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On-air challenge: Every answer today consists of the names of two famous people. The last name of the first person is an anagram of the first name of the last person. Given the nonanagram parts of the names, you identify the people.

Example: Madeleine ________ Aaron.

Answer: Madeleine KAHN and HANK Aaron

Last week's challenge: Think of a word associated with Halloween. Add a letter in the second position to create a new word that does not rhyme with the first. Then add another letter in the third position of the word you just created to complete another word that does not rhyme with either of the first two. What words are these?

Answer: Treat. Add an H at the second position to get "threat," then add an E in the third position to get "thereat."

Winner: Barbara Lawrence of Lake Wales, Fla.

Next week's challenge from longtime listener Merl Reagle: The words "organic" and "natural" are both commonly seen at health food stores. What other seven-letter word, also commonly seen at health food stores, has five letters in common with organic and five letters in common with natural?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to next week's challenge, submit it here. Listeners who submit correct answers win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: Include a phone number where we can reach you Thursday at 3 p.m. ET.

The weekends on All Things Considered series Movies I've Seen A Million Times features filmmakers, actors, writers and directors talking about the movies that they never get tired of watching.

For rapper Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, a founding member of the rap group the Wu-Tang Clan and better known by his stage name RZA, the movie he could watch a million times is Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. RZA makes his directorial debut with The Man With the Iron Fists, which opened in theaters this weekend.

Joe Scarnici/FilmMagic

Actor-rapper-director RZA

Take it easy, tough guy.

Russian officials are acknowledging that President Vladimir Putin has been slowed by back problems, but they insist he won't be sidelined for long.

Rumors about an injury began to float in early September, when the Russian leader was seen wincing at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vladivostok.

A Kremlin spokesman said it's a minor injury, about what you'd expect in an athletic fellow like the 60-year-old Putin. Nonetheless, several overseas trips have been canceled.

There's no word on what the president may be using in terms of liniment, but it must be a bitter treatment for someone who has carefully cultivated his image as an all-around man of action.

Enlarge Ria Novosti/Reuters /Landov

Putin, who was prime minister at the time, rides a horse in southern Siberia's Tuva region on Aug. 3, 2009.

Dan Lungren has been in and out of public office since 1979. The Republican represented a Southern California district in the '80s, served as the state's attorney general for eight years, and then returned to Congress to represent the Sacramento area in 2004.

These days, he's still the same pro-business, limited-government conservative he's always been, Lungren told a friendly audience in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova.

"There's a reason people are leaving California [and] going to Texas, leaving California [and] going to Nevada, and it's not for the weather," he told the crowd. "So I make no apologies whatsoever that I am about more jobs, not more taxes!"

Money Pouring In

That message played well in the past when his district was slightly more conservative, but now Lungren finds himself with a big target on his back.

"Just to let you know, I was informed just before I came over here, more money has been spent against me in this race than any other candidate for Congress in the country," he said.

At least that was true when he gave the speech. Since then, other races have become more expensive. But it is true that Democrats and outside PACs have spent more than $4.5 million trying to defeat Lungren.

Enlarge Rich Pedroncelli/AP

Democrat Ami Bera is challenging Lungren. Bera ran against Lungren in 2004 and lost, but since the district was redrawn, the race has become competitive.

The last unemployment report before the election came out Friday, and the news was middling: Unemployment ticked up to 7.9 percent.

The private sector created more than 180,000 new jobs, but state and local governments resumed laying workers off. That discrepancy is part of a longer-term trend.

For a few years now, private sector employment has been growing, but since mid-2010, state and local governments have eliminated roughly half a million jobs.

"There's real consequences to these huge cuts in the public sector, for overall growth in the economy and for public services that we all need," says Sylvia Allegretto, labor market economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

She says close to 40 percent of the all public sector jobs losses have come in California.

"Class sizes are increasing because we had to lay off a ton of school K-12 teachers, our police department ... we had to lay off a lot of those officers, is struggling," she says.

Related NPR Stories

Superstorm Sandy: Before, During And Beyond

Sandy, Election Could Skew Future Jobs Reports

Robert Siegel talks to regular political commentators, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, and David Brooks of The New York Times. They discuss the new jobs report, the political impact of superstorm Sandy and Election Day.

Mario Veas spent Monday night hunkered down with his family. But he has been running ever since.

Veas runs a tree service in Willow Grove, Pa. He says his phone has been ringing nonstop because people want trees felled by the storm chopped up and cleared.

"Everybody [is] calling and they want [the job] to be done this morning," Veas says.

Insurance Information

Eqecat Inc. estimates $10 billion to $20 billion in insured losses from Superstorm Sandy. The company, which provides catastrophic risk models, says total economic damage could be as high as $50 billion.

If you need to file a claim, the Insurance Information Institute has a variety of resources on its website, including:

— a guide to settling insurance claims after a disaster,

— an insurance coverage FAQ, and

- a list of claims-filing phone numbers for several insurance companies.

And the National Flood Insurance Program's website has information about buying flood insurance.

— Christopher Connelly

As China's global stature grows, Beijing appears to be flexing its muscles more frequently on the international stage. As part of NPR's series on China this week, correspondents Louisa Lim and Frank Langfitt are looking at this evolving foreign policy. From Beijing, Louisa examines the forces driving China's policy, while Frank reports on why China's neighbors are feeling increasingly edgy.

By Louisa Lim

In the past two months, China has brought its first aircraft carrier into the navy, escalated territorial disputes over rocky uninhabited islets far from its shores and permitted tens of thousands of citizens to hold anti-Japanese protests in 180 Chinese cities.

Such assertive behavior seems to signal Beijing's departure from the long-held foreign policy maxim attributed to former leader Deng Xiaoping: "Bide your time and hide your intentions."

"Some people argue that given growing territorial disputes and mounting strategic pressure from the U.S., then China had better change the posture and get some sort of new foreign policy approach," says Zhu Feng at Peking University's Center for International and Strategic Studies.

Zhu himself is still an advocate of Deng's low-profile approach. But he admits that, given China's increasing international involvement in missions such as anti-piracy patrols off Somalia, this is becoming challenging.

"China now is the 800-pound gorilla. When it walks through the forest, it's totally impossible not to make a big noise," he says.

Enlarge Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

Chinese demonstrators carry their nation's flag during an anti-Japanese protest outside the Japanese Embassy in Beijing on Sept. 15. The countries are involved in a dispute over the Diaoyu Islands, known as the Senkaku Islands in Japanese.

As China's global stature grows, Beijing appears to be flexing its muscles more frequently on the international stage. As part of NPR's series on China this week, correspondents Louisa Lim and Frank Langfitt are looking at this evolving foreign policy. From Beijing, Louisa examines the forces driving China's policy, while Frank reports on why China's neighbors are feeling increasingly edgy.

By Louisa Lim

In the past two months, China has brought its first aircraft carrier into the navy, escalated territorial disputes over rocky uninhabited islets far from its shores and permitted tens of thousands of citizens to hold anti-Japanese protests in 180 Chinese cities.

Such assertive behavior seems to signal Beijing's departure from the long-held foreign policy maxim attributed to former leader Deng Xiaoping: "Bide your time and hide your intentions."

"Some people argue that given growing territorial disputes and mounting strategic pressure from the U.S., then China had better change the posture and get some sort of new foreign policy approach," says Zhu Feng at Peking University's Centre for International and Strategic Studies.

Zhu himself is still an advocate of Deng's low-profile approach. But he admits that, given China's increasing international involvement in missions such as anti-piracy patrols off Somalia, this is becoming challenging.

"China now is the 800-hundred pound gorilla. When it walks through the forest, it's totally impossible not to make a big noise," he says.

Enlarge Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

Chinese demonstrators carry their nation's flag during an anti-Japanese protest outside the Japanese Embassy in Beijing on Sept. 15. The countries are involved in a dispute over the Diaoyu islands, known as the Senkaku islands in Japanese.

Superstorm Sandy, the October Surprise no one anticipated, throws a monkey wrench into the final days of the campaign. NPR's Ken Rudin and Ron Elving spend the final pre-election podcast scouting the key presidential battleground states and have a forecast for control of the House and Senate in advance of Tuesday's voting.

Join NPR's Ron Elving and Ken Rudin for their pre-Election Day political roundup.

Hyundai and Kia overstated the gas mileage on most of their models from the past three years in an embarrassing blunder that could bring sanctions from the U.S. government and millions of dollars in payments to car owners.

Because of the inflated mileage, discovered during an audit by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Korean automakers must retrofit the window stickers on the cars, reducing their fuel economy figures by one to six miles per gallon depending on the model, the agency said Friday.

"Consumers rely on the window sticker to help make informed choices about the cars they buy," said Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator of the EPA's air-quality office. "EPA's investigation will help protect consumers and ensure a level playing field among automakers."

The EPA said its inquiry into the errors is continuing, and the agency would not comment when asked if the companies will be fined or if a criminal investigation is under way. But the EPA said it's the first case in which erroneous test results were uncovered in a large number of vehicles from the same manufacturer. Only two similar errors have been discovered since 2000, and those involved single models.

Hyundai and Kia executives apologized for the errors, said they were unintentional, and promised to pay the owners of 900,000 cars and SUVs for the difference in mileage. The payments, which will be made annually for as long as people own their cars, are likely to cost the companies hundreds of millions of dollars.

The EPA said it received about a dozen complaints from consumers that the mileage of their 2012 Hyundai Elantra compact cars didn't match the numbers on the window stickers. So staffers at the EPA's vehicle and fuel emission laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich., included the Elantra in an annual audit that focused on cars that lead their market segments in mileage.

The audit turned up discrepancies between agency test results and data turned in by Hyundai and Kia, the EPA said. As a result, the automakers will have to knock one or two miles per gallon off the mileage posted on most of the models' window stickers. Some models will lose three or four miles per gallon, and the Kia Soul, a funky-looking boxy small SUV, will lose six mpg from the highway mileage on its stickers.

Hyundai and Kia are owned by the same company and share factories and research, but they sell different vehicles and market them separately. The companies said the mistakes stemmed from procedural differences between their mileage tests and those performed by the EPA.

"We're just extremely sorry about these errors," said John Krafcik, Hyundai's CEO of American operations. "We're driven to make this right."

The changes affect 13 models from the 2011 through 2013 model years, including seven Hyundais and six Kias. Window stickers will have to be changed on some versions of Hyundai's Elantra, Sonata Hybrid, Accent, Azera, Genesis, Tucson, Veloster and Santa Fe models, as well as the Kia Sorrento, Rio, Soul, Sportage and Optima Hybrid.

Michael Sprague, executive vice president of marketing for Kia Motors America, also apologized and said the companies have a program in place to reimburse customers for the difference between the mileage on the window stickers and the numbers from the EPA tests.

The companies will find out how many miles the cars have been driven, find the mileage difference and calculate how much more fuel the customer used based on average regional fuel prices and combined city-highway mileage. Customers also would get a 15 percent premium for the inconvenience, and the payments would be made with debit cards, Sprague said. The owner of a car in Florida with a one mpg difference who drove 15,000 miles would get would get a debit card for $88.03 that can be refreshed every year as long as the person owns the car, Sprague said.

If all 900,000 owners get cards for $88.03, it would cost the automakers more than $79 million a year.

For information, owners can go to www.hyundaimpginfo.com or www.kiampginfo.com .

Sung Hwan Cho, president of Hyundai's U.S. technical center in Michigan, said the EPA requires a complex series of tests that are very sensitive and can have variations that are open to interpretation. The companies did the tests as they were making a large number of changes in their cars designed to improve mileage. The changes, such as direct fuel injection into the cylinders around the pistons, further complicated the tests, Cho said.

"This is just a procedural error," he said. "It is not intended whatsoever."

Krafcik said the companies have fixed testing procedures and are replacing window stickers on cars in dealer inventories. Owners can be confident in their mileage stickers now, he said, adding that Hyundai will still be among the industry leaders in gas mileage even with the revised window stickers.

The mileage was overstated on about one-third of the Hyundais and Kias sold during the three model years, he said.

The Greek government faces widespread condemnation for prosecuting Kostas Vaxevanis, a 46-year-old investigative journalist who recently published the names of Greeks who may have sent billions to Swiss bank accounts.

Vaxevanis, one of Greece's best-known reporters, is in court in Athens on Thursday to face charges that he violated data protection laws by publishing the list of names in Hot Doc, the biweekly magazine he edits. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.

When the magazine hit newsstands Saturday, it set off a quicksilver response by the Greek judicial system, which is infamous for its glacial pace. Within hours, police issued a warrant for Vaxevanis' arrest. By Monday, he was facing a judge to set a trial date. When he emerged from the courtroom, more than 200 supporters applauded him.

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed," he told the crowd, quoting George Orwell. "The rest is public relations."

Background Of The 'Lagarde List'

The list Vaxevanis published is named for Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund. In 2010, when Lagarde served as France's finance minister, she got a hold of the leaked names of more than 2,000 Greeks who transferred their money to HSBC bank in Switzerland.

Swiss bank accounts are legal, but are sometimes used to hide money and avoid taxes. Tax evasion, especially by the wealthy, cost Greece at least $36 billion in 2009.

Lagarde gave the list to her Greek counterpart at the time, Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou. Two years went by; nothing happened.

Vaxevanis, whose small team of investigative reporters works out of a small office in a weathered shopping mall, says that changed a few weeks ago when officials confirmed the existence of the list.

"Then we had ministers declaring that they couldn't find [the] list, that they lost it, that they slipped it into a pocket somewhere," he says. "It's like a cartoon. Greek society was watching, sickened. The whole world already thinks we're thieves. So now that this list is out there, it needs to be investigated."

Vetting The Names

About two weeks ago, Vaxevanis says, he received the list in an envelope, along with a letter, which claimed that the Lagarde List had been used to blackmail people.

"Whoever wrote that letter told me that we needed to get the truth out, or [Greece's] problems would just get worse," Vaxevanis says.

He says he and his reporters went through every name on the list to check its authenticity, which he vouches for. He estimates that more than $16 billion had moved through the accounts between 1998 and 2007.

The list includes industrialists, ship owners, and a few politicians and their relatives. But Vaxevanis was careful not to accuse anyone of tax evasion, or to publish the amounts in each account.

"We only gave their names and jobs," he says.

Papaconstantinou and his successor as finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, have both taken heat for their inaction on the list. Papaconstantinou told a parliamentary panel last month that he couldn't use the list because an employee of HSBC had leaked the names illegally. Papaconstantinou said he then put the names on a memory stick, which he gave to Ioannis Diotis, the head of Greece's financial crime units. Diotis later passed it on to Venizelos, who now leads the center-left PASOK party.

'It's Outrageous'

Vaxevanis says he hoped the government would investigate the list now that he's made it public. Instead, the government filed criminal charges against him.

"It's outrageous," says law professor Aristides Hatzis. "Theoretically, this is supposed to be a democratic country and the place, as we like to say, where democracy was born. But this is not the way a proper democracy behaves. The authorities are treating a journalist who performed a public service like a criminal. It's going to backfire."

It's already angered Martina Loukidi, whose taxes come out of her tiny paycheck. She works at a flower shop, making $580 a month — half the monthly pay she earned last year.

She says working-class and middle-class Greeks are paying the price for austerity while the rich keep living large.

"The rich have connections," she says. "They cozy up to politicians who help them hide their money. Politicians should go to jail. Why should a journalist go to jail? Because he told the truth?"

Greeks also believe it's suspicious for the government to prosecute Vaxevanis so quickly, Hatzis says.

"They saw it exactly as it was — a cover-up," he says. "It's a way of treating things. It's a mentality."

Related NPR Stories

Greeks Protest German Chancellor's Athens Visit

People often say China is a nation of contrasts: of wealth and poverty, of personal freedom and political limits. But that observation doesn't begin to capture the tensions and incongruities of modern life here.

For instance, in today's Shanghai, you can sip a $31 champagne cocktail in a sleek rooftop bar overlooking the city's spectacular skyline, while, just a few miles away, ordinary citizens languish in a secret detention center run by government-paid thugs.

Many foreigners are familiar with Shanghai's futuristic bar scene — less so its black detention sites. So, earlier this year, I asked a frequent inmate of the government's so-called "black jails" to show me the place where she's been detained a half-dozen times.

My guide was Li Yufang, a petite, feisty woman of 42.

"I was put in black sites many times," Li said matter-of-factly. "I didn't really count how many, but definitely more than 10 times."

Enlarge Frank Langfitt/NPR

It may appear cute and quaint and sit in the midst of a sprawling Shanghai park, but this cottage is used as a "black jail."

A Chinese government think tank is urging the country's leaders to start phasing out its "one-child" policy immediately and allow two children for every family by 2015, a daring proposal to do away with the unpopular policy.

Some demographers see the timeline put forward by the China Development Research Foundation as a bold move by the body close to the central leadership. Others warn that the gradual approach, if implemented, would still be insufficient to help correct the problems that China's strict birth limits have created.

Xie Meng, a press affairs official with the foundation, said the final version of the report will be released "in a week or two." But Chinese state media have been given advance copies. The official Xinhua News Agency said the foundation recommends a two-child policy in some provinces from this year and a nationwide two-child policy by 2015. It proposes all birth limits be dropped by 2020, Xinhua reported.

"China has paid a huge political and social cost for the policy, as it has resulted in social conflict, high administrative costs and led indirectly to a long-term gender imbalance at birth," Xinhua said, citing the report.

But it remains unclear whether Chinese leaders are ready to take up the recommendations. China's National Population and Family Planning Commission had no immediate comment on the report Wednesday.

Known to many as the one-child policy, China's actual rules are more complicated. The government limits most urban couples to one child, and allows two children for rural families if their first-born is a girl. There are numerous other exceptions as well, including looser rules for minority families and a two-child limit for parents who are themselves both singletons.

Cai Yong, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said the report holds extra weight because the think tank is under the State Council, China's Cabinet. He said he found it remarkable that state-backed demographers were willing to publicly propose such a detailed schedule and plan on how to get rid of China's birth limits.

"That tells us at least that policy change is inevitable, it's coming," said Cai, who was not involved in the drafting of the report but knows many of the experts who were. Cai is currently a visiting scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai. "It's coming, but we cannot predict when exactly it will come."

Adding to the uncertainty is a once-in-a-decade leadership transition that kicks off Nov. 8 that will see a new slate of top leaders installed by next spring. Cai said the transition could keep population reform on the back burner or changes might be rushed through to help burnish the reputations of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao on their way out.

There has been growing speculation among Chinese media, experts and ordinary people about whether the government will soon relax the one-child policy — introduced in 1980 as a temporary measure to curb surging population growth — and allow more people to have two children.

Though the government credits the policy with preventing hundreds of millions of births and helping lift countless families out of poverty, it is reviled by many ordinary people. The strict limits have led to forced abortions and sterilizations, even though such measures are illegal. Couples who flout the rules face hefty fines, seizure of their property and loss of their jobs.

Many demographers argue that the policy has worsened the country's aging crisis by limiting the size of the young labor pool that must support the large baby boom generation as it retires. They say it has contributed to the imbalanced sex ratio by encouraging families to abort baby girls, preferring to try for a male heir.

The government recognizes those problems and has tried to address them by boosting social services for the elderly. It has also banned sex-selective abortion and rewarded rural families whose only child is a girl.

Many today also see the birth limits as outdated, a relic of the era when housing, jobs and food were provided by the state.

"It has been 30 years since our planned economy was liberalized," commented Wang Yi, the owner of a shop that sells textiles online, under a news report on the foundation's proposal. "So why do we still have to plan our population?"

Though open debate about the policy has flourished in state media and on the Internet, leaders have so far expressed a desire to maintain the status quo. President Hu said last year that China would keep its strict family planning policy to keep the birth rate low, and other officials have said that no changes are expected until at least 2015.

Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy and an expert on China's demographics, contributed research material to the foundation's report but has yet to see the full text. He said he welcomed the gist of the document that he's seen in state media.

It says the government "should return the rights of reproduction to the people," he said. "That's very bold."

Gu Baochang, a professor of demography at Beijing's Renmin University and a vocal advocate of reform, said the proposed timeline wasn't aggressive enough.

"They should have reformed this policy ages ago," he said. "It just keeps getting held up, delayed."

Superstorm Sandy pounded Haiti for four straight days, dumping record amounts of rain and killing at least 50 people. More than 370,000 Haitians have been living in temporary camps, since the catastrophic 2010 earthquake. Host Michel Martin discusses Sandy's effects on Haiti with Miami Herald Caribbean Correspondent Jacqueline Charles.

Robert Siegel talks to Don Gonyea about controversial political ads on the auto bailout from the Mitt Romney campaign.

Mitt Romney was on CNN not long ago defending the claims in his campaign ads — "We've been absolutely spot on," he said. Politics aside, the expression had me doing an audible roll of my eyes. I've always associated "spot on" with the type of Englishman who's played by Terry-Thomas or John Cleese, someone who pronounces "yes" and "ears" in the same way — "eeahzz." It shows up when people do send-ups of plummy British speech. "I say — spot on, old chap!"

But that wasn't really fair to Romney. Actually, "spot on" doesn't sound snooty when it's used as an adjective meaning accurate or on-target, as in "a spot-on impersonation." And it has become more common in American speech than it was even 10 years ago, when it made a notable appearance in a 2003 episode of The Wire. Detective Jimmy McNulty is posing as an English businessman in order to bust a Baltimore brothel. He speaks in a comically bad English accent, the inside joke being that McNulty was actually played by the English actor Dominic West. Before he goes in, his boss Lt. Daniels and Assistant DA Rhonda Pearlman are prepping him for his role and giving him the signal to have them come in to make the arrests:

Mention the name Rick Riordan to adults, and they might say, "Huh?" But kids? They know. Riordan has been burning up the best-seller lists with three different series of books that all feature modern-day kids entangled in the lives of ancient gods. The Red Pyramid — the November pick of NPR's Backseat Book Club — features a brother and sister who have no idea they are descended from age-old sorcerers until their archaeologist father accidentally unleashes ancient gods into modern society.

Dangerous? Absolutely. But also very cool.

If you have kids, then you know there's something almost magical when they reach the age when they begin to tackle mythology in school. The world of Greek, Roman, Norse and Egyptian gods, goddesses and heroes is intoxicating for students. The special powers. The cylindrical family trees. The rivalries. The vanities. The names that march across the tongue like Roman armies. It really is delicious stuff. If you want proof, just look at a kid's notebook when they're in a mythology unit — the doodles and drawings in the margins reveal just how deep the obsession goes.

Riordan certainly knows how mythology can cast a spell over young people. Before he became a best-selling author, he was a schoolteacher, and — not surprisingly — mythology was one of his favorite subjects to teach. All of his best-selling series (the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, the Heroes of Olympus series and The Kane Chronicles) follow a similar pattern: A modern-day preteen must complete a difficult mission, or the world will descend into complete chaos. Along the way, they usually discover special powers, overcome big fears and fulfill a destiny etched in stone hundreds of years ago.

Enlarge Marty Umans

Rick Riordan lives in San Antonio with his wife and two sons. You can submit your questions for him here.

Billboards declaring "Voter Fraud is a Felony" were recently taken down in some urban Ohio and Wisconsin areas. But not before civil rights groups said they could intimidate minority voters and decrease turnout. Host Michel Martin talks with WCPN reporter Brian Bull about the billboards, who paid for them, and concerns about their lasting impact.

Richard Russo sits in his elderly mother's home, holding her hand. She's just been diagnosed with dementia, one more illness to add to the long list of ailments she's been battling for years. She wonders aloud whether she'll ever be able to read again, plainly scared at the prospect of a life without her favorite hobby. She takes a look around her small apartment, and tells her son that she hates it.

"I just wish you could be happy, Mom," he says, heartbroken. "I used to be," she responds. "I know you don't believe that, but I was."

It's the most utterly melancholy moment in a memoir full of them, a book in search of a happy ending that will never come. There are instances of joy in Richard Russo's Elsewhere, but they are rare and tempered by the knowledge that sometimes things just don't get better. This story is a tragedy, and it is as unrelentingly sad as it is beautiful.

Elsewhere chronicles Russo's relationship with his mother from his childhood in the decaying mill town of Gloversville, N.Y., to her death decades later, after she's lived through countless unhappy years, wracked by untreated and severe mental illness. Russo's mother, unable to hold down a job and stuck in a long spiral of despair, considered him her "rock" and followed him and his family from town to town. The book is less a memoir than, in Russo's words, "a story of intersections: of place and time, of private and public, of linked destinies and flawed devotion."

That description could fit any of Russo's novels as well, and the prose and depth of feeling that made those books so unforgettable are unmistakably present in Elsewhere. Those who have read Nobody's Fool will recognize Gloversville as the inspiration for North Bath, all dying elm trees, dilapidated storefronts, and blue-collar workers who refuse to yield to the slow death of the American manufacturing industry. Russo writes in the same steadfastly plainspoken tone that he's always employed — in one passage unlikely to go over well in towns like, say, Iowa City, he slams "university-trained writers" who "consider plot a dirty word" and who indulge in "literary pretension."

More Richard Russo

Author Interviews

Short Takes: Richard Russo On 2010's Best Stories

As the presidential campaign has unfolded, the candidates have traded polemics about wealth, class warfare, taxes, dependency and the role of government.

And while it may be uncomfortable to admit, some Americans are simply more financially successful than others. But why do some achieve wealth, while others struggle? Why does one woman make it to the executive suite, while another man drives a taxi? And what do we think explains our prosperity — or lack thereof?

All Things Considered host Robert Siegel visited North Carolina's Research Triangle area, to ask people from very different walks of life how they account for their economic station in life. In the final installment of the series, we talk with several people who are on some of the lowest rungs of the economic ladder — but are working hard to move up.

Enlarge Art Silverman/NPR

The child of a farmworker, Yesenia Cuello aspires to become an RN. She supports herself through school by working at McDonalds.

Mark Danielewski is the author of The Fifty Year Sword.

When I was 12, the movie was forbidden. What my parents matter-of-factly declared too scary, friends confirmed with added notes of hysteria: "Nothing more terrifying!" "The most horrifying film ever made!" "People pass out!"

In Provo, Utah, where I grew up, Mormon children — and in my world that meant all of my friends — reported how just a glimpse resulted in actual, irreversible possession.

No one, though, had explicitly forbidden the book. And one day I found it — on one of those unvisited shelves that at some point cross over from being a place about reading to a plank consigned to storage — beside a copy of The Joy of Sex and something called Slaughterhouse-Five.

Still, I was careful not to let my parents know that I was now in possession of this Bantam edition with its glossy purple cover framing a curiously enigmatic image. It had hues of apricot, and was gauzy in a way that was vaguely feminine, even erotic. It was nothing like the movie poster — with that silhouette of Father Merrin, the Jesuit priest, about to enter the house of the possessed girl, brim hat on, valise in hand, caught in a hazy beam of light. In another context the illumination might have suggested something promising and welcoming rather than the dim dread that poster still evokes in me.

The book, however, felt warm and forgiving. And despite what the words within conveyed, those soft edges felt much different: safe, like a smoked glass through which to view dark suns.

Emman Montalvan

Mark Danielewski is also the author of House of Leaves.

Lady Rhea is not the kind of witch you'll find in a pointy hat this Halloween. She is a real workaday witch, grinding out a living selling magic products in a booth at Original Products, a grocery store-sized botanica in the Bronx. She's been a practicing Wiccan for nearly four decades, making her one of the longest-serving high priestesses in New York City.

"I am a Wiccan high priestess and Witch queen," she says. "My age — I've been in the craft since '73. I have a lot of coven people and people who are attached to me over the last years, so one of them coined me 'Pagan Mother.' Call them up and I'll say 'Hello, are you listening? This is Pagan Mother, call me.' "

Faith In The Five Boroughs: A City Witch

With less than a week left until Election Day, Superstorm Sandy has changed the course of both campaigns. NPR's Political Junkie Ken Rudin, Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg and Matt Continetti, editor of The Washington Free Beacon talk about the campaigns in the homestretch.

If you followed American media in recent years, you might have thought China was taking over the planet. Recent titles at the book store have included Becoming China's Bitch and When China Rules the World.

"They are the world's superpower or soon will be," Glenn Beck used to intone on Fox News. "They always thought America was just a blip."

And when the city of Philadelphia postponed an Eagles football game a couple of years ago because of a blizzard forecast, then-Gov. Ed Rendell said America — unlike China — was becoming a nation of "wussies."

"If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game?" Rendell asked. "People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down."

But China always looks more impressive from afar than it does close up.

The government in Beijing is targeting the economy to grow at 7.5 percent this year – well below the nearly 10.5 percent average growth of the previous decade.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has rung Wall Street back to business.

Traffic is snarled, subways out of commission, streets flooded and power out for many parts of the city, but the New York Stock Exchange opened without hitch Wednesday after an historic two-day shutdown, courtesy of Hurricane Sandy.

Bloomberg rang the opening bell at 9:30 a.m., right on schedule, as stock traders cheered from the iconic trading floor below, rumored to be flooded, but dry Wednesday morning, and festive.

The market got off to a good start after the shutdown.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 74 points to 13,182 shortly after the opening bell.

The exchange is running on backup generators since power is nonexistent in large parts of downtown Manhattan.

The last time the exchange was closed for two days due to weather was in 1888.

The Two-Way

Keeping Sandy's Economic Impact In Perspective

Not so long ago, many Chinese commentators wrote in a cautious, oblique style designed not to offend the nation's famously humorless leaders — then came the Internet, blogs and a cheeky young man named Han Han.

The voice of China's post-'80s generation, Han is ironic, skeptical and blunt — writing what many young Chinese think but dare not say publicly.

Now 30 years old, Han has boy-band good looks, drives race cars and has 8 million followers on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

A collection of his satiric essays is out this month for the first time in English. It's called This Generation: Dispatches From China's Most Popular Literary Star (and Race Car Driver).

Han aims his sarcastic barbs at a wide range of targets in Chinese government and society, from the state education system:

— "I participated in quite a few essay competitions. Before each event, I had to first brainwash myself and check to see what slogans were in fashion."

To the rule of law:

— "We learned that the first article of the Constitution is: 'If we say you're guilty, you're guilty.' "

And the growing gap between the rulers and the ruled:

— "The main contradiction in China today is between the growing intelligence of the population and rapidly waning morality of our officials."

Enlarge Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

Blogger and race car driver Han Han doesn't shy away from skewering Chinese government and society.

Author Richard Russo has been writing about the burned-out mill town of Gloversville, N.Y., for years. In one Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, he called it Empire Falls; in another novel, it was Thomaston.

Now, Russo has turned his attention to the real Gloversville and his experiences growing up there. His new memoir, Elsewhere, tracks his relationship with a very intense and neurotic mother who was also a gallant single mom. Russo and his mother remained close even through those transitions when children usually begin to separate from their parents, like going away to college. Of his own decision to attend the University of Arizona, Russo writes:

"I expected my mother to put up stiff resistance to this plan; after all, I'd be twenty-five hundred miles away and her mantra had always been that we were a team, that as long as we had each other, we'd be able to manage. So I should have been suspicious when she didn't object to my heading west. But even if I'd twigged to the possibility that she was up to something, I never would've grasped the obvious inference, and it was years before it occurred to me that maybe the westward-ho notion hadn't been mine at all, that she'd steadily been dropping hints — for example, that the best place to study archeology, my current interest, was the Desert Southwest — and that I'd dutifully been lapping them up. Nor did she object when, in the spring of my senior year I announced I wanted to buy a car.

"The reason she didn't, of course, was that we'd need one. Because she was coming with me."

Iraqi insurgents unleashed a string of bombings and other attacks primarily targeting the country's Shiite community on Saturday, leaving at least 40 dead in a challenge to government efforts to promote a sense of stability by preventing attacks during a major Muslim holiday.

The bloodshed appeared to be the worst in Iraq since Sept. 9, when insurgents launched a wave of bombings and other attacks that left at least 92 dead in one of the country's bloodiest days this year.

The attacks underscored the difficulties facing the country's leadership as it struggles to keep its citizens safe. Authorities had increased security in hopes of preventing attacks during the four-day Eid al-Adha celebrations, when people are off work and families gather in public places.

The deadliest attacks struck in the evening in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City. Police said a car packed with explosives blew up near a market, killing 12 people and wounding 27. Half an hour later, a second car bomb went off in one of Sadr city's bus stations, killing 10 and injuring 31.

Earlier in the day, a bomb exploded near playground equipment that had been set up for the holiday in a market on the capital's outskirts in the eastern neighborhood of Bawiya. Police officials said eight people were killed, including four children. Another 24 people, including children, were wounded, they added.

"Nobody expected this explosion because our neighborhood has been living in peace, away from the violence hitting the rest of the capital," said Bassem Mohammed, a 35-year-old father of three in the neighborhood who was startled by the blast.

"We feel sad for the children who thought that they would spend a happy time during Eid, but instead ended up getting killed or hurt."

Elsewhere, a bomb attached to a bus carrying Iranian Shiite pilgrims killed five people and wounded nine, according to police. The bomb, hidden on the underside of the bus, detonated as the pilgrims were heading to a Shiite shrine in Baghdad to mark the holiday.

Authorities have said they planned to increase the number of checkpoints, shut some roads and deploy extra personnel during the holiday period.

They are also relying more on undercover intelligence agents, said Lt. Col. Saad Maan Ibrahim, a spokesman for the interior ministry. He emphasized that both bombings took place on the edge of the capital rather than in densely populated areas.

"The terrorists apparently weren't able to get to the heart of the city. So they chose to attack soft targets on the outskirts," he said.

In the northern city of Mosul, gunmen broke into the houses of two Shabak families, killing a boy and his parents in one and a mother and daughter in the other, according to police. A bomb exploded near the house of another Shabak family, wounding six family members.

Shabaks are ethnically Turkomen and Shiite by religion. Most Shabaks were driven out of Mosul by Sunni militants during the sectarian fighting a few years ago.

In Tuz Khormato, about 130 miles north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near in a neighborhood with a Turkomen Shiite majority. Mayor Shalal Abdoul said 11 people were wounded, including three children.

Medics in nearby hospitals confirmed the casualties. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Eid al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice, is a major Muslim holiday that commemorates what Muslims believe was the Prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail, the Biblical Ishmael, as a test of his faith from God. Christians and Jews believe another of Abraham's sons, Isaac, was the one almost sacrificed.

The holiday, which began Friday, marks the end of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Muslims worldwide typically slaughter lambs and other animals to commemorate the holiday, sharing some of the meat with the poor.

Violence has ebbed across Iraq, but insurgents frequently attack security forces and civilians in an attempt to undermine the country's Shiite-led government.

Holidays are a particular time of concern for security forces. A wave of attacks shortly before another Muslim holiday in August, Eid al-Fitr, killed more than 90 people in one of the deadliest days in Iraq this year.

Hurricane Sandy has thrown an unexpected curveball into the presidential campaigns, with just over a week left until Election Day. Host Michel Martin discusses how this might impact the race with Pulitzer-prize winning columnist and journalism professor Cynthia Tucker, and Janice Crouse, a senior fellow with Concerned Women for America.

Shirley Sherrod was forced out of the Department of Agriculture because of a misleading video. An edited clip appeared to show her saying she didn't want to help white farmers save their land. But the entire speech made it clear that Sherrod was actually saying racism is wrong. She talks with host Michel Martin about her book The Courage To Hope.

On-air challenge: Every answer is a three-word phrase, in which each word has four letters. All three words end in the same three letters, and they rhyme. For example, given the clue, "Series of offerings of excellent chardonnays and Rieslings," the answer would be "fine wine line."

Last week's challenge from Pierre Berloquin: What letter comes next in this series: W, L, C, N, I, T?

Answer: The next letter is "S." The series represents the initial letters of the words in the question "What letter comes next in this series?"

Winner: Carl Huber of York, Pa.

Next week's challenge from Jeffrey Harris of Norwalk, Conn.: Think of a word associated with Halloween. Add a letter in the second position to create a new word that does not rhyme with the first. Then add another letter in the third position of the word you just created to complete another word that does not rhyme with either of the first two. What words are these?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to next week's challenge, submit it here. Listeners who submit correct answers win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: Include a phone number where we can reach you Thursday at 3 p.m. ET.

Not so long ago, many Chinese commentators wrote in a cautious, oblique style designed not to offend the nation's famously humorless leaders — then came the Internet, blogs and a cheeky young man named Han Han.

The voice of China's post-'80s generation, Han is ironic, skeptical and blunt — writing what many young Chinese think but dare not say publicly.

Now 30 years old, Han has boy-band good looks, drives race cars and has 8 million followers on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

A collection of his satiric essays is out this month for the first time in English. It's called This Generation: Dispatches From China's Most Popular Literary Star (and Race Car Driver).

Han aims his sarcastic barbs at a wide range of targets in Chinese government and society, from the state education system:

— "I participated in quite a few essay competitions. Before each event, I had to first brainwash myself and check to see what slogans were in fashion."

To the rule of law:

— "We learned that the first article of the Constitution is: 'If we say you're guilty, you're guilty.' "

And the growing gap between the rulers and the ruled:

— "The main contradiction in China today is between the growing intelligence of the population and rapidly waning morality of our officials."

Enlarge Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

Blogger and race car driver Han Han doesn't shy away from skewering Chinese government and society.

A much-anticipated revival of The Heiress, a 1947 play based on the Henry James novella Washington Square, opens in New York on Thursday. It marks the Broadway debut of two accomplished young stars — Jessica Chastain, the Academy Award nominee from The Help, and Dan Stevens, from the hit television series Downton Abbey.

On the surface, the story of The Heiress seems simple enough — a wealthy young woman in Victorian New York is torn between her controlling father and a young, penniless suitor. Is the father being overprotective? Is the young man just a cad? But there's much more going on, says director Moiss Kaufman.

In his introduction to Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, Dan Wakefield, the book's editor and a longtime Vonnegut karass member, writes of the late author's aspiration to be a "cultivated eccentric." Over the course of six decades of letters to family, friends, admirers, detractors and fellow writers, Vonnegut shows himself to be so much more, both in terms of ambition and accomplishment. In fact, viewed in its totality, the collection — by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and mundane — is striking in just how uneccentric it shows the author to be. Vonnegut himself is a near-perfect example of the same flawed, wonderful humanity that he loved and despaired over his entire life.

Letters should be read as a necessary companion piece to Charles J. Shields' even-handed 2011 Vonnegut biography, And So It Goes. The Shields book reveals a successful but mostly unhappy man, one with a penchant for professional betrayals (he nixed an agreement with longtime friend and editor Knox Burger); an anti-war, liberal champion who had no problem investing in napalm manufacturer Dow Chemical.

The singular, iconic author was certainly complicated — and at times vain and quick to anger. Those critics who pigeonholed him as a sci-fi hack promptly felt the wrath of his epistolary ripostes. For example, six years after achieving lasting fame for his classic, Slaughterhouse-Five, a miffed Vonnegut felt compelled to write to Osborn Elliott, the editor of Newsweek, concerning a piece on science fiction written by Peter Prescott. Prescott's offending lines went like this: "Few sf [science fiction] writers aim higher than what a teen-age intelligence can grasp, and the smart ones, like Kurt Vonnegut, carefully satirize targets — racism, pollution, teachers — that teen-agers are conditioned to dislike." To which Vonnegut tersely replied, "I have never written with teen-agers in mind, nor are teen-agers the chief readers of my books. I am the first sf writer to win a Guggenheim, the first to become a member of the National Institute for Arts and Letters, the first to have a book become a finalist for a National Book Award." He goes on to list his undeniably impressive accomplishments and titles for several more lines.

More Vonnegut

Author Interviews

Kurt Vonnegut Was Not A Happy Man. 'So It Goes.'

Executives of the publishing giants Bertelsmann and Pearson announced on Monday that they will pursue a merger of their publishing houses, Random House and Penguin. The united publishing companies are set to become a large and influential force in publishing.

As the presidential campaign has unfolded, the candidates have traded polemics about wealth, class warfare, dependency and the role of government.

And while it may be uncomfortable to admit, some Americans are simply more financially successful than others. But why do some achieve wealth, while others struggle? And what do we think explains our prosperity — or lack thereof?

In a three-part series, All Things Considered host Robert Siegel visited North Carolina's Research Triangle area, to ask people from very different walks of life how they account for their economic station in life. The series begins at the very top of the economic ladder.

Enlarge Art Sliverman/NPR

Bob Hatley's parents struggled to make ends meet when he was a boy. He says his competitiveness and his drive to emulate successful people eventually enabled him to open his own bank.

In a piece in the Washington Post, retired Army officer John Nagl argues that the U.S. has forgotten what losing a war really looks like. Nagl talks about what's been accomplished in Afghanistan, and the concerns that remain.

Hurricane Sandy has thrown an unexpected curveball into the presidential campaigns, with just over a week left until Election Day. Host Michel Martin discusses how this might impact the race with Pulitzer-prize winning columnist and journalism professor Cynthia Tucker, and Janice Crouse, a senior fellow with Concerned Women for America.

Many of my all-time favorite novels have a common (if slightly unsettling) thread: They feature an unreliable narrator at the helm. The term was popularized in the 1960s by the literary critic Wayne C. Booth, but the unreliable narrator herself has been around at least as long as the Wife of Bath in The Canterbury Tales. An unreliable narrator is one who tells a tale with compromised credibility, whether the narrator herself understands that or not. The reader usually finds this out only slowly, as cracks in the narrator's version of events begin to appear. For the reader, figuring out what really did happen is an unending but joyful mystery.

A much-anticipated revival of The Heiress, a 1947 play based on the Henry James novella Washington Square, opens in New York on Thursday. It marks the Broadway debut of two accomplished young stars — Jessica Chastain, the Academy Award nominee from The Help, and Dan Stevens, from the hit television series Downton Abbey.

On the surface, the story of The Heiress seems simple enough — a wealthy young woman in Victorian New York is torn between her controlling father and a young, penniless suitor. Is the father being overprotective? Is the young man just a cad? But there's much more going on, says director Moiss Kaufman.

In the months since the controversy over the Susan G. Komen Foundation's shifting position on funding for Planned Parenthood, the organization has seen a decline in fundraising and attendance at its main event, annual races held around the country to raise money for breast cancer prevention and treatment. Iowa Public Radio's Sarah McCammon visits a race in Des Moines to check in on how fundraising is going there and across the nation.

This is the time of a long election season when voters can begin to feel weary. You can't watch the World Series without seeing ads so scolding and snarling you may want to shoo away your children. The ads can make voting seem like a nasty chore.

When 93-year-old Frank Tanabe of Honolulu moved into the home of his daughter, Barbara, earlier this year, he had liver cancer and knew he was going to die. But his family said he was determined to hold on long enough to vote.

Frank Tanabe grew up in Washington state. He was 22 years old and a college man when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. A Japanese-American, he was sent to an internment camp.

He volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army's Military Intelligence Service, where he interrogated Japanese prisoners in India and China.

"I wanted to do my part to prove that I was not an enemy alien," he said years later in a documentary film. "And if we ever got the chance, we would do our best to serve our country. And we did."

Congress awarded the Congressional Gold Medal last year to all who served in the MIS and other Japanese-American units. Frank Tanabe was able to come to Washington, D.C., stand tall, and have the medal draped around his neck.

As his illness made inroads, his family said Frank Tanabe made living long enough to vote his last goal. He used a magnifying glass to read the newspaper each day and exercised in his bed.

Barbara Tanabe said, "I would let him know, 'Hey, the ballots are coming next week. Just hang in there.' "

Frank Tanabe's absentee ballot arrived last week, and Barbara said she hurried into his room to say, 'OK, I'm going to read you the names and you just nod yes or no.'"

She says the family did not all vote the same way.

"There were some that were OK, but there were others where I said, 'Dad, are you sure?' "

A family member posted a picture of Frank Tanabe, the staunch old soldier listening intently to the names on the ballot from his bed, and it went around the world.

He died this week, just as there were news reports that both presidential campaigns will raise $2 billion together and spend about $5 on each voter, trying to win support with ads and appeals. I wonder how many voters might have preferred to get a gallon and a half of gas or a sandwich.

But as Barbara Tanabe said this week of her father, "He saw people die fighting for their country. The foundation of our country is the ability to be able to vote and affect policies that change society."

Frank Tanabe once fought for Americans to have the right to vote. And he fought to live long enough to cast his own last ballot.

Enlarge Irene Tanabe/AP

Frank Tanabe votes via absentee ballot with the help of his daughter, Barbara (left) and wife, Setsuko, in Honolulu on Oct. 17. He died the following week.

With the buying season for new cars under way, Renee Montagne consults Michelle Krebs, of the auto information website Edmunds.com, about the best way to pay for a new car: buy, lease, or finance.

Since Wambach sounds kind of like wombat, we figure Abby should know everything about the cuddly marsupials. We've invited her to play a game called "You're good at soccer, but can you carry your young in a pouch?" Our quiz will take about four minutes ... and will probably have more scoring than 90 minutes of soccer.

Wambach is a multiple gold medalist, holds the best goals-per-game ratio in U.S. soccer history and has just been nominated for FIFA Women's World Player of the Year.

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

DREW CAREY, HOST:

And now the game where we invite on big names and ask them little questions. U.S. soccer player Abby Wambach is a multiple gold medalist, she holds the best goals per game ratio in U.S. soccer history, and she's just been nominated for FIFA Women's World Player of the Year.

(APPLAUSE)

CAREY: You know, I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm a huge soccer fan and Peter Sagal is not.

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: So I'm really excited to say this, Abby Wambach Welcome to WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!

(APPLAUSE)

ABBY WAMBACH: Thank you.

CAREY: Welcome to the show. So listen, as I mentioned, I'm a huge soccer fan. My number one favorite sport and Peter Sagal isn't, so I guess my first question is what's wrong with him and everyone else who isn't a soccer fan?

(LAUGHTER)

WAMBACH: That's a great question. Soccer is one of those sports, it obviously is a world game, it's the most popular sport played around the world, but I like it because there really isn't a set play. You go out and it's a bunch of people trying to get on the same page because you've got to know your teammates, you got to know your strengths and your weaknesses and ultimately that one goal.

I know it's not the American style. A few goals is the way soccer is meant to be played.

CAREY: Yeah.

WAMBACH: Cerebral game and I really appreciate that part of it.

CAREY: I think they should give seven points for every goal so everybody else could understand it.

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: All right, 21-7, woo, and they'd be really happy about the game. Now, you've been a part of many really exciting moments in soccer history. You had a great header during overtime to beat Brazil in the World Cup. Twice you've had headers in overtime to beat Brazil. Do they hate you in Brazil?

WAMBACH: I think so. I think that they're going to ban me from crossing the line, whether it's the Olympics in 2016 or the 2014 Men's World Cup.

CAREY: Yeah, didn't you win, like 2011, SB Play of the Year Award?

WAMBACH: Yeah, yeah, that was...

CAREY: From ESPN.

WAMBACH: It was pretty special, you know, I mean not to mention it's against Brazil. You know, they have a tendency to sometimes, you know, go down and writhe in pain and waste time, the gamesmanship stuff. And it kind of came back to bite them because...

CAREY: Punching people in the eye.

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: Oh, no, I'm sorry, that was Colombia.

WAMBACH: Yeah, that was Colombia.

CAREY: I get my countries mixed up. Now, what do you think you'd be doing if you weren't a soccer player? Because you've been playing since you were 4 years old. I understand you had to move to a boy's team after you scored 27 goals in three games when you were a kid.

(LAUGHTER)

WAMBACH: Yeah. My parents, they're the kind of people that didn't want me to get a big head, so they just kept challenging me and challenging me. But what I would do if I weren't playing soccer, truthfully I have no freaking clue. I mean I love what I do.

(LAUGHTER)

WAMBACH: I'm going to play until I possibly can't play anymore and at that point, I'll decide.

CAREY: What was your major when you were in college?

WAMBACH: You know, I probably mostly majored in playing soccer, obviously.

CAREY: Wow, female athletes are just like the male athletes aren't they?

(LAUGHTER)

TOM BODETT: Abby, this is Tom. You know, as the father of boys who play sports and as a hockey dad who's up to my eyeballs in the sport, I have to say what I appreciate about soccer is the lack of equipment.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

WAMBACH: That's funny.

BODETT: This hockey bag that my 7 year old carries around, you could put two of him in, in the bag. So have you played since you were just a little mite like that?

WAMBACH: Yeah, I have. I have played pretty young. You know, I played all sports growing up, but that's also the best part about playing soccer is all you need is a ball. You know, you can get two trees in your backyard and there you go, you've got a goal.

CAREY: Listen, like speaking of hockey and equipment and all this stuff, there's no - you're not wearing anything but your uniform when you're playing. I have to ask you, you've had your share of injuries. You want to run down a few of your injury highlights?

WAMBACH: Yeah, I've had a few interesting moments. Broke my leg, tib-fib, have a rod in my leg now. Got punched in the face. I've had multiple stitches put in my head from getting headed by other opponents.

BRIAN BABYLON: What is this, fight club?

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: She's like the toughest soccer player I've ever seen. She literally, like when she went up for a header once and collided with this other player from Brazil, and when she landed, her head was bleeding so much, they came on the field during the game with a stapler and stapled her skin together, which honestly I can't see Landon Donovan doing that.

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: Not the face, you know what I mean?

(LAUGHTER)

WAMBACH: Yeah, I guess not.

CAREY: Yeah, what was that like, getting your face stapled together in the middle of a game? What were you thinking?

WAMBACH: It was the end of the game and we needed to win that game to qualify for the World Cup. It was actually, in fact, it was against Mexico and not Brazil. It was the last few minutes. I think it was almost in extra time. So I was just like, let's go, like staple it up. You know, and your adrenalin is kicking so much that you don't really feel it.

BABYLON: Staple it up.

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: Listen, you know a lot of people, if they don't know soccer, they think soccer players are notorious for flopping. So you realize you don't have to go that far, right?

WAMBACH: I do. And I think that the fact that women and myself included, you know if we're getting staples on the field, we're trying to make Americans know that a lot of the South American countries, they're pretty much more known for flopping than the Americans. We like to stand strong and show the American people that soccer is a physical contact sport but we're not floppers.

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: Some of your teammates have made fun of you for being a bad dancer. Now how can you be so good with your feet and be a bad dancer?

BABYLON: Oh, that's easy.

WAMBACH: I call it I'm the best worst dancer on the team. You know, I still win that award. I don't know. I never was given the gift of dance, and honestly, I'm more of a big target forward, so I would actually even question my ability with the ball at my feet and my technical ability as well.

CAREY: Yeah, you score a lot of goals with your head, yeah, you're right.

WAMBACH: I do. I'm pretty much brain dead at this point.

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: Now, I'm also a big fan of Hope Solo. If you were to arm-wrestle Hope Solo, who would win?

WAMBACH: I think she would win. She's got guns, you know what I'm saying?

CAREY: So do you.

WAMBACH: Well, I've got the weight. I've got her on the weight category. She uses her hands and is pretty fit.

BODETT: What if you each had a stapler?

(LAUGHTER)

WAMBACH: Well, Hope had shoulder surgery a couple of years ago, and so she's got a few pins in her shoulder.

CAREY: Oh, OK.

WAMBACH: I think we've got equally as many - I mean and she actually got hung up on a goalpost once and her whole forearm is totally scarred because she had to have hundreds of stitches to put her arm back together. It was actually pretty nasty.

BABYLON: What are you young ladies doing?

CAREY: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: You hear that everybody who has their little girl playing soccer?

BODETT: Right.

CAREY: This is what happens to you.

BODETT: I tell you that equipment bag of my son's for hockey is looking pretty good all of the sudden.

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: Yeah. Now, are you OK being around after a loss? Are you really mad? Are you good after - like really happy after a win, really sad after a loss, what's it like?

WAMBACH: Yeah, well after a win, most of us are probably just - we expect to win because we've been winning for so many years. And after a loss, it's very, very quiet on the team bus ride back to the hotel and all of us are trying to think through what happened and how do we fix it, how do we not get to this point again. And yeah, you don't want to get really close to me because I'm steaming, I'm upset.

CAREY: Oh, well the reason I wanted to know how you are after a win or how you are after a loss, we've asked you here to play a little game...

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: We've asked you to play a little game we're calling?

CARL KASELL: You're good at soccer, but can you carry your young in a pouch?

(LAUGHTER)

WAMBACH: Oh boy, here we go.

CAREY: I'm almost glad you're not here to punch me.

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: Your name is Abby Wambach, which sounds like wombat, which of course means you'll know everything about them. We're going to ask you three questions about the cuddly marsupials, the wombats.

WAMBACH: Oh boy.

CAREY: Get two right and you'll win our prize for one of our listeners, Carl's voice on their voicemail. Are you ready to go?

WAMBACH: I'm ready.

CAREY: Carl, who is Abby Wambach playing for?

KASELL: Abby is playing or Lakshmi Shamagan of Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

CAREY: OK, Abby, here's your first question about wombats. Despite their cute cuddly appearance, wombats have inspired some creepy tributes, including which of these? A: An Iraqi little league team called the Saddambats?

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: B: A short lived DC Comic series called Wombatman and Wombin?

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: Or C: A fan group for of the bloody video game Mortal Kombat called Mortal Wombat?

WAMBACH: Oh my god.

(LAUGHTER)

WAMBACH: I'm going to go C.

CAREY: C, Mortal Wombat, you are correct.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(APPLAUSE)

CAREY: Yes, Mortal Wombat. One out of three. Next question: Wombats have an amazing defense advantage, what is it? A: Their butts are indestructible?

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: B: They wear glasses. You wouldn't hit a marsupial with glasses, would you?

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: Or C: They have a ton of horses and bayonets?

(LAUGHTER)

WAMBACH: I'm going to go A.

CAREY: A, yes, their butts are indestructible.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(APPLAUSE)

CAREY: Exactly. When pursued, they dive headfirst into a hole, and wait for the predator to bite their butt.

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: Once he's latched on, they kick him until he's dead or loses interest.

(LAUGHTER)

BABYLON: What do you mean indestructible?

CAREY: Like they're made out of cartilage.

BABYLON: Oh.

CAREY: Yeah, indestructible.

WAMBACH: Yeah. That's a tough question.

CAREY: They act just like my old girlfriends do.

WAMBACH: I thought that that would be the wrong answer because no butt is indestructible.

CAREY: Yeah, well, all right. Two out of three. Here's your last question. Let's go for a clean sweep. What do wombats and supermodels have in common? A: They both spend most of the day sleeping in their burrows?

(LAUGHTER)

CAREY: B: Both take two weeks to digest their food? C: Both are nocturnal and tend to feed on grasses, roots, and bark? D: All of the above?

(LAUGHTER)

WAMBACH: I'm going to say D.

CAREY: Yes, all of the above.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

(APPLAUSE)

CAREY: Carl, how'd she do?

KASELL: Well, Abby had three correct answers, so she wins our prize for Lakshmi Shamagan.

(APPLAUSE)

WAMBACH: Yay.

CAREY: Now, listen, the U.S. Women's National Team is out on their Fan Tribute Tour, you can catch them next against Ireland on November 28th in Portland, Oregon. Abby Wambach, thank you so much for joining us on WAIT WAIT...DON'T TELL ME!

(APPLAUSE)

WAMBACH: Thank you.

BODETT: Thanks, Abby. Good luck.

WAMBACH: Take care.

CAREY: See you, Abby. Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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