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So who does drink the most soda in the world, anyway?

That's a question that popped into my mind after the series finale of Mad Men. Ad man Don Draper goes on a hippie retreat, chants some "oms" and then the famous 1971 Coke jingle, sung by an ethnically diverse group of youth, begins to play: "I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company. It's the real thing."

There's debate over what that means on the show. Did Draper write the jingle?

But as the host of a blog called Goats and Soda, I was focused on soda data: How are Coco-Cola and the other Big Soda companies, Pepsi and Dr Pepper, doing in efforts to sell the world its carbonated beverages — especially the developing world?

To find out, I spoke to two beverage analysts: Will McKitterick of IBISWorld and Howard Telford of Euromonitor International.

Sales of soda are still huge in North America and Western Europe. We're talking 12.76 billion gallons last year in the U.S. alone. But consumption of soda in these markets is stagnating or declining, McKitterick and Telford say. There are various theories why: concerns about extra calories and artificial ingredients used to sweeten diet sodas; interest in other beverages, such as energy and fruit drinks, water and tea.

To boost soda sales, companies are looking elsewhere, like Africa and Asia. There's a rising middle class in those regions, and people have more disposable income for treats like soda.

"And you have a large young population that's growing," McKitterick says. Their parents may stick to local brands — that's especially true in China. But the young'uns "may be more willing to purchase new brands and international brands coming into the country." Like Coke and Pepsi.

So the message of that 1971 ad is more important than ever, Telford says, because Big Soda is "depending on driving consumption in the emerging world."

Some governments aren't happy about that. With rising rates of obesity and diabetes, Mexico last year levied a one peso tax (about 7 cents) on soda and other sweetened drinks. Early indications are that the soda tax has caused a drop in consumption, McKitterick says.

There's a global twist to the Mexico story. Mexico bottles a version of Coke sweetened with cane sugar instead of the corn syrup used in the U.S. Coca-Cola says the taste is the same either way, but "MexiCoke," as it's nicknamed, is imported into the States because some purists prefer cane sugar. They're willing to pay a little more to get what they think of as — to quote the 1971 ad — "the real thing."

Coke

soda

Pepsi

Earlier this month, almost 2,000 radio fanatics gathered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) to listen in as Marc Maron, the neurotic and sometimes gruff comedian and podcast host, interviewed Fresh Air's Terry Gross. He is known for being vulnerable and bringing his personal life into his interviews; she tends to keep her personal life separate from her work. The conversation that resulted blurs those two styles and ends up revealing aspects of Gross' life that even the biggest Fresh Air fans may find surprising.

Maron is the host of WTF, a podcast he started in his garage in 2009. WTF began as a way for Maron to talk about life and career success with other comics, and it has expanded to include musicians, actors and directors — and now the host of Fresh Air.

Gross has previously interviewed Maron for Fresh Air, but those interviews were conducted in separate studios; the sit-down at BAM was the first time the two met in person. In her introduction to the interview, Gross says, "When I'd met him backstage before the show, I really wanted to talk with him, but we agreed — let's save it for the interview."

During the course of their conversation, Maron and Gross discussed her childhood in Brooklyn, her beginnings in radio and her record- and book-strewn apartment. For her part, Gross says that Maron's "no bulls***" style made her feel comfortable opening up to him. "I couldn't look you in the eye and not tell you the truth," she tells him.

Interview Highlights

On preparing for interviews

Maron: I'm a little nervous, but I've prepared. I've written things on a piece of paper. I don't know how you prepare — I could ask you that, maybe I will — but this is how I prepare: I panic for a while, and then I scramble and then I type some things up and then I hand write things that are hard to read so I can challenge myself on that level during the interview.

Gross: Being self-defeating is always a good part of preparation.

Maron: Yes!

Gross: Self sabotage.

Maron: So you do that?

Gross: I sometimes do that.

Maron: How often?

Gross: I try not to do that, I do that more in life than I do in radio. ... Life is harder than radio.

On wanting to be a lyricist when she was young

Gross: When I was in high school I wanted to be a lyricist. ... Brooklyn public schools used to have something called SING! where you'd put on a show, each grade would put on a show at the end of the year and you'd write your own storyline. You'd borrow melodies from Broadway shows and write your own lyrics. So I was one of the lyricists for each year that I was there. And part of the time I was in high school my friends shared this interest in theater and it was great, and I thought, "If I could live that life where there's theater and there's song and there's music and people designing scenery and painting it, that would just be super." And then I thought, "How do you get there? How the hell do you get there?" But it was kind of thrilling if somebody sang a lyric that I wrote. Like once I was walking down the street and I heard a couple of the basketball players singing a lyric that I wrote and I thought, "That is really — that's just fabulous."

Maron: It's great! Do you remember the lyrics?

Gross: No.

Maron: Really?

Gross: Yeah. I'm lying, I wouldn't tell you.

Maron: That's what you won't tell me? That's where you draw the line? At a lyric that some basketball players were singing? That's what you don't want America to know about you?

Gross: Yeah.

On her library and record collection

Gross: Here's what typically happens: [My husband] spends a lot of time in record stores looking for unusual and interesting things.

Maron: So he's a vinyl guy.

Gross: Our house is like — it's kind of like we're living in a record store and library.

Interviews

Marc Maron: A Life Fueled By 'Panic And Dread'

Maron: So now we're talking. There are just stacks of records everywhere. I know the vinyl addiction.

Gross: Records and CDs and piles.

Maron: So do you walk around the house going, "Are you kidding me?"

Gross: Yes!

Maron: "I can't get into the bathroom!"

Gross: It is a little like that. But anyways —

Maron: No, no, no.

Gross: Is your house like that?

Maron: Is my house? No, no, let's stay in your house.

Gross: My house is like a little apartment.

Maron: That's how I pictured it. Every time I talk to you on the air I always picture you in some weird bunker surrounded by books.

Gross: It's kind of like that.

On hitchhiking across the country with her first husband when she was in college

Gross: My parents, when I decided to hitchhike cross-country, they were very, very upset about it.

Maron: I'm upset now.

Gross: Well, now that I'm the age that I am, I think, like "My gosh, no wonder they were so upset!" But my attitude then was, you know, "You're not telling me what to do! You don't control me." ...

Maron: Was this a big deal for you, was it against character?

I think I'm intellectually adventurous — I'm adventurous in my musical taste, in my artistic taste. I'm not a physically adventurous person. I'm not a risk-taker when it comes to the outside world.

- Terry Gross

Gross: It was totally against character. And the fact is that I think my boyfriend wanted to do it probably more than I did, because I'm really not the adventurous type. I think I'm intellectually adventurous — I'm adventurous in my musical taste, in my artistic taste. I'm not a physically adventurous person. I'm not a risk-taker when it comes to the outside world. ...

Maron: So you know that about yourself now, but this must've been a fairly powerful bit of business for you personally?

Gross: It was, and it was weird. I hitchhiked rides. Like there was somebody who was probably just out of prison and somebody else who probably had tuberculosis, judging from how he was coughing, and in the back of a truck with probably — they were probably migrant workers and there were axes all over. I don't think they planned on using them against us, but it is a kind of creepy feeling to be in the back of a pickup truck where there's axes. And if my ex-boyfriend/husband is listening to this, I hope his memories jibe with mine because I can't swear to the accuracy of my memory, but it was just totally creepy.

On having more intimate conversations on mic than off

Gross: Can I get a chance to ask you a question?

Maron: In a minute! In a minute! I know how that goes. I'm trying to hold the line, Terry. These are professional boundaries. I'm the questioner. But how are you with joy? I'm asking this because — this is all I know: I became an interviewer for reasons that had nothing to do with interviewing. ... I don't know if you feel this way, you say you work all the time, but you talk to people professionally and you elicit things from them and you draw people out ... but do you get something out of that emotionally? Because I find in my life that I'm capable of almost a deeper intimacy with —

Gross: That was the question I was going to ask you!

Maron: Well, I'm asking you first!

Gross: OK. Yes.

Maron: Looks like I beat you to it. I'm learning. I just feel like I had one of these weird kind of "Yes, I'm glad that I'm on the right track if I came up with a question that you already had in your mind." Do you?

Here I am, talking to people who I'm not in the room with. ... I don't know them, they don't know me, and I'm asking them about death. And here's my friend who is dying and I'm not talking with her about death. ... I felt it would've been intrusive in a way that it's not with my interviewees because she was not ready to talk about it.

- Terry Gross

Gross: It's a weird thing. I'll give you an example. I often ask people who have a history of illness or who are near death — because I've interviewed people who are near death — I've asked them very intimate things about facing death and about their attitudes toward death. I ask people a lot about how they want to buried, or if they want to be buried or if they'd prefer to be cremated. I had a friend a couple of years ago who was also a neighbor who died and I spent a lot of time with her at the end of her life, shopping for food for her, making some food for her. And I knew she didn't want to talk about facing death and she was really not ready to do it. To the end, she didn't want to talk about it. So here I am, talking to people who I'm not in the room with. ... I don't know them, they don't know me, and I'm asking them about death. And here's my friend who is dying and I'm not talking with her about death. But there's a reason for that and I felt it would've been intrusive in a way that it's not with my interviewees because she was not ready to talk about it.

On meeting in real life

Maron: I guess it's sort of shocking to me because my experience with you is only with voice. This is the first time I've seen you moving. I think for a while there, pre-Internet, there was no pictures of you available anywhere. Like I didn't really know what you looked like, but just your voice made me want to be a better person.

Gross: Have I accomplished that?

Maron: Yeah, I think so. I get nervous. Like, talking to you now is good. Like, I don't know why you interview, but for me it's to get very deep emotional needs met. So, like, I seem to be getting along with you, we're connecting, that makes me happy. It doesn't feel difficult to me. I know you're wondering how this is going, I'm telling you from my point of view that I'm having a nice time.

Gross: So am I.

Maron: But when I'm in the studio talking to you I'm standing up straight and I want to impress you. Like one time I made you snort-laugh and I was like, "I win!" I heard you laugh and snort and I'm like, "I'm done with radio. I can wear that as a badge of honor."

We tried our best to translate this conversation into print, but some things are just better in audio. For the full effect, click the audio link above.

Before there was George, there was Sid.

George Stephanopoulos is, of course, the ABC news anchor whose $75,000 in donations to the Clinton Foundation have reminded the world of his longtime ties to Bill Clinton, for whom he worked from 1991 to 1997.

But before Stephanopoulos had entered the picture, another journalist with an activist history, Sidney Blumenthal, had already established himself as an admirer of Bill Clinton and as a confidant of both the future president and his wife, Hillary. That relationship, begun in the 1980s, would last for decades and continues to make news today.

In 2007, Blumenthal advised Hillary Clinton's campaign for president, using his rhetorical razor on her rival, the future President Obama. When she became secretary of state she reportedly wanted to offer a job to Blumenthal but was blocked by the White House. Nonetheless, he remained an informal advisor and worked for the Clinton Foundation. In those roles, he sent her 25 emails relevant to U.S. policy in Libya and that country's political and economic future.

Those emails have now been subpoenaed by the special House committee investigating events in Libya in September 2012 that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

Hillary Clinton weighed in on her relationship with Blumenthal Tuesday, saying that he had sent her "unsolicited" emails when she was secretary of state that she had, in some instances, "passed on."

"I have many, many old friends, and I always think it's important, when you get into politics to have friends you had before you were in politics. ... I'm going to keep talking to my old friends whoever they are," she said.

To say Blumenthal has been no stranger to controversy is to understate the case. As a writer and advocate, Blumenthal could tap into the dreams and fears of the left while triggering the deepest dread and loathing imaginable on the right. Both reactions seemed to nourish his closeness with the Clintons. And that is a closeness that stretches back nearly three decades.

In 1988, when Bill Clinton was still governor of Arkansas, Sidney Blumenthal was already writing flattering pieces about him in The Washington Post. He had already met both Bill and Hillary Clinton at one of their Renaissance Weekend gatherings.

It would be another three years before Stephanopoulos would join Clinton's first presidential campaign. There he would find a ready ally in Blumenthal, who had moved from the Post to his previous employer, The New Republic. Blumenthal had generated controversy at that magazine in 1984 with his enthusiastic coverage of another youthful Democratic presidential hopeful, Colorado Sen. Gary Hart.

The Hart flirtation was soon surpassed by Blumenthal's infatuation with Clinton, whose 1992 campaign he praised for its potential to bring "epochal change." He also found ample opportunity to lay waste to Clinton's rivals — President George H.W. Bush and the billionaire independent H. Ross Perot.

After Clinton became president, Blumenthal became the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, a prestigious position that gave him wide latitude to report on the new era and the new administration. He did not see it as his job to report on various controversies that emerged early on, such as the White House Travel Office firings and then the Whitewater investigation. That fell to other New Yorker reporters, of whom Blumenthal was subsequently critical.

Even as the Clintons' health care bill collapsed and the Republicans took over both the House and Senate in the elections of 1994, Blumenthal remained ardently supportive, touting his access and long interviews with the president. This dovetailed with his tendency to self-assurance and dismissal of other points of view. His relations with other reporters on the beat deteriorated as he criticized their work and, it became clear, discussed it with the Clintons in private.

Although Blumenthal continued to write for The New Yorker, Michael Kelly took over as the principal voice of the magazine's Washington coverage as the administration turned toward the 1996 campaign. Blumenthal wrote a play lampooning the White House press corps that was performed at the National Press Club. Wherever one draws the line between "roasting" and expressing contempt, Blumenthal did not seem reluctant to cross it.

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Blumenthal was one of just four witnesses deposed by the U.S. Senate when it tried (and acquitted) Clinton on the impeachment charges early in 1999. AP hide caption

itoggle caption AP

Blumenthal was one of just four witnesses deposed by the U.S. Senate when it tried (and acquitted) Clinton on the impeachment charges early in 1999.

AP

But if his connection to his professional colleagues was strained, his relations with the Clintons remained robust — enough so that in the summer of 1997 he was hired as Special Assistant and Advisor to the President. In February 1998 he received a subpoena from the special prosecutor who was probing the Monica Lewinsky case that would lead to Clinton's impeachment. He testified to the grand jury twice that year, and was one of just four witnesses deposed by the U.S. Senate when it tried (and acquitted) Clinton on the impeachment charges early in 1999.

In 2003, Blumenthal published his own version of the stormy 1990s, entitled The Clinton Wars. The book features photographs of himself with both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan described Blumenthal as "the most pro-Clinton writer on the planet."

Blumenthal, 66, was raised in Chicago and graduated from Brandeis University in Boston in 1969. He worked for the alternative Real Paper there. In 1980 he published a prescient analytical book called The Permanent Campaign, describing how fixation on electoral politics had begun to paralyze governing in the U.S. He has subsequently written four other books, including Pledging Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War a description of presidential politics in 1988. He also gathered his criticisms of the presidency of George W. Bush in How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime.

Throughout his career, Blumenthal has had a propensity to feuding with other writers. Some were ideological adversaries, such as Sullivan. Some had published false stories about him, as Matt Drudge admitted to doing in 1997. Others were colleagues, such as Michael Kelly at The New Yorker. Some were friends or former friends, such as Christopher Hitchens, with whom he fell out over specific events or issues. In 2013, Blumenthal found himself dueling with critics of his son, Max, whose book Goliath compared excesses of the Jewish state in Israel to those of the Nazi regime in Germany.

Shirin Neshat, the most famous contemporary artist to come from Iran, is playing with her rambunctious Labrador puppy in her airy Manhattan apartment. "Ashi, Ashi, come here!" she calls.

The puppy is black. Neshat's apartment is white — white floors, white bookshelves and a long, white leather couch. Black and white defines much of Neshat's work. Her photographs capture the stark contrast between women in long black chadors and men in crisp white cotton shirts. Neshat left Iran as a teenager in 1974 to attend school in Los Angeles. She did not return until 1990.

"When I went to Iran, I was not an artist yet," Neshat says modestly. In truth, she'd been deeply involved in the art world. After studying painting at UC Berkeley, she co-ran a well-regarded non-profit space for art, architecture and design in New York.

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Calligraphy is often layered on the people in Neshat's photos. It falls over them like veils, or tattoos their skin. Curator Melissa Ho says text gives these silent faces a voice. Above, Neshat's 1996 work Speechless from the Women of Allah series. Photograph by Larry Barns/Courtesy Gladstone Gallery hide caption

itoggle caption Photograph by Larry Barns/Courtesy Gladstone Gallery

Calligraphy is often layered on the people in Neshat's photos. It falls over them like veils, or tattoos their skin. Curator Melissa Ho says text gives these silent faces a voice. Above, Neshat's 1996 work Speechless from the Women of Allah series.

Photograph by Larry Barns/Courtesy Gladstone Gallery

But Neshat's sense of herself as an artist changed after going back to Iran, 11 years after the Islamic revolution transformed her country. Men no longer made eye contact with her. Cosmopolitan Tehranian women who'd worn mini-skirts during her youth had become graphic shapes on the street. Neshat processed her complicated feelings through a series of striking, staged photographs showing women in chadors, some holding guns. Neshat was not the photographer, but she conceptualized and directed the Women of Allah series, and appeared in many of them. She says it's meant to explore the dictomy between religion, politics, violence and feminism.

That's exactly why Melissa Chiu decided to mount a Shirin Neshat retrospective as her inaugural exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Chiu is the museum's brand new director.

"In order to be a 21st-century museum, we have to think about the world in different ways." Chiu says. The Hirshhorn is Smithsonian's home for contemporary art. She wants it to reflect contemporary realities encompassed by Neshat's art and experience.

"This idea of being born in one place, living and working in multiple places — that is a condition that will only increase," Chiu says.

Associate curator Melissa Ho, who helped organize the exhibition, says, "Shirin really believes in the power of the artists' voice to enact change, to unsettle the powerful" — and to protest.

She points to one of Neshat's best known works of video art, Turbulent which is featured in the Hirshhorn show. There are two screens. You stand between them. One features a man singing a classical poem before an adoring all-male audience. Then on the other, a woman in an empty stage sings a wild, guttural and language-less song. It leaves the men on the other screen completely stunned.

"Her music and her presence in this room represents something rebellious," Neshat explains. "... This is indicative of how I feel about women in Iran. In the way that they are so far against the wall, but they are far more resilient and protesting and they're much more of a fighter than the men because they have much more at stake."

The same themes play out in Neshat's movie, Women Without Men, about four Tehranian women from very different class backgrounds who find themselves in a mystical garden in 1953. It's set in 1953, when the CIA helped overthrow the county's first democratically elected leader Mohammad Mossadegh. The film earned Neshat a Silver Lion for directing at the Venice Film Festival in 2009.

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Neshat says her art is about "people who fight power versus people who hold power." Above her 2013 work Rahim (Our House Is on Fire). Photograph by Larry Barns/Courtesy Gladstone Gallery hide caption

itoggle caption Photograph by Larry Barns/Courtesy Gladstone Gallery

Neshat says her art is about "people who fight power versus people who hold power." Above her 2013 work Rahim (Our House Is on Fire).

Photograph by Larry Barns/Courtesy Gladstone Gallery

"The female characters are the non-comformists," says curator Melissa Ho. "Sometimes only quietly or maybe out of sight, but they resist, and they sort of take control of their story, and they decide to defy the rules."

Much like Shirin Neshat. Her art at first was made just for her, a bridge from a place of exile. "And I never imagined that my work someday would be looked upon as a form of dialogue, larger than my own personal life," she says.

"I am not a practicing Muslim," she adds. " I consider myself a secular Muslim. I do have my faith and certain rituals that I do, and I go to mosque when I can, when I'm traveling in that part of the world. I love the sound of the Koran."

Neshat's been working in Egypt recently — shooting a new feature film, about the singer Umm Kulthum, and creating a newer series of portraiture — simple, shattering shots of working class parents in Egypt whose children were killed or arrested during the Arab Spring.

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"It's really about the question of people versus tyranny," she says. "And people who fight power versus people who hold power."

Neshat wants to leverage her current considerable power in the art world to bring more voices from Iran and the Arab world into the global cultural conversation.