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Stephanie Packer was 29 when she found out she had a terminal lung disease.

Shots - Health News

Contemplating Brittany Maynard's Final Choice

That's the same age as Brittany Maynard, who last year was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Last fall, Maynard, of Northern California, opted to end her life with the help of a doctor in Oregon, where physician-assisted suicide is legal.

Maynard's story continues to garner support for right-to-die legislation moving through legislatures in California and several other states. Now another young California woman is stepping up to share her story, but she wants people to draw a different conclusion.

Stephanie Packer is in her kitchen, preparing lunch with her four children on a recent spring afternoon.

"Do you want to help?" she asks the eager crowd of siblings gathered tightly around her at the stovetop.

"Yeah!" yells 5-year-old Savannah.

"I do!" says Jacob, who is 8.

Calmly managing four kids as each vies for the chance to help make chicken salad sandwiches can be trying, but Packer cherishes these moments.

Shots - Health News

California Faith Groups Divided Over Right-To-Die Bill

In 2012, after suffering a series of debilitating lung infections, she went to a doctor who diagnosed her with scleroderma. The autoimmune disease causes hardening of the skin and (in about one-third of cases) other organs. The doctor told Packer that it had settled in her lungs.

"And I said, 'OK, what does this mean for me?' " she recalls. "And he said, 'Well, with this condition you have about three years left to live.' "

Packer, 32, is on oxygen full time and she takes a slew of medications.

She says she has been diagnosed with a series of conditions linked to or associated with scleroderma, including lupus, gastroparesis, Raynaud's phenomenon, interstitial cystitis and trigeminal neuralgia.

The Two-Way

As Planned, Right-To-Die Advocate Brittany Maynard Ends Her Life

Packer's various maladies have her in constant, sometimes excruciating pain, she says. She also can't digest food properly and feels extremely fatigued almost all the time.

Some days, Packer says, are good. Others are marked by low energy and pain that only sleep can relieve.

"For my kids, I need to be able to control the pain because that's what concerns them the most," she says.

But Packer says physician-assisted suicide isn't something she is considering.

"Wanting the pain to stop, wanting the humiliating side effects to go away — that's absolutely natural," Packer says. "I absolutely have been there and I still get there some days. But I don't get to that point of wanting to end it all, because I have been given the tools to understand that today is a horrible day, but tomorrow doesn't have to be."

She and husband Brian, 36, are devout Catholics. They agree with their church that doctors should never hasten death.

"We're a faith-based family," he says. "God put us here on earth and only God can take us away. And he has a master plan for us, and if suffering is part of that plan, which it seems to be, then so be it."

Stephanie Packer, 32, is terminally ill with the autoimmune disease scleroderma. Stephanie O'Neill/KPCC hide caption

itoggle caption Stephanie O'Neill/KPCC

They also believe if California legislation called SB 128 passes, it would create the potential for abuse. Pressure to end one's life, they fear, could become a dangerous norm, especially in a world defined by high-cost medical care.

Instead of fatal medication, Stephanie says she hopes other terminally ill people consider existing palliative medicine and hospice care.

"Death can be beautiful and peaceful," she says. "It's a natural process that should be allowed to happen on its own." Even, she says, when it poses uncomfortable challenges.

Brian has traded his full-time job at a lumber company for weekend handyman work so he can care for Stephanie and the children. The family downsized, moving into a two-bedroom apartment they share with their dog and two pet geckos.

Brian says life is good.

"I have four beautiful children. I get to spend so much more time with them than most head of households," he says. "I get to spend more time with my wife than most husbands do."

Shots - Health News

A Busy ER Doctor Slows Down To Help Patients Cope With Adversity

And it's that kind of support — from family, friends and people in her community — that Stephanie says keeps her living in gratitude, even as she struggles with her terminal illness and the realization that she will not be there to see her children grow up.

"I know eventually that my lungs are going to give out, which will make my heart give out," she says. "And I know that's going to happen sooner than I would like — sooner than my family would like. But I'm not making that my focus. My focus is today."

Stephanie says she is hoping for a double lung transplant, which could give her a few more years. In the meantime, this month marks three years since her doctor gave her three years to live. So every day, she says, is a blessing.

This story is part of a partnership with NPR, KPCC and Kaiser Health News.

right to die

Brittany Maynard

assisted suicide

CAlifornia

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.