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You probably recognize him as the energized muscle man with the ponytail selling his exercise machine, The Gazelle, on late-night infomercials: Tony Little, also known as America's Personal Trainer.

He's been into bodybuilding since his teenage years. After a knee injury playing football in high school, he was taken off the field and into the weight room.

"I wasn't allowed to take gym class because my knee would pop out of joint," Little says. "I sat down and talked to the principal and said to him, 'Hey listen, I'm really a physical guy. This is driving me nuts not to have gym class. Is it possible that if I lifted weights, could I get credits for gym class if I was working out?' "

The school made an exception for him and Little discovered a passion for bodybuilding.

"I entered my first contest and won it and then entered my second contest and won it," he says. "Right after my second contest, I mean, I was offered sponsorships. And I did become Mr. Florida, so that was pretty cool."

Little was on track to the prestigious Mr. America competition back in the early '80s. He says he had a real shot at winning back then.

"Maybe three to five weeks out from being in it, I was driving," he says. "And a loaded school bus ran a red light. It's like everything turned slow motion when you see the yellow."

The bus slammed into his car.

"I was more adrenaline-freaked-out that it was a school bus than anything," he says. "So I hopped out of the car and tried to help and the bus driver locked the door."

He later found out that the bus driver was drunk.

Little was lucky to be alive, but his dreams of becoming Mr. America were shattered.

"I had three herniated discs out of the five lower lumbar disks in my back," Little says. "And I had a vertebrae in my neck that was protruding, was hitting the nerves in my right shoulder and arm."

He says he was in excruciating pain. For the next two years, he was cooped up in a small condo without a job and without any exercise.

“ You start upping the painkillers and drinking alcohol. And all it was doing was just putting me down, down, down, down.

- Tony Little

"You start upping the painkillers and drinking alcohol," Little says. "And all it was doing was just putting me down, down, down, down. And just getting depressed upon depressed upon depressed."

Most of his time was spent watching TV. And that's exactly what got him back on his feet.

Little happened to flip on one of Jane Fonda's exercise programs.

"She was starting a revolution [to get people to] do group exercise, which I thought was pretty cool," Little says. "Because she had a video, I wanted a video too, you know?"

He was motivated enough to leave his condo and go to the local cable company to inquire about his own televised exercise program.

"Fifteen shows for $5,500 and you can have your own show on TV at 250,000 homes," he says. "I said, 'Okay, I'll do it.' "

It was his big break.

"And that's when I started, 'You can do it!' " Little says. "You got to believe in yourself, man. We only have one shot in life and you got to make it a solid one. And sometimes it might have to be a hundred shots."

First, there was James Foley. Then Steven Sotloff. Finally, Abdul Rahman Kassig, also known as Peter Kassig. All three were American hostages, brutally murdered by the so-called Islamic State.

This past week the White House confirmed that it's conducting a review of its hostage policy, but in a press conference, White House spokesman Josh Earnest says the United States will not change its policy on ransoms: America does not pay them.

Instead, the review will focus on how the U.S. government manages itself in a hostage situation and how the many agencies involved communicate with the families of the victims.

Some of the families say they've been left in the dark.

The Two-Way

Obama Orders Review Of U.S. Hostage Policy

What Families Know

"We had no one who updated us. Let's put it that way ... no one at all," says Diane Foley, the mother of James Foley, who was infamously killed this August by the group which calls itself the Islamic State.

"I found out that Jim had been beheaded by a journalist who called me crying on the phone. That's how I found out," she tells NPR's Rachel Martin. "No one from State or FBI or the White House reached out to us at all. None of them confirmed the authenticity. I mean, it was just awful."

Dane Egli managed hostage situations for the Bush administration during the Iraq War. At the worst point, he says he put a poster up to keep track of all the Americans who'd gone missing — upwards of 50 at one point. His story of communication with families painted a different picture than the one Diane Foley experienced.

"The national leadership would get involved and call family members when it was appropriate. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, National Security Adviser Dr. Condoleeza Rice," he says. "There would be occasions when we might put them on the phone. They might ask to talk to parents or members of the family. Just each case was different."

The Price Of A Life

There is also the issue of ransoms. Diane Foley says her family did at points contemplate collecting and offering a ransom for James' return, which would go against official U.S. policy.

But Foley says even if the government hadn't intended to pay a ransom to free her son, talking to the terrorists could have yielded key intelligence about her son's location.

Parallels

Once Tolerated, Westerners Are Now Targeted By Radical Islamists

Egli, the former White House adviser, concedes there are moments when just engaging has its advantages.

"I think you have to acknowledge there's going to be some situations where if you could beat them at their game that you might temporarily allow a waiver for a case," Egli says.

In other words, engage. Maybe even make a half-baked promise, he says. Walk right up to the line without crossing it.

"Be it offering them a ransom or a ride on the space shuttle that no longer exists. In the trading, horse trading schnookery business, you would try to beat them at their game," he says.

But in Egli's estimation, the recent release of Sgt. Beau Bergdahl, held in captivity by the Taliban, in exchange for five high-ranking Taliban officials may have crossed a line into ransom-paying.

"This threw us off a little bit, those of us that were ex-military that have been in the hostage rescue business," Egli says. "It sends a message to the families or those who had hostages who were killed. 'Well, how come we didn't trade or do something for our family members?'"

National Security

Should The U.S. Pay Ransom For ISIS Hostages?

Diane Foley says she was grateful for the Bergdahl's family reunion. "And since they had negotiated with the Taliban for his release I was certainly hopeful that they would do a similar thing for the four other Americans being held. So I was incredulous when that did not happen."

Egli says having a government pay a ransom, cash or otherwise, provides short-term gain at a enormous long-term loss.

"While you may enjoy having your loved one freed, the millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars that were just transferred in cash to al-Qaida or ISIS ... have just underwritten their next mission," he says.

Few Options For Families

Even so, history suggests some room for ambiguity. New York Times reporter David Rohde, who was held hostage by the Taliban in 2008 and 2009, says the American government has a long-standing practice when it comes to ransom payments of saying one thing publicly and sometimes doing another.

"The real policy is the government will not pay, but companies and families have paid for a long time and the government has turned a blind eye," Rohde says.

The families are in an impossible position, Rohde says. They want to do something, but "it's actually not in your hands in the end.You're trapped in these massive international geopolitical struggles," he says.

The Two-Way

U.S. Forces Tried To Rescue Foley, Other Hostages In Syria

"The cruelest thing about a kidnapping is that it gives the family the false sense that they can, if they just try hard enough, they can save their loved ones," he says. "But the kind of kidnapping we have today, the groups involved, that's just not true."

That certainly doesn't mean most families give up. In 2012, Marc and Debra Tice's son Austin was taken hostage in Syria while he was working as a freelance journalist. They have not heard from his captors but they still believe their son is alive.

Like Diane Foley, they feel the U.S. government has held them at too far a distance, denying them security clearance to learn more information about their son's situation, if there is any. They also say they feel shut out of the current review of hostage policy.

"We haven't been given a role," Debra Tice says. Her husband Marc says they have asked to participate but no one from the government has contacted them.

Debra Tice says if she was to meet with the president she'd like to tell him the following: "We would certainly ask him to think about what limits would he accept on finding his own child and bringing them safely home."

"We just would beseech him to think of our son in the very same way," she says.

A spokesperson for the White House declined NPR's request for an interview on the hostage policy review.

The turducken — a whole chicken stuffed inside a whole duck stuffed inside a whole turkey, all boneless — is a relatively recent culinary phenomenon. Though popularized in the past 20 years with the help of Louisiana's Chef Paul Prudhomme and John Madden, who brought one to a football game broadcast in 1997, the turducken actually builds on a long tradition of creative bird-into-bird stuffing.

Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reynire, the world's first restaurant critic, in 1803 launched the Almanach des Gourmands, what the Paris-based dining historian Carolin Young calls the world's first serial food journal. He would edit and publish this best-selling guide to seasonal cooking and restaurants until 1812.

Like any good publisher, Grimod de la Reynire knew he needed to slide in some extra flair from time to time. And in 1807, he put out a recipe for rti sans pareil, the roast without equal.

The Salt

Frogs And Puffins! 1730s Menus Reveal Royals Were Extreme Foodies

The daredevil-ish recipe calls for a tiny warbler stuffed in a bunting, inserted in a lark, squeezed in a thrush, thrown in a quail, inserted in a lapwing, introduced to a plover, piled into a partridge, wormed into a woodcock, shoehorned into a teal, kicked into a guinea fowl, rammed inside a duck, shoved into a chicken, jammed up in a pheasant, wedged deep inside a goose, logged into a turkey. And just when you think a 16-bird roast is probably enough, it's not. This meat sphere is finally crammed up into a Great Bustard, an Old World turkey-turned-wrapping paper, for this most epic of poultry meals.

Holiday Recipes

The Veggieducken: A Meatless Dish With Gravitas

While there's no record of anyone actually making the rti sans pareil, Grimod de la Reynire seemingly achieved what is every publisher's goal: capturing (generations of) eyeballs. (If you want a visual of the concoction, check out the illustrations that Wired magazine and Vice came up with.)

It's clear that culinary stunts with meat started long before chefs were grilling steaks with molten lava. Take the cockentrice, a half-pig, half-turkey combo that rode the line between mythical beast and gastronomic masterpiece during the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century. It's been re-created by Richard Fitch, the project coordinator for the Historic Kitchens at Hampton Palace, who told Vice that while these dishes certainly weren't the norm, Henry VIII once served a cockentrice and a dolphin to the French King, Francis I. (As we've previously reported, royals of that era went to great lengths for a culinary thrill.)

While the roti may seem freakish or excessive today, we do have the bacon-wrapped alligator, a sort of modern-day meat mummy.

For those who heart turducken, the demand is high enough that big-box stores like Sam's Club and Costco now stock them. There's even a vegetarian version, if the stuffing concept floats your boat.

food history

Thanksgiving

After a spate of deadly violence in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to speed up home demolitions of attackers as a punishment and deterrent.

This week, the family home of Palestinian Abdel Rahman Shaludi was destroyed. Last month, Shaludi, age 20, drove a car into a crowd of people waiting for a light rail train, killing a 3-month-old baby immediately and injuring eight others, including a woman visiting from Ecuador who later died.

Police fatally shot Shaludi at the scene.

i i

Israeli policemen secure the scene after Shaludi drove into a group of pedestrians in east Jerusalem on Oct. 22. Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

Israeli policemen secure the scene after Shaludi drove into a group of pedestrians in east Jerusalem on Oct. 22.

Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

At half past midnight Wednesday, Israeli soldiers arrived at the East Jerusalem building where he had lived with his parents and five siblings.

"They didn't ring or knock on the door," says Shaludi's mother, Enas Shaludi, 43. "They only pushed in the door, rushed in and began to scream."

She says they were given five minutes to get on warm clothes and told to each take a blanket. Their family home is four stories tall, each floor with two apartments, each apartment the home of an extended family member.

Five days before the soldiers arrived, Israel had warned the family their home would be destroyed. So the parents and remaining five children had moved out their belongings and were sleeping in a relative's apartment on the same floor.

Everyone was forced to leave, waiting a few blocks away for several hours.

The military says soldiers used explosives to destroy the front outside wall and most interior walls of the apartment.

"It was dark, but we see the flashes and lights," says Enas Shaludi. "We heard breaking stones."

By the time they returned, the floor of the destroyed apartment was covered in concrete rubble. One wall of the attacker's bedroom was still standing, the lower half decorated in blue wallpaper with a pattern of hot air balloons.

All the apartments of the extended family were ransacked.

Tamir Shaludi, an uncle of Abdel Rahman, the attacker, owns the apartment just upstairs. He says soldiers broke his door and a mirrored table, turned over furniture, and emptied drawers and cupboards.

"Why?" he asks.

He worries his apartment is no longer structurally sound, and he feels this Israeli practice is patently unfair.

i i

Palestinian Nibras Shaludi, 13, holds a photo of her brother, Abdel Rahman Shaludi, in the remains of the family apartment that Israeli troops destroyed this week. Abdel Rahman Shaludi was fatally shot by police after he killed two people in Jerusalem last month. After a series of recent attacks, Israel is speeding up its once dormant policy of destroying attackers' family homes. Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

Palestinian Nibras Shaludi, 13, holds a photo of her brother, Abdel Rahman Shaludi, in the remains of the family apartment that Israeli troops destroyed this week. Abdel Rahman Shaludi was fatally shot by police after he killed two people in Jerusalem last month. After a series of recent attacks, Israel is speeding up its once dormant policy of destroying attackers' family homes.

Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

"I am very upset at what happened to my brother's apartment," he said, referring to the father of attacker Abdel Rahman Shaludi. "But I am even angrier that I'm punished too. Because I have never had one thought of even picking up a stone and throwing it at Israelis."

Not far away, the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof is recovering from Tuesday's synagogue attack, in which five Israelis died.

Neighborhood resident and young father Abraham Dick is studying to be a rabbi.

"Obviously everybody's still in pain," he said.

Israel plans to destroy the family homes of the two Palestinians who attacked the synagogue. Dick says he wishes Israel didn't have to.

"We are never in favor of aggression," he said. "But I would be in favor of it, if that's what it takes to save lives."

Israel stopped such home demolitions after military leaders questioned its effectiveness nearly a decade ago. According to statistics of the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, Israel destroyed just over 650 family homes of attackers between 2001 and 2004. Since then, the military has destroyed six homes for what B'tselem calls "punitive" reasons, including that of the Shaludi family.

Israel decided to revive the practice earlier this year. With the recent spate of attacks in Jerusalem, Netanyahu vowed to speed them up.

Knesset member Dov Lipman says he knows much of the world sees the practice as vindictive and collective punishment. But, despite the long hiatus of the practice, he believes it works.

"We know from interrogations over the years there are young people who do not carry out terror attacks because they know there will be implications for their families," he said. "The moment we know that, we have to do it. "

At least a half a dozen families of Palestinians who carried out attacks recently have received notices that their homes will be destroyed. They can appeal.

Meanwhile, Enas Shaludi isn't sure where her family will live now. But she tells her kids God will give them beautiful houses in heaven.

East Jerusalem

Israel

Israeli-Palestinian Coverage