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Susan Stamberg is a big name in public radio. One of NPR's "founding mothers," she was the first woman to anchor a national nightly news program when she co-hosted NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. Listeners hear her reports as a special correspondent, and every year at Thanksgiving, her mother's cranberry relish recipe returns to the air.

But Stamberg's career began its ascent with a nervous mistake.

"My big break occurred essentially at the moment I made my radio debut," she says.

Stamberg was working at a local station in Washington, D.C., producing a daily program when the weather girl called in sick. Stamberg says the format called for a weather forecast.

"There was nobody else to do it," she says. "It was up to me."

Back in those days, Stamberg says, you would dial W-E-6-1-2-1-2 on a phone to get the weather report. She was supposed to write down the forecast and bring her notes into the studio for her live report.

"But I was so nervous I forgot to call," Stamberg says. "So I go into the studio, the on-air light comes on, and I think, 'I don't know what the weather is because I didn't make the phone call.' "

She thought she could just look out the window — but the only window in the studio was out of reach and covered with curtains.

She was in the dark.

"So I did the only thing I could think of to do," Stamberg says. "I made it up."

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The earliest photo of Susan Stamberg at a microphone, age 25. Later, as the host of All Things Considered, she was the first woman to be a full-time anchor of a U.S. national nightly news broadcast. Courtesy Susan Stamberg hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy Susan Stamberg

The earliest photo of Susan Stamberg at a microphone, age 25. Later, as the host of All Things Considered, she was the first woman to be a full-time anchor of a U.S. national nightly news broadcast.

Courtesy Susan Stamberg

She says it was in the middle of February, but she was so nervous, she said the temperature was in the 90s.

"And that the barometer was — I didn't even know what that meant," she says. "And then the format called for me to repeat what the weather was. And I couldn't remember what I had said because I was so nervous."

So, Susan Stamberg made it up again.

"Now I say it's 62 degrees and the wind and the velocity is 109 and I went on and on and on," Stamberg says. "Mercifully, got off the air and happily our three listeners did not call. So nobody noticed that, anyway."

But Stamberg says her not-so-glamorous on-air debut taught her a couple things about being on the radio: Never go on the air unprepared and never lie to your listeners.

"I think I was so petrified and so relieved when I was finished," she says. "But yeah, something in the back of my head said, 'You know, this could be fun.' So this was the beginning of my inauspicious broadcasting career."

We want to hear about your big break. Send us an e-mail at mybigbreak@npr.org.

Susan Stamberg

A collection of art and others artifacts related to the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II will not be sold to the highest bidder.

A New Jersey auction house was set to sell more than 400 items on Friday. But Rago Arts and Auction Center decided to withdraw the items on Wednesday after protests from descendants of internees who were wrongfully imprisoned by the U.S. government during the war.

Japanese-American families had donated many of the pieces to Allen Eaton, an historian who was working on a book published in 1952 about arts and crafts from the internment camps.

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The collection also includes containers and furniture that Japanese-American internees made from scrap lumber found inside the internment camps. Courtesy of Rago Arts and Auction Center hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Rago Arts and Auction Center

The collection also includes containers and furniture that Japanese-American internees made from scrap lumber found inside the internment camps.

Courtesy of Rago Arts and Auction Center

Over the decades, the collection came into the hands of an anonymous friend of the Eaton family. He decided to auction them off, which caught the attention of Japanese-Americans like Barbara Takei, who helped to lead online protests against the sale.

"This has been a very intense two weeks," says Takei, whose mother was among the thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent forced to live in internment camps after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

David Rago, one of the auction house's owners, says the ideal solution to the controversy is to find a museum to house the items. "We want to see the property end up where it can do the most good for history, and I do believe the consigner wants that as well," he says.

The collection includes carved wooden nameplates that were once attached to tar-paper barracks, as well as oil and watercolor paintings of Japanese-American families living behind barbed wire.

"We're talking about items that were produced by prisoners, who were wrongfully concentrated into absolutely abysmal places," says historian Marc Masurovsky, who co-founded the Holocaust Art Restitution Project.

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There are parallels between the paintings Jewish families lost during World War II and the artifacts of Japanese-American internment camps. Masurovsky says descendants of both groups deserve a say in what happens to these objects.

"It's a healing process," he says. "And that's why you have to have that kind of sensibility and sensitivity, and sit down and recognize that and accept it so that an element of justice can be performed."

The internment camp artifacts may not have the same financial value as masterpieces of European painting. But they were among the few possessions of Japanese-American families devastated by a chapter of U.S. history that left many penniless and without a home after the war.

Delphine Hirasuna, an expert on art created in the camps, says they're high in emotional value.

"Most families have nothing from that period to show for it," she says. "Here is something that gives them pride about what they're grandparents created under really bad circumstances."

The circumstances of Takei's protests may have changed now that the auction's called off. But she says the story isn't over.

"It's the beginning of a different chapter," she says. "Now we have time to begin exploring how best to preserve it, so that it won't be scattered to the wind."

The Rago auction house says it will now work with Japanese-American groups to help the collection's owner decide where the artifacts go.

It's fair to say George Lucas is a person who has had a lot of attention paid to him.

Largely because of his creation of the Star Wars universe (though he also co-wrote the story of Raiders Of The Lost Ark), Lucas is a figure of enormous pop-cultural weight. When he sat down to talk with Stephen Colbert as part of the Tribeca Talks series at the Tribeca Film Festival, expectations were high. The challenge, however, is that in terms of hearing him tell stories, the majority of the people who want to hear him talk want to hear about Star Wars, and at this point, almost 40 years on, Lucas doesn't have all that much to say about Star Wars that he hasn't already said.

He remains polite and noncommittal about the upcoming Star Wars films in which he isn't involved: he hopes they're great, he's excited to see them. He remembers showing the film to a bunch of his friends at the time — and regardless of who was at this actual screening, his friends included your Marty Scorsese, your Brian De Palma, your Steve Spielberg, that kind of thing — and only Spielberg believed Star Wars would be successful. Brian De Palma, for the record, didn't get what "The Force" was. Almost nobody got it. Almost nobody believed in it. This is the story as he tells it.

In some ways, the revelations about Star Wars came from Colbert, who opened by explaining that as a 13-year-old, he won tickets to an advance screening of the film, knowing essentially nothing about what it was. He said that as he and a couple of his friends arrived, they were given two things: a blue ticket that was taken at the door and a button that said "May The Force Be With You." Colbert still has the button, and he insisted that on the way out of the theater, he and his friends were so profoundly affected that they already knew they'd want those tickets as souvenirs, so they asked for them back. No dice: already gone.

This is what the Star Wars story is now — it's less the story of how a movie that's been exhaustively documented was made, and more the story of the extraordinary cultural force that it created. This entire thing has largely gotten away from George Lucas, not just in that he no longer helms the movies in the franchise, but in that Star Wars is now culturally — though certainly not legally — in a sort of public domain space. It's mashed up and remembered and used as a marker: for Colbert, as he explained it, this was the moment when everything became different. At an event after he became a celebrity himself, Colbert said he was so unprepared when someone suggested "George" wanted to meet him that he asked, "George who?" This could not, he assumed, mean George Lucas.

Lucas has settled into the life of the restless gazillionaire dabbler, or at least into the narrative of one: he himself told the audience he's "retired," "just screwing around in [his] garage," and devoted to making little experimental films — something he's been saying for years. He told Colbert he doesn't like celebrity. In fact, when Colbert opened by asking him, "What's it like to be George Lucas? Is it good?" Lucas answered, "It's ... OK."

This is what George Lucas does now: He talks about the importance of creatives and the terrible people who interfere with them, he talks about the meaninglessness of criticism that doesn't come from his friends who are directors (in fact, he says there should be no such thing as negative reviews; it should be as he claims it is in Europe, where critics who don't like things simply say nothing at all), and he gently brags about having, at this point in his life, what we might call "get-lost money": the money to ignore other people with money because you have plenty of your own and can do what you want.

That's why the most enjoyable moment of the talk might have been when Lucas unleashed a wonderfully shriek-y sneeze. I've heard so much about George Lucas, I've heard him talk about Star Wars, I know about his passion for sound, I know about his early movies, I know about his director friends. But I've never heard him sneeze before.

But for all the ways in which Lucas can seem like old business that doesn't change, the spell he still casts on people is remarkable. During the audience Q&A at the end of the event, a young man stood up and told his story: He's 21 years old. When he was young, his now-deceased grandfather got him started with Moleskin notebooks, in which he began writing down ideas. He now has 10 notebooks full of ideas, and here was his question: maybe he could help George Lucas somehow?

This is the hold Lucas still has over people's imaginations. This is what it still means, decades later, to be in a room with the guy who made Star Wars. There is a uniquely 21-year-old quality to this story — it's the time in your life when you still believe that with adequate chutzpah, with the ability to stand up and tell George Lucas right to his face that you are a writer and you can help him, you can skip over the boring parts like pitching your projects to people who can fund them. This is what George Lucas told him, really. Not "Let's have lunch!" Not "Meet me out back; I'd like to read your stuff." Not "Give my assistant your name and I'll call you next week." None of the things one suspects he may have hoped for. George Lucas told him to do the work. Go try to make deals.

Colbert offered, not unkindly, to translate: "Go to Hollywood and suffer."

A few other items of note:

Colbert is warming up to take over David Letterman's 11:35 p.m. slot at CBS, and he proved — out of "Stephen Colbert" character — to be a solid and warm interviewer.

Lucas said his favorite compliment is that a film is a "cult classic," because that means a small number of people love a movie so much that they carry it on their backs to that status. "Even Howard The Duck is a cult classic," he said, before predicting that Marvel would remake it now that they can use, as he put it, "a digital duck."

Unlike some directors, George Lucas isn't offended if you want to watch his movies on your phone. They're made for big screens, he said, and they're best seen in a big theater with a good sound system and a lot of other people. But ultimately, it's up to you: "If you want to see it on a cell phone, that's fine with me. You just won't get the same experience."

So, we all jumped in our rental cars and dashed to the Jones Street Java House, where we packed into the kitchen waiting for the candidate.

One of the store's owners captured the absurdity of the whole thing when she snapped a selfie with the press throng as her backdrop.

Posted by Jones St Java House on Tuesday, April 14, 2015

When Hillary Clinton kicked off her campaign in Iowa, her team said she would be going small — intimate events, conversations in coffee shops with just a few people. That's easier said than done when the candidate is one of the world's most famous politicians.

When Clinton arrived, she walked up to the counter facing the tangle of reporters, who were really just a small share of those trying to cover her.

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Hillary Clinton meets her barrista. She ordered a chai tea, a caramel latte and a water. Tamara Keith/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Tamara Keith/NPR

Hillary Clinton meets her barrista. She ordered a chai tea, a caramel latte and a water.

Tamara Keith/NPR

She shook hands with a few unsuspecting customers, and then sat down to chat with three invited guests. And that's about the time the press pool was kicked out.

So I can't tell you if they had a deep discussion about policy, or if one of her guests asked about the personal e-mail server she used while secretary of state. For the campaign, the point was simply to show Clinton relaxed and comfortable, chatting with Iowans, and for Clinton to get a chance to sit back, relax and hear from Iowans.

It turns out the reporters weren't the only ones given decoy locations. The Democratic activists, whom Clinton met with in cafes around the state, weren't told they would be meeting with her until the last minute. They turned over their cell phones before being taken to the meetings.

Such was the game of cat and mouse that characterized Clinton's return to Iowa. This was the campaign's effort to keep things small — to do Iowa the Iowa way.

"In order to have somebody like Hillary Clinton, who is huge, to be able to do that with these intimate settings, they really had to really make some compromises," said Kathie Obradovich, a political columnist for the Des Moines Register. "And one of them was not really telling everyone exactly where she's going to be. One of them was severely restricting the number of people who are in these events."

Reporters flew in from all over the country and around the globe. But because her events were in small venues, many of those reporters were left outside. When the black van she calls Scooby pulled up to the back entrance (instead of the front) of Kirkwood Community College, reporters and photographers gave chase, as captured by MSNBC.

VIDEO: Reporters ran to get to close to Clinton as the Scooby Van approached her Iowa event https://t.co/7vqR31b6NN

— The Cycle (@thecyclemsnbc) April 14, 2015

It was comical. And embarrassing. Was that really the Iowa way?

Or was it like taking a gondola ride in the Venetian hotel in Vegas instead of Venice? To hear the people Clinton met with tell it, though, from the inside, it felt like the real deal. Yes, they were all hand-picked. But they weren't all supporters.

Before Clinton had even left the state, her campaign sent out images of front pages from all the local papers. And there she was with a cup of coffee smiling and chatting with Iowans.

The chase continues on Monday in New Hampshire. According to a campaign aide, Clinton will hold roundtable discussions and meet privately with elected officials and Democratic activists around the state. Luckily for the reporters giving chase, New Hampshire is a much smaller state.

2016 Presidential Race

Democrats

Hillary Clinton

Political life is full of comeback stories, but few are quite as dramatic as the boomerang that Scottish nationalists have experienced over the last six months.

Last September, the Scottish National Party lost a vote on whether to break away from the United Kingdom.

Now, membership in the SNP has quadrupled, and that unexpected turn of events means that this party, dismissed as a loser last fall, could determine who becomes the next prime minister after British elections in a few weeks.

People who wanted Scotland to leave the U.K. had waited their whole life for last year's vote. Then the long, slow buildup to Scottish independence deflated with a massive whoosh as the nationalists learned that they had lost by 10 points.

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Sturgeon has delighted the audiences during a series of televised debates. Here, she is seen with British Prime Minister and Conservative leader David Cameron at the first, on April 2, after which newspapers hailed her as "Queen of Scotland" and "Surgin' Sturgeon." Ken McKay/ITV via Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Ken McKay/ITV via Getty Images

Sturgeon has delighted the audiences during a series of televised debates. Here, she is seen with British Prime Minister and Conservative leader David Cameron at the first, on April 2, after which newspapers hailed her as "Queen of Scotland" and "Surgin' Sturgeon."

Ken McKay/ITV via Getty Images

The morning after the referendum, Edinburgh librarian Robyn Marsack looked to the future with a sigh and a note of hope.

"There's also a feeling that something has been unleashed that can't be held back now," she said. "It's out there."

At the time, that sounded like an attempt to put a positive spin on a painful defeat. Then thousands of new members started signing up for the Scottish National Party.

"It did come as a surprise," says political scientist Tony Travers of the London School of Economics. "I don't think any of the ever-present political pundits had predicted this."

"I think the reason it happened is that, clearly having voted to stay in the United Kingdom, the people of Scotland could signal that they were still very interested in degrees of freedom and autonomy, if not quite independence," he says.

For decades, the U.K. was dominated by two big parties: Labour and Conservatives. That's still true, but neither is expected to break 50 percent in next month's election. That leaves an opening for a small party to be kingmaker. And right now, the SNP is out-performing all the other small parties.

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Demonstrators march in Glasgow, Scotland, to call for the scrapping of Britain's Trident nuclear weapons program on April 4. Opposition to Trident is a cornerstone of the SNP's platform. Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images

Demonstrators march in Glasgow, Scotland, to call for the scrapping of Britain's Trident nuclear weapons program on April 4. Opposition to Trident is a cornerstone of the SNP's platform.

Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images

If they do as well as expected, the Scottish nationalists could pull the new government to the left. The party wants more spending on social services, and the SNP opposes Britain's nuclear weapons program, Trident.

"It's often asked of me, 'Is Trident a red line?' " party leader Nicola Sturgeon said in one recent debate, "Well here's my answer: You better believe Trident is a red line."

The audience roared. That's become typical of Sturgeon's performance in these debates. During one faceoff among seven leaders, people searched for her name more than any of the others. After the debate, the Daily Mail hailed Sturgeon as "Queen of Scotland," while the Belfast Telegraph ran the headline: "Surgin' Sturgeon." One of the most Googled questions during the debate was "Can I vote for the SNP?"

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It's a development that Charlie Jeffrey, a politics professor at Scotland's University of Edinburgh, calls "very interesting."

"A party which is Scottish and which can only stand in Scotland, [people asking], yeah, can we have some of that?" he says.

"It's a strange situation, isn't it?" he says, "When the party in the campaign that lost is now on such a political high."

Sturgeon has joked that her party climbed so fast, she might be experiencing altitude sickness. But her opponents have not let voters forget that the party was founded on a belief that Scotland should be an independent country.

People often referred to last year's independence referendum as a "once-in-a-generation" vote. Now that the SNP is on a rocket trajectory, many are wondering whether another vote could come much sooner.

Sturgeon recently brushed aside such speculation.

"A vote for the SNP in this election is not a vote for another referendum," she said. "It is a vote to make Scotland's voice heard much, much more loudly."

But then she said she wouldn't entirely rule out another Scottish independence vote, either.

In his home in Lahore, Pakistan, Saleem Khan holds up his late father's violin. There are no strings, the wood is scratched and the bridge is missing.

"There was a time when people used to come to Lahore from all over the world to hear its musicians," the 65-year-old violinist says in the new documentary, Song of Lahore. "Now we can't even find someone to repair our violins."

Pakistan's second largest city once had a booming film industry and a flourishing music scene. Classical musicians, with their tabla drums, violins and sitars, would perform on stage, in movies and in crowded markets.

Then in 1977, Pakistan's sixth president, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, banned live music altogether. That left classical musicians like Khan struggling to get by. Many of his fellow artists fell into poverty.

Today the ban has eased, but people mostly tune into pop music, says Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, an Oscar-winning filmmaker and journalist based in Karachi and a director of the film. Classical music in Pakistan has virtually died, she says.

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Saleem Khan, 65, teaches his grandson how to play the violin in their home in Lahore. Courtesy of Asad Faruqi hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Asad Faruqi

Saleem Khan, 65, teaches his grandson how to play the violin in their home in Lahore.

Courtesy of Asad Faruqi

But seven musicians in Lahore are trying to change that, one performance at a time. Obaid-Chinoy's film follows the musicians on their quest. The documentary premiers Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

The musicians are part of Sachal Studios Orchestra, a group of about 20 Lahore-based artists who fuse traditional Pakistani music with jazz. They work in a small rehearsal room in Sachal Studios, at the heart of the city. There, they create new songs and rehearse for concerts in effort to keep traditional music on the public's radar.

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Oscar-winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, left, co-directed Song of Lahore with producer Andy Schocken, right. Courtesy of Wasif Arshad hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Wasif Arshad

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, left, co-directed Song of Lahore with producer Andy Schocken, right.

Courtesy of Wasif Arshad

When they started in the early 2000s, the ensemble went largely unnoticed. Then in 2014, they performed in New York City with Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. This appearance earned them recognition in the global jazz scene. Since then they've been performing around the globe and in Pakistan.

The documentary zooms into each musician's personal life before their success. For example, Nijat Ali, 39, is tasked to take over as conductor of the ensemble when his father dies. Saleem Khan, the violinist, struggles to pass on his skills to his grandson before it's too late. And guitarist Asad Ali, 63, tries to make ends meet by playing guitar in a local pop band.

The biggest challenge, Obaid-Chinoy says, was getting them to open up. "The musicians are very proud," she tells Goats and Soda. "When I first began filming them, they hid how tough life was for them, and it took me a long time to pry that open."

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For the 36-year-old journalist, the three-year project hits close to home. "I grew up with my grandfather's stories of a very vibrant Pakistan, where on the streets [of Karachi] you would have bands playing," she says. "When I was young I would watch [the performances] on television. But when I was a teenager, all of that was lost, and I never experienced the appreciation that he did."

The film is co-directed by filmmaker Andy Schocken. He wants the video to show people in the West a different side of Pakistan. "Typically, people only see stories about terrorism and sectarian conflict," he says. "So it's important for us to show that there is a culture there worth preserving, and these are the people fighting for it."

Obaid-Chinoy remembers worrying if people would show up to the group's first free concert back in Pakistan. They had played sold-out shows in New York City, but could they fill a 1,000-seat auditorium in Lahore?

She took her cameramen outside just five minutes before doors opened. "As far as my eyes could see, there were hundreds and hundreds of people lining up — I mean a sea of people," she says. "That was when I said, 'Well, the musicians have come home.'"

Sachal Studios

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Pakistan

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Got a high-deductible health plan? The kind that doesn't pay most medical bills until they exceed several thousand dollars? You're a foot soldier who's been drafted in the war against high health costs.

Companies that switch workers into high-deductible plans can reap enormous savings, consultants will tell you — and not just by making employees pay more. Total costs paid by everybody — employer, employee and insurance company — tend to fall in the first year or rise more slowly when consumers have more at stake at the health-care checkout counter whether or not they're making medically wise choices.

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Consumers with high deductibles sometimes skip procedures, think harder about getting treatment and shop for lower prices when they do seek care.

What nobody knows is whether such plans, also sold to individuals and families through the health law's online exchanges, will backfire. If people choose not to have important preventive care and end up needing an expensive hospital stay years later as a result, everybody is worse off.

A new study delivers cautiously optimistic results for employers and policymakers, if not for consumers paying a higher share of their own health care costs.

More U.S. Companies Switch To High Deductible Health Plans

Researchers led by Amelia Haviland at Carnegie Mellon University found that overall savings at companies introducing high-deductible plans lasted for up to three years afterwards. If there were any cost-related time bombs caused by forgone care, at least they didn't blow up by then.

"Three years out there consistently seems to be a reduction in total health care spending" at employers offering high-deductible plans, Haviland said in an interview. Although the study says nothing about what might happen after that, "this was interesting to us that it persists for this amount of time."

The savings were substantial: 5 percent on average for employers offering high-deductible plans compared with results at companies that didn't offer them. And that was for the whole company, whether or not all workers took the high-deductible option.

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The size of the study was impressive; it covered 13 million employees and dependents at 54 big companies. All savings were from reduced spending on pharmaceuticals and doctor visits and other outpatient care. There was no sign of what often happens when high-risk patients miss preventive care: spikes in emergency-room visits and hospital admissions.

The suits in human resources call this kind of coverage a "consumer-directed" health plan. It sounds less scary than the old name for coverage with huge deductibles: catastrophic health insurance.

But having consumers direct their own care also requires making sure they know enough to make smart choices. That means getting vaccines and skipping dubious procedures like an expensive MRI scan at the first sign of back pain.

"What happens five years or 10 years down the line when people develop more consequences of reducing high-value, necessary care?"

- Amelia Haviland

Not all employers are doing a terrific job. Most high-deductible plan members surveyed in a recent California study had no idea that preventive screenings, office visits and other important care required little or no out-of-pocket payment. One in five said they had avoided preventive care because of the cost.

"This evidence of persistent reductions in spending places even greater importance on developing evidence on how they are achieved," Kate Bundorf, a Stanford health economist not involved in the study, said of consumer-directed plans.

"Are consumers foregoing preventive care?" Bundorf asks. "Are they less adherent to [effective] medicine? Or are they reducing their use of low-value office visits and corresponding drugs or substituting to cheaper yet similarly effective prescribed drugs?"

Employers and consultants are trying to educate people about avoiding needless procedures and finding quality caregivers at better prices.

That might explain why the companies offering high-deductible plans saw such significant savings even though not all workers signed up, Haviland said. Even employees with traditional, lower-deductible plans may be using the shopping tools.

The study doesn't close the book on consumer-directed plans.

"What happens five years or 10 years down the line when people develop more consequences of reducing high-value, necessary care?" Haviland asked. Nobody knows.

And the study doesn't address a side effect of high-deductibles that doctors can't treat: pocketbook trauma. Consumer-directed plans, often paired with tax-favored health savings accounts, can require families to pay $5,000 or more per year in out-of-pocket costs.

Three people out of 5 with low incomes and half of those with moderate incomes told the Commonwealth Fund last year their deductibles are hard to afford.

As in all battles, the front-line infantry often makes the biggest sacrifice.

health care costs

Affordable Care Act

Health Insurance

Updated at 4:50 p.m. E.T.

For millions of cash-strapped consumers, short-term loans offer the means to cover purchases or pressing needs. But these deals, typically called payday loans, also pack triple-digit interest rates — and critics say that borrowers often end up trapped in a cycle of high-cost debt as a result.

Now, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is preparing to unveil a framework of proposed rules to regulate payday lenders and other costly forms of credit. The federal watchdog agency is showcasing those proposals Thursday, the same day that President Obama spoke in Alabama, defending the agency and its work.

"The idea is pretty common sense: If you lend out money, you have to first make sure that the borrower can afford to pay it back," Obama said. "This is just one more way America's new consumer watchdog is making sure more of your paycheck stays in your pocket."

The new rules would very likely affect consumers like Trudy Robideau, who borrowed money from a payday lender in California to help cover an $800 car repair. When she couldn't repay the money right away, the lender offered to renew the loan for a fee.

"Ka-ching," Robideau said. "You're hooked. You can feel the hook right in your mouth. And you don't know it at the time, but it gets deeper and deeper."

Before long, Robideau was shuttling to other payday lenders, eventually shelling out thousands of dollars in fees.

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"I was having to get one to pay another," she said. "It's a real nightmare."

When Robideau first spoke to NPR back in 2001, payday lending was a $14 billion industry. Since then, it has mushroomed into a $46 billion business. Lenders have also branched into other costly forms of credit, such as loans in which a car title is used as collateral.

"What we want is for that credit to be able to help consumers, not harm them," said Richard Cordray, director of the CFPB. "What we find is that consumers who get trapped in a debt cycle — where they're having to pay again and again, fee after fee — is actually quite detrimental to consumers, and that's what we're concerned about."

Cordray suggests that one solution is to require lenders to make sure borrowers can repay a loan on time, along with their other monthly expenses.

That kind of review was a "bedrock principle" of traditional lending, Cordray said in remarks prepared for a Richmond, Va., field hearing. But many payday lenders "make loans based not on the consumer's ability to repay but on the lender's ability to collect."

New Report Cites Danger Of Payday Loans

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Because payday lenders have automatic access to a borrower's bank account, they can collect even when a borrower is stretched thin.

"If you're behind on existing bills, for any legitimate lender that's a red flag," said Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer advocacy group. "For the payday lenders, that's often a mark of a vulnerable and profitable customer, because they will be stuck."

Payday lenders say they might be willing to live with an ability-to-pay test, so long as it's not too costly or intrusive.

"It only makes sense to lend if you're getting your money back," said Dennis Shaul, CEO of the Community Financial Services Association of America, a payday industry trade group. "Therefore the welfare of the customer is important. Now, so is repeat business."

In fact, repeat borrowers are the heart of the payday business. Government researchers found that 4 out of 5 payday borrowers had to renew their loans, typically before their next paycheck. And 1 in 5 renewed at least seven times, with the accumulated fees often exceeding the amount originally borrowed.

Planet Money

I Applied For An Online Payday Loan. Here's What Happened Next

Regulators are also considering alternatives to the ability-to-pay standard, including limits on the number of loan renewals, as well as mandatory repayment plans. Other proposed rules would crack down on costly collection practices, requiring lenders to notify borrowers three days before taking money out of their bank accounts and limiting the number of withdrawal attempts.

Wynette Pleas of Oakland, Calif., ended up with hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees after a payday lender repeatedly tried to collect from her account.

"They make it seem like it's so convenient, but when you can't pay it back, then that's when all the hell breaks loose," Pleas said.

The proposed regulations are still at an early stage, and there will be plenty of pushback. The industry managed to evade earlier efforts at regulation, so Cordray says that he wants the rules to be free of loopholes.

"We don't want to go through all the effort of formulating rules and then find people are working their way around them," he said.

payday loans

Alabama

President Obama

Would you lead a more active lifestyle if it meant lower life insurance premiums? Insurer John Hancock and Vitality, a global wellness firm, are hoping the answer is yes. But there is a condition: They get to track your activity.

The practice is already employed in Australia, Europe, Singapore and South Africa, where Vitality is based.

The companies announced the new plan Wednesday and posted a video on John Hancock's website.

Here's how the program works: Once you sign up, John Hancock sends you a Fitbit monitor as one way to track your fitness. You earn Vitality Points for your activities. As you accumulate points, your status rises — from bronze to silver to gold to platinum. The higher your status, the more you save each year on your life insurance premiums. The points also allow you benefits at stores like REI and Whole Foods as well as hotel chains like Hyatt.

The New York Times, which first reported on the announcement, notes that the most active customers can earn discounts of up to 15 percent on their premiums. The company in a news release says:

"For example, a 45 year old couple (of average health) buying Protection UL with Vitality life insurance policies of $500,000 each could potentially save more than $25,000 on their premiums by the time they reach 85, with additional savings if they live longer, assuming they reach gold status in all years."

But as The Times notes, if customers don't maintain their gold status for any reason, the premiums could increase by 1.1 percent to 1.6 percent each year. Those who reach platinum status will see premiums fall by about 0.30 percent each year, the newspaper adds.

NPR's Chris Arnold tells our Newscast unit that privacy advocates worry that the plan will raise insurance costs for lower-income people juggling two jobs who don't have as much time to get to the gym.

John Hancock and Vitality say the information collected won't be sold and would only be shared with those entities that administer the program, The Times reported, but some of it could be used to create new insurance products.

And for those uncomfortable with sharing some data, Michael Doughty, John Hancock's president, told The Times: "You do not have to send us any data you are not comfortable with. The trade-off is you won't get points for that."

The Times adds that the company hopes the program revitalizes life insurance sales in the U.S., which have stagnated for decades.

The concept of incentivizing behavior, while new in life insurance in the U.S., is not new to other sectors of the insurance industry. As Julie Rovner, who is with our partner Kaiser Health News, reported last December, wellness programs already exist in many workplaces. And, she reported, "There's no real evidence as to whether these plans actually improve the health of employees." (You can see some of NPR's other coverage of wellness programs here and here.)

In the auto industry, Progressive offers its customers a mileage-based tracking device called Snapshot; those who opt-in can save up to 30 percent on their premiums. But as CNET notes, "not just how many miles you drive but also how you're driving them could affect your insurance rates."

life insurance

John Hancock

insurance

Earlier this week, members of Congress and their staffs were greeted by a makeshift golf expo set up on the Rayburn House Office Building.

The event included golf shot simulators, certified golf instructors and a putting challenge between Democrats and Republicans. It was all part of National Golf Day, an annual event organized by the industry that promotes the economic and health benefits of the sport.

American politicians have had an affinity with golf dating back at least as far as William Howard Taft, the first-known president to hit the links. Since then, Democrats and Republicans alike have enjoyed game. But as hyperpartisan politics have become more commonplace in Washington, bipartisan golf outings have disappeared like a shanked tee shot into a water hazard

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South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn talks with PGA professional Bob Dolan Jr. at the National Golf Day event on Capitol Hill. Clyburn is an avid golfer, and the Democrat says that earlier on in his career, he learned a lot about bipartisanship on the golf course. Emily Jan/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Emily Jan/NPR

South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn talks with PGA professional Bob Dolan Jr. at the National Golf Day event on Capitol Hill. Clyburn is an avid golfer, and the Democrat says that earlier on in his career, he learned a lot about bipartisanship on the golf course.

Emily Jan/NPR

Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the third ranking Democrat in House leadership, said that when he first came to Washington in the early 1990s, golf was something political rivals did together regularly.

"I really learned bipartisanship up here on the golf course, and it allowed me to develop relationships across the aisle. And sometimes I'd be the only Democrat there — often the only African-American — but it taught me a lot. And I hope the experience taught some of them a lot," he said.

Clyburn, who took part in the event's putting challenge, admits that as years have passed, golf has stopped being used to chip away at bipartisan divides.

One needs to look no further than the closely watched relationship between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner. Shortly after Republicans regained control of the House following the 2010 midterm elections, many wondered if the two would get together for a round of golf to iron out their differences.

It finally happened in June 2011. According to reports at the time, it was a cordial outing — Boehner clapped when the President sank a putt, and Obama put his hand on Boehner's shoulder as they were exiting a green.

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President Obama points to Vice President Biden's putt as they and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, golf at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., in June 2011. Charles Dharapak/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Charles Dharapak/AP

President Obama points to Vice President Biden's putt as they and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, golf at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., in June 2011.

Charles Dharapak/AP

But a month after that golf outing, the negotiations between the two on raising the nation's debt ceiling collapsed.

Sweetness And Light

Golf May Be Too Polite A Sport For Presidential Politics

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, is an avid golfer, and still has a lot of power in his swing for an 81-year-old. Like Clyburn, he believes the decline in across-the-aisle golf outings has led to missed opportunities.

"It's still one of the best ways to communicate with one another and solve a problem — on the golf course," Young said.

Young admits there are still some bipartisan outings, but far fewer than there used to be. He said one reason is that members don't stick around Washington on weekends, when Congress isn't in session.

Former Republican Rep. Michael Oxley, who represented Ohio's 4th Congressional District for a quarter-century, said he played golf with many Democrats before his retirement in 2007, including former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill.

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A staffer participates in the annual Democrats vs. Republicans putting challenge. Emily Jan/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Emily Jan/NPR

A staffer participates in the annual Democrats vs. Republicans putting challenge.

Emily Jan/NPR

"When I ran for Congress, of course, Tip was the boogeyman among Republicans," Oxley said.

Oxley said the two golfed together and hit it off. He even remembers O'Neill's odd device at the handle end of his putter — a suction cup, so O'Neill didn't have to bend down to pick his ball up out of the hole. He admits there wasn't a whole lot of good golf played, but says it wasn't about that — it was about laying the groundwork for a good working relationship.

"I can't remember one time when I've cut a deal specifically on a specific piece of legislation on the golf course, because it's just generally frowned upon," Oxley said. "But the prearranged relationship that you've developed over time on a golf course gives you that avenue to make deals at a later date."

Any chance current members of Congress can learn something from their predecessors?

Rep. Clyburn will golf in Hilton Head, S.C., this weekend, and his trip suggests the lack of links bipartisanship will persist a bit longer: The list of House colleagues who will join him is all Democrats.

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Eric Werwa, left, Deputy Chief of Staff for Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., gets some tips on his swing from a PGA professional at the National Golf Day event on Capitol Hill. Emily Jan/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Emily Jan/NPR

Eric Werwa, left, Deputy Chief of Staff for Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., gets some tips on his swing from a PGA professional at the National Golf Day event on Capitol Hill.

Emily Jan/NPR

Rep. Don Young

House Speaker John Boehner

bipartisanship

House of Representatives

golf

President Obama

James Clyburn

West Africa is about to receive a hefty infusion of cash. This Friday the World Bank unveiled a major aid package for the three West African countries at the center of this past year's Ebola epidemic.

Over the next 18 months, the bank plans to provide Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea $650 million in recovery assistance, mostly in the form of grants. The African Development Bank followed suit Friday with a pledge of about $300 million in similar funding.

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Sierra Leone health officials check people passing through the border with Liberia in Jendema last month. For the last two weeks, Sierra Leone has recorded only nine cases. Zoom Dosso/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Zoom Dosso/AFP/Getty Images

Sierra Leone health officials check people passing through the border with Liberia in Jendema last month. For the last two weeks, Sierra Leone has recorded only nine cases.

Zoom Dosso/AFP/Getty Images

Combined with additional new promises by other international organizations and governments, the three affected countries will be getting more than $1 billion. Those additions boost the total international commitment to Ebola recovery since the outbreak began by about a third, the advocacy group One Campaign reports.

The aid comes amid recent steady declines in the number of new cases in the region. Weekly tallies are now down to fewer than 40 cases — their lowest level since last May, when the outbreak was just beginning to gather steam.

Still, the economic and social repercussions of the epidemic continue to reverberate.

In Sierra Leone, the Ebola crisis coincided with a plunge in the price of one of the country's major exports, iron ore. The economy there could end up contracting by more than 20 percent in 2015, the World Bank estimates.

Guinea's economy is stagnating. Liberia is projected to see growth rates of about 3 percent, but that's still well below the pre-Ebola estimates of 6.8 percent.

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Back in July, the streets of Kailahun, Sierra Leone, were empty because of the Ebola crisis. Local shops and restaurants suffered from the lack of business. Tommy Trenchard for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Tommy Trenchard for NPR

Back in July, the streets of Kailahun, Sierra Leone, were empty because of the Ebola crisis. Local shops and restaurants suffered from the lack of business.

Tommy Trenchard for NPR

At the same time, all three countries are plagued with poor infrastructure and fragile health systems — which are still reeling from the loss of dozens of health workers to Ebola.

Meanwhile, the effort to bring cases down to zero continues to grind forward. Liberia has not had a single new case since late March. Sierra Leone is in sight of that goal as well, said the World Health Organization's Bruce Aylward at a news conference Thursday. He noted that for the last two weeks there have been only nine new cases confirmed there.

"They [Sierra Leone] are down to numbers where they can drive this to zero," Aylward said.

Another hopeful sign is that a large share of new infections — nearly 70 percent — are occurring in people whom health officials had already been tracking because they were known to have been in contact with an Ebola patient. That's important because it suggests health officials are doing a good job of identifying potential transmission chains.

But Aylward also warned that the campaign to end Ebola in Guinea is proving more "bumpy" than it is in Liberia and Sierra Leone. And he's worried that the progress across West Africa has created a false impression that the battle to stop Ebola has been won. "This is not done," he said. "Success is not assured," he added.

Recently, the U.S.'s effort in Liberia has come under fire. The multi-million dollar effort to build Ebola treatment units was completed too late to be of much use, The New York Times reported Sunday. The U.S. deployed almost 3,000 military troops at a cost of hundreds of millions to erect 11 treatment facilities. But by the time they were ready, the caseload in Liberia had already fallen precipitously. Only 28 Ebola patients were treated at a unit built by U.S. forces.

Nonetheless, Aylward said, the U.S.'s promise to build these centers provided an important morale boost for Liberians at the height of the crisis. The U.S. also gave material support and air transport, which was instrumental in getting health worker teams to hard-to-reach hotspots, he said.

Finally, Aylward noted that when the U.S. committed to building the treatment units, statistical models were suggesting infections would continue to rise exponentially in the coming weeks and months.

"The key to any large scale crisis is no regrets," Aylward said. "You have to go in big and heavy if you want to deal with it."

West Africa

ebola

World Bank

Global Health

Violence against immigrants in South Africa has killed at least five people, resulted in attacks on businesses owned by foreigners and sent thousands to take refuge at temporary shelters.

A massive rally against xenophobia was held Thursday in Durban, the coastal city that has been the scene of much of the unrest. Migrants from Africa and South Asia have been the target of the violence, which was condemned by President Jacob Zuma.

The fighting in Durban killed five people – two immigrants and three South Africans, CNN reported.

The charity Gift of the Givers told CNN that about "8,500 people fled to refugee centers or police stations this week because of the violence."

In Johannesburg Thursday, foreign-owned shops were attacked and looted, the BBC reported, prompting some 200 people to take refuge at a police station.

The BBC adds: "Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the looters and arrested 12 people. ,.. Police used rubber bullets to disperse a group of migrants in Johannesburg who had armed themselves with machetes for protection."

The unemployment rate in South Africa is 24 percent, and many in the country accuse foreigners of taking jobs. The violence, which has been widely condemned in South Africa, has been attributed to comments made by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini who was quoted as saying foreigners should "go back to their countries." He says his remarks were misrepresented.

South African officials have apologized to their African counterparts for the violence.

Anti-immigrant violence in 2008 killed more than 60 people.

South Africa

Immigration

Pope Francis, who plans to visit the United States in September, might tack onto his itinerary a side trip to Cuba, the Vatican says, but it cautions the talks with Havana are at an early stage.

The Catholic Heraldquotes Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi as saying Francis is "considering the idea of a Cuba leg."

The Herald notes:

"In what will be the Pope's first trip to the US, the Pontiff will travel to Washington DC, New York and Philadelphia in September. He will join a session in Congress and be hosted by President Obama in the White House.

"A visit to Cuba would be a historic addition to this itinerary. Pope Francis has already played a major role in the re-opening of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US, last summer writing letters to both Barack Obama and Raul Castro that eventually led to the release of US prisoner, Alan Gross."

Francis is credited with helping broker a breakthrough in relations between Washington and Havana following a decades-long Cold War freeze. Both of his predecessors, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II, have also visited the predominately Catholic island-nation.

Pope Francis

Cuba

If there's one piece of hardware that can be found on nearly every trader's desk, regardless of time zone, it's the Bloomberg data terminal.

So, when the terminals experienced a global outage lasting hours, it sent chaos through markets where the "screens" are relied upon to analyze and interpret financial data — and to exchange market gossip with other traders around the world.

Zero Hedge, a financial news site, says the outage led to "widespread panic among traders mostly in Europe, who were flying blind and unable to chat with other, just as clueless colleagues (the one function used predominantly on the terminal is not charts, nor analytics, but plain old chat)."

Service now restored to most customers following disruption to parts of our network. Making progress bringing the full network back online.

— Bloomberg LP (@Bloomberg) April 17, 2015

The Wall Street Journal quoted Louis Gargour, the chief investment officer at London-based LNG Capital as saying "We're flying blind."

"It's scary how dependent we have become on our Bloomberg screens," Anthony Peters, a strategist at London-based capital markets adviser SwissInvest, was quoted by WSJ as saying.

Reuters, which is a Bloomberg competitor, quoted Ioan Smith, managing director of KCG Europe, as saying that traders had to "catch up" on important market chatter "after the Bloomberg terminals came back online, and that's when we saw the falls in Europe."

The Associated Press adds the problems "prompted the British government to postpone a planned 3 billion-pound ($4.4 billion) debt issue."

"Users say the outage started as trading was getting in full swing around 8 a.m. in London, one of the world's largest financial centers, particularly in foreign exchange and bond markets."

CNBCsays Bloomberg confirmed that the outage began about 8:20 a.m. London time and that service was restored to most users by 12:45 p.m.

AP notes: "The disruption is likely to cause concern at Bloomberg. The company has become the world's biggest financial information provider, overtaking rival Reuters. Bloomberg is privately held and is not obliged to divulge financial information, but it said in September that its revenue grew to more than $9 billion in 2014, with 320,000 subscribers globally."

stock exchange

Economy

The World Bank's goal is to end extreme poverty and to grow income for the poorest people on the planet.

The bank does this by lending money and giving grants to governments and private corporations in some of the least developed places on the planet. For example, money goes to preserving land, building dams and creating health care systems.

But a lot of poor people actually end up worse off because of those projects, a report from The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found.

People are often displaced, or their livelihoods are ruined. Over the past decade an estimated 3.4 million people have been displaced by bank-funded projects, says Michael Hudson, a senior editor at ICIJ, who worked on the report. In one instance, hundreds of families had their homes burned down.

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Dr. Jim Yong Kim became president of the World Bank in 2012. He is the first bank president who to come from the global health sector. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Dr. Jim Yong Kim became president of the World Bank in 2012. He is the first bank president who to come from the global health sector.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

"The World Bank has promised 'do no harm,' but our reporting has found that the World Bank has broken this promise," Hudson says.

In response, the World Bank says the vast majority of its projects don't involve the resettlement of people. But the bank says it has identified shortcomings in its resettlement policies. And it plans to improve those policies to protect people and businesses affected by bank-funded projects.

ICIJ's Hudson spoke to NPR's Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition about the new report, which he and his team worked on with The Huffington Post and other outlets.

A lot of these projects seem beneficial. But you found that something is going wrong. What is it?

What is often going wrong is what happens to people on the ground when you do these big projects. When you build a big dam, that can have huge consequences for the people living along the banks of the rive and people who make their living via subsistence fishing or farming along the river bank. A mega dam can affect 50,000, even a 100,000 people.

What happens to the people displaced?

In some cases they may have to move. Or they may lose part of their land. In other cases, they may not be physically displaced but rather economically displaced because their livelihoods have been destroyed, or at least partly impacted.

Parallels

The World Bank Gets An Overhaul — And Not Everyone's Happy

If you make your living fishing from the river or along the coast, and a power plant or dam affects the ecosystem, there's fewer fish, and you're not catching as many. Then your livelihood and your ability to feed your family has been impacted.

The problem is that even resettlements that are done well and fairly often leave poor people even poorer. There's a lot of research that shows that people who are forced to move suffer higher rates of hunger, illness and early death. It causes really serious consequences for people.

You write about a land conservation project in Kenya. What went wrong there?

The land conservation project funneled money to the Kenyan forest service with the idea of preserving a forest in western Kenya. The problem is with the thousands of indigenous people — the Sengwer — living in the forest. Our reporting on the ground shows that hundreds, and perhaps as many as a thousand, homes have been burned by the Kenyan forest service as they try to evict people from the forest.

When you brought these cases to the World Bank's attention, how did they react?

Around the first of March, we told the bank that our reporting had found systemic gaps in its protection for displaced families. Days later, the bank announced that it had found major problems with how it handles resettlement and released an action plan to fix the problem.

The bank has also released internal reports going back several years, which show the bank often had violated its own rules, has failed to protect people, has failed to monitor what happens to them and hasn't held its part as accountable for their actions.

Is it inevitable, on some level, that people may be harmed when you replace a low-level economy with a corner of the global economy via these projects?

There's always a price tag for development. But the question is: Who should pay the price? Should poor people be the ones who sacrifice when the government tries to do a big project? Even the World Bank says the budget for a project should include money to cover people's losses, that you can't just show up at someone's house and tell them to leave, that there has to be a process and that people have to be made whole.

global development

World Bank

Kenya

A certain kind of book seems practically written to be adapted into a musical. Phantom of the Opera, for example, or Wicked. Then there's Fun Home, based on a graphic novel by a middle-aged lesbian cartoonist that grapples with themes of suicide, shame and familial dysfunction. Fun Home was a bestselling book, then a smash off-Broadway hit at the Public Theater.

The memoir, by Alison Bechdel, takes its title from her family's sardonic nickname for their business — a funeral home. It delves into the mystery around her father's suicide, which took place around 1980. Bechdel, then a student at Oberlin College, had just come out to her parents as a lesbian — and learned her father was a deeply closeted gay man.

Bechdel agrees that the book is not exactly the most obvious source material for a musical.

"I thought it was crazy," she tells NPR about her reaction when the idea was first broached. "I didn't know how it was even possible."

Related NPR Stories

The Two-Way

Book News: A Q&A With Alison Bechdel, Cartoonist And MacArthur Winner

Author Interviews

A Portrait Of The Cartoonist And Her Mother

Alison Bechdel's Family Life? Tragicomic

But composer Jeanine Tesori, best known for writing the music for Caroline, Or Change and Shrek The Musical immediately responded to the story about an artistic but repressed and unhappy family.

"I knew that it was a singing piece," she said during an interview in her Manhattan office. "You could just hear it. All of the songs — they sing their desires and what's being held back."

Far more challenging Tesori says, was figuring out how to tell Bechdel's story without using her cartoons, which the creative team tried hard to incorporate in earlier versions.

"Oh my god, we had so many songs about her drawing, remember?" she says. "I mean, we had songs and songs and songs."

Tesori's talking to her collaborator, Lisa Kron, a playwright and longtime member of the downtown theater collective the Five Lesbian Brothers. Kron spent decades writing plays about lesbians back when they were practically invisible in popular culture — let alone on Broadway. It took Tesori and Kron seven years to create Fun Home the musical, but Kron thinks the timing ended up being perfect when the show opened off Broadway a year and a half ago.

"There was a critical mass of images of lesbians in the culture," she says. "So this could move forward in this way, that the audience would have the scaffolding that they could place this in.

"Ring of Keys," from Fun Home

That scaffolding allows for a show tune based on a moment when the main character realizes her sexual difference. Alison Bechdel, only about nine years old, is with her dad in a diner, when she notices a butch delivery woman, and is transfixed by everything about her. The song is called "Ring of Keys."

While writing the lyrics, Lisa Kron resisted cultural assumptions about masculine woman as unattractive or as punchlines. She found language that told a different truth. The 11-year-old who sings it became the youngest Obie winner in off-Broadway history. Sydney Lucas originated the role of "Small Alison" off-Broadway when she was only nine.

"Lesbian woman have come to see the show and say they remember that in their childhoods," Lucas says in her dressing room, referring to that moment of epiphany. "It's cool."

Lucas is one of three actors who play Bechdel at various points in her life. It's a cultural watershed for Broadway to feature a lesbian main character, says Lisa Kron, partly because musicals bring an unequaled sense of romance and empathy to their protagonists.

"There is nothing that gets in your bloodstream like that thing," she says. "So to have not just a lesbian but a butch lesbian be that person? That is a big moment."

The real Alison Bechdel is having quite a moment herself. In the past few years, Swedish movie theaters adopted a ratings system based on what's become known as " the Bechdel test." (That's when a movie features more than one female character ... and they talk to each other ... about something other than a man.) The book Fun Home has become required reading on many college campuses. And recently, Bechdel won both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur "genius grant."

"My life is so crazy lately," Bechdel confesses.

Just a decade ago, Bechdel was best known for a beloved but relatively obscure cartoon series called Dykes to Watch Out For that ran in gay and alternative newspapers for decades. Like Bechdel, Lisa Kron created lesbian-themed work back when it was — by definition — marginal. Now that it's on Broadway and bestseller lists, she believes mainstream lesbian artists face a new challenge.

"We need to pay attention and think who else is out there that we have not seen yet," she says. "Who doesn't feel fully human in the culture. Because there are lots of other people who haven't gotten to this point yet."

In Congress, just like at any storied American institution — McDonald's, New York Fashion Week, the Bush and Clinton families — trends come and go.

The 114th Congress is now 100 days old. And it can be difficult to keep up with the goings and comings of the body and its 535 members — the negotiations, visits from world leaders, the scandals and, oh yeah, the legislation.

So here's our look at what's in and what's out on Capitol Hill:

Have something to add to the list? Tweet @nprpolitics.

IN

Benjamin Netanyahu

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is greeted by members of Congress before speaking to a joint meeting in the House chamber. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is greeted by members of Congress before speaking to a joint meeting in the House chamber.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Netanyahu's address to a joint meeting of Congress caused weeks of controversy after Speaker John Boehner invited him, but didn't tell the White House. Though several Democrats protested the speech, Netanyahu spoke to a packed house.

Bad Blood Gets Worse Between Barack, Bibi And Israel

3 min 58 sec

Add to Playlist

Download

Gyrocopter

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An Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician check the gyrocopter that landed on the Capitol's South Lawn Wednesday. Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

An Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician check the gyrocopter that landed on the Capitol's South Lawn Wednesday.

Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

The Capitol was on lockdown Wednesday as a postman flew a gyrocopter into the Capitol airspace and landed it on the South Lawn. He's now in custody.

The Two-Way

Postman Carrying Letters For Congress Lands On Capitol Grounds In A Gyrocopter

Doc Fix

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The signatures of House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Orrin Hatch on the Medicare Access CHIP Reauthorization Act 2015. Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Getty Images

The signatures of House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. Orrin Hatch on the Medicare Access CHIP Reauthorization Act 2015.

Getty Images

On Thursday, the House approved a long-term resolution to how doctors who accept Medicare are paid. It had been a perennial issue. The New York Times calls "the most significant bipartisan policy legislation to pass through that chamber since Republicans regained a majority in 2011."

It's All Politics

Is Capitol Hill Ready To Rest Its Near-Annual 'Doc Fix' Exercise?

Bipartisan Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015

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Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker confers with ranking member Sen. Ben Cardin during a committee markup meeting on the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran. Win McNamee/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Win McNamee/Getty Images

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker confers with ranking member Sen. Ben Cardin during a committee markup meeting on the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

The bill means the administration must formally submit to Congress the final Iran nuclear agreement. It's bipartisan, it passed, and the president has agreed to sign it.

Politics

Obama, Senate Compromise Gives Congress A Say On Iran Nuclear Deal

Tweeting Iran's Leaders

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Sen. Tom Cotton's tweet to Iran's President Rouhani. Twitter hide caption

itoggle caption Twitter

Sen. Tom Cotton's tweet to Iran's President Rouhani.

Twitter

Sen. Tom Cotton led 46 other senators in writing a letter to Iran's leaders explaining that they "may not fully understand our constitutional system." He said he didn't actually mail the letter, but he did tweet it to President Rouhani (@hassanrouhani).

It's All Politics

47 GOP Senators Tell Iran They May Not Honor A Nuclear Deal

Tom Cotton's Tweet To Iran's President

Diversity

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Utah Rep. Mia Love. Mark Wilson/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Utah Rep. Mia Love.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Rep. Mia Love is part of the largest class of black Republicans in Congress since Reconstruction. Overall, 17 percent of the 114th Congress is non-white, the largest portion ever. Still, that's lower than the 37 percent of the non-white population overall in the country.

At Critical Juncture, GOP Honors Largest Class Of Black Lawmakers

3 min 44 sec

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Pew: 114th Congress is Most Diverse Ever

Regular Order

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"We need to get committees working again. We need to recommit to a rational, functioning appropriations process," Sen. Mitch McConnell said on the first full day of the new Congress. Susan Walsh/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Susan Walsh/AP

"We need to get committees working again. We need to recommit to a rational, functioning appropriations process," Sen. Mitch McConnell said on the first full day of the new Congress.

Susan Walsh/AP

Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., John McCain, R-Ariz., Ben Cardin, D-Md., and others have called for the glorious return of regular order. Those are the rules and customs of Congress, according to Roll Call, that "constitute an orderly and deliberative policymaking process."

It's All Politics

McConnell's Call For 'Regular Order' May Not Mean What It Used To

Reconciliation, In The Budget Sense

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Reconciliation, like chutes in the popular game, can catapult legislation through the Senate with only 51 votes instead of 60. Ben Husmann/Flickr hide caption

itoggle caption Ben Husmann/Flickr

Reconciliation, like chutes in the popular game, can catapult legislation through the Senate with only 51 votes instead of 60.

Ben Husmann/Flickr

It's a procedural fast track that could allow Republicans get sweeping legislation through the Senate with a simple majority, as NPR's Ailsa Chang reports, For actual, bipartisan reconciliation, "the restoration of friendly relations," see the Out list.

Budget Reconciliation Explained Through Chutes And Ladders

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OUT

Offices Modeled After Downton Abbey

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Media members gather outside of the office of Rep. Aaron Schock after he announced his resignation from Congress on March 17. Lauren Victoria Burke/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Lauren Victoria Burke/AP

Media members gather outside of the office of Rep. Aaron Schock after he announced his resignation from Congress on March 17.

Lauren Victoria Burke/AP

Rep. Aaron Schock resigned after reports of lavish spending, including $40,000 to decorate his Capitol Hill office like the PBS show. Probably not out: TMI Instagram feeds and fudged mileage reports.

Regular Order

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When Mitch McConnell became Senate majority leader, he promised he'd restore what he called regular order in that chamber. But Democrats have been accusing him of violating regular order ever since. Susan Walsh/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Susan Walsh/AP

When Mitch McConnell became Senate majority leader, he promised he'd restore what he called regular order in that chamber. But Democrats have been accusing him of violating regular order ever since.

Susan Walsh/AP

The dreams of restoring regular order were grand, but in the words of George Washington University's Sarah Binder, "It's kind of hard to get back to a Senate where the Senate works in that type of a fluid, collegial place. Because that's just not the world — partisan or ideological — that we live in."

McConnell's Call For 'Regular Order' May Not Mean What It Used To

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Exercise Bands

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi starts a news conference by donning dark glasses, a teasingly sympathetic gesture to Reid. J. Scott Applewhite/AP hide caption

itoggle caption J. Scott Applewhite/AP

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi starts a news conference by donning dark glasses, a teasingly sympathetic gesture to Reid.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Resistance bands won't be overtaking P90X as the Congressional exercise of choice, after one broke and seriously injured Sen. Harry Reid.

Bob Menendez

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Sen. Bob Menendez on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Andrew Harnik/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Andrew Harnik/AP

Sen. Bob Menendez on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

Andrew Harnik/AP

He's technically still in, but Sen. Menendez is out as ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after he was indicted on federal corruption charges. A majority of New Jersey voters say he should resign, but he is professing his innocence and vowing to fight.

Reconciliation, Broader Sense

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House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio kisses Rep. Nancy Pelosi during the opening session of the 114th Congress. Pablo Martinez Monsivais /AP hide caption

itoggle caption Pablo Martinez Monsivais /AP

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio kisses Rep. Nancy Pelosi during the opening session of the 114th Congress.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais /AP

Can't we all just get along? In the first 100 days, the Senate has seen the lowest level of Democratic cosponsorship in 20 years, a New York Times review found. Bill cosponsorship in the House has also dropped compared with previous years.

Congress

Republicans

During WWII, Cretan resistance to the Nazis was augmented by the Special Operations Executive (otherwise known as "The Firm"), Churchill's secret arm of the British military, made up of lone fighters, "poets, professors, archaeologists — anyone who'd traveled a bit and knew is or her way around foreign countries." Dropped behind enemy lines to wreak havoc, these "lethal shadows" fought in tandem with the audacious, all but shoeless resistance. (Weapons of choice: sickles, axes and garden tools.)

MacDougall summons up an entertaining cast of characters: a one-eyed archaeologist named John Pendleburg, the penniless young artist Xan Fielding, and wandering playboy-poet Patrick Leigh Fermor. Then there are the home-grown resistance fighters, daring men with nicknames like "The Clown" — a shepherd turned bandit — the "wind boys" and Scuttle George.

By profiling these atypical commandos, McDougall redefines the heroic ideal, establishing heroism as a skill set rather than a virtue. "For much of human history," he writes, "the art of the hero wasn't left up to chance; it was a multidisciplinary endeavor devoted to optimal nutrition, physical self-mastery, and mental conditioning." Crete, it turns out, has a nickname: "the Island of Heroes."

Long-Distance Runner Was 'Indomitable Seeker'

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At the age of fifty, the author embraces Parkour, or freerunning, beginning by ricocheting off the bricks of a London housing project, loving the sense of flow. He learns about the supreme importance of the fascia, the "powerful connective tissue that is like your body's rubber band," which enable him to effortlessly bounce down mountainsides as he claims the ancient Greeks did. A Paleo diet (the Cretan version: wild greens, snails and boiled hay) allows him to utilize his body's fat for fuel and gives him the ability to scale steep mountaintops.

"The art of the hero," he discovers, "wasn't about being brave; it was about being so competent that bravery wasn't an issue."

The essential narrative here, the twisty tale of a kidnapping that incredibly goes right, is exciting. It is balanced out with the journalistic account of McDougall's entry into the world of the hero. His personal quest to "rewild the psyche" might seem an awkward fit with war storytelling. But under McDougall's sure hand the combination improbably works.

Kind of like kidnapping a German general on an island swarming with Nazi troops.

Read an excerpt of Natural Born Heroes

Jean Zimmerman's latest novel, Savage Girl, is out in paperback. She posts daily at Blog Cabin.

Speaking on the first anniversary of a catastrophe that killed 304 people, President Park Geun-hye has pledged to salvage the Sewol ferry, which capsized and sank during a trip to a resort island. Nine bodies are believed to remain inside the ship.

"Most of the victims were actually students from a single high school," NPR's Elise Hu reports, "so this obviously sent the country into deep grief — but also outrage, since the rescue effort was widely viewed as bungled."

Listen to the Story

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The ship's captain and several crew members notoriously abandoned the ship as it was sinking. The ship tilted at an extreme angle, and it's been reported that conflicting orders were given to passengers. A transcript of radio distress calls showed confusion and panic.

More than half of the ship's crew members survived; several were arrested. The captain was later sentenced to more than 30 years in jail. The ferry's owners have also faced intense scrutiny, and one month after the disaster, Park disbanded the Coast Guard.

The president's promise today "is the first time that Park explicitly mentioned the salvage," the Yonhap news agency says.

The pledge comes as relatives of the victims demand accountability and closure. They're also unhappy with the government's plan to place a special inquiry into the tragedy under the control of the president's office.

Today, families at one memorial altar turned their backs on the country's prime minister. And The Korea Herald reports, "families of the missing, who have camped in makeshift homes at Jindo Harbor since the accident, vacated the spot upon hearing of the president's planned visit, in an apparent show of protest."

Other politicians' attempts to visit memorial sites were met with boos — and in one case, a brawl, the newspaper reports.

Sewol Ferry

South Korea

In the new FX series The Comedians, Billy Crystal and Josh Gad star as satirical versions of themselves. The show is about how the two comedians are hesitant to work together and share the spotlight, but they do, and they begin a strained relationship, in which they're separated from each other by a generational comedy gap.

But in real life, when Crystal and Gad met, they hit it off.

"Even though there's 30-something years between us, there's a lot of commonalities and a lot of interesting parallels in our careers," Crystal tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

"It really was kismet," Gad says.

Gad, who was on Broadway for The Book of Mormon and did the voice of Olaf for Frozen, says he wasn't planning to go back to TV, but he couldn't pass up the opportunity.

"I wasn't looking actively for any reason to go back," he says. "And I have sort of been unlucky in love with television and it's hard ... to find a comedy that really works for your voice and is going to be something that connects with audiences."

On The Comedians, the characters Crystal and Gad play are heightened versions of themselves.

"I like to think of myself as a lot more jovial and easy-going than this guy, who sort of does have an egocentric personality, this guy who is constantly jealous or neurotic or what have you," Gad says. "My guy in the show is a vessel for anything but responsibility. He sort of doesn't have anything he's committed to other than himself and you see that reflected in his personal choices and his professional ones."

Crystal says his character is a lot more insecure about the success of the show and is often uncomfortable about the direction it is going.

"He senses more about the danger of messing this one up," Crystal says. "I don't feel that way. Whatever happens, happens now. I have much more of a carefree attitude than I ever had."

Interview Highlights

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Billy Crystal (left) says that onstage Josh Gad (right) "lights up." Ray Mickshaw/FX hide caption

itoggle caption Ray Mickshaw/FX

Billy Crystal (left) says that onstage Josh Gad (right) "lights up."

Ray Mickshaw/FX

On seeing the Swedish series upon which The Comedians is based

Billy Crystal: Within five minutes I loved this thing so much, I basically committed to it because the premise was so terrific: It was a veteran comedian, he has a show that he wants to do and they can't really let him do the show and they want to team him with somebody else. And they force him to be teamed with a younger — what they think [is] an edgier — comic to make this sketch show. I thought the premise was so strong. Then comes the decision: "All right, who is going to be the guy? Where do you find this guy who can play with me and be funny and do all the things that I'm going to do, just his own version? And who is going to be the Sancho to this guy's comedy Don Quixote?"

On finding Josh for his partner in the series

Crystal: I had seen Josh in Book of Moron and he was a revelation to me. I saw him once or twice as a Daily Show correspondent and you can tell he's a very skilled writer and very funny and has a really interesting charming charisma about him, but onstage he lights up. To me he's a new Zero Mostel. He embodies all the good things about many great musical comic performers.

On the generational comedy gap

Josh Gad: There's certainly a disconnect that exists, I think, in a lot of comedy out there and different approaches to comedy. I happen to have a lot more in common with Billy than not — so it was almost more difficult to create this sort of gap between the two of us. ...

Crystal: It happens a couple of times in the show where I have to go in front of an audience of young people and bomb and make it really uncomfortable. And that was really hard to do. The instinct is to go out and get 'em. But to deliberately do stuff that looks out of touch and out of date was really difficult. And it'll be very painful for the audience because it was for me, but in a really funny way. ...

It's really just awkward references. [It takes place] at a place called the Comedy Living Room ... [and] everyone is sitting on the floor and I just say, "You know, back in our day we used to call these sit-ins. We'd protest Vietnam. So what are you protesting, lumbar support?" And you could hear this "What is he talking about?" "We had these protests during the Vietnam War. Vietnam. That was the war that Forrest Gump fought in." It just dies. It's just so painful.

On their work in animation, Gad as Olaf in Frozen, and Crystal as Mike Wazowski in the Monsters Inc. films

Gad: In general, when you're doing something like this, you sort of are looking over your shoulder at all of the amazing comedic sidekicks that have come before in the Disney or Pixar canon. ... I was blessed enough to be growing up in what they call the "second golden age of Disney animation," which was The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Lion King. And I remember seeing Robin [Williams'] performance as the Genie and I watched it over and over again in the theater and I just thought it was so unique and so brilliantly captured the essence of him as a performer. And I sort of wanted to have that kind of freedom when I was approaching Olaf in the recording studio. And the creative team gave me that freedom, especially when it came to improv.

Related NPR Stories

Author Interviews

Billy Crystal Finds Fun In Growing Old (But Still Can't Find His Keys)

Movies

For Top-Flight Animators, The Gag Is An Art All Its Own

Crystal: [Mike's] a little one-eyed green guy but they videotape me and I said, "I want the hands of Sammy Davis Jr." They looked at film of Sammy and they would tape me when I was doing the voice work, so it's weird, it's this orb with this one eye but actually ends up having a lot of my expressions, it's very interesting that way.

To me, little Mike Wazowski is one of the best characters I ever got to play because he was funny; he was outrageous; he got angry; he was romantic; he was a full, well-rounded character.

On starring in The Book of Mormon on Broadway

Gad: I got a phone call one day from Bobby Lopez who was working on the music with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and it was about four or five years before it ever hit a Broadway stage. And he said, "I'm developing this show about Mormons, would you want to be a part of it? It's with the guys who created South Park." I said, "Yeah, of course!" I listened to a demo they sent me and the first song is "Hello" and it's lovely, it's hysterical, the second song is "Two by Two," then I get to this song called "Hasa Diga Eebowai." And I called my agent and I said, "I can't do this." And he said "Why?" And I said, "Because I'll be shot. This is the most offensive thing I've ever heard. You can get away with this in animation, not on a stage." I sort of took a leap of faith and I did the very first workshop we ever did and I white-knuckled it and the audience not only embraced it but was laughing harder than I've ever seen. And from that point on, I never looked back.

The White House announced Tuesday that President Obama would remove Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. That got us thinking about which other nations are on the list, how they got there, whether any others have been removed, and what happens to countries when they're put on (or taken off) the list.

Who's On The List?

Aside from Cuba, there are three other countries currently on the list:

Iran, there since Jan. 19, 1984

Sudan, since Aug. 12, 1993

Syria, since the list's inception on Dec. 29, 1979.

Cuba was added March 1, 1982.

The countries that have been removed are: Iraq, Libya, North Korea and the former South Yemen.

Why Are they There?

Three laws dictate a country's presence on the list:

Section 6j of the Export Administration Act of 1979

Section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act

Section 620 of the Foreign Assistance Act

To be added to the list, according to the U.S. State Department, the secretary of state "must determine that the government of such country has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism."

That designation triggers unilateral sanctions by the U.S. These include a ban on weapons exports and sales; the imposition of financial and other curbs, as well as a ban on economic assistance; and restrictions on the exports of items that can be used by the country to enhance its military capability or its ability to support terrorism.

Cuba was previously accused by the State Department of being a safe haven for armed left-wing groups from Colombia and Spain. In its most recent report on terrorism, the State Department noted that "there was no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training to terrorist groups." But, it added: "The Cuban government continued to harbor fugitives wanted in the United States. The Cuban government also provided support such as housing, food ration books, and medical care for these individuals."

Iran was cited for its support of the Shiite group Hezbollah, as well as Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen and other militant groups across the region.

Sudan was listed for allowing terrorist groups to operate on its soil, but the State Department notes that the country "remained a generally cooperative counterterrorism partner and continued to take action to address threats to U.S. interests and personnel in Sudan."

Syria, the report said, continued its political support of groups such as Hezbollah and other groups.

It's worth noting that being on a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism does not necessarily mean that the country stops trading with other nations. Typically, as in the case of Iran, strong multilateral sanctions are needed to have an impact.

How Do Countries Get Removed?

For a country to get off the list, the U.S. secretary of state must make a recommendation to the president. Should the president accept the recommendation, a 45-day review follows during which Congress can vote on whether to block the move. A country can be officially removed from the list after that time.

Just because a country is no longer on the list doesn't necessarily mean it is considered a U.S. ally, but it does mean the U.S. and said country can enjoy a semblance of normal relations.

As President Obama told NPR in an interview this month: "There are areas where there are serious differences, and you know, I don't expect immediate transformation in the Cuban-American relationship overnight," he said. "But I do see the possibility — a great hunger within Cuba — to begin a change — a process that ultimately, I think, can lead to more freedom and more opportunity."

Indeed, countries that have been removed from the list are not all U.S. allies.

For example, Iraq was one of the original members of the list, but it was removed in 1982 during the Iran-Iraq war when the U.S. was supporting Saddam Hussein. Iraq was slapped back on the list in 1990 following its invasion of Kuwait.

Libya, another of the original members, was removed in 2006 when its then-leader, Moammar Gadhafi, gave up his program to make weapons of mass destruction and, in the words of the U.S., renounced his support of terrorism.

North Korea was removed in 2008 following commitments it made on its nuclear program.

South Yemen was removed when it was united with the north.

state sponsors of terrorism

Terrorism

Cuba

When Henry Paulson first visited Beijing in 1991 as a banker, cars still shared major roads with horses.

"I remember getting into a taxi that drove too fast on a two-lane highway ... [that was] clogged with bicycles and horses pulling carts," says the former secretary of treasury under George W. Bush. "You still saw the hutongs — the old neighborhoods [with narrow streets] — which were very, very colorful and an important part of life."

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A 2006 photo of former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson meeting with Xi Jinping in Hangzhou, China. Jinping became president of China in 2013. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A 2006 photo of former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson meeting with Xi Jinping in Hangzhou, China. Jinping became president of China in 2013.

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Since the early '90s, Paulson has returned to China more than 100 times, as the head of Goldman Sachs and U.S. Treasury Secretary. Along the way, he has watched China become the world's second biggest economy.

"Now the country puts up half of all new buildings on Earth. It consumes and produces 50 percent of the cement in the world, 50 percent of the steel, the coal," he says. Most of the old hutongs have been replaced by glass and steel skyscrapers.

Eventually, China will likely surpass the U.S. and become the largest economy in the world, Paulson says. "But it's also a country with monumental challenges. There's as much danger in overemphasizing China's strength as in underestimating its potential."

Dealing With China

An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower

by Henry M. Paulson, Jr.

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In his new book, Dealing With China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower, Paulson describes some of the major challenges China faces as its people become richer.

At the top of that list is government censorship. China has the fastest-growing urban population in the world, with nearly 650 million people living in cities. At the same time, the government continues to severely limit political freedom.

Paulson says that approach isn't sustainable.

"Today you have the president of the country emphasizing the party being tougher on certain human rights, and on the media and internet — toughening up censorship," he says. "I look at this and I tell them, 'You live in an information economy, and you're not going to succeed if you close people off from information and innovation.' "

Both publicly and privately, China's president — Xi Jinping — is very direct about his own views on this topic, and his colleagues' views.

"They don't aspire to have a Western-style, multiple-party democracy," Paulson says. "They don't aspire to have Western values. Jinping believes that the future of the country, the stability, is dependent on a strong Chinese Communist Party.

"I feel quite strongly that won't work long term," Paulson says. As more people prosper, they'll demand information and rights.

Goats and Soda

China's Villages Are Dying. A New Film Asks If They Can Be Saved

But Paulson does give the government credit for listening — and responding — to its people.

"The Chinese leadership over time has been pretty pragmatic in terms of understanding the mood of the people," he says. "Today they are focused on the things people care about the most: fighting corruption; restoring property rights to peasants; working to clean up the environment; working to ameliorate some of the income inequality."

development

China

People have been drinking tea for so long that its origin story is rooted in mythology: More than 4,700 years ago, one popular version of the story goes, a legendary Chinese emperor and cultural hero named Shennong (his name means "divine farmer") discovered how to make a tea infusion when a wind blew leaves from a nearby bush into the water he was boiling.

By the 4th century B.C., as Jamie Shallock writes in his book Tea, the beverage had become part of everyday life in China — though in a very different form than we might recognize today.

As the culture surrounding tea has changed through the centuries, so, too, have the tools we use to drink it. From the first dainty tea bowls to the mugs people use to warm themselves with a cup of tea today, tea sets have changed to meet cultural and utilitarian needs.

Before 1500

The first tea leaves weren't drunk in loose form; instead, they were compressed into cakes. To prepare tea, early drinkers had to tear off a piece of the compressed brick (often stamped with intricate patterns, and so valuable that it could be used in lieu of currency), roast it and tear it into even smaller pieces. Then they boiled their tea in heat-resistant kettles. According to Rupert Faulkner's book Tea: East & West, by the Song Dynasty (960-1279), tea had moved into a powdered form that could be set in a cup and whipped into the boiling water poured onto it. This whipped tea is most commonly associated with Japanese tea ceremonies today.

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A modern-day tea brick, compressed and embossed with an intricate design. Before the 1500s, tea leaves came in bricks not unlike this one. Wikimedia hide caption

itoggle caption Wikimedia

A modern-day tea brick, compressed and embossed with an intricate design. Before the 1500s, tea leaves came in bricks not unlike this one.

Wikimedia

A proper tea service could include 25 objects, according to Lu Yu, whose seminal 8th century book, The Classic of Tea, is the authority for early drinking habits. But the most important of these was the tea bowl. These glazed, ceramic vessels were simple in shape and tended to be between two and three inches in height.

1500s

By the 1500s, powdered and whipped tea had given way to steeped tea, which came in the form of rolled leaves rather than bricks. This necessitated the invention and use of the teapot as we know it today. These first teapots, James Norwood Pratt writes in A Tea Lover's Treasury, came from the Yi-Xing region of China and were soon copied throughout the world. Japanese potters moved the handle from the side to the top of the teapot.

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A Yi-Xing teapot made circa 1900. The first teapots came from the Yi-Xing region of China. Japanese potters moved the handle from the side to the top of the teapot, a style that later made its way back to China. Wikimedia hide caption

itoggle caption Wikimedia

A Yi-Xing teapot made circa 1900. The first teapots came from the Yi-Xing region of China. Japanese potters moved the handle from the side to the top of the teapot, a style that later made its way back to China.

Wikimedia

1700s

Tea finally reached Europe in the 1600s, along with the necessary tea wares manufactured in Japan and China. As English potters began to adapt the tea set to their countrymen's tastes, they eventually added a handle to the tea bowl to protect fingers from the transmission of heat through the delicate porcelain. According to Steeped in History, edited by Beatrice Hohenegger, this "became necessary because of the British habit of drinking hot black tea, which is consumed at higher temperatures than Chinese green." The English based the new design off existing large, handled mugs and containers used for hot beverages. The size of tea cups also grew to accommodate the English taste for milk and sugar in their tea.

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An illustration of Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century English writer, at tea, by R. Redgrave and H. L. Shenton R. Redgrave and H.L. Shenton/Corbis hide caption

itoggle caption R. Redgrave and H.L. Shenton/Corbis

An illustration of Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century English writer, at tea, by R. Redgrave and H. L. Shenton

R. Redgrave and H.L. Shenton/Corbis

However, Christina Prescott-Walker, a European ceramics expert and the director of the Chinese ceramics department at Sotheby's, believes the invention of the handle may have been a fashion statement more than a utilitarian choice. "In England, tea bowls were still being made as late as 1800," she tells The Salt. Faulkner writes in his book that the original bowls were perceived as more "authentically oriental" than their handled cousins.

1920s

By the early 1900s, innovations in tea drinking became an American affair. The most revolutionary was the tea bag, which was accidentally commercialized by a tea merchant named Thomas Sullivan. He had been sending customers tea wrapped in silk, and rather than take the leaves out of the bag, as Sullivan intended, the customers put the bags into their teapots instead. According to Faulkner, not only did the tea bags push the teapot back to the sidelines of tea service, they were too large for tea cups and ushered in the modern practice of drinking tea from large mugs.

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The tea bag was an American invention, commercialized by tea merchant Thomas Sullivan. Ryan Kellman/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ryan Kellman/NPR

The tea bag was an American invention, commercialized by tea merchant Thomas Sullivan.

Ryan Kellman/NPR

Today

Today's designers are thinking up ways to integrate technology into our tea. Take, for example, Playful Self, a new exhibition piece at the Dublin Science Gallery. The tea set – which is still far from commercial use — responds to and collects biometric data from the user, including heart rate, breathing rate and even sweat production. From bowls to biosensors, the tea set has come a long way.

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The creators of the Playful Self tea set believe that "in the future, biometric data will only become more ubiquitous." And your tea set could become one of the devices gathering these data. Project by: Alex Rothera & Jimmy Krahe. Tea set design: Pascal Hien. Photo by: Marco Furio, Magliani Photo. Playful Set Editor: Karen Oetling. Marco Furio Magliani and Karen Oetling/Courtesy of Alex Rother and Jimmy Krahe hide caption

itoggle caption Marco Furio Magliani and Karen Oetling/Courtesy of Alex Rother and Jimmy Krahe

The creators of the Playful Self tea set believe that "in the future, biometric data will only become more ubiquitous." And your tea set could become one of the devices gathering these data. Project by: Alex Rothera & Jimmy Krahe. Tea set design: Pascal Hien. Photo by: Marco Furio, Magliani Photo. Playful Set Editor: Karen Oetling.

Marco Furio Magliani and Karen Oetling/Courtesy of Alex Rother and Jimmy Krahe

Tea Tuesdays is an occasional series exploring the science, history, culture and economics of this ancient brewed beverage.

Tove Danovich is a writer based in New York City.

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