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John Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten, is a name that conjures images of a scrawny punk thrashing around the stage with The Sex Pistols, giving confrontational interviews with MTV VJs, or just generally raising hell. Maybe you think of his innovative post-punk band Public Image Ltd. Or, well, his stints on reality shows and nature documentaries.

In any case, Lydon thought it was time to set the record straight with his memoir, Anger Is An Energy.

Anger Is An Energy

My Life Uncensored

by John Lydon and Andrew Perry

Hardcover, 536 pages | purchase

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Read an excerpt

"After reading so much rubbish written about me over the years, it became obvious that I had to just tell it like it is," Lydon says. "Rather than let people carry on with their estimation that I'm a foul-mouthed yob."

And to prove he's not a foul-mouthed yob, at least not all the time, Lydon spoke with NPR's Arun Rath about losing his memory to meningitis at 7, being a threat to civilization (and loving it) and why he's appeared on reality TV shows.

There's an incredible story here I'd never heard before. When you were 7 years old, you contacted meningitis, were very ill, and you lost your memory.

I was in a hospital for nearly a year. I was in a coma for the first few months of that. And when I came out of the coma, nothing. Everything was gone. Everything. I couldn't even really communicate or talk even though I felt I was. I didn't actually know who I was or why I was there or where there was. The process of finding out who I was took a long, long time.

Most 7- and 8-year-olds don't even have to think about who they are.

No. It's all paid off, you know, for me in the long run because doctors had informed my mom and dad to be kind of hard on me, to get me angry, to keep the rage up. By keeping me in that state of mind and maybe things would suddenly jump back into place. This is where I got the form of anger as an energy. Without that energy, I might just have wallowed into, well, self-pity or something far worse. I never probably full recouped.

You write about your own anger, but I was thinking about the anger that was directed at you when you hit the scene in the '70s. I think people may have a hard time remembering what that was like now. People were talking about you like you were a threat to civilization.

[Sniggers.] Why, thank you, that's a really nice compliment. [Laughs.]

What was that like for a young man?

It was quite preposterous to see adults behave so violently and so negatively to basically — what am I exercising here? — freedom of thought and my own opinions on the institutions, the powers that be. Somebody has to say these things because there's no exaggeration in it. These are all tragic situations that need to be uncovered and stopped. And I'm quite good at that.

You've kept your energy up. People that were close to you on the scene — I think of Sid Vicious who self-destructed. And you were a young man thrown quickly into this world of indefinite indulgence, but you didn't self-destruct.

No, well I had quite a lot to claw back from, didn't I?

Was it as simple as that?

Yeah, and I'm never ever ever going to be the kind of person that's going to throw his life away. The whole drug culture that permeates the rock 'n' roll universe — well, you could look at it this way: drugs could be recreational, but if you're using drugs to really avoid a reality, that's when problems come in. Heroin is very important to the mentally deficient and insecure.

Now, all of us, as human beings, we all have weaknesses. We all feel inadequate. We all have painful experiences we can't quite seem to fess up to. And we're all shy of explaining ourselves openly and fully in front of human beings. But that don't mean you should run away from it. My way is that I embrace these things and made them part of my character, my personality, and I think gives me that glorious word that I celebrate: integrity.

We know you kind of hate celebrity culture, but you've also taken part in to a certain extent. You've written about the reality TV shows —

It's not much like I could avoid, is it? The reality TV show — well, we talk about I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here is a European show. I did that for charity and raised a small fortune. Now if that's celebrity, yippee! You know?

And you got to swim with sharks.

Ah. We came up with the idea of some quite extreme diving outfits. Mine was yellow and black, so I looked like a really ridiculous bumble bee. I mean, really dangerous colors at the time, you would be thinking to be learning to dive. But we found since — as science has recently discovered — that these are good, natural shark-repellent ideas. Well, hello, Johnny was doing this quite some time ago. Where's my money? You know, "Thank you, science."

It's been like that, really, throughout my life. People are prepared to absolutely condemn me, but then behind my back, rush off and copy it. I've spent my whole life trying to be myself. I'm not emulating other human beings, not trying to fit into what society thinks it has the right to dictate to me about what is right or wrong. Who's right or wrong here? Well, it's either me or the whole of society.

Well, the whole of society has come around on you being yourself —

So you're in agreement with me.

Well, you've been described as a beloved figure now. I've even seen you described as a national treasure in Britain. How's that for a kick in the hat?

It sounds like a race horse. I've heard the rumors. Oh, they're trying to give me an O.B.E. or an M.B.E. or whatever that is. Nope, not interested.

Whether or not we call you a national treasure —

You wouldn't say that if you saw the state of my underpants. I tell you. Let's be honest.

[Laughing.] I do find a very British attitude running through this book. What you described earlier: you don't wallow in your pain.

No, my mom and dad would never tolerate self-pity. And although that was a painful experience, to learn that's actually the correct way of living a life — well, I'm just happy to be this way. I can't imagine trying to fit in with the rest of the honky donkeys out there. It's just not worth it.

Read an excerpt of Anger Is An Energy

Back when he was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, Jonathan Adler was told that he'd never make it as an artist, and he should go be a lawyer. But Adler continued making his pottery, and today his design empire includes 26 stores named for him all over the world.

We've invited Adler to play a game called "We know you love it, so we're changing it!" Thirty years ago the Coca Cola company introduced New Coke, which is legendary as both the most disastrous, and most successful product launches of all time. We'll ask Adler three questions about the strange but true saga of New Coke.

Back when he was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, Jonathan Adler was told that he'd never make it as an artist, and he should go be a lawyer. But Adler continued making his pottery, and today his design empire includes 26 stores named for him all over the world.

We've invited Adler to play a game called "We know you love it, so we're changing it!" Thirty years ago the Coca Cola company introduced New Coke, which is legendary as both the most disastrous, and most successful product launches of all time. We'll ask Adler three questions about the strange but true saga of New Coke.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders got into the presidential race Thursday, becoming Hillary Clinton's first official challenger for the Democratic nomination. His website has a disclaimer: "Paid for by Bernie not the billionaires."

Although he caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate, he's not a registered Democrat — he's actually the longest-serving independent in congressional history. (There's no rule, by the way, barring candidates who are not registered Democrats from running in the Democratic primary.)

Sanders is one of those politicians known by only one name — everyone in the Capitol knows who "Bernie" is. He's a fiery, left-wing voice who calls himself a democratic socialist. And he's never lost his Brooklyn accent or his absent-minded professor look.

Here are three reasons why Sanders' candidacy could actually help the Clinton campaign:

1. Progressives now have a champion

OK, he's not Elizabeth Warren. But the left-wing base of the Democratic Party has been hungering for an alternative to Clinton and now they have one. HRC herself welcomed him into the race by tweeting: "I agree with Bernie. Focus must be on helping America's middle class."

I agree with Bernie. Focus must be on helping America's middle class. GOP would hold them back. I welcome him to the race. –H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 30, 2015

Sanders will force her to focus on issues important to the progressive base of the party, like climate change, campaign finance reform and income inequality. All of which she has already been talking about. But the contrast with Sanders may help her find that sweet spot between the left wing of the party and the center of American politics a little faster. She's a progressive who says "the deck is stacked in favor of those at the top," she supports a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and she wants an "end to the era of mass incarceration." But, in comparison to Sanders, it's clear she's no socialist.

2. All candidates need a sparring partner

Clinton can't stand on the debate stage alone. Having challengers will help her sharpen her message and her skills, which are rusty from being out of the arena for eight years. And the sparring will not be lethal because Sanders has said that although he thinks questions of Clinton's ethics are "fair game," he will not air any negative ads against her. Sanders will be joined by other Clinton challengers. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is expected to join the race; so is former Democratic Sen. Jim Webb and the former Republican senator and Democratic governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee.

3. He can't beat her

Sanders is a long shot. So are the other three potential Democratic candidates. But they're all serious, substantive challengers. All of them are current or former governors or senators — there's not a talk show host or a House member in the bunch. Democratic activists all over the country have been saying they want a real debate, not a coronation. And now they have one. Even though HRC's position as the leader of the Democratic pack hasn't changed, a multicandidate race could make the eventual nominee a much stronger general election candidate.

On the Republican side of the 2016 race, this was the week the courting of the Latino vote seemed to begin.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas spoke at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Wednesday, after the group criticized him for skipping their summit last month. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush went on a Spanish-language tour — first to Puerto Rico and then speaking to the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference in Houston.

Latinos are part of the electorate everyone agrees is key, but the GOP has struggled to connect. They have long skewed Democratic, but the last two presidential elections hit Republicans especially hard — they voted overwhelmingly for Obama. But this time around two major candidates on the right — Cruz and Marco Rubio — are Hispanic. And despite that box he checked, Jeb Bush is not Latino, but his wife is Mexican-American, and he speaks fluent Spanish.

Cruz, who is Cuban-American, told the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce about his immigrant father who struggled to get a job in the 1960s. He said his father came to terms with the fact that if he was up against an American for a job, "they'll hire the other guy."

Asked how he would attract Hispanic voters in 2016, he called the community "fundamentally conservative," and cited shared values like faith, family, patriotism, and hard work.

"I don't think I've ever seen a Hispanic panhandler," he told the audience. "And the reason is in our community it would be shameful to be begging on the street."

That's a line he has said before but during a presidential election, every word is more closely scrutinized. His hometown paper, The Houston Chronicle, noted this:

"Two days after making the statement, the Republican presidential contender refused to offer an opinion about African-Americans who beg for money on the street. Asked Thursday what he thought of them, Cruz turned away without speaking, striding into a senators-only elevator in the Capitol and waiting for the doors to close."

Cruz added at the chamber, "Now if you want people to work their fingers to the bones, hard work, you'll have Hispanic men and women lining up to work hard and provide for their families. Those are all conservative values."

Cruz also repeatedly pointed to polls that show the top issue for Hispanic voters (like nearly all others) is the economy. He called it the central issue for 2016, and said his "No. 1 priority" in the Senate "has been economic growth."

In Puerto Rico, Bush pushed for statehood, advocated a legal pathway to citizenship and spoke adoringly about his wife, and his bilingual, bicultural children.

Though Puerto Rico doesn't have any votes in the electoral college, it does send delegates to the conventions — and Bush's visit made for good optics back in the U.S. It was covered by Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision.

During those stops, Bush also spoke about his Catholic faith, which he converted to 20 years ago. In Houston, he called the audience of Hispanic Christians "the hope of this country."

Bush also hopes to capitalize on his last name. His older brother, George W., won about 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 2004 election, the best showing ever for a Republican.

Sen. Marco Rubio, who is also Cuban-American, spoke to NPR recently about what he feels the Republican Party needs to do to win over Latinos.

"Well, at the end, I don't think people go to the ballot box and say, 'I'm a Latino, therefore I'm voting Democrat,'" he said. "I think they bring with them their hopes and fears about the future, and they vote for whoever they think best understands them. And the challenge the Republican Party has had is unfairly, but it's the reality, they've been portrayed as a party that doesn't care about people who are trying to make it."

Republicans are hoping they can make inroads with Hispanics in 2016 given some disaffection among Latinos with President Obama's handling of deportations. But with Republicans in Congress standing in the way of comprehensive immigration reform, that is going to be a tough argument.

Hillary Clinton, the leading contender on the Democratic side, hopes to capitalize on that when she takes her pitch to Hispanics on the road in places like Nevada and Colorado.

2016 Presidential Race

Ted Cruz

Jeb Bush

Latinos

Marco Rubio

Hillary Clinton

Hispanics

On the Republican side of the 2016 race, this was the week the courting of the Latino vote seemed to begin.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas spoke at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Wednesday, after the group criticized him for skipping their summit last month. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush went on a Spanish-language tour — first to Puerto Rico and then speaking to the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference in Houston.

Latinos are part of the electorate everyone agrees is key, but the GOP has struggled to connect. They have long skewed Democratic, but the last two presidential elections hit Republicans especially hard — they voted overwhelmingly for Obama. But this time around two major candidates on the right — Cruz and Marco Rubio — are Hispanic. And despite that box he checked, Jeb Bush is not Latino, but his wife is Mexican-American, and he speaks fluent Spanish.

Cruz, who is Cuban-American, told the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce about his immigrant father who struggled to get a job in the 1960s. He said his father came to terms with the fact that if he was up against an American for a job, "they'll hire the other guy."

Asked how he would attract Hispanic voters in 2016, he called the community "fundamentally conservative," and cited shared values like faith, family, patriotism, and hard work.

"I don't think I've ever seen a Hispanic panhandler," he told the audience. "And the reason is in our community it would be shameful to be begging on the street."

That's a line he has said before but during a presidential election, every word is more closely scrutinized. His hometown paper, The Houston Chronicle, noted this:

"Two days after making the statement, the Republican presidential contender refused to offer an opinion about African-Americans who beg for money on the street. Asked Thursday what he thought of them, Cruz turned away without speaking, striding into a senators-only elevator in the Capitol and waiting for the doors to close."

Cruz added at the chamber, "Now if you want people to work their fingers to the bones, hard work, you'll have Hispanic men and women lining up to work hard and provide for their families. Those are all conservative values."

Cruz also repeatedly pointed to polls that show the top issue for Hispanic voters (like nearly all others) is the economy. He called it the central issue for 2016, and said his "No. 1 priority" in the Senate "has been economic growth."

In Puerto Rico, Bush pushed for statehood, advocated a legal pathway to citizenship and spoke adoringly about his wife, and his bilingual, bicultural children.

Though Puerto Rico doesn't have any votes in the electoral college, it does send delegates to the conventions — and Bush's visit made for good optics back in the U.S. It was covered by Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision.

During those stops, Bush also spoke about his Catholic faith, which he converted to 20 years ago. In Houston, he called the audience of Hispanic Christians "the hope of this country."

Bush also hopes to capitalize on his last name. His older brother, George W., won about 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 2004 election, the best showing ever for a Republican.

Sen. Marco Rubio, who is also Cuban-American, spoke to NPR recently about what he feels the Republican Party needs to do to win over Latinos.

"Well, at the end, I don't think people go to the ballot box and say, 'I'm a Latino, therefore I'm voting Democrat,'" he said. "I think they bring with them their hopes and fears about the future, and they vote for whoever they think best understands them. And the challenge the Republican Party has had is unfairly, but it's the reality, they've been portrayed as a party that doesn't care about people who are trying to make it."

Republicans are hoping they can make inroads with Hispanics in 2016 given some disaffection among Latinos with President Obama's handling of deportations. But with Republicans in Congress standing in the way of comprehensive immigration reform, that is going to be a tough argument.

Hillary Clinton, the leading contender on the Democratic side, hopes to capitalize on that when she takes her pitch to Hispanics on the road in places like Nevada and Colorado.

2016 Presidential Race

Ted Cruz

Jeb Bush

Latinos

Marco Rubio

Hillary Clinton

Hispanics

The unrest in Baltimore and other cities regarding alleged police misconduct has prompted new calls for law enforcement officers to wear body cameras. Such recordings could provide accountability and transparency in potentially controversial circumstances.

At least, that's the idea.

But the recent controversies and scandals also have introduced questions about how often officers' stories line up with what's on video.

Last summer, a rookie police officer in Oakland, Calif., pulled his gun on a man and his two young sons outside a fire station at night. The action was recorded by the cop's body camera as he issued orders to them: "Put, put the bag down! Huh? Put your hands up! Put you hands up! Turn around!"

Fortunately, the cop, who was white, quickly learned that the suspect, who was black, wasn't a burglar, but rather an off-duty firefighter. The officer apologized, though like virtually any video involving police these days, the incident went viral.

The Oakland Police Department has been using body cameras since 2010, and they've had an impact — cases of use-of-force and citizen complaints are both down, says Police Chief Sean Whent.

But have officers' reports fit what their cameras have recorded?

"Our experience has been that the evidence has largely supported the actions of the police officers, in showing that they were in fact behaving appropriately," Whent says.

Whent has been at the State Capitol in Sacramento a lot lately, testifying on behalf of a hotly contested proposed law that would have prevented police officers — in cases where force was used — from reviewing their own recordings before giving a statement.

Code Switch

Is It 'Uprising' Or 'Riot'? That Depends On Who's Watching

Photos: 'Ain't No Way You Can Sit Here And Be Silent'

Code Switch

Civilians Can Record Police Encounters, But When Is It Interference?

Whent says he wants to know what a cop recalls from an incident, not what the video recorded. That's important, he says, because it goes to the cop's state of mind.

"And we believe the public has more faith in the process if the officer does not watch the video prior," he says.

It's all about transparency, says Whent.

But many law enforcement groups aren't buying that, which have rallied in opposition to the measure, saying it that would undermine accurate police reports — and that it presumes that the police will lie.

Mike Rains, an attorney who specializes in representing police officers and their unions, says that's absurd.

"It really is the only reason for not showing an officer the video, is that 'okay, we don't want you to be able to get your story straight,' he says. "And it's all premised on that. And it's crazy!"

Crazy or not, this debate is just one of the questions raised by body camera use by police officers. Throughout the nation, policymakers are talking about rules for when a cop's camera should be turned on, where the recordings should be stored, and when — if ever — they should be shared with the public.

But this issue of whether a cop can see his or her video before writing a report is the most contentious, says Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. While she says there is a risk that some police officers will tailor their reports based on their videos, she also says that, in many instances, the possibility that other footage might be available could deter that.

"It may not be possible for them to be as much as a schemer as people think they can be, because you have lots of videos, not just the one that might be on the officer himself," she says. "In this day and age we might have videos from other perspectives, and they cannot anticipate what those will show."

Still, it appears that — for now — law enforcement is winning the debate.

Earlier this week the Los Angeles Police Commission voted to allow its officers to review their video before writing reports. Days later the California Assembly bill Oakland Police Chief Whent testified about was amended to give police around that same access — except in cities like Oakland that set their own limits.

body cameras

ferguson

CAlifornia

police brutality

crime

Baltimore

race relations

oakland

President Obama met Thursday with moderate Democrats in hopes of rallying support for a controversial Asia-Pacific trade deal.

The president will need approval from at least some members of his own party to win passage of a "fast-track" bill, authorizing him to complete trade negotiations and present the agreement for an up-or-down vote in Congress.

So far, most Democratic lawmakers have been skeptical.

"I don't think enough of our issues have been resolved for us to be having a big movement of votes toward the bill," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. "Hopefully we can have some accommodations" to make the agreement more palatable.

"What does it do to increase the paycheck of America's workers?" Pelosi asked. Democrats worry that any further liberalization of trade rules would lead to a greater exodus of U.S. jobs. And they complain past trade agreements, including NAFTA and the three-year-old pact with South Korea have not lived up to expectations.

Republican lawmakers are generally more supportive of trade deals, and House Speaker John Boehner promised "strong Republican support" for the fast-track bill. Some Tea Party members are wary, however, of giving the president any additional negotiating authority. The more House Republicans that withhold support, the bigger boost Obama will need from his own party.

"The president needs to step up his game in terms of garnering more support amongst Democrats, especially here in the House," Boehner said Thursday. "I don't think those who are involved in trade have done a very good job of helping the American [people] understand the benefits of trade and why, in fact, it's good for America."

Political operatives close to the president commissioned a poll which shows a narrow majority of Democrats — 52 percent — back the Asia-Pacific trade deal. That number climbed to 82 percent when survey respondents were told the deal would make it easier for American companies to export products, and that it would raise labor and environmental standards.

The survey was released on Thursday by a group calling itself the "Progressive Coalition for American Jobs." Other progressive groups, which generally oppose the trade agreement, mocked the new coalition as an artificial vehicle for promoting the president's trade agenda.

Next week, Obama takes his trade show on the road — to Oregon. That's the home state of Sen. Ron Wyden, who's one of the top Democrats supporting the deal. Obama plans to take part in a pro-trade event at Nike. The Beaverton, Ore., company relies heavily on contract factories in Asia to produce its goods. Nike sneakers made in Vietnam could see lower tariffs if the trade deal is approved.

trans-pacific partnership

trade agreement

Democrats

Nike

Congress

John Boehner

Nancy Pelosi

Barack Obama

Marie Heurtin was born, blind and deaf, just five years after Helen Keller, and experienced a similar liberation through the discovery of sign language. The French girl's tale is the harsher one, since Keller didn't lose sight and sound until she was 19 months old, and was able to communicate in a limited way with another girl before the breakthrough dramatized in The Miracle Worker.

And yet, as told by director and co-scripter Jean-Pierre Ameris, Marie's Story is gentler and less melodramatic. An account of faith as well as knowledge, the movie recalls the work of such transcendental French filmmakers as Alain Cavalier (notably with 1986's Therese) and Robert Bresson.

Ameris is a less distinctive stylist than either of those, although his depiction of nature is evocative and sometimes poignant. In the arresting introductory sequence, Marie (Ariana Rivoire) holds her hand up toward the sun, a presence she knows only as heat, not light.

The 14-year-old Marie is in a wagon, driven by her father, on the road to the Larnay Institute, where Catholic nuns teach deaf girls to sign (and, most likely, become tomorrow's nuns). The mother superior (Brigitte Catillon) rejects Marie because she's blind as well as deaf. But Sister Marguerite (Isabelle Carre) bonds with the girl as she coaxes her out of a tree, her customary refuge. Marguerite insists that Marie be allowed to study at the convent.

It's a demand she may at first regret. Unbathed and uncombed, Marie looks a bit like another savage of French cinema fame, Truffaut's 1970 The Wild Child. The other girls don't accept her, so Marie sleeps in Marguerite's room. They become very close, yet Marie wildly rejects any change in routine, which includes learning sign language.

Rather than a doll or similarly unthreatening toy, Marie's prized possession is a pocket-knife. So Marguerite tries to enlist the potentially dangerous object in her teaching, whose doggedness is underscored by recurring cello lines. The symbol she keeps signing into Marie's hand is the one for "knife."

There wouldn't be much of a story if Marie didn't ultimately learn to sign, but that practical knowledge is followed by even more challenging information. Marguerite has an unnamed lung disease, probably tuberculosis, and will not live long. The nun's trip to a sanatorium — an absence foolishly not explained to Marie — triggers the girl's furious regression. So when Marguerite returns, she tries to teach religion's hardest lesson: the acceptance of death.

The subject is quietly heightened by a speech in which the mother superior reveals herself as something more than a dogmatic authority figure. At first, she says, she assumed that women who had lived religious lives would die peacefully. But her experience in the convent has taught her otherwise.

There's probably no record of the actual nun's thoughts to support that dialogue. In an opening note, the movie professes only to be "inspired by real events." But if the movie's portrait of the Larnay Institute is idealized, that's mostly because it depicts a place where doctrine is tempered by reality.

The movie's tone is intimate, which means it relies heavily on the two principal actresses. Carre achieves just the right balance of delicacy and determination, while Rivoire — a novice who is deaf but not blind — begins fiercely bewildered and becomes surprisingly serene. Both have radiant smiles, illuminating every moment of understanding or empathy. Their rapport warms the movie as surely as the opening scene's sun.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders got into the presidential race Thursday, becoming Hillary Clinton's first official challenger for the Democratic nomination. His website has a disclaimer: "Paid for by Bernie not the billionaires."

Although he caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate, he's not a registered Democrat — he's actually the longest-serving independent in congressional history. (There's no rule, by the way, barring candidates who are not registered Democrats from running in the Democratic primary.)

Sanders is one of those politicians known by only one name — everyone in the Capitol knows who "Bernie" is. He's a fiery, left-wing voice who calls himself a democratic socialist. And he's never lost his Brooklyn accent or his absent-minded professor look.

Here are three reasons why Sanders' candidacy could actually help the Clinton campaign:

1. Progressives now have a champion

OK, he's not Elizabeth Warren. But the left-wing base of the Democratic Party has been hungering for an alternative to Clinton and now they have one. HRC herself welcomed him into the race by tweeting: "I agree with Bernie. Focus must be on helping America's middle class."

I agree with Bernie. Focus must be on helping America's middle class. GOP would hold them back. I welcome him to the race. –H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 30, 2015

Sanders will force her to focus on issues important to the progressive base of the party, like climate change, campaign finance reform and income inequality. All of which she has already been talking about. But the contrast with Sanders may help her find that sweet spot between the left wing of the party and the center of American politics a little faster. She's a progressive who says "the deck is stacked in favor of those at the top," she supports a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, and she wants an "end to the era of mass incarceration." But, in comparison to Sanders, it's clear she's no socialist.

2. All candidates need a sparring partner

Clinton can't stand on the debate stage alone. Having challengers will help her sharpen her message and her skills, which are rusty from being out of the arena for eight years. And the sparring will not be lethal because Sanders has said that although he thinks questions of Clinton's ethics are "fair game," he will not air any negative ads against her. Sanders will be joined by other Clinton challengers. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is expected to join the race; so is former Democratic Sen. Jim Webb and the former Republican senator and Democratic governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee.

3. He can't beat her

Sanders is a long shot. So are the other three potential Democratic candidates. But they're all serious, substantive challengers. All of them are current or former governors or senators — there's not a talk show host or a House member in the bunch. Democratic activists all over the country have been saying they want a real debate, not a coronation. And now they have one. Even though HRC's position as the leader of the Democratic pack hasn't changed, a multicandidate race could make the eventual nominee a much stronger general election candidate.

Newly released documents from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration show that it initially declined to grant a medical certificate to Andreas Lubitz, the pilot who is believed to have intentionally crashed an airline into the French Alps last month.

The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, provide an eerie glimpse into Lubitz's mental history and an effort to conceal that from U.S. medical examiners.

In the summer of 2010, Lubitz was enrolled in a training program for Lufthansa Airlines. As part of that program, he applied for a U.S. pilot's license so he could continue his training in Arizona, where weather conditions are favorable to flying all year round. But he needed a medical certificate to get a license.

The FAA documents show Lubitz checked "no" in response to an online application question about whether he had been treated for any mental disorders. But a later copy of the questionnaire shows it had been changed to "yes" by the aviation medical examiner after discovering Lubitz had been treated for severe depression a year earlier.

Dr. Warren Silberman, the former head of the FAA's aerospace medical certification unit, told NPR that the aviation administration declined to give Lubitz a medical certificate. But Silberman says Lubitz was offered a chance to clarify things.

"We sent a request for information, saying hey Lubitz, we see here that you had depression, please provide us with a status report," he said.

Lubitz's psychologist in Germany provided the FAA with a letter, translated from German, saying Lubitz had been treated with several drugs for his depression disorders. The psychologist, whose name is redacted, states that Lubitz was "completely recovered."

Silberman says the FAA let Lubitz know he would receive his medical certificate. "Meaning that somebody in the division reviewed the statement from the psychiatrist, thought that it was adequate and cleared him," he said.

The letter warned Lubitz that he would be prohibited from flying if his depression returned.

Lubitz was ultimately able to secure a job as a co-pilot for Germanwings.

As NPR reported earlier, it was discovered after Flight 9525 crashed into the French Alps that Lubitz had been treated for suicidal tendencies, and that investigators found boxes of medication in his home, along with torn up doctor's notes for sick leave, including one note for the day of the crash.

Silberman says in May, members of the Aerospace Medical Association will meet to discuss Lubitz's case. "We're going to get together because of the Germanwings accident and come up, you know, is there anything else we should do now," he says.

Andreas Lubitz

germanwings Flight 4U 9525

FAA

United States

mental health

Germany

If you can live stream movies, why not live stream medical care?

Insurance company UnitedHealthcare will start covering visits to the doctor's office — via video chat. Patients and physicians talk live online — on smartphones, tablets or home computer — to get to a clinical diagnosis. This move to cybermedicine could save insurers a ton of money — or have unintended consequences.

Cybermedicine has been long-discussed by the experts. Now, Eric Neiman, father to a little girl in San Francisco, can explain how it works — from personal experience.

"So I'd gotten a text from my wife earlier in the day," he says. "One of our daughter's eyes was a little bit red and she was rubbing it."

A few hours passed and it got more red and started oozing. "Well, unfortunately that sounds like it could be pinkeye. So we would look at it together when I got home," Neiman says.

Which was close to 8 p.m. — too late to see their regular pediatrician. And kind of late to see any doctor. If they went to the local urgent care center, they'd get back home at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m.

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Then, Neiman remembered something, from his Instagram account, a post for an app called Doctor On Demand. It pairs users up with doctors who are licensed in their state for a video screening.

Neiman decided to log in. "The pediatrician came on, introduced himself, and then asked to see our daughter, asked to hold the iPhone up to her eye, checked her throat, everything that he could see via the phone."

Within minutes, the doctor called in a prescription for pinkeye. The visit cost Neiman $40.

Neiman was so impressed, he says, he used the app just a few days later for himself. He thought he was getting a sinus infection, and logged in from his car.

"I was sitting on the side of the street. It's not the first time I pulled over to use my phone," he says. "But to actually go to the doctor — I was just hopeful nobody was watching!"

Save On Cost Or Break The Bank?

UnitedHealthcare's move to cover all or part of the cost of these e-visits — for up to 20 million customers by 2016 — is big. A major company is putting its stamp of approval on a process that, until now, has been largely experimental.

Three mobile-doc startups – Doctor on Demand, NowClinic and Amwell – are the initial providers.

Karen Scott, who directs innovation initiatives at UnitedHealthcare, says the company is studying cost: "What happens if somebody is more likely to use virtual care? Maybe they would have gone in to urgent care. How many of them will choose the virtual visit instead?"

It could be that people grab a doctor online for skin rashes, colds and coughs — and by getting care early on, they prevent an expensive catastrophe. Or maybe people wait too long when they really just need to see a doctor in person. Or it could be this service brings out the inner hypochondriac in us and leaves the insurer with a bigger bill to co-pay.

"Those are the sorts of health care economics and actuarial questions that our experts will be watching," Scott says.

Convenience For Doctors

This move has big implications for physicians, too.

Dr. Tania Elliott, an allergist with Doctor on Demand, says that through the app, patients with a rash show her their symptoms in the moment — not a week later. She takes virtual tours of people's homes to search dust mite sources. Instead of tedious planning, she gives patients a ballpark of when to do a follow up visit.

"They have access to essentially my schedule. And so when they log into the app they can see when I'm online," she says.

The doctor has even gotten to work remotely — from a hotel room in Hawaii.

UnitedHealthcare

telemedicine

Doctors

Chipotle is trumpeting its renunciation of ingredients derived from genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. The company says that using GMOs — mainly corn in its tortillas and soybean oil for cooking — "doesn't align" with its vision of "food with integrity." According to Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold, it represents "our commitment to serving our customers the very best ingredients we can find."

Here at The Salt, though, we've been hearing from people who think Chipotle's stance shows little integrity at all. Rather, it shows a double helping of marketing hype, they say. Greg Jaffe, the expert on GMOs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, calls it "hypocritical" and based on "smoke and mirrors." The Washington Post, meanwhile, accused the company of joining a "global propaganda campaign."

Why? Here are five reasons.

1. Soda

Way, way down at the bottom of the page that announces Chipotle's new policy, far below the headline that says "Food With Integrity; G-M-Over It," you'll find this sentence: "Many of the beverages sold in our restaurants contain genetically modified ingredients, including those containing corn syrup, which is almost always made from GMO corn."

Well. It appears that Chipotle is making a massive exception to its GMO-free policy when it comes to selling sugary drinks.

2. The "superweed" double standard

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A sunflower greenhouse in Fargo, N.D., where Brent Hulke is breeding plants that produce oil that's dramatically lower in saturated fat. Dan Charles/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Dan Charles/NPR

A sunflower greenhouse in Fargo, N.D., where Brent Hulke is breeding plants that produce oil that's dramatically lower in saturated fat.

Dan Charles/NPR

As an example of the ways that GMOs can damage the environment, Chipotle points to the problems caused by herbicide-tolerant GMO crops and how they encourage farmers to use a single herbicide, usually glyphosate, or Roundup. This, in turn, has led to the emergence of herbicide-resistant weeds, which Chipotle calls "superweeds."

Chipotle's answer to this, per its new non-GMO policy, is to switch from soybean oil to sunflower oil.

The problem is, many sunflower varieties, while not genetically modified, also are herbicide-tolerant. They were bred to tolerate a class of herbicides called ALS inhibitors. And since farmers starting relying on them, many weeds have evolved resistance to those herbicides. In fact, many more weeds have become resistant to ALS inhibitors than to glyphosate.

Why should Chipotle bemoan the emergence of weeds that are resistant to glyphosate, yet not to other weedkillers?

3. Salt

The Salt

Farmers Face Tough Choice On Ways To Fight New Strains Of Weeds

The top reason to back away from GMOs, according to Chipotle's web site, is uncertainty about the long-term safety of growing and consuming this food. Yet the company apparently has no problem with salt, a substance that poses risks that are far more clearly documented, Jaffe points out. A recent survey by the New York Times showed that the typical meal consumed at Chipotle contains close to a full day's recommended allowance of sodium, along with 1,070 calories.

For CSPI's Jaffe, the company's highly publicized move away from GMOs serves merely to distract consumers from "the real problem with Chipotle food, which is that it's just not healthy."

4. Science

Chipotle can't quite make up its mind what to say about the safety of GMOs. In an email, Chipotle spokesman Arnold told The Salt that "we didn't say we were doing this because we think GMO foods are not healthy." Yet the company's website casts doubt: "While some studies have shown GMOs to be safe, most of this research was funded by companies that sell GMO seeds and did not evaluate long-term effects. More independent studies are needed," it says.

The fact is, scientific studies have shown ill effects from eating lots of things on the Chipotle menu, if you eat them to excess. At the top of the list, of course, are sugar in those sodas, the refined carbohydrates in the white rice and flour tortillas, and salt. There's no such evidence about GMOs.

5. Meat

Chipotle says it wasn't too difficult or expensive to remove GMO ingredients from its burritos. It simply had to find new suppliers for corn flour and cooking oil.

It would be much harder, and presumably more expensive, to use only meat from pigs, chickens that consumed a non-GMO diet. Because the amount of corn or soybeans required to feed Chipotle's animals is vastly larger than what's needed for its tortillas or cooking oil. Find a new supply of animal feed would raise costs, so Chipotle isn't doing it.

Chipotle

Rapeseed, an oilseed known in North America as canola, has a mild reputation as a cooking oil. Maybe that's because the version that most consumers know is a pale, neutral-flavored oil used for frying and baking.

But in the U.K., a more colorful and flavorful version has made its way onto store shelves: cold-pressed rapeseed that goes for 5-7 per 500 milliliters (about $9 to 12 for 17 fluid ounces)

This vibrant, mustard-colored oil goes by names like Farrington's Mellow Yellow, Sussex Gold and Summer Harvest. Some products are touted as "extra virgin," and there's a Cotswold Gold rapeseed infused with white truffle. You'll find them at London's Fortnum and Mason food hall. Even chefs like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson have embraced the "national" oil, which is grown, processed and marketed by British farmers.

Third-generation farmer Algy Garrod uses it on his popcorn, to give it "a nice, creamy flavor," he explains while driving me through his bright yellow fields in Norfolk, in the east of England. In late April, they're in full bloom.

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Cold-pressed British rapeseed oil with asparagus. Anne Bramley hide caption

itoggle caption Anne Bramley

Cold-pressed British rapeseed oil with asparagus.

Anne Bramley

After harvest, all that rapeseed will be transformed into a golden, nutty oil a few miles away at Crush Foods, the family business started by Brendan Playford and his father about five years ago. They bottled their first cold-pressed oil at the kitchen table. Now, with Playford's university friend, Stephen Newham, Crush is run from the environmentally-minded Salle Park Estate.

But long before rapeseed became a cooking oil, it was an industrial oil used as a lubricant in Victorian steam engines and World War II ships. Back in those days, it wasn't even edible because it contained such high levels of erucic acid, which is toxic, and glucosinalates. Rapeseed, after all, is a brassica – a genus of plants that includes Brussels sprouts, mustard and broccoli – and it had a particularly high quantity of glucosinalates, which impart a flavor often described as "cabbagey," according to Paul Williams, a plant pathologist at the University of Wisconsin.

In the 1970s, Canadian scientists brought these levels of erucic acid and glucosinalates almost to zero through plant breeding. And they were so proud of their creation, which also had the lowest level of saturated fat (7 percent) of any vegetable oil, they gave it a new name: canola, a contraction of Canada and ola, meaning oil.

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This type of "double low" rapeseed is what we eat on both sides of the Atlantic, explains University of East Anglia's crop geneticist Rachel Wells.

The Salt

Top Five Myths Of Genetically Modified Seeds, Busted

But there are three key differences. The Europeans never adopted the name canola. And once genetically modified, herbicide resistant canola seeds were developed in 1995, North American farmers started planting mostly those, while European farmers stuck to the non-GMO rapeseed. (Today, 80-90 percent of the canola sold in the U.S. is GMO, while GMO rapeseed is banned across the European Union.)

Another key distinction of the artisanal — and more flavorful — rapeseed now available in the U.K. is how it's processed.

According to Playford of Crush in Norfolk, most rapeseed oil maintains its consistency by being processed and filtered in an intensive way that erases the muddled flavors resulting from seeds sourced from a range of different farmers. This is also true for the pale oil that dominates the American canola market.

But Crush and many other companies springing up around the U.K. and in other parts of Europe are cold pressing the seeds, just as with a high-quality olive oil. "When you cold press all you're doing is squeezing the oil out of the seeds very slowly at a temperature of no more than 40 degrees Celsius [104 Fahrenheit]," says Playford. "That keeps all the vitamin E, all of the flavor, every constituent compound that is in the oil completely intact."

And whether farmers are planting GMO or non-GMO rapeseed, most choose the "double low" varities that produce the greatest yield. But those aren't necessarily the ones that will create the best-tasting oils.

Crush's Playford and Newham think like single-malt whisky distillers and pay a premium to farmer Algy Garrod to get a rapeseed variety with a unique and appealing taste. Varieties "can range from tasting like fish to tasting like grass to tasting like cabbage," Playford tells The Salt.

"It's taken a lot a lot of time and research to find a seed variety that tastes like ours does," adds Newham. "We pride ourselves on the fact that it's a single variety." That allows Crush to keep a more consistent taste than if they would have to rely on a blend. And it keeps home cooks happy as well as the chefs who have to turn out hundreds of plates all tasting the same.

Many feel it keeps the British farm economy happy as well. In an era of local food love, rapeseed is celebrated as the new "British olive oil."

With the U.K. general election just days away, the National Farmers Union has created the "Great British Food Gets My Vote" campaign to encourage a commitment to domestic products. British culinary rapeseed oils provide a domestic alternative to imported olive oils from Italy, Greece and Spain.

The high-end rapeseed oils "are very important to farmers," says Guy Gagan from the NFU. "It's a local product, more or less in every town in England. It's a way for farmers to add value to their crops, so it's important to buy them rather than importing from outside the U.K."

Anne Bramley is the author of Eat Feed Autumn Winter and the host of the Eat Feed podcast. Twitter: @annebramley

rapeseed

canola

cooking oil

United Kingdom

The protest over a free speech award to Charlie Hebdo continues to grow.

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Earlier this week, six authors withdrew from the PEN American Center's annual gala in response to the organization's decision to give the French satirical magazine its Freedom of Expression Courage Award.

Former PEN American president Francine Prose was one of the original six. She tells NPR she's now been joined by more than 90 other writers — such as Junot Daz, Lorrie Moore and Rick Moody — who've signed on to an open letter critical of the decision.

"It is clear and inarguable that the murder of a dozen people in the Charlie Hebdo offices is sickening and tragic," the letter reads. "What is neither clear nor inarguable is the decision to confer an award for courageous freedom of expression on Charlie Hebdo, or what criteria, exactly, were used to make that decision."

It continues:

"Power and prestige are elements that must be recognized in considering almost any form of discourse, including satire. The inequities between the person holding the pen and the subject fixed on paper by that pen cannot, and must not, be ignored.

"To the section of the French population that is already marginalized, embattled, and victimized, a population that is shaped by the legacy of France's various colonial enterprises, and that contains a large percentage of devout Muslims, Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of the Prophet must be seen as being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering."

Current PEN American President Andrew Solomon told NPR on Monday that Charlie Hebdo deserves the award. "There have been very few places where people have consistently and constantly been willing to say the things that are offensive and to defend them as part of free speech," he said.

And some authors are speaking up in support of PEN American. Simon Schama took to Twitter this morning to defend the award:

The anti-Charlie Hebdo PEN protesters blame the victims, make satire defer to religion; gag freedom and contextualise away murder.

— Simon Schama (@simon_schama) April 30, 2015

Salman Rushdie, famously the subject of a fatwa after publishing The Satanic Verses, also came to PEN's defense in a letter to the organization. "This issue has nothing to do with an oppressed and disadvantaged minority," he wrote. "It has everything to do with the battle against fanatical Islam, which is highly organised, well funded, and which seeks to terrify us all, Muslims as well as non Muslims, into a cowed silence."

The gala is set to be held May 5. Charlie Hebdo editor Grard Biard is expected to accept the award, along with the magazine's film critic Jean-Baptiste Thoret.

free speech

Charlie Hebdo

Sitting in a stadium that seats 10,000, I look down at the ring and something I never thought I'd see in Asia: a bullfight.

But instead of pitting matador versus beast, two bulls face off in the South Korean version. And befitting a Buddhist country, the battle ends not in death, but in surrender. In some cases, one of the combatants simply turns and wanders off.

"In Korean bullfighting there is no mortal end in sight for these beasts of burden," my interpreter says.

The small town of Cheongdo, in the country's south, hosts the annual Bullfighting Festival every spring at the stadium.

"In Spain, it is a game between a human and a bull, with the bull being killed in the end," says the town's Mayor Lee Seung-yool. "But in Korea, we feel proud of the fact that we don't kill the bull and that they don't ever die in a fight. We simply let them express their emotions to each other and when one loses its strength, it turns away and shows its back. That is when the bull says he is done. The fight is brought to an end."

The judges, wearing green blazers, white gloves and cowboy hats, enter the 10,000-seat stadium and take their places before the bullfighting begins. Marius Stankiewicz for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Marius Stankiewicz for NPR

After a tractor rakes the dirt, the judges in green blazers, white gloves, and cowboy hats enter the bovine battleground, bow to the audience and take their places.

Then the competitors come trundling out of the tunnel: The General, a hulking brown bull with a red bulls-eye painted on its body, and his opponent, Dragon, identified by a blue bulls-eye and led by a handler in a puncture-proof vest.

After snorting, moaning and the scraping the dirt with their forefeet, two of South Korea's fiercest bulls clash — racking horns and head butting. But there's not a lot of gore, and certainly not death.

Spectators place bets and watch the fight on screens. The maximum bet is 100,000 South Korean won, or about $95. Marius Stankiewicz for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Marius Stankiewicz for NPR

"It is a thousand-year-old tradition passed down from our ancestors," says Lee Kang-min, an avid fan who has attended every year but one since the stadium was built in 2002. The only exception was last year, when the festival was cancelled due to the ferry disaster that killed more than 300, many of them high school students.

"Bulls would naturally fight each other when farmers would take them out to the pastures," he says. "The fighting then became a part of our culture so it was transformed into a competition for everyone to enjoy."

When young bulls are about a year old, around the time they're fitted with nose rings, they are also assessed to see if they have what it takes to fight. Head size, horn shape and strength of the hind legs are all factors.

Outside the stadium where the Cheongdo Bullfighting Festival takes place every spring in the southern part of South Korea. Marius Stankiewicz for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Marius Stankiewicz for NPR

The bulls selected are then put through intense training to beef up their size and strength: they haul tires with a rope tied to the neck, they run in the pastures, and rack their horns against tree trunks.

Unlike other places, betting on these bullfights isn't just permitted, it's encouraged. The maximum bet is capped at 100,000 won, or about $95.

"I enjoy coming here with my family not only to admire the bulls and their strength but to wager a little bit of money," says Park Ji-hun, another spectator. "Hitting the jackpot isn't on many people's minds; it is just for fun."

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What he said rang true. When I attended, there were neither frenzied winners nor losers hanging their heads in dismay.

I did not see the "intensest degree of emotion in the spectator," something Ernest Hemingway once said that results from seeing "good bullfighters" fighting "good bulls."

But perhaps that was understandable in a country known as "The Land of Morning Calm."

At the end of the day, I place a 10,000 won bet on Wild Beast. He barely locks horns with his opponent when the rival bull breaks off and runs away.

It is the shortest fight of the day, lasting less than 10 seconds. But it earns me a win and a bit of Zen, happily achieved without the sight of a matador, a red cape, or lances dangling from the bloody nape of a bull.

South Korea

To that end, he plays hopscotch with time, place and mood. Volume One begins with a highfalutin riff on death, moves into a 100-page account of underage Karl and a pal sneaking beer for New Year's Eve, and builds to the burial of his father in one of the unforgettable sequences in contemporary literature. In contrast, the comparatively lighthearted Volume Four is filled with boozing and sexual embarrassment — no writer has ever admitted to quite so many premature ejaculations.

Knausgaard's confident directness has won him raves from scads of star writers who clearly see new possibilities for their own writing in his books. They especially admire the ways he's not like them. He's earnest, not cute, bouncy or ironic. He's not afraid to use clichs and doesn't polish every sentence like a new Lamborghini. Unlike most novelists, who feel they must compete with video games and Game of Thrones, he doesn't kill himself trying to make every moment exciting.

There may be something oedipal in this. In Volume Three, Knausgaard revealingly notes that one of his dad's unbearable qualities was purging any situation of everything that had no direct relevance to what they were doing. If they were going somewhere, dad drove there grimly fast; if they ate, it was only because food is necessary. Knausgaard's own vision of life is almost the opposite. I've never read a good novelist who deliberately included so many things that served no evident point. For him, such unfiltered inclusiveness does justice to the cluttered density of experience, and it gives his work a strong, hypnotic pull.

In calling his book My Struggle, Knausgaard daringly echoes Hitler's Mein Kampf, which I'm told he talks about at length in Volume 6. But he's not being flip with this title the way an American writer would be. The book actually is about his struggle — with his father, with death, with his Muse, with his feelings of inadequacy, with the dreariness of a daily life that offers teasing glimpses of transcendence. If this sounds a bit grandiose, it is.

Yet Knausgaard is not a "difficult" writer like Proust, Joyce or David Foster Wallace. He's pointedly un-literary. Anyone can understand what he's writing. And, paradoxically enough, his honest, obsessive self-absorption makes his life feel universal. As I was reading, every single subject that came up in my daily living — parents, politics, education, Italian food, trees, even David Byrne — reminded me of something in Knausgaard. His work makes you realize that each and every one of our lives contains rich enough material for a long, daunting book called My Struggle.

Pope Francis called the gender pay gap a "pure scandal" in remarks Wednesday on marriage and family.

NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports that Francis' remarks, at his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, are some of his most forceful yet in favor of women.

Francis raised his voice as he made a plea for an end to the situation in which men typically earn more than women for performing the same task.

The "the disparity is a pure scandal," he said, in comments reported by Vatican Radio.

Sylvia adds that the pope dismissed the attitude of some who blame the crisis in the family on women leaving the house to go to work. She adds:

"Francis has been speaking out about family life ahead of a big church meeting on family issues in October. While he has often said women should play a bigger role in the church, he has said the door is closed to the possibility of women becoming priests."

The pope's remarks Wednesday were part of a larger catechetical reflection on marriage and family.

"Today, society is confronted with fewer marriages. ... These broken marriage bonds affect the young most of all, as they come to view marriage as something temporary," he said, according to Vatican Radio. "In truth, we know that almost every man and woman desires a secure and lasting relationship, a stable marriage and a happy family."

gender pay gap

Pope Francis

Catholic church

Pope Francis has called the gender pay gap a "pure scandal" in remarks today on marriage and family.

NPR'S Sylvia Poggioli reports that Francis' remarks, at his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, are some of his most forceful yet in favor of women.

Francis raised his voice as he made a plea for an end to the situation in which men typically earn more than women for performing the same task.

The "the disparity is a pure scandal," he said, in comments reported by Vatican Radio.

Sylvia adds the pope dismissed the attitude of some who blame the crisis in the family on women leaving the house to go to work. She adds:

"Francis has been speaking out about family life ahead of a big church meeting on family issues in October. While he has often said women should play a bigger role in the church, he has said the door is closed to the possibility of women becoming priests."

The pope's remarks today were part of a larger catechetical reflection on marriage and family.

"Today, society is confronted with fewer marriages. ... These broken marriage bonds affect the young most of all, as they come to view marriage as something temporary," he said, according to Vatican Radio. "In truth we know that almost every man and woman desires a secure and lasting relationship, a stable marriage and a happy family."

gender pay gap

Pope Francis

Catholic church

As 2015 began, the U.S. economy posted its weakest performance in a year, growing at a 0.2 percent annual pace. That's a sharp slowdown from the fourth quarter and well below the 1 percent rate economists had projected.

The deceleration — from 2.2 percent growth in the fourth quarter — comes as the Federal Reserve is debating how soon it will begin to boost historically low interest rates. Policymakers at the central bank are due to announce the results of their latest two-day meeting in Washington at 2 p.m. ET.

Seasonally adjusted annual rates. NPR hide caption

itoggle caption NPR

Reuters reported that the "weak growth, though probably temporary, reduces the chances of a June interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve."

Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit in London, told Reuters: "A stalling of U.S. economic growth at the start of the year rules out any imminent hiking of interest rates by the Fed."

Employment growth has also slowed, with the economy adding just 126,000 jobs in March, though the jobless rate held steady at 5.5 percent.

The Commerce Department said in its "advance" estimate of gross domestic product Wednesday that the slowdown reflected a deceleration in consumer spending, exports and investments by companies.

And The Wall Street Journal said the first-quarter slowdown seemed to repeat a recent winter pattern:

"Last year, economists pinned much of the blame for a bad first quarter — GDP shrank 2.1% — on unusually harsh weather. This year, multiple factors appear to be at work, including another bout of blizzards, disruptions at West Coast ports, the stronger dollar's effect on exports and the impact of cheaper oil."

Given the consistent pattern of weak first-quarter growth, some economists suspect there's a problem with how the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis does the seasonal adjustments for the first-quarter GDP report. The New York Times reported last week in its Upshot blog:

"It isn't a surprise that the economy has seasonal ups and downs. After all, summer vacations slow some industries, while others are chilled by winter snow, and the annual parade of holidays shifts spending throughout the year. But the government's economic statistics are meant to adjust for these predictable seasonal swings, through a process known as seasonal adjustment. But it appears that these adjustments have failed to do the job."

Personal spending grew at a 1.9 percent pace in the first quarter, less than half the 4.4 percent pace of the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.

Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said in a blog post that consumers generally haven't been using the savings from lower gasoline prices to spend on other things. But, he said, that leaves room for a spending rebound later this year.

"Rising saving suggests continued improvement in households' financial situation," Furman wrote. "This will help foster conditions for stronger consumer spending growth over the course of the next year, especially in light of the fact that consumer confidence measures are nearly the highest they have been since before the financial crisis."

The first-quarter GDP numbers are subject to two more revisions, with the next one due May 29.

GDP

Federal Reserve

interest rates

The Republican-controlled Florida legislature — at odds over the question of whether to expand Medicaid — abruptly ended its session three days early on Tuesday, leaving hundreds of bills that are unrelated to health care unfinished.

Andy Gardiner, president of Florida's state Senate, says he's disappointed with the House's decision to stop negotiating and leave town.

"The House didn't win, the Senate didn't win and the taxpayers lost," Gardiner says. "There are a lot of issues that aren't going to make it, and it's unfortunate."

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But Steve Crisafulli, speaker of the Florida House, says it was the right thing to do.

"We've made every effort we can to negotiate with the Senate on a budget," he says, "and at this time they're standing strong on Medicaid expansion."

Shortly after the adjournment, Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, filed a lawsuit against the federal government over health care funding — a move that was promptly derided by the leadership of the state Senate.

"I don't think it changes anything," says the chairman of Florida's Senate appropriations committee, Tom Lee. "Once he announced he was going to file a lawsuit against the federal government, I think everyone sort of shut down and lawyered up, and all that sort of thing."

Here's a brief overview of the fight: The Republican-led state House is firmly against Medicaid expansion, while the Republican-led state Senate supports it. Scott once supported expansion but is now against it. And the federal government raised the stakes of the battle by refusing to negotiate on the renewal of a $2 billion fund called the Low Income Pool, which reimburses hospitals for unpaid bills.

"The pool money was about helping low-income people have access [to health care]," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell told northern Florida's WFSU in January. "I think we believe an important way to extend that coverage to low-income individuals is what passed in the Affordable Care Act ... this issue of Medicaid expansion."

The governor's lawsuit over the low income pool accuses the federal government of trying to coerce the state — requiring Florida to expand Medicaid or lose $2 billion. That sort of pressure was expressly forbidden by the U.S. Supreme Court, Scott says, when it upheld the federal health law in 2012.

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Once a proponent of Medicaid's expansion under the Affordable Care Act, Florida Gov. Rick Scott is now trying to pressure Florida's Senate to abandon its support of expansion. Joe Raedle/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Once a proponent of Medicaid's expansion under the Affordable Care Act, Florida Gov. Rick Scott is now trying to pressure Florida's Senate to abandon its support of expansion.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

House appropriations chief Richard Corcoran recently delivered a 20-minute anti-Medicaid speech to fellow lawmakers that underscored his side's determination to block the expansion. "Here's my message to the Senate," he said. "They want us to come to the dance? We're not dancing. We're not dancing this session. We're not dancing next session. We're not dancing next summer — we're not dancing. And if you want to blow up the process because you think you have some right that doesn't exist? Have at it."

Now, the central task that state law requires of the legislature — to pass a budget— remains incomplete. Scott tried this week to pressure the legislature to the bargaining table to craft a budget. He threatened to veto Senate priorities, but the Senate remained unmoved.

Scott has said he will call the legislature back for a special session to complete the budget.

This story is part of NPR's partnership with WFSU and Kaiser Health News.

Obamacare

Affordable Care Act

Medicaid

Florida

As we reported earlier this month, a fascinating project called Blue Zones is documenting and disseminating the lifestyle secrets of the communities with the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world.

The people in these five regions in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the U.S. that live to be 100 have a lot going for them. Genes probably play a small role, but these folks also have strong social ties, tightly-knit families and lots of opportunity to exercise.

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Blue Zones' Dan Buettner smells turmeric grown in Okinawa. Gianluca Colla/Courtesy of Blue Zones hide caption

itoggle caption Gianluca Colla/Courtesy of Blue Zones

Blue Zones' Dan Buettner smells turmeric grown in Okinawa.

Gianluca Colla/Courtesy of Blue Zones

As we were parsing through the dietary secrets of the Blue Zones, as described in author Dan Buettner's latest book, The Blues Zones Solution, we were struck by how essential tea drinking is in these regions. In fact, Buettner's Blue Zones Beverage Rule — a kind of guideline distilled from his 15 or so years of studying these places — is: "Drink coffee for breakfast, tea in the afternoon, wine at 5 p.m."

In Okinawa, Japan, for example, Buettner watched one 104-year-old "make jasmine tea, squatting in the corner and pouring hot water over tea leaves as the room filled with a delicate, floral aroma." Indeed, Okinawans call their tea shan-pien, or "tea with a bit of scent," which combines green tea leaves, jasmine flowers and a bit of turmeric.

And, of course, science has plenty to say about the healthful virtues of green tea. Researchers are most smitten with catechins, antoxidants that show up in green tea, as well as foods like cocoa. Why might they help so many Okinawans break 100? Catechins and other compounds in green tea can lower the risk of stroke, heart disease and several cancers. One review study also found that drinking green tea slightly boosts metabolism.

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Ginger's golden cousin, turmeric, figures prominently in the Okinawan diet in both food and tea. Studies suggest it is a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. Gianluca Colla/Courtesy of Blue Zones hide caption

itoggle caption Gianluca Colla/Courtesy of Blue Zones

Ginger's golden cousin, turmeric, figures prominently in the Okinawan diet in both food and tea. Studies suggest it is a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory.

Gianluca Colla/Courtesy of Blue Zones

If you find yourself on the island of Ikaria, the Greek Blue Zone in the middle of the Aegean, you won't be offered any tea made with tea leaves. Instead, Ikarians typically brew their daily cup of tea with just one fresh herb that they have picked themselves that day — either rosemary, wild sage, oregano, marjoram, mint or dandelion, all plants that may have anti-inflammatory properties.

Buettner tells The Salt that he took samples of Ikarian herbs to pharmacologists in Athens to have them analyzed. "Turns out, they were anti-inflammatories and mild, or mildly strong diuretics," which help lower blood pressure, he says. This could explain Ikaria's very low dementia rate, he adds, since high blood pressure is a risk factor for the disease.

The Salt

Health Benefits Of Tea: Milking It Or Not

According to Thea Parikos, an Ikarian who runs a guesthouse there, the people of the island use herbs and teas as medicine and will drink them for various ailments before going to see a doctor. (If the condition worsens, they will seek medical attention, she says.)

"We often drink a tea with friends or in the evenings," she tells us by email. "The teas we use are collected in the wild. We are not so enthusiastic on store-bought tea. We consider the wild plants to be of better quality."

Hear that? So rather than run to the store in search of Ikarian Longevity Tea (it doesn't exist), grow or buy fresh herbs and make your own tea with them.

In Sardinia, the preferred tea is milk thistle, a native wild plant that Buettner writes is said to "cleanse the liver." The plant's principal active ingredient, silymarin, is being analyzed by scientists as an antioxidant. One 2007 review paper noted that, "Promising results have been reported in the protective effect of milk thistle in certain types of cancer, and ongoing trials will provide more evidence about this effect." So those Sardinians, who've been drinking this tea for centuries, may have figured out one small hot fountain of youth.

If you want to get more tea into your routine, here's what Buettner recommends:

"Sip green tea all day; green tea usually contains about 25 percent as much caffeine as coffee and provides a steady stream of antioxidants.

Try a variety of herbal teas, such as rosemary, oregano or sage.

Sweeten teas lightly with honey, and keep them in a pitcher in the fridge for easy access in hot weather."

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

blue zones

Tea Tuesdays

green tea

herbs

tea

When a major earthquake pummeled Kobe, Japan, in 1995, more than 6,000 people were killed, many buried as their traditional wooden homes collapsed under the weight of heavy, unstable tile roofs.

The quake's power was extraordinary and demonstrated Japan wasn't as prepared as it thought it was. Still, it was no match for Japanese resilience.

Many surviving families went directly to schools and spread out quilts in orderly rows in the gym. Boxed meals were handed out around the clock. Bottled water was abundant. The bathrooms remained clean. The trains kept running. The homeless were permitted to make phone calls anywhere in the world free of charge.

Almost immediately, it was clear Kobe would not be defined by the tremor. Kobe had one of the busiest container ports in the world before the quake. A year later, it was operating at the same level.

Earthquakes are equal opportunity destroyers, delivering death and destruction to rich and poor countries alike. Yet they seem cruelest when they flatten places like Nepal, which lacks the resources to prepare for or recover from a devastating tremor. It's not just a brief, cataclysmic event in Nepal. The aftershocks will last for years as the country struggles to return to where it was before the disaster.

When Nepal's earthquake hit, the first number everyone turned to was that awful magnitude number: 7.8.

But INFORM, which provides global risk assessment with sponsorship from the European Commission, has developed its own scale, calculating just how vulnerable 191 countries are when it comes to earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes and other disasters.

The chart below shows that when it comes to likelihood of being hit by a quake, Japan maxes out at 10 on a scale of 10. Nepal is just a tick behind at 9.9.

But when other factors are incorporated — a country's wealth, emergency services, medical system, the quality of its government and general infrastructure — Japan has a relatively modest overall risk of 2.2 compared with Nepal's still unhealthy 5.3.

The chart also shows that the U.S. and Haiti face similar likelihoods of being hit by earthquakes, floods and tropical storms. But the consequences are likely to vary widely. More than 300,000 people died in Haiti's 2010 earthquake, and despite countless aid projects, reconstruction has moved at a glacial pace.

You can check out all 191 countries here.

The calculations involve a lot of guesswork but capture the way poor countries suffer doubly when disasters strike. The first is the disaster itself, and the second is the enormous long-term burden it places on nations ill-equipped to cope.

Nepal's per capita income is just $700 a year. Few buildings and homes were constructed to be earthquake resistant. Many that will be rebuilt are likely to be equally vulnerable.

Source: USGS

Credit: Alyson Hurt/NPR

The country is also riven by political fault lines as unstable as its geological ones. A Maoist insurgency was launched in the 1990s and eventually led to the abolition of Nepal's monarchy in 2008. The Maoists are now the largest political party in Nepal, and the country's defining political feature has been nonstop feuding in recent years.

IHS Global Insight estimates Nepal's reconstruction costs will be $5 billion over the next five years, requiring a large chunk of the country's resources.

Key sectors have been set back, like tourism, an industry that ranges from backpackers on a budget to mountain climbers paying tens of thousands of dollars for a chance to scale Mount Everest. Saturday's quake touched off an avalanche that killed at least 18 climbers. Last year, the brief climbing season was cut short last year after an avalanche that killed 13 on the mountain.

Aid pledges are already flowing into Nepal, raising the hope that buildings, roads and power systems can be rebuilt and at a higher quality. But there's little precedent for this. Long after the world's attention has moved on, most have struggled to rebuild.

Greg Myre is the international editor for NPR.org. Follow him @gregmyre1.

earthquakes

Nepal

The original 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign logo. Hillary Clinton campaign hide caption

itoggle caption Hillary Clinton campaign

Hillary Clinton's campaign logo was changed Tuesday to show support for same-sex marriage on the day of oral arguments at the Supreme Court. Hillary Clinton campaign hide caption

itoggle caption Hillary Clinton campaign

The Clinton campaign's Iowa logo. Hillary Clinton campaign hide caption

itoggle caption Hillary Clinton campaign

The Clinton campaign's New Hampshire logo. Hillary Clinton campaign hide caption

itoggle caption Hillary Clinton campaign

Hillary Clinton's new logo has been much maligned. A simple, rightward-pointing "H" with a red arrow through it that looks like it could have been made in "Paint."

Red, the color of the other team. How could she? some Democrats wondered. It seemed so amateurish, some design experts lamented.

"I think the Hillary logo is really saying nothing," Scott Thomas told Politico. Thomas was design director for Obama's 2008 campaign and worked on the White House website's redesign.

Clinton's simple logo, though, is certainly saying something now. On Tuesday, the day of the Supreme Court oral arguments on gay marriage, her logo on both Facebook and Twitter were changed to a rainbow-colored "H."

And it's not the only example of how the campaign has tried to adapt the logo. For Iowa, the background is an open field with corn in the foreground. For New Hampshire, mountains.

It's kind of becoming the Empire State Building of presidential campaign logos — changing colors to celebrate any variety of milestones and holidays, from pink for breast cancer awareness to red, white and blue for Memorial Day to "pastel fades" for Easter. (The Empire State Building has a whole calendar of scheduled colors.)

Among perhaps the smartest analyses of the logo was from Sol Sender, who designed Obama's 2008 logo. He told the Huffington Post that the point of campaign logo design is to first address one of the candidates biggest weaknesses. For Obama, because of his unusual name, the campaign knew it had to play up patriotism. For Clinton, it's the criticism that she represents the past.

"If you boil it down it's really a symbol of forward motion," Sender said of Clinton's logo. "On the Obama work we were really conscious from the start about where he was vulnerable — we knew Obama critics said things like 'he's not American.' So we thought going strong with a patriotic theme was quite important. Hence the red, white and blue colors in the Obama logo. In terms of vulnerabilities, Hillary always seems to get dragged into the past by her critics. Therefore, you might argue that a symbol like this which is so aggressively pushing forward could help counter-balance any negative energy that is directed at her past."

2016 Presidential Race

Democrats

Hillary Clinton

The families of convicted drug smugglers held farewell meetings in an Indonesian prison Tuesday, after the government rejected last-ditch pleas for mercy. The condemned include two Australians who led the "Bali Nine" smuggling group.

Australians Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan were the ringleaders of a group that was caught trying to smuggle heroin out of Bali in 2005. Their seven couriers have received either lengthy or life prison sentences.

In addition to the Australians, three convicts from Nigeria and one each from the Philippines, Brazil, Ghana, and Indonesia are to be tied to posts and killed by a firing squad tonight. The case of Sukumaran and Chan has attracted wide attention, in part because the pair have reportedly reformed themselves in the nearly 10 years since their arrest.

The case has also shown the limits of the influence wielded by Australia, which has abolished capital punishment, on Indonesia, one of its closest neighbors and a popular tourism destination. Indonesia and President Joko Widodo have rejected several nations' requests for clemency in the cases.

Prisoner Mary Jane Veloso of the Philippines has also been the subject of a last-minute push to save her life, over allegations that the mother of two had been forced into being a drug courier by a human trafficker. Pleas from Philippine President Benigno Aquino and boxer Manny Pacquiao were rebuffed this week.

The exact timing of the executions hasn't been announced, but a three-day warning period expires at midnight tonight, and it's widely believed that in the early hours of Wednesday (local time), the punishment will be carried out. Indonesia is 12 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time.

"I won't see my son again and they are going to take him tonight and shoot him and he is healthy and he is beautiful and he has a lot of compassion for other people," Raji Sukumaran said, according to Australia's ABC news agency. "I am asking the government not to kill him, please president, please don't kill him today."

The case has drawn international protests. This week, Australian celebrities including actor Geoffrey Rush put out a YouTube video calling for Prime Minister Tony Abbott to intervene.

From Sydney, Stuart Cohen reports for our Newscast unit:

"Australia's attorney general today became the latest official to appeal to Indonesian authorities, saying there are still serious questions about the legitimacy of their original trial that need to be resolved.

"But most people trying to save the two Australians say it's unlikely at this late hour that the executions won't go ahead."

Some of those questions about the case include allegations of bribery, as the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Bali Nine

capital punishment

Australia

Selection Criteria: 'A Hundred Hours Of Hell'

They were whittled down to about 55 or 60 women from more than 200 at the very start, and they faced a selection process that was called "a hundred hours of hell." So that was a combination of mental agility tests and physical tests — climbing a 30-foot wall, or putting 35 or 40 pounds on your back and marching for what is called an unknown distance, so that could be 2 miles or it could be 12 — tests about cultural awareness. And they went through this in a five-day period which had little sleep and a lot of testing of who they were as people, and they were judged as a team.

Why White Didn't Tell Her Parents About Her Deployment

She really did not want them to worry. ... There wasn't a lot of a roadmap to point to in terms of what she would be doing [with the special operations teams]. Not many women had done that before her ... and she realized pretty quickly that this is real combat, right? We are going on some of the most dangerous, most critical missions to the war in Afghanistan that America is pursuing. ... There is a real moment where she talks to her husband and she talks to her brother and just says "I really want to keep this between us, I don't want people to worry."

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of Ashley's War. Courtesy of Harper hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Harper

What Female Soldiers Were Able To Discover

One young soldier found a woman who was sitting on a weapon that they had been looking for. Another soldier found something they were looking for in a baby's soiled diaper. Yet others were keeping young women that they had met calm during operations so that the Rangers could do their work. So very quickly they proved that there was this whole world, this whole community of Afghan women that you could access if you had American women soldiers out there talking to them.

A Foundation For Integration

We will know the answer in January of 2016 as to which jobs will open to women and whether all jobs will open to women. Right now what we know is that, in the summer of 2013, one of the special operations commanders actually cited Ashley and all of the women in these pages and said "those soldiers may well have laid the foundation for ultimate integration" — that they had done a fabulous job on the battlefield, and that they did prove that women could bring value to those kinds of mission. Those women were the softer side of the harder side of war.

women in combat

Afghanistan

The feeling that tech giants such as Facebook and Google know exactly where we are and what we're doing can be uncomfortable. Targeted advertisements or suggestions based on our location can feel like an invasion of privacy.

But the collection of our digital data has an upside in certain circumstances, and the aftermath of the massive earthquake in Nepal provides a good example.

As the nation struggles to deal with the devastation of a magnitude-7.8 earthquake that has left an more than 4,000 people dead, information about survivors, those still in danger and what resources are needed is in high demand. Tech and telecom companies are stepping up to offer much-needed services. From Apple to Viber, each has something a little bit different to offer.

The Two-Way

More Than 4,000 Dead In Nepal As Earthquake Toll Rises

The Two-Way

LOOK: Historic Nepal Sites Before And After The Quake

All Tech Considered

When Disaster Strikes, Facebook Lets Friends Know You're OK

Here's an overview of the ways in which tech companies are leveraging their power, and some of the challenges they are facing.

Apple: Apple has activated an iTunes store feature that allows visitors to donate to the American Red Cross using the credit card information Apple has on file. Apple has enabled one-click donation following other natural disasters such as the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the 2011 tsunami in Japan and the 2013 typhoon in the Philippines.

we poop on Facebook a lot here but this is super useful pic.twitter.com/5VSbPgo4uV

— nathanjurgenson (@nathanjurgenson) April 26, 2015

Of course, there are other ways to help those in need. You can find a list of some of the charities doing relief work in Nepal here.

Facebook: In October, after noticing how users organically turn to Facebook in times of crisis, the company launched "Safety Check." The site uses the city listed in your profile and data on where you've accessed the Internet from to determine whether you may be affected by a natural disaster. If so, Facebook sends a push notification asking if you're safe. When you confirm your safety, your friends receive a notification as well.

In the case of the Nepal earthquake Facebook activated Safety Check for Nepal and surrounding areas on Saturday. Mark Zuckerberg announced the service on his Facebook page. "It's moments like this that being able to connect really matters," the Facebook founder said in his post.

The feature has garnered praise, but it faces challenges associated with the availability (or lack thereof) of Internet access. The World Bank says that just 13 percent of Nepal's population accesses the Internet regularly, and the Los Angeles Times has reported that current connectivity in Kathmandu is tenuous.

MT-@GoogleCR: Person Finder launced to help track missing persons for #Nepal earthquake http://t.co/MovGHXXoAb pic.twitter.com/8NNz4BKXIp

— Google (@google) April 25, 2015

Google: Google also has a service designed to help you know whether friends and family are OK — it's called "Person Finder." According to Google's Asia Pacific blog, Person Finder "gives people a way to post and search for family or friends affected by the disaster." In a sense it crowdsources information about people in affected areas and in doing so collects an amazing amount of data. Through Person Finder you can create a listing for a person you're looking to get in touch with, or provide information about someone you've heard is safe. Search is available via the Web, or via SMS in Nepal, India or the United States.

Reduced cost of calls to #Nepal to 1/min (from 19/min) to help loved ones connect http://t.co/RjfHY8bCri @GoogleCR pic.twitter.com/fWEb70Pp8P

— Google (@google) April 27, 2015

And Google has reduced prices for Google Voice calls into Nepal from 19 cents per minute to 1 cent per minute, and Google.org, the company's charitable arm, pledged $1 million toward disaster relief and response.

Again, both of these services depend on infrastructure that is struggling to cope with demand. NPR's Kirk Siegler, who is in Kathmandu, noted that the local phone network "has been sporadic at best."

Microsoft: On Monday afternoon Microsoft announced free Skype calls to landlines and mobiles in Nepal. Microsoft has also pledged a minimum of $1 million to recovery efforts.

In light of the tragic events in Nepal, all Skype calls to landlines & mobiles in & out of Nepal are free. More: [http://t.co/pz8PwVcCq6

— Skype (@Skype) April 27, 2015

Sprint/T-Mobile: Both telecom firms have waived fees for calls and text messages sent by users in Nepal. The offer lasts through May 16, and is retroactive to April 25. On the question of whether users will have the capability to call or text Sprint notes that "it has been shown that text messages may go through when calling capabilities aren't available."

Viber: Chief Operating Officer Michael Shmilov told The Wall Street Journal that the voice and messaging app has approximately 3 million users in the Himalayan region. The company announced it would make calls for users in Nepal free to any destination.

In response to the earthquake in Nepal we have switched off Viber Out billing so Nepal users can call any destination for free

— Viber (@Viber) April 26, 2015

Tajha Chappellet-Lanier is the social media intern at NPR.

Nepal

Earthquake

Thanks to the fast-growing sharing economy, anyone can make money renting out their home or car — or becoming a personal chef.

Just ask Time magazine columnist Joel Stein. He decided to give the sharing economy a try, then wrote about his experience, The explosion of new social apps and services powering this new consumer landscape gave him the opportunity to run a few of his own DIY businesses. He rented out his Mini Cooper, drove people around in it a-la-Lyft and cooked for strangers.

'Sharing' As A Misnomer

A recent survey from PricewaterhouseCoopers shows the sharing economy is growing faster than ever, led by Airbnb and Uber. And those participating feel it's more personal and convenient.

Of the 44 percent of U.S. adults who are familiar with the sharing economy, 86 percent say it makes life more affordable, 83 percent say it makes life more convenient and efficient and 78 percent say it builds a stronger community.

All Tech Considered

For Ridesharing Apps Like Lyft, Commerce Is A Community

All Tech Considered

What's Mine Is Yours (For A Price) In The Sharing Economy

A lot of companies prefer the term, "on demand" economy, Stein tells NPR's Robert Siegel. What's really happening, Stein says, is "people wanting things as soon as they can get them by pressing a button on their phone."

Part of what's transforming our consumption habits is that we have a different relationship to property because "things" are more accessible and less valuable, Stein says. So we're spending more money on experiences. According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, 43 percent of consumers say that "owning today feels like a burden."

Stein lost money when it came to running his own restaurant, but was profitable driving others and charging $35 a day to rent out his car.

The Human Element

Stein used RelayRides — an Avis or Hertz of car-sharing — to rent out his Mini Cooper. He found that rentees picked up his car from his house and often went the extra step to fill up the gas tank.

Still, there are downsides of becoming your own small business. One Sicilian customer asked what the R, D and N meant on his stick shift — a clue that he would later get a call from her telling him she'd had an accident. But RelayRides's insurance handled it "amazingly," Stein says, and covered the damage.

A large part of what makes this collaborative consumption work is getting strangers to trust strangers. Sites like eBay were testing grounds when it came to building a level of trust in online peer-to-peer transactions. Several people who used to work for eBay now work in the sharing economy, Stein says, which adopted the model of getting the user and the provider to rate each other. It reduces the number of bad actors and promotes trust amongst strangers, otherwise built by the reputation of a brand name of a big business.

"If you want a more personal experience, or in most cases, a cheaper experience, you take a little more risk with an Airbnb, but you get a less generic experience than you do at a big name hotel," Stein says.

And these companies are on the market value scale of large corporations, like Delta Airlines and Hilton Worldwide. PricewaterhouseCoopers projects that by 2025, global revenues from sharing economy companies will soar to an estimated $335 billion, from about $15 billion today.

A Sharing Economy Horror Story

It may be a more personal experience, but it's still a business transaction. So, what happens when something goes wrong in the peer-to-peer setting? In a darker story of Airbnb experiences, the host passed away while the guest was staying in her apartment.

Jordan Ruttenberg, a student at Wesleyan University, relocated to Brooklyn for a summer job with his friend Connor. They booked a place through Airbnb. His host, who they met once via Skype, was in California at the time. Mid-stay, Connor noticed messages on their host's Facebook wall in the tone of: "You have to pull out of this" or "We need you."

After reaching out to a friend of the host, he learned she had overdosed and been pulled off life support. His arrangement turned eerie, as he continued to stay in this woman's apartment, with all her personal belongings and photographs.

Ultimately, the host's brother contacted Ruttenberg, asking when his checkout date was, assuming the procedural manner of a business arrangement.

"I recognize the tragedy in it," Ruttenberg says, "but our relationship with her was a logistical one. And so, her death for us was largely of a logistical nature."

Ruttenberg says he would still use Airbnb for short-term stays.

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