This is Weekend Edition. I'm Scott Simon we'll have the latest from Parker Rico where millions of Americans still need food water and health a former Republican speechwriter on the party's can't do image just another cap and member has to leave repeal and replace fails again and anger grows over hurricane relief a Russian activist an author on what Putin has wrought and plans a general's blunt inspiring words stand. That Stravinsky to a toadfish would another civilization hear or sounds and know that we're actually here 1st we have our newscast today is Saturday September 30th 2017. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington on trial Snyder President Trump is defending his administration's response to Hurricane Maria all American hearts are united with the people of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands who have faced terrible devastation in the wake of 2 catastrophic hurricane we are working night and day in cooperation with territorial and local authorities to assist those in need to help save and sustain lives the president speaking in his weekly media address following complaints that the response has been slow and trumpets answering his critics on Twitter this morning singing to immigrants and told the mayor of San Juan that she must be nasty to trump and that she and other Puerto Rican leaders have poor leadership ability San Juan Mayor Carmen Julian Crews yesterday accuse a trump administration of killing us with any fish and sea secretary of state Rex Tillerson in China this weekend for talks with Chinese leaders in Beijing the focus likely to be on trade in North Korea Tillerson also expected to help lay the groundwork for president Trump's visit in November federal funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program or chip is set to expire today N.P.R.'s Leila Fadel reports on the findings of a study that looked at what this means for states and for almost 9000000 children who are covered by Chip. If Congress doesn't act next week some states like Nevada are preparing to stop coverage chip insures children from low income families and while it's jointly funded by the states and the federal government some 80 percent of the money comes from federal funding Nevada told the Kaiser Family Foundation that it expects to run out of money by the beginning of December at the latest So if the funding isn't extended next week the state will have to start telling families that it's discontinuing coverage according to the study 10 states will use up federal funding by the end of the year right now experts say the number of uninsured kids is at an all time low disruption of chip could change that Leila Fadel n.p.r. News Las Vegas the American Civil Liberties Union threatening to challenge the Trump administration's latest travel restrictions as N.P.R.'s Richard Gonzales reports in a statement a c.l.u. Executive director Anthony Di remember oh says President Trump's newest travel ban on lawfully discriminates on the basis of national origin earlier this week the administration issued its 3rd version of the travel ban affecting 5 Muslim majority nations that were on the original list and adding Chad North Korea and Venezuela the a.c.l.u. And other groups that sued the administration over the earlier versions of the travel ban now in a letter to a federal judge in Maryland the a.c.l.u. Says it wants to amend its existing lawsuit and is seeking a preliminary injunction to suspend the implementation of the visa and entry restrictions set forth in the new travel ban Richard Gonzales n.p.r. News and you're listening to n.p.r. News. The Trump ministration is looking for a successor to Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price Price resigned yesterday over his use of private charter planes for government business the president has named deputy assistant secretary of Health Don Reich to serve as acting secretary Spain's Northeast region of Catalonia holding a referendum on independence tomorrow the Spanish government considers a vote illegal and has sent employees from all over the country Lauren Frayer reports from the closing campaign rally in Barcelona. To say. That's where bands played into the night on a stage near majestic fountains in Barcelona the Catalan president Carlie's Puja Mont took to the stage I we haven't won yet we have been shook lush parts we've already won who told the crowd of thousands we've already defeated the fear he says tomorrow's referendum will go on despite orders to desist from the central government in Madrid the police have been instructed to surround polling stations public schools and block voting parent teacher associations are mobilizing separatists to camp out inside if the yes votes when Catalan leaders vow to the Clare independence from Spain no matter how many voters actually turn out for n.p.r. News I'm Lauren Frayer in Barcelona Iraq's military preparing to take control of the international borders of the northern Kurdish region the move as part of efforts to isolate the Kurds following their vote for independence earlier this week yesterday the Iraqi government in Baghdad imposed a ban that halted all international flights servicing the region's airports on trial smiter n.p.r. News support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include Cigna a global health service company dedicated to helping people improve their health well being and sense of security more information is available at Cigna dot com and the National Endowment for the Arts art works. This is Weekend Edition from n.p.r. News I'm Scott Simon Tom Price the secretary of Health and Human Services has fallen on his prescription pad and let me put it that way resigned just before he was probably going to be fired after reports as department chartered private jets for the secretary at the same time the Trump administration is assailed for failing to come to the aid of Puerto Rico Congress failed again to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and now the party is trying to overhaul the tax code a lot to talk about with Mary Kate Cary who was a speechwriter for President George h.w. Bush she's now a senior fellow for the presidential for Presidential Studies the University of Virginia Mary Kay thanks so much for joining us this morning thanks for having me and I'm afraid we have to begin with not just Puerto Rico but President Trump's tweet storm of just a few minutes ago the mayor of Puerto Rico of course has said despondently people are dying the president said just this morning quote He tweeted the mayor of San Juan has displayed quote such poor leadership ability is this time for that kind of observation. Well I've said for a long time that I think the president needs an assistant to the president for Twitter control and once again we have an example of why you would want that in this case though I have to say when I 1st read the tweet you know you're just shocked I was shocked at the mayor's speech last night begging for help and saying that people were dying that was heartbreaking to hear but this feels feels to me like it fits in a theme that he has had for a while starting with his inaugural which is to side on the side of the forgotten people in this case he names the military the 1st responders and the able coach nobody feels more forgotten the people of Puerto Rico and yes can say and the people of Puerto Rico versus what he sees as the elite which would be the mayor and questioning the mayor's poor leadership ability can't get workers to help was told to be nasty to Donald Trump is in the tweet also and this fits with his m.o. Of going against the elites and this fits with the rest of the news this week as well. Is that not surprising is the trumpet ministration failing Puerto Rico now. Every president in his or his his or her every president in their 1st year has an unexpected crisis whether it's national security natural disaster domestic unrest this is certainly shaping up to be Donald Trump's unexpected crisis and I think he realizes that and the stakes are getting higher and I think that's why he's lashing out more because I think he realizes what's going. To move to the capital as we said Secretary price has resigned but at least 3 more Cabinet members face similar records ations about charter jets. Whatever happened to them Can the trumpet ministrations say they'll drain the swamp when they seem to be flying over in private jets you know this reminds me of that line from The Godfather about Mr Corleone likes his bad news early Donald Trump is not like bad news and this was starting to spread to other cabinet members obviously and I think the we'll see when he was asked. Whether Trump I mean whether price should resign was his way of signaling Yes And sure enough Tom Price offered his resignation and unlike the sessions case the president accepted it because I think he he sees this for the irony that it is of his own cabinet doing what he campaigned exactly against is the Republican Party offering much of a profile of leadership at the moment can't get repeal and replace past the tax code seems a proposal seems fuzzy federal response seems to certainly be be slow if not negligent in Puerto Rico we could go on it's a very big challenge right now because they're trying to harness the energy of the base and turn it into a legislative agenda and that is proving almost impossible there is no populist wing of the Republican Party in the House or Senate and there is across the country but not in the House and Senate and that to me is where the big disconnect is happening and it is extremely frustrating for Republicans like the rest of us out here to watch the lack of inability to harness that energy into a legislative agenda do you think the tax reform proposals are going to go nowhere No I think if anything the chances of it passing are even higher now because they all realize it's almost October and they've got nothing to show for this year so I think you'll see faster action now as a result on Puerto Rico in tax reform Yeah but will it will it help middle class taxpayers I think a growing economy will solve a lot of problems in this country and tax reform would certainly start the economic engine moving very quickly you saw it this week with the stock market I think tremendous good could come from that solve a lot of problems when the president says he's getting praise in Puerto Rico for what is ministrations doing and when we see and we speak with people without food water power or medicine does he look either incompetent or just profoundly out of touch. When he was saying he got praise I noticed at the beginning there was praise from the mayor and the governor saying that really they were all working together things were good but then the optics as you're saying did not match that so at 1st there was some praise but that seems to have stopped as of you know last night this morning so that's that makes him look a little more in tune now because it's he knows the tide is turning America Kerry thanks so much for being with us thanks for having me and our Mandalit del Barco traveled to the northwestern side of Puerto Rico where there is no power virtually no social service dwindling food and water she spoke with people in India and with Isabella about how they're very I saw some graffiti the red deer army we need help and. The countryside was always been a very lush green and it's now a tangle of dry palm trees and uprooted say but trees there are bees swarming everywhere lost from their homes you see broken power lines and wires dangling over the roads piles of garbage and debris and long long lines that stretch for miles of people in cars waiting to get gasoline sometimes for 8 or 12 hours people who are able to get a bit of fuel drive to spots near cell towers to be able to make calls and get some information while at the airport and I met Anthony who was hoping to get some diesel he's a lumberjack who says he was finally able after 8 days after the hurricane to make a call to his family on the mainland who had been worried sick everybody I mean even though we were alive. Over here Everybody's are crying about the grammar of. Their families how are people living there well like in other parts of the island some of the houses that were built out of concrete and rebar were beaten up but they're still standing and people are beginning to clean those up but others who lost their homes. Are living in shelters some of them very precarious leave because they need oxygen ventilators or dialysis machines and the few generators there are can go out at an in time and in the roof more rural areas people are drinking from the creeks that run through the farmland I met a man named Boris bet all he worries about those areas that are even more cut off here strayed and. I feel I decrease when there were ones where they draw Still I. Told him and I have been taking care of day when. I don't I don't. Mentally President Trump says he will visit Puerto Rico on Tuesday do people know that he's coming they do know that he's coming and unlike some of the people in other parts of the United States who are angry with him that it's taken so long the people I met are pretty hopeful that the island will finally receive some help once President Trump sees for himself what's happening here and I met a little 8 year old boy named Anthony Hernandez he stays at a shelter at the Boys and Girls Club an idea because they don't want to he doesn't want to be home alone in the dark and this is what he had to say to the president. It's easy. He says so stop tweeting and come help the people N.P.R.'s Mandalit del Barco in Puerto Rico thanks so much thank you. Hugh Heffner made history and then tripped over it when I was growing up in Chicago the formidable women who were my mother's friends considered Playboy a good place to work for a single woman women at the Playboy Club were well paid got chauffeured home and cabs and customers stars politicians even it was rumored spoiled middle eastern princes were thrown out if they weren't gentleman my aunty are between Playboy bunnies when Gloria Steinem and other said the bunny costume which wrenched a woman's bodice upwards so her chest resemble ice cream scoops were exhibit a in the way he made women into idealize sex objects my aunty obvious NAFTA and said Well there were some pretty ridiculous costumes at the Metropolitan Opera to Hugh Hefner was considered progressive and hip in a time of button down shirts and bigotry Playboy printed articles by Nobel laureates on the flipside of fold outs he hired the late Dick Gregory and other black comics to work the Playboy Clubs when nightclubs were largely segregated and he put long crucial interviews with James Baldwin Malcolm x. And Dr Martin Luther King front and center in his magazine when it had 7000000 readers he hired Lenny Bruce to play his clubs and paid his legal bills he promoted jazz in finance legal cases for free speech civil rights and abortion rights you have heard how the sexual revolution is companion to the movements for civil rights and free speech but this leading figure of the sexual revolution couldn't see the feminist revolution half went from being acclaimed an icon of cool to being denounced an oppressive pig the criticism wasn't just rhetoric Bill Cosby allegedly raped several young women at the Playboy Mansion where drug use was rife numerous playmates said they were abused too free nudity on the Internet ultimately diminished the Playboy empire but its cache of cool had long disappeared. We talked about that when we profiled Hugh Hefner on Playboy's 50th anniversary he often sounded defensive and called his critics prudes and the interview was over I told him he'd known some members of my family and Mr Hefner brightened he took me through his personal archives to go through photos and even found a couple of my father it was a gracious act that seemed to bring him back to the time when he wasn't a controversial figure in a mansion but a hipster in a stodgy culture. Life reminds us that the cutting edge can grow. The music of psycho man if you're listening to n.p.r. News. On Trial Snyder with these headlines President Trump is accusing the mayor of San Juan Puerto Rico of listening to Democrats after being complimentary only a few days ago Trump as opposed to a series of tweets this morning defending his administration's response to Hurricane Maria and attacking critics including news media up to say the response has been inadequate the trumpet ministration is looking for a successor to Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price Price resigned yesterday over his use of private charter planes for government business and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in China this weekend his focus is on trade and North Korea Tillerson is also expected to help lay the groundwork for president Trump's visit to November on trial Snyder n.p.r. News from Washington. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from Babble a language app that teaches real life conversations in a new language including Spanish French and German Babble's 10 to 15 minute lessons are available in the app store or online at Babel be a b b e l dot com from future of storytelling presenting the future of storytelling festival with immersive technologies performances and panel conversations October 6th 2 a Finn New York City future of storytelling dot org And from the listeners who support this n.p.r. Station this is Weekend Edition from n.p.r. News I'm Scott Simon Lieutenant General Jason Varia received a lot of attention when he stood up before his 4000 cadets and 1500 staff members at the u.s. Air Force Academy and said If you can't treat someone with dignity and respect. Then you need to get out general so very ahead of that academy and he spoke after racial slurs were written on the message boards of 5 African-American cadets at the prep school the n word and the message get out at Bin scrawled on the dry erase boards outside their dorm rooms general so very joins us now from Colorado Springs thanks so much for being with us absolutely my pleasure Scott good to talk to you and what it would move you to speak out so bluntly directly Well I wanted to make it very clear to the cadets and also the cadet candidates at the prep school that this kind of language this kind of thought is reprehensible that it's disgusting and I wanted that to come to the cadets in a very unambiguous way I wanted to make it very clear you also mention Charlottesville and Ferguson and the protests in the n.f.l. Why did you think it was important to talk about events in the outside world to well I I mentioned those because as I said when I talked to the cadets that we would be tone deaf not to think that this kind of incident at our prep school that it takes place within the backdrop of what's going on around the nation so we would be tone deaf not to recognize that there are other incidents going on to what degree did the people who teach at the Air Force Academy talk about the outside world not just military matters which obviously they're there to learn about but the social context of this country. Our dean of faculty has a program that we we call critical conversations where we bring groups together to talk about those issues that we see every day and our society this is a country that our cadets have signed up to defend So it's important that we have those conversations about what's going on in our nation is racism a problem that at the Air Force Academy racism is not a problem at the Air Force Academy somebody that decided to put hateful speech and someone that clearly is thinking small and someone that does not embrace our values as an Air Force Academy or as a United States Air Force decided to write something on a message board and writing something on a message board is not going to take away our values or threaten our institution general mask without giving away anything you've discovered Do you know who wrote those messages we do not know who wrote those the investigation is ongoing we are fairly certain at this point based on hand writing that one person did write on the boards but the investigation continues right now as we speak I appreciate General that this is a question that might put you in a difficult spot but a lot of people who have acclaimed your speech. Have drawn a contrast with a speech they haven't heard from the White House following for example the the events in Charlottesville I wonder how you react to that. Well Scott the reason that I gave a speech to to these cadets is to talk to them directly about the power of diversity These are unbelievable young men and women who have signed up to serve our nation and they're going to be leaders in the Air Force they're going to be officers and they're going to lead to airman in the battlefield and so I wanted to make it clear that they have to consider diverse thought and diverse ideas so my speech was was for them my speech was was for them and it was supported by my amazing faculty and staff and coaches that was the audience that I was going after the tenant general Jaiswal Varia superintendent of the u.s. Air Force Academy thank you very much General for for your service and your speech thank you very much Scott the House Oversight Committee is asking the White House for a list of aides who used private e-mail accounts for official business this request comes after confirmation that President Trump son in law and top advisor Jared Kirshner used a personal account for at least some White House business n.p.r. White House correspondent Tamara Keith has this look at what the rules are for these kinds of communications. The Presidential Records Act has since 1978 made it plain that the president and his advisors need to preserve all presidential records essentially the law on the books since the Nixon administration says that the public needs to know the official business of the federal government Nate Jones is with the National Security Archive in open government group presidential records including e-mails and text messages in 2014 Jones says the law was updated to make it crystal clear that you couldn't use personal or any other e-mail and that if you did it for example for convenience or if the e-mail is broken or have the occasions that we all know in real life if you did you had to forward it to the official account within 20 days this was all prompted by something that happened during the George w. Bush administration Richard Painter was chief White House ethics lawyer at the time and instructed all aides and officials that they shouldn't use non-government e-mails for official business but a number of people chose to use Republican National Committee miles for official United States government business and then the Republican National Committee server apparently deleted it millions of e-mails went missing though they were recovered much later Paynter says there are 2 main reasons why using personal e-mail for official business is problematic for records preservation and because of the risk that classified information could end up on non-government systems but painter says it seems to keep happening you know it was a buyer acing I would have hoped that Secretary Clinton would have learned from Maya there she didn't and I would hope that the top administration would learn from what has happened before as well and the apparently they don't learn the lesson either Jared cushion or the president's son in law an adviser sent or received about a 100 work related e-mails on his personal account from January through August usually forwarded articles or an exchange initiated by someone else that is. According to a statement from his attorney Abbe Lowell Lowell added quote all non personal e-mails were forwarded to his official address and all have been preserved in any event but that passive voice were forwarded ketches Jones's ear the key thing that Mr Kushner's lawyer didn't say was if he forwarded the e-mails before 20 days were over or not because if he did he would be in the clear but if he forward as his e-mails to the official count after he did break the law questioners lawyer did not respond to questions about when cushion or forwarded the e-mails to his official account but here's the thing even if cushion or did violate the Presidential Records Act There aren't many consequences possible disciplinary action it's not a credible offenses just servers stupid again Richard Painter none of this is criminal no with get locked up but it really is very very poor judgment reports in Politico and The New York Times indicate cushion or is not the only senior Trump White House aide past or present to use a personal account the House Oversight Committee has set an October 9th deadline for the White House to respond to its request for information about who has been using personal email for government business Tamara Keith n.p.r. News Washington Mitt Romney received a lot of ridicule during the 2012 presidential campaign when he said Russia was the number one geopolitical foe of the United States how many Americans Democrats and Republicans would disagree with that now Masha Gessen who is the daughter of Soviet dissidents one of the founders of the pink triangle campaign in Russia and a respected writer on Russia who now lives in New York has written a book about what she calls the story of freedom that was not embraced in democracy that was not desired her book is The Future is history how to tell a Tarion isn't reclaimed Russia Marsha Gessen joins us from our studios in New York thanks so much for being with us thank you for having me let me begin with a question this blunt is Russian Vladimir Putin trying to cause unrest in the u.s. . You see trying to cause unrest in the u.s. Yes. But you know if you were going to. I wouldn't draw the conclusion from it that we know something about collusion during the 2016 presidential campaign no but . What about the misinformation campaign that we keep discovering more about hacking which seems to be just a lot of Russian involvement on a lot of different fronts Why what is the Russian interest in causing unrest or consternation in the United States or Western Europe Well actually I think that causing on rest and consternation is an end in itself and part of that part of the goal is psychological you know all of us are interested in seeing our world views affirmed and Russia's world view the Russian the contemporary Russian ideology is that the whole world is rotten everybody is corrupt everything is for sale elections in the United States are just as rigged as they are in Russia and so. Sowing the kind of disruption that Russia saw in 1st and foremost pursues the goal of firming that view much of your book is devoted to the stories of 4 Russians who had hoped that when the Soviet Union came undone free speech and democracy would take hold what happened instead Well actually those 4 Russians were much too young to to have for anything when the Soviet Union collapsed there were. Preschoolers or kindergarteners when the Soviet Union collapsed. But what happened and I was interested in them because they came of age you know they've been or they became human beings in the 1990 s. a Period that is variously portrayed as a flooring of democracy or as a period of chaos and you know robber barrons and that's one thing and. Both of those things are true and not true in about equal measure what what happened instead was that Russia didn't embrace democracy Russia didn't embrace freedom and that's what I tried to write a book about you know which is a difficult task to try to write a book about absences. I didn't know until reading your book that the Putin regime has incinerated food and in a country with a history of famine why. It was an extraordinary then this was a few years ago after put in had introduced counter sanctions in response to the Western sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and the counter sanctions were very much designed to make Russians feel the brunt of sanctions. Because the sanctions that were imposed by the West. Wouldn't necessarily sort of mobilize the population against the West but that but banning food products from Western countries had an immediate effect. But there was also a lot of contraband and so one of the measures against the contraband boys incinerating food once it was exposed as contraband and it really. You know it was it was a display of something that that I think inspired turn a lot of people in a country that has known famine and in a country where a lot of people have feared starvation in living memory yeah we certainly have our own struggles with bigotry in the us but it's hard not to go through your book and and not be staggered by the persistence in Russia batty Semitism and prejudice against gays what role does this play. You know I actually wouldn't call that prejudice against gays because I think that conveys the sort of the impression that it comes from the grassroots that this is the the Russian population is homophobic not that it isn't but what we're really talking about is a concerted campaign by the Kremlin over the last 5 years to single out and target l g b t Q I people and as scapegoats in the country as the the chosen other . Towards the end of your book you to phrase that children me where you say that in Russia today quote Life is a foreign agent. Well foreign agent is a reference to one of the key parts of Putin's political crackdown of the last 5 years which is to crackdown on civil society introduce laws that. Constrain organizations that receive any foreign funding and among other things they have to register as foreign agents. Which really makes it difficult for them to function but toward the end of the book one of the characters in the book psychoanalyst talks about what she calls she says maybe a death drive in Russia and she sort of you know morbidly entertains this idea that what if what if or what witnessing the end of a civilization that somehow countries end right and maybe this is one of those one of those things Masha Gessen her book The Future is history how to tell a tear in his room reclaimed Russia thanks so much for being with us and defragment And tomorrow on Weekend Edition Sunday litter speaks with. Maria Alyokhina about her band Pussy Riot and political repression in Russia which they're fighting. You're listening to Weekend Edition from n.p.r. News. Meghan Kelley debuted on n.b.c. This week as host of the new extra hour of The Today Show it was a rocky 1st few days for the former Fox News stars she took criticism from all quarters N.P.R.'s David Folkenflik breaks down the week Megan Kelley burst into total national consciousness 2 years ago with her tough minded questioning of a Republican presidential hopeful you call women you don't like that pigs dogs slobs and disgusting animals that candidate turned his ire on her for months and is now president Kelly left Fox News for n.b.c. And she has been eager to proclaim a new chapter The truth is I am kind of done with politics for now. Let's say from the outset that it's fundamentally unfair to evaluate a show with any fatalities based on its 1st few episodes but you should be able to get a feel about where it thinks it's headed Kelly was brought over from Fox News with great fanfare and a big pay day reportedly well in excess of $15000000.00 a year she's now host of The Today Show's 90 m. Hour and she's been reintroducing herself as she seeks to reinvent herself I'm so excited so excited and also a little nervous bear with me please at the moment Kelly show is a bit of a jumble each episode involves pumping up one of the network's big shows excitable sex I like so many of you also watched Will and Grace religiously Kelly also promoted N.B.C.'s Saturday Night Live and the new true crime chapter of the law and order juggernaut focusing on 2 brothers who made national headlines for killing their parents a generation ago Kelly gamely conducted a telephone interview with Lyle Menendez one of the brothers not to give away the ending but he remains incarcerated This may sound like an odd question but is there any joy in your life not all of Kelly's guest got joy from appearing on her show Jane Fonda and Robert Redford joined Kelly to speak about their new movie years ago on Fox Kelly had belittled Fonda's beyond the pale politically because of her anti-war activism during the. Not this week just a good old fashioned celebrity interview you've been an example to everyone and how to change it beautifully and with strength and. It goes off the rails Kelly asks about Fonda's plastic surgery why did you say I read that you said you felt not proud to admit you've had work done when are we really want to talk about that I think that laughter masks a withering look from Fonda later that day a reporter for Entertainment Tonight Canada asks Fonda whether she was shocked by the question or it was a weird thing to bring up whether a plastic surgery or not I haven't talked about it but it just seemed like the wrong time and place to raise that question Will and Grace star Debra Messing told a fan on Instagram that she regretted participating in interviews on Kelly's show after a joke about a gay fan let's acknowledge that ghosts of Fox News hover over Kelly that network is polarizing and it tends to drum empathy out of its stars the qualities she most needs to demonstrate for the kind of show she's now doing it's been very exciting it has been educational I've just been so delighted at that the media response which is you know but that was has been awesome and the show's success is likely to depend on how authentic viewers find this new incarnation of Meghan Kelley to be David Folkenflik n.p.r. News New York. And this is n.p.r. News. More than a week ago Hurricane Maria lashed leaving residents without electricity and with limited supplies of food water and fuel today Puerto Rico faces months if not years to recover amid complaints the mainland was too slow to respond I'm Michel Martin the latest on conditions in Puerto Rico on the next All Things Considered from n.p.r. News. I'm Joel Snyder with these headlines in Europe Spain's Northeast region of Catalonia is preparing to vote tomorrow in the region holding a referendum on independence the Spanish government considers a vote illegal and it's in employees from all over the country to stop it Iraq's military is preparing to take control of the international borders of the northern Kurdish region the move as part of efforts to isolate the Kurds following their vote for independence earlier this week and in the South Pacific Australia has sent a naval vessel to Vanuatu the ship is expected to help evacuate thousands of residents from a Northern Island where a volcano is threatening to erupt on trial Snyder n.p.r. News from Washington. Support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from pro Quest partners with the u.s.c. Show a foundation to enable access to the visual history archive for helping students and researchers understand the impact of genocide through video interviews with survivors learn more at Pro Qwest dot com and from Dana Farber Cancer Institute working to unleash the immune system's power to fight cancer and develop promising new therapies videos white papers and patient stories are available at Discover care believe dot org. This is Weekend Edition from n.p.r. News I'm Scott Simon we're approaching the 16th anniversary of u.s. Troops serving in Afghanistan it's been a little more than a month since President Trump announced a new strategy to send more u.s. Troops as advisers to the Afghan military as it tries to train its own soldiers our Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman has been in and out of Afghanistan for the past decade he's there again with u.s. Marines checking out how things seem to be going he joins us now from the Helmand Province Tom thanks so much for being with us you're welcome Scott what have you noticed in your time with the Afghan troops Well Scott I was here last year with the u.s. Army and they were advising the Afghan army at a higher level and now with the Marines here about $300.00 Marines they saw the need to help the Afghans down at a lower level closer to the front lines and they're actually going out to Afghan bases something you didn't see the army do the American soldiers pretty much stayed on their larger base talking with the Afghan generals Well what do American commanders say about these new troops and their leadership Well they say they are steadily improving the soldiers are we went to a graduation ceremony today of some new troops but they're not sufficient number they're supposed to have 18000 Afghan troops here but because of casualties desertions and so forth they have only about half that number they do need more help with resupplying themselves Ascott in the field a medical evacuation calling in airstrikes and most importantly they need better leadership of the Marine speak highly of the new general here Major General I'm odd say he's from the area which is important and he works closely with the Afghan commandos they're the best fighters in the country and the Marines praise him for his aggressiveness and of course the Marines like those who are aggressive but the leadership has been a real problem here when I was here last year again with the u.s. Army they praised the general here General Moeen who turned out to be corrupt he was stealing. Money set aside for his soldiers food he was recently sentenced to 9 years in jail and Scott his predecessor was also fired for corruption so the hope is that this current leader General Ahmad say will stick around and do the job but . As you as you presented all that to us we hear about casualties desertions corruption. That sounds like a story we've heard before we have heard that before for years now but the Marines here optimistic but one Marine I spoke with he admitted it was kind of bittersweet being back here at the Marines lost several 100 comrades here thousands were wounded clearing Helmand province the Marines left here in 2014 and at the high water mark there were 20000 Marines here but when the Marines left the Taliban rolled back in and took back much of this province so here they are back again not fighting but training and again it's going to take some time president of Afghanistan has a 4 year plan so some of the Marines who are here now advising and training they could very well be back. Tom when we spoke 5 years ago we were told that Afghans were taking the lead against the Taliban which clearly has not been the case has that changed you know it has changed a lot Scott when you and I spoke 5 years ago the Americans said the Afghans were in the lead I went on a patrol with those soldiers American soldiers and the Afghans I was clearly not the case they all but had to drag the Afghan soldiers out of their base to go even on a patrol it's like night and day now the Afghans are doing almost all of the fighting but again they need some help with some of the higher level skills here again calling in airstrikes resupplying themselves and so forth but there's no question that right now the general leading these troops in Helmand is very aggressive but he has a long way to go they've cleared some areas of Taliban but there's a lot left in this province to do a lot more places are controlled by the Taliban N.P.R.'s Tom Bowman in the Helmand Province Afghanistan thanks so much Tom You're welcome Scott. Shakespeare and because this is n.p.r. Will interrupt the flow of a sentence to tell you that he was an English dramatist to live from 15642616 is still considered by many academic sources to be a preeminent playwright has been done every which way over the years on stage in parks in drag unexpurgated and highly condensed to members of the Reduced Shakespeare Company have produced an especially dignified presentation pop up Shakespeare the pop up part is drawn by Johnny Mays else the so-called scholarly texts by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor of the r.s.c. They join us now Austin is at the b.b.c. In London and Reed Martin is a care c.b. And runner at Park California Gentlemen thanks so much for being with us thank you Scott 1st thing I want to do is is thank you because our dog choose a lot of pop up books and she loved yours. It's not really tasting Yeah that's been going on our website right now is high praise what do you trying to achieve by popping up Shakespeare. Well Jenny Mays was the artist approaches she had this idea to do a pop up Shakespeare book this is Reid speaking Go ahead yes. She had this idea to do pop up Shakespeare and I think the point of it is much like our stage shows as Shakespeare's and put on a pedestal over the years he's high culture and in his time he was popular culture in appealed to everybody and we had Meyer Shakespeare but we think he's taken a little too seriously and we want to spread the gospel of the Bard you know the plays are known as a canon as the complete works and I started thinking works work that sounds hard and serious let's call them what they are plays they're playful and they're fun and Jenny's drawings are so engaging they really they bring sort of the equivalent of what we do on stage on to the pages of a book they're colorful and they're inviting and they invite the reader really of any age to sort of dive in and participate you have every play in here too don't you we do we don't have the odd couple we left we left but. But that's the only one where we did that was the working title of Romeo and Juliet or was it . Because it's going to be the outcome and our number of Yes is the answer yes to Odd Couple of Verona working title we hope it reads like the way the classic Looney Tunes play is that a pop up book you think it's for kids like Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny but you go back and you watch it as an adult and there's all kinds of things in there that the kids maybe get or maybe they don't but the adults appreciate So the more you know about Shakespeare I think the more you'd enjoy the book my favorite hardly a comedy is Julius Caesar and I must say it was hard to find the pop up of Julius Caesar it's hidden one has his dad that falls down because Julius Caesar stabbed in the back we put his plot synopsis on the back this is a full 36 serious reason why you did it yeah yeah all right Ok. That's our story and we're sticking with it that's right but you gentlemen in the pop up. Advanced the idea that Julius Caesar is not in the play enough to merit having the play named after No it's a really sort of a bait and switch it's called Julius Caesar but it's really it's really about Brutus and Cassius and their struggles although Caesar does appear is a ghost Hence the phrase from the old Superman show Great Caesar's ghost nice is that really oh never mind if it's true or not Ok you Scott if you're going to ask us whether everything is true I had to be here a very long time said I mean to put you on the spot. I don't want people to think this is just for fun because there's a lot of scholarly information in here for example under words Shakespeare may have invented you mentioned more than a dozen including lonely gossip zany but puking you know and after people look at the book they will experience. So I had no idea that was a Shakespearean word though yes well we had him few King babies right yes Dr Peter Holland vetted the book for us he's a very famous Shakespearean scholar and we had to word that very carefully because people don't really know which Shakespeare invented him maybe it's the 1st example in history where that's written down so that was an interesting process too and he played with the language a lot didn't it Oh you did he took nouns and made them into verbs and he he wasn't precious about language as you know he was very adventurous and that's what I think is so fun about Shakespeare and I think why kids kind of are attracted to him because he's playing with language in the way that kids are learning language and yet it's fun to discover all the words that he has I don't know not invented but maybe popularized is the audience for this book youngsters or pompous adults who just want to sound better informed yes. It's we hope that it's a it's a book that's inviting and attractive but also has enough in it so no matter how deep of a dive you want to make there. Is something in pop up Shakespeare for you read Martin Austin Tichenor of the Reduced Shakespeare Company their book pop up Shakespeare Gentlemen thanks so much for being with us thanks a lot Scott 40 or 40 years ago this month NASA launched the Voyager spacecraft to explore the solar system it carried a message from Earth that essentially said Hello out there this is us besides words and drawings the message included a phonograph record with sounds voices and music although none of it from b.j. Lederman who writes Our theme music that got N.P.R.'s science correspondent Christopher Joyce an audio producer Bill McQuay to thinking what would he leans make of the message on Voyager if they found it. As the Voyager spacecraft cruised by Jupiter it recorded this. It's the solar wind charged particles hurdling past the planet turned into sound we can hear foragers mission was to record what it saw and heard in space but it also carried a cargo of earthly sounds on a phonograph record made of human speech music when Emerson the difference of the players during. The sound of. Bell I'm an audio guy and I got to wondering what aliens actually be able to hear this stuff in the 1st place I mean think about it what if they were aquatic like fish or more like in sex with a be able to hear the sound the way we do so we ask some experts bio acoustics scientists at Cornell University who study aliens on earth animals everywhere we look at life on Earth sound is really the universal language of life that's Aaron rice so I think it's reasonable to predict that if there was extraterrestrial life they may use sound as a communication channel so Nasonex just in point Aaron Ron Paul is also a biochemist 6 expert we have to presume that even for he's alien life forms and Lucian was involved evolution of useful traits and hearing would likely be useful and would evolve as it has on earth yes but there's all kinds of hearing the frequency range of hearing varies incredibly from one species to the next based on what they've evolved to listen to just take whales for example it ranges from 10 hertz in the songs of blue whales. To 200 killer herds with some of the pygmy and or sperm whales dicta. And so my suspicion is that if there was some sort of creature that intercepted these sounds they most certainly wouldn't hear it the way that humans do so this was a sort of fun thought exercise but I figure there's no way to know what aliens would actually hear if they played the Voyager record but Bill being the audio guy found a way I tip my hat to the scientists on this one they've developed audio filters that actually mimic the way different animals here they use data from tuning curves these are measurements of the electrical activity in an animal's auditory neuron when it hears a sound right you take a sound and send it through a series of filters taken from the animal's tuning curve those filters all through the sound to the way an animal would hear it it's like putting one animal's ears Ok let's say the aliens evolved in water so what we're going to do is let you hear one of the recordings on the Voyager Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Well here's what it would sound like you were a fish a toad fish. That sounds terrible I don't think the fish would enjoy it hardly music to our ears we played it for air and rice and run hoist you know a lot of that almost sounds like environmental noise so you don't necessarily have discrete notes necessarily like toadfish usually used to communicate I thought that sounded long very early. Form speakers because you lost all the highest That's because toadfish his ears are tuned to hear lower frequency sound it doesn't hear higher frequencies like old rock n roll musicians exactly so maybe the Stravinsky would be wasted on a fishy alien How about something more like an insect like. I happen to have tuning curves for several kinds of animals How about Stravinsky heard by a cricket a cricket telly a grilling oceanic us to be exact. So that's pretty different from the toadfish not pretty but different Ron Hall he happens to be an expert on cricket communication suite I loved it because it was nice high frequency there but the bottom dropped out Ron explained that crickets evolved to hear of high frequencies because their mortal enemies are bats which navigate by using ultrasonic signals in fact the Voyager team at NASA asked Ron why back in 1977 to choose a cricket song for the golden record he chose tell you grill us oceanic s I chose it because it had the most complexity. We tried some other music from the record and some spoken English all pretty unintelligible so if aliens evolved like fish or crickets our message might fall on deaf ears well not so fast if they're flying around in interstellar space they're probably smart enough to know about tuning curves they might be able to tune us into their frequency the same way we just tune Stravinsky out of ours. So they've almost. His sound kind of fish it's. For n.p.r. News. I'm. David Greene and I want to talk to you about one reason I love working at n.p.r. It struck me especially in these divisive political if you look you about something whatever it is we're listening I've been to so many places recently Bozeman Orlando Phoenix I'd love to get out and listen and to give you space to think out loud on air it's what we do thanks for listening to this n.p.r. Station support for n.p.r. Comes from this station and from the financial services firm of Raymond James offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise along with a legacy of putting clients financial wellbeing 1st learn more at Raymond James dot com from future of storytelling presenting the future of Storytelling Festival 3 days of technology interactive games and performances October 6th 28th in New York City future of storytelling dot org And from the sustaining members of this n.p.r. Station. 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