Puerto Ricans are known they house is meeting to question people Lucy speaking outside the capital House President Johnny Mendis said he was the process to be transparent the process on a monitor. I want a clear process Lisa so what degree can skin present at the final decision is what's best for Puerto Rico last week Mendis said he supports Thomas treated as ship's The president of the Senate to succeed. And other legislators have raised issues of conflict of interest for pedal. Mary's opinion n.p.r. News San Juan Puerto Rico China's foreign ministry is pushing back against new terrorists a President Trump announced this week N.P.R.'s Emily Fang reports China views the new tariffs as a violation of a consensus between the u.s. And China spokesperson while training says that China doesn't want to trade war but isn't afraid of fighting one the strong words came after President suddenly announced on Twitter that the u.s. Would enact 10 percent tariffs on 3 $100000000000.00 remaining of Chinese goods the tariffs are expected September 1st u.s. And China trade negotiators failed to reach a trade deal during talks that ended this Wednesday in Shanghai that said they need again in Washington d.c. And September in June trying to promise to buy more u.s. Agricultural products such as pork and soybeans but u.s. Department of Agriculture data shows that Chinese purchases have yet to materialize and leafing n.p.r. News Beijing u.s. Stocks to lower with the Dow down 221 points 26362 this is n.p.r. News. This is bird knows. 2 different hawks that live on opposite sides of the world have evolved in identical and outlandish ability. The 1st is the crane Hawk of Central and South America it's named after the tall statuesque birds called cranes because of its long slim dangly legs. Unlike most birds legs the crane Hawks are adapted to bend both forward and backward this rare trait known as reversible Tarsus is something we might call being double jointed. On the far side of the Atlantic there's a 2nd long legged and double jointed bird of prey the African Harrier hard. As Hawks go the 2 are only distantly related but similar animals in similar environments can sometimes evolve similar traits each bird's wonderfully particular leg adaptation is completely original it evolved all on its own even though the solution at the end of all that experimentation ended up being the same scientists call this process convergent evolution. Both Hawks are experts in capturing prey that other raptors find too elusive their long double jointed legs allow them to reach into crevices or holes and sway back and forth at odd angles to snatch their prey. To Hawks 2 cartons and one amazing solution for bird note I'm Mary McCann. Hey I'm Francis lamppost The Splendid Table culture and lifestyle show all about food and the way it works lives every week we talk with people who are shaping the food world from writers and chefs the yoga makers and the guy selling papooses of the in the. In here the show Saturdays at 1 pm on the only station playing the lead table in the Bay Area 91.7 k l w San Francisco Splendid Table debuts tomorrow at one here on Calle that view. This is Fresh Air I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross according to the u.s. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration June was the planet's hottest month on record today we're going to listen to Terry's interview with self described conservation photographer Paul Nicklen whose beautiful photos document some of the most dramatic consequences of climate change in the Arctic and Antarctic he's been working in those regions since 1905 taking pictures of polar bears penguins Sienna moles and the ice and it's been a lot of time in frigid waters taking underwater photos the threat of hypothermia and of getting attacked by predators makes it a risky business despite the inhospitable temperatures He works in Nicklin feels at home he grew up in an interview with community just a few 100 miles from the North Pole Mifflin's down about 20 stories for National Geographic he and his partner and fellow photographer Christina Mr Meyer founded the group c legacy which uses photography and film to inspire people to protect the oceans in a few moments you'll hear Nicklin talk about working in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard this week researchers in Norway reported that 200 reindeer had starved to death on an island there where the ecosystem has been affected by climate change a new book of Paul Nicklen photographs called Born to ice was published last year Terry spoke to him in 2017 Paul Nicklen welcome to Fresh Air one of your most famous photos has to do with melting install Bard this is a photo that Al Gore has used to illustrate the changes caused by climate change and it's basically like a glacier that's become a waterfall because of melting ice absolutely is one of my favorite images you know we were working as fall barred photographing it was a really traumatic day because we had been photographing polar bears and traveling around Svalbard there was no sea ice to be found anywhere the bears were stranded on land and and I was actually had philanthropists who're. Who I was the guy you know and guiding bring in with us to do our c legacy work and they were you know allowing us to show them what's at stake as well allowing us to do our journalism and our storytelling. And that day in the morning I had found them finally some polar bears that were sleeping and we sat there waiting for hours for the Bears to get up until I realized that the Bears were probably never going to get up and I walked up to the Bears and they were both dead they had starved to death and they were young 3 year old bears on the shores of all barred and it was just a gut wrenching moment we filmed and documented and then later that night we had to move the vessel because of a really big storm was coming and winds were up to 80 knots and we came around down behind the ice cap of Nordhaus land at the Northeast ice cap of Svalbard just to get out of the wind from the storm and as the light hit this ice face the ice cap to look back and to see not only was that you know that outside temperature 68 degrees Fahrenheit but to see 20 waterfalls in a row just gushing off the top of this ice cap and then you start to tie that to the science that's coming out that 1st time in recorded history that the entire ice cap of Greenland is melting and then you know so just yeah it was just a really powerful humbling moment and I felt very lucky to be able to capture all these waterfalls you know pouring off the top of this ice cap Now you mentioned the photograph that you took in 2014 of a dead polar bear and you found 2 dead polar bears on that trip how does that connect to the climate change. I mean for me it's you know when I was I was a biologist I worked on polar bears. Throughout the Arctic and helped you know look at population dynamics and movement patterns and you know in all those years of flying around in helicopters and driving across the sea ice on snowmobiles and looking for bears I never I never found a dead polar bear you very for some reason you very rarely find dead bears and in the last 20 years to have the scientists talking about how we're you know reaching the lowest extent of ice we've ever had a place for lakes Falbe our Norway historically has been covered by sea ice year round and in the last 20 to 30 years that ice has been just in a few fjords and now in the last few years there's been no ice at all arounds full bar there's been a little strip down the east side and when there's no ice that means bears basically do not have that platform to catch seals and that's their main food source they might eat a little bit of seaweed but they might get the odd bird a or the odd bird but that's not given him any nutritional value essentially bears are designed to go on land for long periods of time they can be on land for 2 months and not eat a meal but they're not designed to go for 5 or 6 months on land without eating any food and that's where we're starting to find emaciated bears dot dead bears you know in Alaska in the Beaufort where there's really ice has taken a beating especially that multi-year ice that lives for many years they're finding dead bears floating out in the sea and these are most likely bears that have attempted to swim from the ice pack in the summer in the fall back to land and if they have to swim you know several 100 miles and they're already a skinny bear they are going to suffer from hypothermia as well so when you start to see these examples you just see how tied they are to their food source if they don't have SEALs they're going to get angry if they have seals you're going to get fat bears you have a photo that I think pretty recent of a mother polar bear and her cub stranded on a small piece of glacier ice would you describe the photo and tell us how you interpret it. Yeah absolutely so that's a very good point in when you say you know people see bear standing on ice. And they think they're fine but in this case for me it was very important to put that photograph in context it's a mother and her 2 year old standing on a piece of glacier ice drifting out in the middle of the ocean we were over 150 miles from land anywhere and we were not around any pack ice at all so at this point the mother and her cub are basically stranded drifting out to sea on a pad of ice or on a on a piece of glacier ice hoping to it probably at some point get deposited off near land where they could at least see land or smell land and be able to get her cubs safely to land when they're on glacier ice like that it's not like a seal is just going to hop up up in the ice and just you know present itself and they're going to build or kill a seal when the Bears are in that situation they're not catching they're not hunting they're not killing they're not eating so you see you know. Again that's the art part is it's beautiful to look at and then when you start to assess the image and I think that's what most people are not doing right now they're not stopping and asking why or what it means and that's that's another image for me that starts to create conversation and drive debate which is which serves its purpose so polar bears have a very special place in your work and in your life like what's their importance to you personally. I think the fact that having grown up in the high Arctic with the you know it as a kid. And just spending so much time throughout my life with bears you know I've seen probably if I had to guess over 2000 polar bears in the wild and to have spent so much quality time sort of an intimate settings with them throughout my life from the time I was young and then mostly as a young adult when I was working as a biologist and living on the sea ice for you know 34 or 5 months at a time and spending so much time with bears that you just sort of fall in love with the species and you get to know it so intimately and you know I've never had a scary moment with a polar bear and everyone people come to me it's like it's not the only animal that actively pursued humans for food and you know I just see the sort of all powerful but very fragile vulnerable species that is so at the mercy of its ecosystem and it's sort of the one species that I really used to drive home that connection to how important this ice ecosystem is I want people to realize that ice is like the soil in the garden without ice the polar regions cannot exist when you have healthy ice you get the big crops of Coppa Pods and half of pods those crust ations that live on the bottom of the ice you've got the algae that they feed on underneath the ice and then you've got polar Cod and you've got seals and you've obviously at the top of the food chain and you've got the bowhead whales you've got narwhals and Blucas And then you've got you know of course the polar bear at the very top and you see how and bad ice years all these species stand to suffer and so ice is that important and polar bears allow me to talk about ice I think that's why I love them so much have you seen penguins who are dying because of the loss of sea ice. I'm seeing penguins die this year was a really tragic year to go down in witness that normally when you go down to Antarctica in February at the end of the season there's still a lot of snow on the ground in the penguins are just getting ready to go to sea but what we witnessed this year was this is the most rainfall they've had and all the snow is gone in these places where it's are normally covered in snow and the penguins when they're in they're very vulnerable down and face they've got this fluffy down that keeps him warm and that's there until they get there their adult feathers which allow them to do to repulse water and go to sea and that that phase they can't get wet but dry snow can be is very dry it's a safe environment for them but when they get wet and it rains you start to see a lot of dead penguins and another thing that we have to address in Antarctica with penguins is you know krill has become the new latest craze for humans it's the new cool protein it's the a mega 3 that we like to eat and to go down to at Arctic and see factory ships that are 800 feet long pulling out hundreds of millions of pounds of krill and shipping that off to market there's a huge biomass of krill in this earth but what's important is where they're taking the krill from if they're taking the krill right close to critical feeding habitat of penguins that's a big problem and so you know seeing the Rossi marine protected area created based on the efforts of many people and then to now be working towards a marine protected area around that Arctic peninsula it's sort of the work that we do at sea legacies the work that that fuels us and it's it's exciting and it's urgent Paul Nicklen speaking with Terry Gross recorded in 2017 we'll hear more after a short break this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air and we're listening to the interview Terry Gross recorded in 2017 with Paul Nicklen a photographer who documents the effects of climate change in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. So you photographed like many many polar bears and you've seen about 2000 of them and I think it's easy for people in some ways to relate to polar bears because they're just so impressive an attractive looking but you also spend a lot of time photographing creatures that you know aren't going to be like you know cute or impressive like that by people's standards you know so I'm thinking here of like the nor wall which is let me ask you to describe what in our wallets. It's funny that we're so in love with the unicorn so you know that the horse with a tusk and all of a sudden there really is a unicorn out there it just happens to be in something so much more amazing to see a 16 foot long whale modeled on mana seris means $11.00 tooth and it has doesn't have any teeth in its mouth but it has 2 teeth that grow out of its upper jaw and they go straight out from their head and so they goes out on the left he looks spiral and that's that's the tusk of the Narwhal So it's a 16 foot long whale and really big toss can grow up to 11 feet and very very rarely do both teeth actually protruding grow out from the upper jaw and that gets you know they call them double tuskers but sometimes you can you know see this poor whale that has to swim around with probably you know $4050.00 pounds of ivory strapped to its head you know that's 11 feet long it's got a lot to be to carry around in the ice especially to the you know like whales with an ivory spear attached to its head it's basically a beluga whale that's got this great speckled color that. Has long a long ivory tusks you know that's up to him so you've taken a lot of photographs of Nora walls but it took you years to find them why was it hard normals are extremely difficult to to photograph very few people you know flip Nicklin who was my original mentor has seen them underwater photograph males it's it's just very rare you know you the big film crews have been working up there the b.b.c. The National Geographic and h.k. Had been chasing them for years and you know I just would be up there with you know it for years every season trying to get narwhals and it's just they're shy they're smart they're a loose of you know the end of what you're hunting them so when they're being hunted they don't want to be anywhere you know near the ice crack so they're staying out in the open water and it was after years of going up there and trying to find our wells at least have that intimate moment again where I could be alone with this animal so I want to be I always want to be close to my subjects I want to be able. To reach out and you know pet in our will and then I know I'm photographing with a wide angle lens almost like this 3 dimensional sensation with these with these animals and I want to transport people into my images so I thought how am I going to get close to these narwhals and I finally figured out if I could go home and get a little airplane and learn how to fly it and ultra light and put cement Teflon floats on the bottom that will glide across the sea ice then I can keep my airplane on the sea ice for you know months at a time and when the weather is right we could just feel the plane take off out over the pack ice and land on a floating pan of ice next to a bunch of narwhals And you know we did that for 2 years and we really really struggled it didn't go well and finally you know after years of trying this you know we the 1st time we flew we got carb ice and we ended up the engine in them shutting down on us that's 1000 feet above the sea ice 50 miles off shore it's my friend and I flying this little ultralight with the doors off and I thought for sure we were going to end up in trouble and. You know and then we ended up breaking the crankshaft and so we had a very bad landing a crash landing back at our ice camp you know we called Rotax and ordered up a new engine and had it shipped overnight Fedex which you know took 6 weeks for it to arrive there and we had we had you know what hunters go out with sleds and pick up this new engine and we had stalled the new engine in it too had some problems but finally on the last 2 days of the project we were nobody else was on the ice because it was so rotten and we took off in this airplane and not expecting to see much and 1st we saw a couple narwhals and then we saw hundreds and then we saw thousands of normals and thousands of thousands and we we landed on the ice and we landed on a pan of ice right next to a mother and her cub polar bear got out and there were just narwhals absolutely everywhere and I was so excited I knew in that moment in 8 years of trying that we just shot an entire assignment we shot the most important pictures ever taken of narwhals in just a few hour period we went back to camp went to fuel up the airplane. I fell through the sea ice dislocated my shoulder as I was going through the ice and at that point the project was over but it was amazing that as my field assistant was trying to reset my shoulder I was wincing in so much pain and I would squint and close my eyes and all I would see were narwhals and tusks and in beautiful light and I knew at that moment that it was safe to go home because we got the story. Were you worried about their 12 foot ivory tusks you know it's funny you know I've never ever worried about the tusk it all it's. So funny because I'm so so in love with what I do in just to be able to see narwhals approaching me underwater and you can hear them clicking and they're Eckel locating you and they're coming towards you to check you out I mean the last thought I think I'd ever have is like while they all have you know 11 foot long tusks and but you do see that Narwhals are scarred up sometimes not much is known about their toss but you know they must do enough battle that create these scars and so you know they cross toss they stab each other they poke and so sure that's I guess the crosses your mind but it's not being impaled by I'm not really scared to death I just want my death to be cool and I guess being speared by an hour will be a pretty cool way to go so it's. Not a concern but is it something you think about a lot that you want your death to be cool. No I just don't want to be uncool you know I don't want to do something stupid and you know step out on a car in front of a bus in New York as I wasn't paying attention and get run over that would not be a cool death you know if I'm out there pushing and trying to push the limits to come back with something amazing to connect to the world to what I love then sure it's you know it but you can't my friends are geographic tell me all the time you can't take pictures when you're dead so we have too many stories to tell and so it's important to try and stay alive for now so I want to get back to those tasks for a 2nd what function do they serve are they a defense mechanism or like a really large toothpick with which to spear what they want to eat you know there are a whole bunch of theories that have come out and it's actually a very heated sensitive topic if there was so much benefit to a tusk then I think you know obviously females would have them as well you know they're just they're rich they're a trade on males and I really believe that there are sexual trade just like in many other species you know and when deer have these big big antlers and you know elephant males have these massive toss and you know these narwhals these males when you watch them out there they're constantly robbing each other with their tusks they're tapping their tusks they're waving them in the air it's like they're measuring sort of who's got the biggest task and it's it's quite it's fascinating to watch them so you mentioned that in looking for the Nara walls you fell through the ice. Would you describe what it's like to fall through Arctic ice. It's actually no followthrough Arctic ice is not a big deal you know it's if you fall through lake ice it's terrifying because you you know if you're out on thin lake ice and you break through I am so scared of lake ice because it shatters it's brittle it breaks and you know every time you try and get back up you're getting wetter you know you're getting wet you're getting heavier and every time you throw your upper body on lake ice you break through it I fall in through lake ice as well I it's really really awful and if when you fall through sea ice it's quite supple it's porous it's rough it's so I mean I wear a dry suit quite often and when I'm running across the ice I expect to fall and you can be almost running you know the honeycomb cereal where it's you know all the air pockets through you can walk across the ice that is that rotten that is that porous and sometimes all fall through and you laugh and you get up and you keep going to crawl back onto the ice and it's not a big deal but it is a big deal when you are you know if you're on a snowmobile and you go through you know now you're wet and you're out on the ice and it's that's that gets to be very dangerous but it's yeah it's Ok I mean I've fallen through sea ice dozens of times and you know but it's it's the time that I fell through and I dislocated my shoulder on the ice that you know when I was I was I was falling through the ice I was laughing to myself like here we go again you know we're about to get wet and I was just wearing normal you know Gore tex clothing and as I was going through the ice the ice that I was on broke into these 2 big chunks and they were starting to roll in words like on a grinder and I was starting to go in between the ice and down and under and I wouldn't come back from that there's no way I could have pushed up to the ice and nobody saw me go in and as I'm going through that ice I reached up and I grabbed a rope on my sled I've just done in next to my comment to which is a sled that you pull and as I did that it popped my shoulder and I'm just lying there sort of just my nose in my mouth sort of above the water with this ice squeezing me and my shoulder dislocated which I never had before so it actually hurt quite a bit and kind of takes your breath away for a moment and then I realized that I was in a bit of a predicament but luckily you know my team eventually saw me and I know what Hunter saw me and they all grabbed me and pulled me out in then just to reset my shoulder but you know. Conservation photographer Paul Nicklen speaking with Terry Gross in 2017 after a break we'll talk about another harrowing underwater encounter with a leopard seal and film critic Justin Chang reviews the new psychological drama Luce I'm Dave Davies and this is Fresh Air. The Neubauer Family Foundation supports w.h.y. Was fresh air and its commitment to sharing ideas and encouraging meaningful conversation support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the estate of Joan Kroc whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation which provides unrestricted support to individual artists in jazz dance and theater through the Doris Duke artist awards. On the next calls media roundtable we'll speak with award winning journalist Lawrence Lanahan about his new book The lines between us 2 families in a quest to cross Baltimore's racial divide he chronicles the history of the Divide by exposing the forces that have created black spaces and white spaces and poor spaces and rich spaces join the next call with me. And coming up at 10. Hi I'm Janay Darden host the sights and sounds of joint k l w on Saturday August 3rd. But the Black Bloc Party enjoy live music a kid. More the party is on the International Boulevard and. Celebrate the very city at the black culture part of this new to 5 pm. Visit. Org. This is Fresh Air I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross June was the hottest month on record for the planet and we're listening to the interview Terry recorded in 2017 with photographer Paul Nicklen who works in the Arctic and Antarctic photographing polar bears penguins Seattle's and the ice documenting the effects of climate change melting ice is altering the ecosystems in both polar regions Nicklin has done about 20 stories for National Geographic and co-founded the conservation group sea legacy . So we've been talking about your photography in the Arctic Let's switch to Antarctica where you've also done a lot of photography and among us a c.n.n. Is that you photograph there is the leopard Theo would you describe a leopard seal you know leopard seals are are fascinating to look at there they're 12 feet long you know is a really big 1000 pounds they have the Serpentine like body they're very lean and slender and they have these massive pictorial flippers that allow them to turn on a dime underwater they have these big reptilian heads with these massive jaws and these sort of dark holes for eyes like there's like almost like this is sinister look to them but you just have to see want to really just sort of fall in love with them they're just such characters. So you wanted to photograph them and you got your chance one once time to banging against your boat in a kind of threatening way would you describe the circumstance that led to you getting in the water yeah I wanted to get Antarctica and get to know as many leopard seals as I could to give them a fair shake I never really think animals are vicious or have to get humans or and so I worked with a friend of mine named your Don from Sweden people would say Goran and I called him up and he had been in the water with leopard seals a couple of times and I said What do you think are the vessels and he said no no they're they're fantastic animals but they're complex you just have to really get to know them and once you get to know them it can be great so he and I went off to Antartica together on a small sailboat crossed the 500 mile Drake Passage and arrived there in the 1st day we showed up on the peninsula and we went out in the little zodiac that was 12 feet long and this right away this leopard seal came up to us and she was as long or longer than the boat and he just said that is a bloody big Silja just to quote him exactly he said you know it's a huge seal and he said this is good the bigger they are the more confident they are the more they're going to interact with you and so that big seal grabbed the penguin right away came up underneath the whole of the boat and started to ram it against the bottom of the boat and then she went away from the boat with this penguin almost knocked us over the edge of the boat we had to sit down and I was like This is my 1st encounter with a leopard seal was completely humbling and and then she goes about 10 feet away from the boat she grabs it by the neck and does this death shake where they shake him so hard from side to side that they try and turn them inside out so the feathers come off their body and they can eat the meat so the leopard still does that so there's guts in the water there's blood everywhere there's you know bits of paying went and this is all sort of in the 1st half an hour of me seeing a leopard seal and you're out on said to me this is a great situation it's time for you to get in the water you know with his sick thick Swedish accent and at that point I was just I'm a pretty brave guy and I always give animals the benefit of the doubt but everything in my body was. Saying don't do it do not get in the water and and so I said to you out on you know hey dude it's just my 1st seal let's let's let's do it tomorrow and he said and he started yelling He says it's 10 in the morning you've complained all the time there's not enough budget and not enough time your skin you know scared of failing a story for National Geographic he goes I tell you now to shut up and you get in the water yeah and I just looked at this guy yelling at me and I looked at this massive seal and I'm like he's right you know I come here to photograph the ceiling get to know it's known this is no time to chicken out and I put on my my hood in my dry suit sealed it up and put my fans on and my mouth was like it's so dry like parts dry mouth put my snorkel in my mouth and slipped over the edge of the boat and things appear 30 percent larger underwater than they do above water so whoever big She looked above water she looked 30 percent larger underwater so she looked like the size of a beluga whale to me and this massive head and she was huge and she just dropped her Penguin it came shooting over to me and she opened up her mouth which is you know her head's twice as big as a grizzly bears and now I'm staring down her throat her canines are 2 above my head and my camera 2 are below and I'm staring down her throat and luckily for me every time I took a picture of my shutter went black so I was actually it was really great shooting and the more I shot the less I could see I made the mistake once of looking over my camera when you're looking at something through a really wide angle lens like a fish eye they appear tiny but when I looked over my camera I realized truly how massive this animal was and it was more she was when I deal with polar bears her grizzly bears or any of these incredible top predators I let them dictate the encounter I don't want to harass them push them change their behavior but this was all her so all I did was lie there motionless I didn't move I let her check me out I let her go through this whole series of threat displays that she was doing to me to establish her Damas because you have to. I think that she is on this incredible penguin record and there's you know thousands of penguins and she's eating penguins all morning as they go to sea. And I just showed up and jumped into her territory and she's chased every other leopard see a lot of her territory and also here is this this cocky person who maybe she hasn't even seen a human before but she was going to figure out what I was doing in her territory and she started off with this threat display that never felt terrifying it was just it was just incredible it was just big and powerful but it was never it didn't like like it was ever going to bite me and another thing that's fascinating about leopard seals is when you look at these animals when you look at elephant seals or 1st SEALs they're covered in scars and bite marks and walrus are always hitting each other you look at a leopard seal they're perfectly clean their shiny sleek silver bodies they have no scars on their bodies they don't they don't fight by biting each other all the time they fight through gesture and display in these threat displays and so this is what this seal is doing it was communicating with me it wasn't coming up to bite me but it was establishing its dominance which I was happy to concede and at some point I started feeding you penguins. So you have a great yeah sure of this leopard seal with half a penguin in its mouth like the bottom half like that the feet in the torso coming at you to offer you a piece of Penguin It's such a crazy picture yeah it was it was an incredible situation and you know this leopard seal stayed with me for 4 days straight and every time I would show up on the water she'd be there to greet me she would follow me back to the sailboat at night and once she established her dominance she completely relaxed and then she disappeared I thought the encounter was over and she showed up a few minutes later with a penguin in her small that she had just caught a penguin check she was holding it by the feet in the Penguins flapping trying to get away from her and she would just sort of line it up with me and when it was lined up perfectly with me she would let it go and I would swim off she caught it she did this over and over and I realized at that moment that she was trying to feed. Me a life Penguin and I think she realized quickly in this encounter that I was not capable of of catching a live moving swimming penguin and so she brought me another penguin she did all these different attempts to feed me live penguins and at one point I think she just got she says there's a photo of her looking dejected sort of disappointed in me that I'm sort of so useless that I'm unable to catch or accept one of her gifts so then she started to bring the dead penguins and up one point she would I had 5 Penguins floating around my head and the picture you're talking about as is further on in the encounter when she got so tired of me being unable to accept one of her pain was that she grabbed it and she flipped it on top of my head and that's where you have the feet sort of lying on my camera they had sort of you know she kept throwing penguins on me that she'd put me in the ribs she would she come around beside me as the Penguins floating on top of my camera and she sort of poked me with her whiskers in my cheek you know and I'm trying to shoot but I'm laughing so hard in my mask that it's flooding mine my seal so I'm trying to see through this mass it's filling up with seawater and she's just determined like this o.c.d. Determination to get me to eat a penguin because if I accept the penguin then she knows exactly why I'm there then I think she but the more I rejected her penguin offerings the more confused she became the more o.c.d. The more determined she became to give me one of her offerings so it sounds like you were kind of falling in love with this leopard seal do you feel like you learned something that other people didn't know about leopard seals. I think I learned I mean I definitely fell in love with the seal I mean I would come in it's embarrassing to admit this to you on paranoia you have a lot of followers to admit that you're you know so is you know I'd fall asleep at night with tears coming down my cheeks is so sore I'm just remembering it. Yeah I was just so grateful you know I'm just a dude to spend your life with Hamels and to be fighting to get yourself into a situation where you can try and get close where you can try and you know just even get within 100 metres of something and also in here is a top predator and not only you're getting to see its face it's interacting with you it's trying to force feed you penguin that's trying to take care of you it's. It's a very very humbling humbling thing and and so what you learn about these animals is how computer could to they are how intelligent they are how social they are and sort of how forgiving they are and it's just a flop yourself into its world and for it to spend that much time and energy trying to figure out who you are and to interact with you and then the encounter went further from there and I think that's why I get emotional because we had such a connection and then near the end of the project she I was in the water and she came up to me and she did this really aggressive threat display she went upside down she did this guttural sort of good and I could feel it vibrate through my whole body and I thought Ok now now she's upset I've pushed her too far she's going to attack what had happened was another big leopard seal had snuck up behind me and she did that threat display and she chased that leopard seals away from me and that other leopard seal too had a penguin in its mouth and she took that penguin away from that leopard brought that paying them back and gave that to me as well so yeah. It was pretty powerful Paul Nicklen speaking with Terry Gross recorded in 2017 will be back in just a moment this is Fresh Air. 2 support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from the Main Office of Tourism with wild landscapes and rugged coasts to inspire original lifestyles and authentic adventures Maine offers travelers an opportunity to discover their very own main thing visit Maine dot com I'm from the level sun foundation committed to improving lives through invention in the u.s. And in developing countries and working to inspire engine Nabl the next generation of inventors more information is available at org This is Fresh Air and we're listening to the interview Terry recorded 2 years ago with Paul Nicklen He's a photographer who documents the effects of climate change in the polar regions. Here's a paradox like you you fell in love with this leopard seal who who feeds on penguins in keeps giving you penguins as an offering but you love penguins too and you have some beautiful pictures of penguins My favorite is a picture of a mother and father penguin with their beaks touching and the outline of their bodies kind of form like a heart and in between them is like a baby penguin like their baby penguin and it's such a really beautiful photo so what it's what's it like for you to fall in love with both the Predator and the prey that's a great great question Terry and when you watch leopard seals they play with their food there's like this cold hearted emotional less. Reaction that they have their food they don't mind torturing the food I was swimming in the water with a corpsman is called the blue eyed shag and it's a beautiful beautiful black and white cormorant and the leopard seal swam up to me grabbed the Cormorant by its neck and broke it and the Cormac could still swim and the leopard still was amused by this you know I just watched it for a little while but then it got bored and left and I'm in the water with this bird that has a broken neck and I thought should I kill the bird I mean this poor thing's going to suffer it's never going to make it and I thought well it's not my job to interact but you know I came back the next day and I found the same poor bird swimming with a broken neck and you know it's if you allow your emotions into this it's it does get really really tough you know but it's try and try and stay removed from natural ecosystems so I want to ask you about another sea creature and one of these creatures nearly killed you and this is the elephant seal and you were filming in elephant seals underwater and you ended up kind of in the mouth of one of them would you describe what happened yeah sure it's it was really. You know a traumatic moment and it was very much 100 percent my fault and it's when you watch elephant seals they way up to 8 or 9000 pounds they're 800 feet long you know they weigh more then an f 350 pick up truck I mean they're huge and they've got really large teeth and when it's time. For the mating season all they're doing is either breeding or they're fighting and when they fight they fight they're willing to fight to the death they you can hear 2 elephant seal mouth magine to 8000 pound dominant bulls slapping their fatty chest together you know with such force they rear up 10 feet high in the air and they come down with such incredible force you can hear it from a long ways away and then when you watch them in the surf zone they'll they would grab females who way you know females much smaller you talk about sexual dimorphism a female elephant seals maybe 131400 pounds and they're just so you know Randi that time of year they they just turn their brain off and. You know and they're just they're looking to breed and a big ball will have up to 300 females in his harem and so he's chasing all the males away he's grabbing females in the surf zone chasing away subordinate males in the surf zone and then unfortunately we're watching them even drown females because they were so ready to breed that they were killing these poor females and it's just something just I wasn't very smart I made a really dumb decision I saw this big elephant seal floating in the water I thought he was just a subordinate male who was off to the side of the colony and was just sort of hanging out cooling off but what I didn't realize it was the beach master it was the guy who had 300 girlfriends and I swam up to him in the water and it was just a stupid decision and right away he came shooting over to me and I tried to hide behind a rock he just wrapped his body around this rock and the water was solid was 4 feet deep so I couldn't really it was the point that he kept trying to come on top of me to crush me and as he's swimming on top of me the only way I could get out from underneath them is I would shove my camera to his mouth he was trying to bite my head and it's his head weighs probably you know 45600 pounds the size of a grizzly bear just his whole head and neck region it's that big of an animal I would just suck my Domon his mouth and as he would come down I mean I'd push off and then he kept trying to come on top of me again and I knew if he got on top of me that I would do. Around and I would die it's just you know in a mouse going to snorkel if I had been smart I would have swam out into deeper water where he couldn't crush me but you know he could push me underwater but I'd be able to probably keep coming up for breath and instead I tried to get on the land which is where all his girlfriends were and he didn't like that so every time I tried to stand up he would be up 10 feet in the air and he throws body I mean I'd have to lunge out of the way you know one side bounced off his chest and finally my assistant was down the beach and hear me screaming and but it was funny it was it was almost call me because it was like it's like I've always been sort of curious home going to die and it was at that moment I was like So this is it I find like Ok I finally know it's kind of a cool death but of course I was you know a dumb ass getting myself into the situation never thought it through and my system saw I was in trouble and he came running down the beach and distracted the elephant seal for a 2nd I crawled up on the beach and just curled up in a fetal position had a long cry and got on with their day but you know it's just a bad decision on my part. Did that change your approach to working under water at all not really I mean this is maybe doesn't make me sound too bright but I mean I got in the water with other elephant seal males again that project but I would I would really started to I don't think anybody has ever been in the water with big breeding elephant seal bulls before and you know the problem with my work is almost everything I do when it comes to working with these big predators you're you're sort of innate fear mechanisms are telling you not to do it so you're always ignoring your gut and when you ignore your gut all the time at some point you don't know where that benchmark is anymore you don't know you're always stepping into this gray area you're stepping over the line and so now I've learned to just really learn my guts really screaming at me to slow down and be smart I start to back up a little bit and just spend more quality time analyzing thinking watching and then and then moving on with it if if it seems like the right decision well that's an interesting paradox that you just mentioned I mean you're in the water with predators so your gut would be tell. I don't do that but at the same time that's your work to do that but if you turn off your gut you will not pick up on signals that you really should be picking up on you know really dangerous possibilities I think I get so caught up in how important these stories are and how you know my images are going to have to have that 3 dimensional feel to them to really bring people into the issues I care about and I think I just get so focused sometimes on getting those images you know the biggest thing I guess that I'm worried about or and I'm also very proud of as I've never had to kill an animal or hurt an animal because of my photography so I you know I want to get close but I also never want to harass an animal I don't want to change an animal's behavior I want animals to behave naturally but at the same time in order to get great images I need I need to be close so that's you know it's a bit of a it's a challenging situation well thank you so much for going to the places that most of us will never be able to get to and bringing back images from there thank you for your work thank you so much I really appreciate this chance to talk with you Paul Nicklen is a photographer who works in the Arctic and Antarctic and documenting the effects of climate change Terry spoke to him in 2017 a new book of his photographs called Born to ice was published last year coming up film critic Justin Chang reviews the new psychological drama loose This is Fresh Air. I'm listening to fresh air on a local public radio Ok. You can keep in touch with us on the n.p.r. One app it's in quick and easy way to listen to the latest episodes of k. Algaba programs and also to discover new public radio podcasts download the n.p.r. One app for your smart device and tune it to k.l. Dubey coming up at 10 it's your call with Rose Aguilar You can catch the 10 o'clock broadcasts it's broadcast again this afternoon at 5 archived at Caleb dot org This is Fresh Air the psychological drama loose stars Calvin Harrison Jr as a star high school student who winds up in conflict with his history teacher played by Octavia Spencer the movie touches issues of race privilege and identity and features Naomi Watts and Tim Roth as losers parents film critic Justin Chang has this review the title character in the coulee and grossing new movie loose is a high schooler who seems exemplary from every angle played in a remarkable performance by Calvin Harris and Junior Luce Edgar is handsome and popular and academic and athletic star who gives inspiring speeches at school assemblies You wouldn't guess that Lou spent his early years as a child soldier in the war torn country of Eritrea a trauma that he's clearly worked hard to overcome with the help of his adoptive parents played by Naomi Watts and Tim Roth who he lives with in Arlington Virginia everyone seems deeply invested in Luce's future. Sure partly because he's so accomplished and partly because there's no denying the symbolic power of an African immigrant who overcame an unimaginable hell to become an American success story no one understands this better than looses history teacher Harriet Wilson played by a steely and authoritative Octavia Spencer she's tough on her students especially her black students and she reminds them that society will automatically view them as inferior to their white peers in that context someone like loose is clearly a godsend or is he went loose turns in a paper echoing the violent revolutionary ideas of the anti-colonialist philosopher France final Harriet is concerned and decides to search looses locker where she finds a bag of illegal fireworks rather than going to him or the school principal she hands the fireworks over to his mom and advises her to keep a close eye on her son Harriet's actions designed to protect loose while also neutralizing any potential threat seem like a violation of school protocol as well as basic common sense but it's not the only time the movie sacrifices plausibility to explore a larger point about how our good intentions can get the better of us the movie was adapted from a play by j.c. Lee who wrote the script with the director Julius on a and they don't try to disguise the stories theatrical origins This is unabashedly a thesis movie in which the characters speak in rather too perfectly formulated sentences and even a simple conversation can become a battle of wills when the loose learns that Harriet searched his locker he invites her to come to a debate prep session telling her he could use her help with an argument basically my question that I hope this will sink in help me with is around this idea of reduced expectation versus the affirmation by the court of students civil rights like what are the Cry 2 year for evaluating what's a violation of privacy is privacy is the right thing so maybe the law isn't so sure . If I went through your desk without your knowing would you feel like your privacy was violated. Yes I would so. Failings aren't a legal argument in the New Jersey case the teacher assume the girl was guilty because of her feelings that's called a reasonable suspicion it's all the police need to search your car says about what's reasonable. That's what courts are for. Really just about people the right. Whether they conform to what we think they are. It's not that simple. Nothing hammers when Lew says parents finally confront him he claims that he and his friends often share lockers and the fireworks could belong to anyone Calvin Harrison junior keeps you guessing in a performance that is both slippery and precise is loose a troubled individual who has mastered the art of code switching to an almost sociopathic degree or is he really a good kid caught up in a big misunderstanding loose keeps playing games with everyone's perceptions he has no interest in being subjected to any kind of labeling and he clearly believes that sanctifying people of color is ultimately no better than demonizing them in stoking and dogging the suspicions of his teacher and his parents he also lays bare their own blindspots and prejudices Naomi Watts Until are especially good as 2 loving liberal minded parents slowly realizing they don't know their son as well as they thought their confusion and helplessness reminded me of the work of Michael Hanukah the great Austrian director known for his a ruthless evisceration of cluelessness it's probably no coincidence that Watts and Roth previously played a couple in Hanukkah's 2008 shocker Funny Games. Director on a has improved and then some from his work on must years forgettable side by Thriller the Cloverfield paradox he guides this tricky talky material with both an analytical distance and a willingness to consider every character's perspective the way on our confronts race privilege tokenism and the politics of respectability could hardly be more relevant to an era when issues of representation are being raised in every arena from academia to the entertainment industry the film is on less solid ground when it brings an other characters including Harriet's troubled sister and 2 of Luce's classmates who have struggles of their own the story starts to feel like a grab bag of talking points including mental illness sexual assault and teen privacy in the social media age like loose himself this smart promising movie strains to be all things to all people rather than simply being the truest version of itself. Justin Chang is a film critic for the l.a. Times on Monday's show Terry talks to filmmaker Rodney Evans he's lost much of his vision but he's still making movies his new documentary vision portraits is about how he and 3 other blind or visually impaired artists a writer a dancer and a photographer continue to do their work hope you can join us. To producer is Danny Miller our technical director and engineer is with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman and Julian. Our associate producer for digital media. Teresa Madden directed today for Terry Gross and to. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from Scribner publisher of ask again yes Mary Beth Keane's novel about 2 families linked by fate of forgiveness and abiding love available in bookstores. And from Weston hotels and resorts offering a range of wellness options for guests including their menu on demand fitness gear lending program and signature Heavenly Bed learn more at Weston dot com a member of Marriott bon voyage. Thank you Tom. With 3. Recent release. From the British. Folk music. To discuss his new book Between 2 families and across Baltimore's racial divide. Before. Twitter. The history of the divide and by exposing the forces that have created blacks and whites and. I think media treats to educate the public about. After the. Hello I'm Marion Marshall with the b.b.c. News the secretary general of NATO says the organization wants to avoid a new arms race after the u.s. Formally pulled out of a Cold War nuclear weapons pact with Russia installed in Baghdad a news conference that NATO supported Washington's decision and blamed Russia for the collapse of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty the u.s. Says Moscow has violated the agreements terms by developing a new type of cruise missile but Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergei Riyadh cough warned that Washington's actions were a danger to world peace and stability on the famous symbolic Koach that shows the time left to the nuclear conflict we have are not unfortunately passed yet another minute towards the midnight thousands of civil servants in Hong Kong have rallied in support of pro-democracy demonstrators defying an order from their bosses the government of told them they were expected to remain totally loyal to the territories Leader Kerry lamb but large numbers of civil servants ignore the warning and crowded into a public park near government offices a b.b.c. Correspondent in Hong Kong said the protest was peaceful activists have been asked not to disrupt the event. A Ugandan academic has been sentenced to 18 months in jail for posting comments on Facebook criticizing President Yoweri Museveni Stellan Yancey it was convicted of cyber harassment has been in detention since November appearing by video link she caused uproar in court when she rejected the case against her and exposed her breasts as exam a card a is a lawyer who represented Stella Nancy in this case he told the b.b.c. What he thought of the 18 month sentence she was denied the right to attend her own try to shore skipped at this maximum security prison in Korea a violation of Ugandan law and international treaty obligations to which Uganda is a state party guaranteeing copyright of an accused person to act and every aspect of they are criminal trial rights campaigners have accused the government of using the law to intimidate and stifle critics customs officials in Germany have announced the country's biggest ever see.