Barbara hope zuckerberg. Corporate funding is provided by mutual of america designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. W thats wre your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by oand by the corporaor public broadcasting. A private corporation funded by the american people. Urand by contributions to pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Ch from the tnet studios at Lincoln Center in new york, hari sreenivasan. Sreenivasan good evening and thanks for joining us. T in wuld be the largest demonstration yet, prodemocracy protesters fled the streets of hong kong today, marching through heavy rain towards government offices to call f reform. Citing previous violence, police initially banned the protesters from marching, but the rally which had Police Approval quickly overwhelmed the citys Victoria Park and spilled into the nearby streets. The marcremained peaceful with no reports of clashes with police. A Smaller Group mained outside government offices late into the night. The organizers of the Pro Democracy Movement say there were 1. 7million protesters. Quartz reporter mary huis in hong kong and she joins us now via skype. This lasweek has seenome changes in how the protests are functioning. Where do the protesters go from here . I tnk one of the main questions the protest is, after last sunday nigghts agressive step up in Police Action and followed by the violent chaos at the airport throughhe socalled brave fighters on the front line of the prote take a step back, i think thats exactly what we saw today in hong kong. Theres been a huge buildup of frustrations and things people were angry about, including the lack of free and fair elections, the lack of proper democracy, so those demands have become part ofhe demands people are a part of and reflects a lot of what a lot hong kongers want. Sreenivasan is hong kong running business as ususoal . Its tely business as usual. You walk to the train stations. People are making their commutes to wor and sometimes its a bit jarring, even, to think about what happened just th night before on the same streets, then you go in on a monday and this is unusual. Sreenivasan mary hui joining us sreenivasan an affiliate of the Islamic State aimed responsibility for yesterdays attack in kabul. It was the deadliest of the year. A suicide bomber detonated an explosivesfilled vest, killing 63 and wounding nearly 200 more, at a wedding celebration. As families buried the dead today, questions surng civilian security intensified. The bombing came as the u. S. And the taliban are reportedly nearing a peace deal, but its a conversation that does not include the afghan government, isis groups,exr other emists. The u. S. Wants the taliban to ensure that afghanistan not become a launching pad for the Islamic State before any deal to end the 18year olwar can be reached. Several migrants stranded on a charit coast of italy jumped overboard and attempted to swim to shore. Were later rescued and returned to the ship. The rescue ship, operated by the charity open arms, iored off lampedusa an island that lies between north africa and sicily. Te italiarior minister Matteo Salvini refuses to let the ship itck. He claims the chary uses rescue boats to smgle migrants from a base in libya. The boat originally had 147 aboard, but italian authories did allow number of minors and ill immigrants to come to shore yesterday. Spain and five other European Countries are offering to takeni in those remai on the ship. A leaked government report on brexit published in the sunday times of london today says britain will face a shortage of fuel, food and medicine if it fails to make a deal on its scheduled exit from the European Union at the end of october. Compiled in secretthe government report, dubbed operation yellowhammer, lays out what the newspapers says are the most likely outcomes of a no deal brexit. E addition to shortages, the report predicts thll be delays in freight, as well as a return of a rd border between Northern Ireland and the republic of ireland. U. K. Prime minister ris johnson is scheduled to travel a germany and france this week in an effort to maew deal on brexit with the european ion. For the latest on the deadly suicide bombing in afghanistan, visit pbs. Org newshour. Sreenivasan today the New York Times published the print edition of the 1619 project, ofe name marks this months 400th anniversarhe arrival of the first enslaved people brought from africa to the thenvirginia colony. The times says the p aims to reframe the countrys history understanding 1619 is our true founding and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black americans at theery center of the story we tell ourselves about whojwe are. The t is led by New York Times magazine reporter nicole. Annah jones, who was the author of the opening ess she joins me now. This isnt this isnt just about sort of fe kind of textbook ideas what happened to slaves. Your youve got essays in here about healthcare, about geography, about sugarabout music, all of these different ripple effects that happened throughout the economy and really life here. You say in a sentence you said, you know, we would not be the United States were it not for slavery. This is kind of, one of the originalibers that made this country absolutely. Why do you have to keep talking about the past . Well, one, i think the past is early instructive for the future, for how how we are right now. But also the conceit of the i magazithat you can look at all of these modern phenomenon that you think are w related to slavery at all, and we were going to su how they are. And so, we have a story in there about traffic patterns. Or we have a about why were the only western industrial country without universal health care, about why americans consume so much sugar, about capitalism, about democracy. T were realing to change the way that americans are thinking that this was just a problem of the past that weve resolved and show that it isnt. What many people dont know, and i point this out in my essay, is that o of the reasons we even decide to become a nation in the first place is over the issue of slavery and had we not have slavery we might be canada. At one of the reasons that the founders wanted to break off from britain is they were afraid that britain was going to begin regulating slaenry and maybe oving towards abolishment, and we were making so much money off of slavery that the foders wanted to be able to continue it. Were not taught tt when were taught about our origin stories. And not knowing that, en, really does not allow us to grapple with the nation that we reallyre, and not just the nation that were taught in kind of american mythology. Sreenivasan and that, that money ends up fueling so much more of what made this country. Of course. Its not incidental that ten of the first 12 president s of thewe united state slave owners. This is where, at that time, this kind of very burgeoning nation was getting so much of its wealth and its power. s what allows this kind of ragged group of colonists to believe that they could defeat the most powempire in the world at that time, and it went everywhere. Was north and south. We talk about the industrial revolution. Where do americans believe that the cotton that was being spun in those textile company, our textile mills, coming from . Enslaved people were growing t that cotton south. The rum industry, which was really rum, was the currency of the slave ade. That rum was being processed and sold in the United States. The Banking Industry tses in new york city is rising largely to pros de the mortgad insurance policies and to finance the slave trade. The Ship Builders are northern ship builder the people who are sending voyages to africa to bring llenslaved people here aren the north. So this was a truly national hiterprise. But we prefer to that it was just some backwards southerners, because that is tn way that we nd of deal with our fundamental paradox at our beginning, tt we were a nation built on both the inalienable rights of man and also a nation built on bondage. V srean yeah, you even talk about wall streets name comes from something that most of us dont recognize. Absolutely. So, wall street is called wall street because it was on that wall that enslaved people were ught and sold. Thats been completely erased from our National Memory andly complerased from the way that we think about the north. At the time of the civil war, new york citys mayor actually threatened to secede from the union with the south because so much money was being made off of slaveproduced cotton that was being exported out of new york city. It is that erasure, i think, that has prevented us from really grappling with our history and so much of modern society that we see that is still related to that. Sreenivasan you know, one of the essays in here about healthcare, which is ating, is that some of t myths that started then are still perpetuated today in modern healthcare, and there are still gross misunderstandings of that could actually have very seriouc healsequences. So, Linda Villarosa has this compelling essay that talksri about how slavery, and slavers were using enslaved people to do these medical experiment but also we were using medical technology to justify y by saying, enslaved people dont fef pain the way, or people african descent, dont feel pain the way that white people do. Um, that thehave thicker skin. And so you can beat them or torture them, and its not gonna hurt as bad. Well, these are all justifications for slavery. But if you look at moder medical science and our understanding, theyre still ing these calculations that, say, for instance, lung capacity was one the things that linda writes about that black people have worse lung capacity and the reason that slavers said that was they said that working in the fields and doing this hard labor was good for black people because it helped them increase their lung capacity. Well, what linda points out is today, um, doctors and medical science, are still accounting for what they think is a lessened lung capacity of black americans. And its simply not true. But weve never purged ourselve of tlse science that was used to justify racism. Sreenivasan you talk about how basically the black american, or theres the black experience, has been inconvenient to the narrative of this nation in all of these different categories, thatit been something that we have struggled to deal with but attentimes just not dealt with it as a result, t was thorny. When you think about the aory of who we are, that the, we are this, um, country built on individual rights, we are the country where youre coming from a place where you are not free, you can come to our shores and you can get freedom. Well, then you have black people, and every time you look at black americansyou have to be reminded that there was 1 5 of our population who we had no rights, no liberties, no freedom whatsoever. We are the constant reminder of really theie at our origins, that while Thomas Jefferson was writing the declaration of independence, s enslaved brotherinlaw was there to serve him and make sure that hes comfortable. So, i think this is explains a lot, um, the continued perception that black people are a problem, that black people are, uh, as Abraham Lincoln said, a troublesome presence in american democracy, because every time you see us you have to be reminded of our original sin, and no one wants to be reminded of sin. Were ashamed of sin. Sreenivasan Nicole Hannah jones, thank you so much. Thank you. Sreenivasan singer csongwriter ben folds fire to prominence in the 1990s as the leader of the band ben folds five, which, in keeping with thr particrand of humor that runs in and out of his work, had only three members. Now, folds has added author to his resume, and he recently sat down with newshour weekends to casciatoscuss his new memoir. cheers and applause and so annie waits annie waits annie waits for a call reporter you might have been able to predict ben foldat 52 if you had known ben folds at two. When was two years old i was listening to eight hours of music a day. Reporter seriously . Yes. Reporter and what were the records . Do you remember what you were listening to . Yeah. Oh, i remember them. I remember sam and dave hold on im coming. I remember that one. Hold hold on otis redding. Little richard records, which i loved. He was so off the hook and exploding with insanity. Wop bop a loo bop a lop aaaagghh i was taken to a child psychologist about this. He came to the conclusiothat i i should be kept back in school, that i was slow. But i know that my mother says that she came back feeling like the doctor was wrong, and that i was just creative. Reporter his mom, scotty, whose picture once graced the sleeve of a ben folds five single, was only 21 at the time. But she was old enough to be right about her son. Its all spelled out in foldss new memoir, which he bigned for faore a recent show. Its called a dream about Lightning Bugs a life of music and cheap lessons. In it hes generous with praise for those who inspired him during his North Carolina chilood. Reporter you named your good teachers in your book. Ac yes because my good rs changed my life. Reporter and yet, you write about beg on the verge of being kicked out all the time or yeah. Reporter being a dstudent. Nd i was alternately awful well ahead. I was crawlin out the window, i was skipn school all the time. And skipped school in, like, tenth grade ancame up, uh, to new york with my friend. I mean, its dangerous. People, like, offering you drugs and taking you to strip clubs, right, in in in the middle of, uh you know. I was kind of young for that. Its okay you dont have to pay ive got all the change reporter for all that, his book offers fans no rock star tale of drugs and groupies. Br nor does i with intimate stories of his four marriages, or his being the father of twins. Rather, its about a wiseguy kid with an ear for melody who brought a punk sensibility to the kind of group that had never had one the piano trio. But this punk also wrote astute pop lyrics in the everyday language to. Fans could relate cause everybody knowit ucks to grow upnd verybody does so weird to be back here it was important for me to strip awayhe formality of songs. Ar rosered, violets are blue, yeah, girl youre thats ju that stuff just gets the way. Shes a brick and im drowning slowly reporter some of his songs are autobiographical. Nty girlfriend and i, preg in high school, and we went and got an abortion all by ourselves. We didnt tell adults. We were all alone. And i wrote about a song about that later. They call her name at 7 30 i pace around the parking lot and i walk down to buy her flowers reporter that song was called brick. It was the one that put ben folds five on the map in 1997. But were getting ahead. For now he had an education to complete. And while young bens academic record may have been spotty, his musical talentever in doubt. He got a full scholarship tosi study perc at the university of miami. I considered the school the doorway to the world where they maded usic. But i southern accent and at miami they were all new york kids. Ati was so intimidated by and then so i come in with thisc drum set, i paid precisely ol7 for, i saved up for over a summer, which is aplywood kit that was falling apart. The other kids had seally nice drs. Uh, those things were horrifying to me. It was horrifying not to be dressed the right way. I didnt have the right tirt. Didnt have the right shoes. What im not so proud of is that i lost the scholship because i got into somethin that could be described as a fight, but was more of me just gettin myself beaten up really badly and goin to the hospital all night. R repor fellow student beat him up. Folds broke his hand on the wall trying to punch back. The next morning was his final exam. And i had been up all night. I had been drunk the night i got dropped off in a police car, uood still on on me. And i remember goito the instructor. I was like, can i take my test next week . And he goes, no. You know, they made me play my major test for the year now with a a broken hand. I knew id flunked the test. And i knew by flunkin the test i had lost my scholarship. And i threw my drum set in the lake at the moment that i realized that i flunked the test. D ama. I was very dramatic. But i got applause for throwin em in the lake by all these kids who never gave me the time of day cause suddenly i had done somethin that was funny and cool. Ep ter foldss memoir describes how cool was hard to come by back in North Carolina,h e he got his First Official gig playing polkas in a german asrestaurant, for which he required to dress the part. L for a ke, tryin to look cool growin up, you know, like, se 18 years old by this time, maybe 19. And my little skinny legs stickin out of, like, legit german ledhosen, playin beer barrel polka for old people. I wasnt gettin laid that year. Reporter the conceptf ol yeah. Reporter and being cool or not beincool runs in and out of your book. Yeah. In my era in the 90s, beingbe cool was mbout being miserable. Being cool was maybe about, um, you know, a lot of dark lot of dark things, not takin things too seriously. Reporter well, your your song title, the battle of who could care less. Yeah. Who could care less . Which of you is more cool than the other because you have so much apathy. Do you not hear me any more i know its not your thing to care i know its cool to be so bored reporter and at one point you figured out that you really wanted to cultivate your own nerdiness. Uhhuh. When i was honest about my feelings about not being cool, that really seemed to resonate with people. W never cool in school and i think i cultivated that then because i realized, hey,i speakin for like, 80 , 90 of us who dont feel c reporter besides offering insights into his work, the bool charts bens course through more than two decades of ups and downs in the music business, including his havingm produced an alr William Shatner of star trek fame. P and given thk sensibility, his story features a reasonable amount of bad boy behavior along the way. Like the time he was on australias midday show in 1997. It was a very, very naive show, innocent, way behind the times. Didnt realize that we had dirty words all in the song. And we just cussed our way through the song. At the end of it i threw my stool at the pianond stool bits went everywhere. Looked very violent, but it was showbiz. If you ever youtube it its hilarious cause i threw that stool, and then even the gotocommercial break music sounds like somethin from the 50s. Its like dadadadadadadadada like, its just way out of time. But this was just shocking for the man whos piano it was, who happened to be the host of the show. And he was very upset. Theres 47,000 fantastic australian groups out there trying so hard to get on and we let them on because they aret american, i doow. Reporter later, says folds, he became friendly with the man whose piano he assau you were not the same after that walking you know, one of the things my iarents could have done, was going to give them a little advice as a 52yearold back to a 25yrold father, maybe a little discipline. Just a little bit. Reporter or ben folds at 52, the onstage behavior is somewhat less raucous these days. Still performing before thousands, hes less lstely to throw l than to conduct a singalong. Either way hes still making music his fans can relate to. Sreenivasan finally tonight, a somber note from iceland. Mourners have placed a commemorative plaque to mark the first glacier lost to clime change. Its a process captured in these nasa satellite images. The plaque notes the date and the current levels of carbe diox the atmosphere and reads, in the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it. Thats all for this edition of pbs newshour weekend. Im hari sreenivasan. Thanks for watching. Have a good night. Captioning sponsored by wnet captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org pbnewshour weekend is made possible by bernard and irene schwartz. Sue and Edgar Wachenheim iii. The cheryl and Philip Milstein family. The j. P. B. Foundation. Rosalind p. Walter, in memory of george oneil. Barbara hope zuckerberg. Corporate funding provided by mutual of america designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Additional support has been provided by f and by the corporati public broadcasting. A private corporation funded by the american people. And by contributions to your ikpbs station from viewers you. Thk you. Be more. Pbs. S. Announcer this program is made possible in part by you know, theres real piner travel. Ts a twosided thing. First is what it does to yourself. Because it does give you other experiences, other culture and other people. But also, it lets other peopl experience you. And i think it helps make us kinder. Viking. Exploring the world i comfort. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Deborah good evening