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He directed and implemented what is arguably the most significant change in the FBI's 105
year history.
Robert Mueller has died.
He once led the FBI and later investigated President Trump for possible obstruction of
justice.
For Saturday, March 21, this is all things considered from NPR News.
I'm Adrian Mah.
Coming up, the U.S. has continued military operations in Iran make an off-ramp to war
increasingly difficult to see.
The people are not satisfied.
They want major forms, nevertheless, when they are attacked, they would defend their country.
Later, daily life in Cuba has become a desperate struggle.
I've lived in Cuba for 14 years and you are seeing people begin to live out of humanitarian
crisis in real time.
And we meet a Colombian musician who gives back the Latin jazz treatment.
First, the newscast.
Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst.
The Senate is holding a rare Saturday session, debating the Republicans Save America Act,
which has new requirements for voter registration and requires photo IDs at the polls to make
sure only citizens can vote.
But Democrats say federal law already blocks non-citizens from voting.
They're also debating ending the DHS shutdown and getting TSA workers paid.
Democrats have repeatedly blocked efforts to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security
without reforms to ICE.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Every bill they have brought before the Senate says, oh, yeah, we want to pay the TSA workers.
We want to reduce the lines and airports.
But only if you pass ICE funding with no reform and the American people want reform.
They know that.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
It's very, very hard to explain if we lead town this next week without having funded
the Department of Homeland Security.
Meanwhile, the Senate today blocked a proposal that would have banned trans athletes from
competing in women's sports.
Britain says Iran launched an unsuccessful missile attack at a joint British and American
base in the Indian Ocean, and Pierce Ruth Sherlock has more.
In a statement to NPR, the British Ministry of Defense accused Iran of lashing out across
the region after it said Iran had made a failed attempt to strike at Diego Garcia military
base.
It's unclear how close the missiles came to the base, located on the Chegos Islands
in the Indian Ocean, some 2,500 miles away from Iran.
The base has long been strategically important for the US, which has used it in military operations
from the Vietnam War to the invasion of Iraq and in other more recent conflicts.
The British government has said US bombers can use some British bases, including Diego
Garcia, for operations to prevent Iran attacking ships in the strategic strait of Hurumaw's
waterway, Ruth Sherlock and Pianyues.
Nearly two months of virtual learning ended this week, for students in St. Paul, Minnesota,
it was a response to the sweeping immigration enforcement surge in the state.
NPR's Meg Anderson has more.
More than a third of the students at the Selemetry School switched to online learning during
the ice surge.
NPR is not naming the school because the staff fears the federal government could target
them.
After weeks of online learning, the school year feels like it's starting all over again,
and not every student came back.
One family is now in El Salvador, others are in Mexico.
But many of the students who returned are relieved, like Camila, a fifth grader.
It felt good because I got to see my friends again, and they helped me feel safer.
She says it's starting to feel just a little bit like how it was before.
Meg Anderson and Pianyues.
And you're listening to NPR News from Washington.
Robert Mueller, the FBI director, who transformed the agency into a terrorism fighting force
after the 9-11 attacks has died.
He was 81 years old.
Mueller was also the special counsel in charge of investigating ties between Russia and
Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and whether the Trump campaign illegally coordinated
with the Kremlin to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential race.
Mueller led the FBI for 12 years and was named special counsel eight days after Trump
fired FBI director James Comey, who was also investigating Russia in the Trump campaign.
Trump hasn't forgiven Mueller's investigation, though, saying in a post on social media
quote, good, I'm glad he's dead.
You can no longer hurt innocent people.
The British version of Saturday Night Live debuts tonight with Tina Fey hosting.
Vicki Barker has more from London.
Comedy and satire are not strangers to the British airwaves, but live comedy and satire
is.
Cast member Ayowad de Bangboye telling the BBC, I mean, I'm nervous, but I think my nerves
are just like excitement.
You know when you're nervous because you care.
User James Longman is confident the SNL brand will appeal to British viewers.
The world is rough out there at the moment, so it's really good times of laugh and we are
creating hopefully something very special with an amazing cast and amazing team of writers.
The sky program will stream in the US on peacock on Sunday.
For NPR News, I'm Vicki Barker in London.
And I'm Janine Herbst and you're listening to NPR News from Washington.
Support for NPR comes from the Lemelson Foundation, dedicated to improving lives through invention,
innovation and climate action and the William T. Grant Foundation, supporting research to
improve the lives of young people at WTGrantsFDN.org.
The team behind smash hits like the Lego movie and the animated Spider-Verse trilogy have
a new movie filled with action and drama and it's good for all ages.
We don't really target a demographic or like we're not really strategic.
We make movies for human beings and certain dogs.
Project Hail Mary and all the latest news Sunday on Weekend Edition from NPR News.
Tomorrow morning starting at 8 on 90.9 WBUR.
This is all things considered from NPR News, I'm Adrienne Ma.
Former FBI director and special counsel Robert Mueller has died at the age of 81.
He helped transform the bureau and later came to national attention for his investigation
of President Trump.
NPR's National Justice Corp.
Kerry Johnson followed Mueller's long career and she's here now to tell us more about
him.
Thanks for being here, Kerry.
Happy to do it.
Kerry, you interviewed Mueller several times over the years.
What do you remember about him?
He really was a guy who would run toward a tough assignment, really an indispensable man
in Washington for many years who was called on to solve some of the hardest problems in
law enforcement.
In person, when you sat down with him, you was just the facts kind of guy.
He was conservative, in dress and demeanor, white shirts, no loud ties.
He didn't want a waste time.
His friends joked that he should have been a drill sergeant on Paris Island and Adrienne,
he was a decorated Marine for his service during the Vietnam War.
He won a bronze star for rescuing a fellow Marine and he was shot in the war, winning a
purple heart.
I understand Mueller was also the longest serving FBI director since Jay Edgar Hoover.
What stands out about his tenure at the FBI?
From this start, it was remarkable.
Mueller was confirmed by the Senate to lead the FBI at a president George W. Bush in 2001.
Only a week before terror attacks struck the United States on September 11th.
That was an enormous shock to the system.
FBI agents and technicians spent week searching for survivors and evidence and helping recover
bodies from the wreckage in New York, the Twin Towers.
Many FBI agents and employees later suffered health problems from their work there.
The bureau also sifted through tens of thousands of leads about the hijackers.
President Bush told Mueller, make sure this never happens again.
The challenge was really to transform the FBI from an agency that reacted to crime into
one that identified terror plots and prevented them from happening.
Mueller's deputy John Pistol described the assignment this way.
He directed and implemented what is arguably the most significant change in the FBI's 105
year history.
This was a hard job.
Many FBI agents resisted Mueller's marine style approach at the time, but they did respect
him for owning up to problems and trying to fix them.
And Mueller is probably best known for his work as a prosecutor.
Can you remind us about some of his top assignments?
Sure.
Earlier in his career, he worked as a prosecutor in Boston, San Francisco, and in DC.
At one point, he went into a lucrative job in the private sector, but he did not like
it.
If he could go back to work prosecuting homicides in Washington, DC in an era when violent
crime was really high, Mueller's probably best known for his work as special counsel
who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.
His team charged many people, including President Trump's former campaign chairman and his
national security advisor with crimes.
As for Trump himself, Mueller concluded he could not make a judgment about the president's
culpability.
Because of Justice Department policies that say a sitting president cannot be indicted.
But Mueller later told Congress he did not exaggerate or clear Donald Trump over obstruction
of justice.
And Donald Trump never got over that.
Today, Trump posted on social media, quote, good, I'm glad he's dead.
He can no longer hurt innocent people.
Congressman Benny Thompson and Mississippi responded on social media that there is no bottom, even
for Trump.
And Thompson said Mueller did his job honestly and told the truth.
And lastly, what about the reaction from the legal and law enforcement community about
Mueller's death?
A lot of condolences today, the Wilmer Hale law firm where Mueller worked late in his career
basically said they were very sorry to his family.
They called him an extraordinary leader and public servant and a person of the greatest
integrity.
They talked about all the ways he served the country, said that was exemplary and inspiring.
And former president Barack Obama said Mueller was one of the finest directors in the history
of the FBI and a man who saved countless lives.
Obama said it was a relentless commitment to the rule of law and unwavering belief in
our bedrock values that made him one of the most respected public servants of our time.
We've been speaking with Carrie Johnson and PR's national justice correspondent about the
death of Robert Mueller.
Thanks again, Carrie.
Thanks for having me.
Hundreds of, and possibly billions of dollars for Minnesota's Medicaid program are in
limbo as part of President Trump's crackdown on fraud.
Medicaid experts say this funding freezes unprecedented.
And as NPR's Giuliana Kim reports, more states could be next.
Sarah Limbo's 14 year old daughter, Greta, has cerebral palsy.
She relies on a range of medical and physical supports to thrive, like doctors, medical
equipment, prescriptions, and a paraprofessional at school.
Many of these services depend on Medicaid.
It is the foundation of what gives Greta her experience at school and in our community
and our family.
But lately, limbo has been nervous.
She and her family live in Minnesota where the Trump administration has paused some funds
for Medicaid.
And it came after federal prosecutors last year, alleged that billions may have been stolen
from the state's Medicaid program over the years.
A number of people were also charged with Medicaid fraud.
At a press conference last month, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who oversees the federal agency centers
for Medicare and Medicaid services, said,
This is not a problem with the people of Minnesota.
It's a problem with the leadership of Minnesota and other states who do not take Medicaid preservation
seriously.
CMS is freezing funds in two ways.
And retroactively, CMS is delaying about $259 million that I was supposed to reimburse
the state.
And going forward, the agency says it plans to withhold roughly $2 billion each year.
Having those two work in tandem, that is unprecedented.
Also the amounts of money at issue here are unprecedented.
That's Andy Schneider.
He's a Medicaid policy expert with the Georgetown Center for Children and Families.
He says it'd be really difficult for Minnesota to cover the potential loss in funds, and
that could disrupt care for patients.
The possibilities are they have to slow down payments to the providers.
They have to slow down payments to the plans.
They actually have to reduce reimbursement rates for services to the providers.
Minnesota officials argue that they have taken several steps to tackle the fraud problem.
To challenge the future funds at risk, the state has asked for a hearing.
It also filed a federal lawsuit over most of the unpaid reimbursement money.
Meanwhile, several other states are being probed either by CMS or congressional lawmakers.
Among the states being investigated are California, New York, and Maine.
When Limbo for Minnesota first heard about the threats to Medicaid, she got emotional.
Regression is real.
And with the unpredictability of that, especially if that would be in school, that would
just be so heartbreaking.
She says any disruption to our daughter's care could undo the progress Greta has made.
Juliana Kim and PR News.
Yesterday was the Vernal Equinox, a time that marks the start of spring, yes.
But for millions of people around the world, it also marks the holiday of No Rules.
Even in regions currently rattled by war, No Rules celebrations went on.
And NPR's Jaina Raff takes us to one in Accrae, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
Accrae is nestled against jagged, dark mountains.
Deep purple thunder clouds roll in as people like torches symbolizing the victory of light
over darkness.
It's a setting as dramatic as the mythology behind the celebration of No Rules, which means
New Day.
On a brief lull in the pouring rain, amid the sound of fireworks, Abdul Rahman Khalid,
who has a Kurdish YouTube channel, is setting off.
But you're going to climb up the mountain, yes.
That's fantastic.
So tell us, what are you going to do up the mountain?
Up the mountain, we'll light up the fire.
Once the sun sets, we will light it up and climb up to the top.
Khalid, who is 25, says this now is different.
More than 30 million Kurds live in a contiguous area in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey.
But they're divided by external borders and internal conflicts.
Khalid says since fighting between Syrian government forces and Syrian Kurds, and the
war in Iran this year, Kurds have come together.
And hopefully, next No Rules, next year, we're a free country, and all the parts of
Kurdistan will unite.
An independent Kurdistan has long been Kurdish dream, when opposed by countries where
they are citizens, and not likely to happen anytime soon.
But Kurdish identity remains an extinguishable.
In the town square Isomah Ahmed from the Syrian Kurdish city of Afreen, sings a folk song
about the senselessness of the war.
He tells us later it's about the pain of brothers fighting brothers.
Along the rakis, there are lots of Syrian Kurds here, and some from Iran and Turkey.
The rain and the threat of missiles and drones has kept dignitaries away.
But still, there are hundreds and hundreds of people making their way up the mountain,
holding lit torches.
There's a giant Kurdish flag that's been unfurled.
Men in sparkly dresses and men in Kurdish clothing with cumber buns.
They're carrying out a tradition that's much older than the countries where it's celebrated.
In Kurdish mythology, the flames mark the defeat of a murderous king by a courageous blacksmith
and an army of villagers.
Band for many years in some countries, No Rules is a central affirmation of Kurdish identity.
The torches on the mountains start going out, but people are still gathering.
Aul Luka
We catch a ride in the rain out of the impossibly crowded square, with Mohammad Shokat,
an oil engineer.
He says his family, like many people, were too afraid to come with him to the festivities.
We move the family outside the city we are there.
We can easily see drones passing over us and moving to Erbil.
And sometimes like, accidentally you will see the drone falling there and here.
This Kurdish region is on the path of giants fighting, Iran and the U.S.
Shokat says Kurds in different countries are more united now, because they've learned
from the past that together they're stronger.
Jaina Raff, NPR News, Acre, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq
This is all things considered from NPR News.
The team behind smash hits like the Lego movie and the animated Spider-Verse trilogy
have a new movie filled with action and drama and it's good for all ages.
We don't really target a demographic or like we're not really strategic.
We make movies for human beings and certain dogs.
Project Hail Mary and all the latest news Sunday on Weekend Edition from NPR News.
Tomorrow morning, starting at 8 on 90.9 WBUR.
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I'm Janine Herbst with these headlines.
The Senate is working this weekend on ending the partial government shutdown that's now
five weeks old.
Democrats say they won't pass a budget for DHS until there are changes in immigration
enforcement funding.
TSA workers have been on the job without pay.
Robert Mueller, the FBI director who was also special counsel investigating ties between
Russia and Donald Trump's first presidential campaign, has died.
He was 81 years old.
President Trump said in a post, quote, good, I'm glad he's dead.
He can no longer hurt Innocent people.
And the super group band BTS is back together once again, holding its first concert in more
than four years in Seoul after the musician's completed mandatory military service.
I'm Janine Herbst in PR News.
Support for NPR comes from this station.
And from signal health care at signal health care, they're dedicated to being there through
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And from the sustaining members of this NPR station.
This is all things considered from NPR news.
I'm Adrian Ma.
As the war with Iran enters its fourth week, President Trump said on Friday, he's considering,
quote, winding down military efforts in the region.
But ending the conflict may not be that easy.
Iran has continued its retaliatory attacks, including an unsuccessful attempt to bomb the
Diego Garcia air base, which is managed by US and UK militaries.
And that came after a week of bombings in Iran targeting strategic sites and killing
some of the country's top leaders.
One of them was Ali Larajani, the country's top civilian leader.
Before he was killed, Larajani was seen as someone who might be willing to negotiate
with the West.
And all of this leaves the path to a negotiated peace murky.
Hussein Musavyan is a former Iranian nuclear negotiator.
He's also a former policy advisor to Ali Larajani.
He's currently a research collaborator at Princeton University's program on science and global
security.
And he joins us now.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you.
So on Friday night, President Trump announced on social media that he's considering winding
down military efforts in the region.
What was your reaction to that?
Actually, the president said he wants to wind it down in another interview also.
He said the same.
He said, we said the war will end very soon.
However, in another interview, he asked, why should we have a ceasefire when we are
defeating Iran?
I really don't know which statement reflects the president's real intention.
Nevertheless, I hope a decision is made to bring this war to an end because so far Iran,
Israel and the US have all suffered unprecedented losses.
So it's sending mixed messages there.
And this follows, as we said, killings over the last three weeks of some top level officials
in Iran.
Ali Larajani, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and a public policy
adviser to Ron Supreme Leader was killed.
And from a high level, what do you think will be the lasting impact of these assassinations?
The US Israeli attack on Iran, specifically assassinating the top levels, has ignited
two powerful dynamics within the country, nationalism and shite ideology.
Well inside Iran have witnessed practically, I mean daily, they have witnessed that over
the past three weeks of the US-Israeli war, more than 10,000 civilians have been killed
or injured.
And approximately, I would say 200 Iranian officials have been assassinated by the US-Israeli
wars since 2025.
What you see or you have seen, even on their bombardments, tens of thousands of people
have participated in their funeral ceremonies.
In Shia tradition, there is a concept whereby those who are killed in the path of Islam
or their homeland are regarded as martyrs or are viewed as heroes.
This phenomenon now is unfolding in the case of assassination of Iranian officials.
So in this current climate, it seems that more power is shifting to the revolutionary
guard.
What should we understand about that?
During past 15 years, working at Princeton University as a academic, with my experience
of 40 years working on Iran-U.S. relations, advocating peace between Iran and U.S. relations.
I have explained in my books in many articles that more sanctions, more pressures, more coercion
would radicalize Iran more and more and more.
And this is exactly when the U.S. withdrew from the nuclear deal, Iran increased the level
of the and the capacity of enrichment.
And now, the U.S. attacked Iran, I think it's normally when a country is attacked, the
military would take over the country practically.
You refer to the earlier nuclear negotiations, and it's believed that Iran has a stock
pile of about 400 kilograms of enriched Iranian.
What do you think will happen to that stock pile?
See, I mean, here is the reality that during negotiations between the U.S. representative
with Gulf Kushner, with Iranian representative in February, 2026, the Iranian negotiator
very clearly explicitly told the American side, if there is a deal, we would be ready to
dilute the whole high level enriched Iranian 60%.
We will be ready to give it up.
This was mentioned officially by the Iran Foreign Minister, even lately, I don't know whether
you read the article at the Guardian, the UK National Security Advisor attended in the
last meeting, February 2026, just this year.
And he also confirmed that Iran was ready to give up the total 60% of stock pile enriched
Iranian.
Therefore, if there is a deal, Iran has no problem.
Iran is not going to make it to keep it.
So a deal does seem hard to imagine at this particular moment.
Do you think there's still room for diplomacy, given that the U.S. started this war in the
middle of what were apparently productive negotiations?
Frankly speaking, that would be very difficult, complicated, because the U.S. attacked Iran.
As the Omani Foreign Minister said, there was two times negotiation.
There was significant progress.
They were very close to reach a deal, but the U.S. decided to attack.
Therefore, trust is gone.
Nevertheless, I don't believe that the door for diplomacy is totally closed.
Nevertheless, I really don't know what type of deal the U.S. is looking for with Iran.
You heard Prime Minister Netanyahu saying the Israeli strategy is greater Middle East.
You heard American ambassador in Israel said Israel has a right to take over the Middle
Eastern countries.
And I really don't know if this is really the objectives, regime change, taking over
Iranian oil wells, never there would be a deal.
We've been speaking with Hussein Musavyan, former Iranian nuclear negotiator.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
Thank you very much.
For millions of Cubans, daily life has turned into a desperate struggle.
Earlier this week, Cuba was forced into a nationwide blackout.
After months of the U.S., effectively choking off oil shipments to the island from Cuba's
allies.
The country continues to experience rolling blackouts.
And meanwhile, President Trump continues to float the idea of taking over the country.
But amid negotiations with the U.S., Cuban officials say they don't intend to go anywhere.
For more on how those politics are affecting life for millions of everyday Cubans, we reached
out to Patrick Oppmann.
He's the Havana bureau chief for CNN.
Welcome and thanks for joining us.
My pleasure.
Can you just paint the scene for us?
What is life like right now in Havana where you are?
So Cubans, of course, have always had many difficulties, many challenges.
This is a different level.
I've lived in Cuba for 14 years and you are seeing people begin to live out of humanitarian
crisis in real time, where their food is spoiling, where most of the day, sometimes the entire
day, they don't have power.
There's no transportation now, really of any kind.
If you can find gas, it's going to be hugely expensive, more than a regular Cuban who
works for the state will make it an entire year.
And so we're just seeing the economy, which is already failing.
This is not a well-managed economy in the best of times, but it's grinding to a complete
hold as the U.S. prevents any oil from coming in.
How does that compare to the scene outside of the city?
It's much more dire outside of the city.
Havana is still the capital.
This is where all the government officials live.
This is where tourists come, and so there's still some sense of normalcy and in certain
parts of the city, you get power more than other parts, but you get power every day.
In the countryside, where we've seen some of the more violent protests, there are towns
that don't get power for two or three days.
You said that you've been covering Cuba for 14 years, and this moment feels different.
How for the people that you speak to there doesn't feel different.
Are they feeling like this moment is kind of a new phase?
It's a new level of difficulty where before they struggled to make ends meet, and now they
are not making ends meet.
One of the byproducts of this oil blockade making a bad problem much worse is just the
pickup of trash.
And I was really shocked.
I wanted to do one of the most densely popular neighborhoods in Nevada, and they're a whole
street, so we're just clogged, you know, a city block, nothing but trash, because the
government's not picking up the trash anymore.
They can't pick up the trash anymore, they don't have fuel for the trucks, and people are
living next to trash piles, and they're buried under trash, and this has potential to
cause a major health crisis.
My understanding is that some of this, for the residents, is really boiling over
in frustration.
I've seen some reports about some protests, can you talk about that?
And you go for hours and hours, almost an entire day without power, and when it gets
to be nighttime, and you kind of realize one that you're not going to get any power that
day, and two, it's dark, so you really can't be identified, is then you go out and you
bang on pots and pans.
It's called a casserole, so, and it's very common in Latin America, less common here, because
if you protest here, you could be arrested for that, you could be tried for that.
And so for people to do this, they're taking a big risk, and they don't care anymore.
People feel like they've got nothing left to lose, and particularly when you go more
than a day here, without any power, your food begins to spoil, and that is a huge sacrifice
that Cubans have made.
Have any food in the fridge at this point.
The price of food is just going, shooting up.
And I should just point out here, when you don't have power, you don't get water, because
water is pumped in, and you don't get water here every day, you get every other day,
every third day, you have a water day, the other day I will.
So if you don't have power on your water day, you don't get water, and that means you can't
shower, you can't wash your plates, you're really not living in the century anymore.
And I think for a population that is an educated population that had a much better living
standard, not that long ago, they're just seeing their lives collapse around them.
Given that, what are Cubans telling you about the messages coming from President Trump,
who earlier this week kind of mused about taking over Cuba?
Obviously, there are a lot of detractors of the government that feel like the government
has mismanaged many crises now, not just this one.
But there are people as well who either support the government or just are fiercely proud,
and they have read stories, or maybe even remember what Cuba was like before the revolution,
where the U.S. essentially called the shots.
And so Donald Trump, when he says, I can take Cuba, I can do anything I want with Cuba,
that really brings back some bad memories when this island was concerned of a kind of a
plaything.
And so I think people here don't want to go back to that, but they also feel that their
government here has not opened the economy like we've seen in China and Vietnam.
And the limits here on private history are so strict that people actually talk about
the two blockades, the U.S. blockade, and then the one that our government places on us.
Given the kind of dire picture that you've painted,
what are the consequences of this continuing?
So already, the government says there are about 100,000 people on a waiting list for surgeries.
If you went to a hospital now, whereas before they would have a generator with fuel during
a blackout, now there's no fuel, you'd probably have doctors holding a cell phone camera
lights so you can have light during the operation.
There might not be running water in the hospital.
You might be sending your kids to school, and there's no power during the entire day,
which in the summer here is going to get very uncomfortable.
And it's all these little things that add up to kind of a cascade effect where you're
already hearing about people having crops that can get to the city and so they're rotting,
inflation's out of control, and people who are already just hanging on, and I think
people have fallen well below the poverty line.
So everyone kind of at this point, many people I should say are looking for a way out.
And the desperation is getting such that you hear about crimes, you never heard about
before.
You see these protests on a nightly basis, which is something that was not common here.
And you can just kind of feel a society breaking down in real time.
We've been speaking with CNN's Havana bureau chief Patrick Oppmann.
Thanks again.
Thank you so much.
You're listening to all things considered from NPR News.
If I poured you half a glass of water, would you say it's half full or half empty?
If you're inclined to say empty, you might want to look again because studies have shown
optimism can promote longevity and even reduce risk of chronic disease.
A new book by the optimism doctor argues everyone could also be more optimistic.
So you might be thinking with all the everything going on in the world, the fighting, the
climate, general angst and uncertainty, maybe optimism doesn't feel particularly useful
right now.
I actually feel quite the opposite.
No change can be made without optimism.
We need to be able to stay engaged and to keep looking and to keep showing up and to keep
deeply caring.
Rebecca Chopra is a behavioral scientist with a doctorate in clinical health psychology.
Her new book, The Power of Real Optimism, works to dispel common misconceptions.
It's not undiluted positivity and ignorance is not bliss.
When you have the rage part or anger part or sadness part and you don't have the part
on I have a vision or a hope or a real true possibility in my mind that things can be
different.
Brain doesn't put forth the executive functioning to start problem solving and then you're stuck
in paralysis.
And so if there's one thing that I think is really necessary right now is to train your
brain.
That is, the brain is an anticipatory organ.
The brain is constantly thinking in future tense.
Our brains like to fill in the blanks for us to help make sense of the world around
us and to be more efficient.
Like you know when you finish your spouse's sentences for them or your mouth starts to
water when you smell your favorite food, cooking in the kitchen, that kind of cognitive
working ahead happens with your emotions and your belief systems too.
And your beliefs can influence your behavior.
Maybe you're dreading that big job interview because you feel like you're terrible under pressure.
So instead of preparing, you just sweat and spiral.
And then big surprise, there goes another opportunity.
In other words, as the saying goes, whether you think you can or you can't, you're right.
Which is why Chopra says it's critical to infuse optimism into your life on a daily basis.
And there are a lot of small ways to do that.
Starting with your language.
Like today, it happened in getting to the studio.
I was just going to make it, but I made the wrong turn.
And immediately I heard myself like, of course, it's always the times that I need to get
somewhere that I make the wrong decision.
But in reality, it's not every time and you don't always choose wrong.
So avoid that tendency towards permanence in your thinking, zoom out on the big picture
and reframe.
Hey, you still made it to the interview safely.
It's easy to be angry at all the red lights, but when was the last time you celebrated
the green ones?
Actively working to bring some more sunshine into your life can help too.
Maybe that looks like a morning wake-up dance party.
Being some time with nature, expressing just a little gratitude every day for remembering
to celebrate your wins.
Chopra uses something she calls a tadallist.
Instead of a to-do list, I write down everything that I accomplish.
That's what I see before I go to bed.
Because when I go to bed, I want to feel a sense of purpose and a win.
And the smaller, the better.
I mean, there are things on my list that are like, I drink water today.
Now, is being less stressed and well-hydrated going to change the world?
Well, not exclusively.
But things are looking up.
I always say, you know, real optimism doesn't deny the dark.
It just gives us a way to see within it.
For NPR's life kit, I'm Andy Tagle.
And this is NPR.
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And it's good for all ages.
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We make movies for human beings and certain dogs.
Project Hail Mary and all the latest news
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Why the U.S. imports most of the oil it consumes
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In waging war with Iran, the U.S. military
is using some of the most advanced and expensive weapons
that it has.
For example, the Tomahawk, a precision-guided missile
that can cost as much as $3.5 million a piece.
Iran, by contrast, is fighting back
with relatively simple weapons, like drones,
which might only cost a few thousand dollars each.
This asymmetry in firepower poses a very costly
and real conundrum for the Pentagon.
And here to explain why we are joined by NPR's Darian Woods.
Darian is co-host of our Daily Economics podcast,
the indicator from Planet Money,
which is also my normal day job.
And Darian joined us now.
Thanks for being here, Darian.
Yeah, great to be here.
And Darian, can you start off by telling us more
about the kinds of weapons the U.S. and Iran
have been using and how they're using them?
Yeah, so the U.S. has been using things
like Patriot Interceptors that help
protect against missiles and drones.
It's also been using things like Tomahawk missiles.
These guided missiles, they're very advanced,
filled with all kinds of electronic circuitry.
And I understand that military folks
have a kind of interesting name
for the kind of weapons the U.S. is using.
Yeah, so the term is exquisite weapons.
This is a term that's been in use in the military,
it's popularized in the late 2000s.
Really it's a critique of too much focus
on the really high end ships, planes, munitions,
like the guided missiles that we've been talking about.
And this has created this kind of asymmetry
of warfare economics in the current war.
I spoke to Jerry McGinn.
He is the director of the Center for the Industrial Base
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
They launch a lot of drones to try to have U.S.
kind of use their more exquisite weapons
to knock them down and deplete our stores.
So in essence, it sounds like Iran,
if it's not quite matching the U.S. firepower,
they're still holding their own with an arsenal of weapons
that is costing them much less.
I mean, don't get me wrong.
The U.S. has targeted and destroyed a lot of targets in Iran,
but what Iran has figured out is to how to make this costly
for the U.S. in Israel.
And can you tell us more about the drones
that Iran has been using?
Like, what do they look like? How do they work?
Yeah, so imagine an 11 foot long missile
with big wide wings.
This is not like a consumer drone with four blades
that you might take up hiking and take some photos of.
This is a weapon that's designed to fly into a target,
blow it up.
It's about the size of a go-kart
and they're pretty cheap for around to produce.
So these are nowhere near as costly
as the kinds of missiles that the U.S. has been using.
Estimates vary, but these could cost as little
as $4,000 a piece.
So we're three weeks into this war.
We've established that the U.S. and Iran
are using very different kinds of weapons.
How does this add up in terms of the cost for the U.S.
as it continues to conduct this war?
And can it continue with this strategy?
By day 12, the Center for Strategic and International Studies
put the U.S. military cost at $16.5 billion.
And on Wednesday, the Washington Post reported
that the Pentagon has asked the White House
to approve more than $200 billion to fund the war in Iran.
And to put that into perspective,
it's about $585 for every American.
A huge part of these costs have been the munitions,
the so-called exquisite weapons,
the billions of dollars worth of tomahorks
and patriot missiles that have been launched.
And so just to give a sense of how much has been sent
from the U.S. side in the first three days of the war,
the U.S. drained an estimated 10% of its tomahork infantry.
So this has gutted supplies so much that,
according to the Washington Post,
the Pentagon is moving parts of its missile defense system
from South Korea and its patriots
from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East.
And the issue isn't just the cost,
it's that these take 18 months or longer to make.
So that being the case,
how is the U.S. adapting to Iran's use of these massive fleets
of drones?
So the Pentagon saw this coming to some extent.
Last year, they set a target to procure 200,000 drones
for themselves by 2027.
This is an area that is newer for the U.S.
It announced last year what is called the Lucas drone.
This is an American drone,
very similar to the Iranian drone.
In fact, so similar,
it is reverse engineered from the Iranian drone.
And this is being used for the first time in this war.
If you wanna hear more on this,
you can check out the indicator
from Planet Money Podcast.
We've been speaking with Darian Woods, who co-hosts it.
Thanks for being here, Darian.
Yeah, thanks.
Gas prices have spiked since the start of the war with Iran.
And that might make electric cars
suddenly more appealing to consumers,
with some companies and countries eager to meet that demand.
My colleague Emily Kwong takes it from here.
Camila Domenoski covers cars for NPR
and how cars reflect important changes
in the global economy.
So I started our conversation by asking her
about the most surprising development coming
out of the automotive industry.
When you talk to car executives about electric vehicles,
a lot of them maintain this belief that, you know,
that electric vehicles are the future
and they say that not necessarily for environmental reasons,
that's part of it.
Car companies are making a consumer good, right?
They are serving a consumer audience.
And electric vehicles are really nice to drive.
They're very smooth, they're very quiet.
The acceleration is really quick.
They're very low maintenance.
You never have to do an oil change.
If you can charge at home,
that's actually way more convenient
than going to a gas station.
I love how you're whispering this.
I know like secret.
There's a lot of things that drivers really like about them.
And the data shows this is something
that GM CEO Mary Barrow was pointing out recently.
When people are in an EV,
they very rarely switch back to gasoline.
And so that element of like the appeal of EVs
to people who have driven them is actually
something you hear about a lot from executives
when they're thinking about why they can't,
no matter what, the policy is in the US.
Ignore this market.
You're saying the product in its own right
is winning new fans.
And again, I'm saying that the car executives say that.
I've heard of the same argument from people
who are thinking about this with billions of dollars
on the line at their companies.
That's interesting to hear because the origin point of EVs,
at least from like the perspective of policy,
was they produce less emissions
and that makes the air cleaner.
And that led to support for EVs.
That's been rolled back by the Trump administration.
What does that mean for Americans
when it comes to electric vehicles?
What the policy under Biden was really trying to do
is to push the market to move faster
than consumer demand alone was going to.
And by faster, that is not like making more cars.
You're specifically selling more EVs
than they would if it was just pure market demand.
So functionally, they would have to sell those EVs
for less money, really push them, encourage them,
advertise them.
And that's something that we've seen that policy go away
under President Trump, he's going to let the market
really dictate how quickly this moves,
which does mean in the near term,
fewer full EVs than there would have been
under the policy otherwise.
But they have to be prepared
for the possibility regulations could change again.
It has been whipsawing back and forth
with every administration.
And they're also looking at staying competitive globally
with the rest of the world,
still having a real focus on EVs with Chinese automakers
making very competitive EVs.
These are things that you hear about a lot
from the auto industry right now,
this fear about global competitiveness.
So they can't walk away,
and they won't walk away from EVs
and cleaner vehicles altogether.
Do you have reported on how Tesla is no longer
the global leader in EV sales?
And that is because of cars, EV cars manufactured in China.
And the US has been very determined
to keep those China-made cars out of the American market.
How much longer do you see that as being a possible?
I'm obsessed with this question.
It is one of the most interesting questions
in the auto industry right now, I think,
because it doesn't seem sustainable long-term, right?
For there to be vehicles that are cheaper
and by all accounts just played better
that the US is keeping out.
And this is something that the auto industry
is acutely aware of.
And you know, whether it's probably not
under the Trump administration
allowing a huge number of EVs to be imported from China,
but could a Chinese automaker take up shop in the US
and build vehicles in North America, for North America?
Could Chinese companies partner with US companies,
which is incidentally how Western automakers entered China
was in partnerships with Chinese companies,
could the same thing happen in reverse
where a Chinese automaker strikes a joint venture with, say, Ford.
There's been some reporting that Ford is actively talking
about this with the administration.
Right now these vehicles are essentially impossible to get
in the US, but that could change at really any time,
especially with President Trump at the helm.
And if it changes, it's gonna be a huge disruptive shift
to the existing automakers.
What's your favorite part of cars?
Like from a supply chain perspective,
I was actually going to say that my favorite part about cars
is people that like car people are my favorite part
of covering.
Why are people your favorite part of the car beat?
I was doing this story in December
where I was meeting with a group of K-Car enthusiasts.
K-Car is the tiny little Japanese cars.
And they're just these teeny tiny little cars,
very common in Japan, very hard to get in the US.
Okay.
President Trump commented on how we should have more of them here.
I went and I just talked to these people about their cars.
Sounds kind of like an angry sewing machine.
That's Andrew Maxson.
We're riding in his red Autosam AZ-1,
a vehicle he lovingly calls ridiculous.
We're sitting a few inches off the ground
with the turbo engine, a few inches behind our heads,
racing at 40 miles per hour.
Maxson founded the capital K-Car Club,
which gathered at a park in Northern Virginia this month
to talk with me about their beloved little vehicles,
which are best described as...
Tiny, very tiny.
It's so fun to talk to people who are as excited
about something as anybody who loves their cars.
What storylines do you think will define your beat
for the next year or two?
I mean, the China competition that I mentioned,
that's gonna be huge for sure.
And I do think the question of what does EV demand
really look like in the US without government support
and incentives?
And what does that mean for US global competitiveness?
If companies do think that long-term,
these vehicles are really important.
Is there enough market support in the US
to support the kind of investments that they would need to make
to be competitive globally?
I think that's an open question
and it's gonna be really interesting.
Camila Domenoski,
Cars and Energy correspondent,
thank you so much for talking to us.
Thanks for having me, great to chat.
A collage of piano, vibraphone, and conga drums.
That's the trio of instruments you'll hear in Trio Libre.
A fourth coming album by Colombian-born percussionist
and composer Samuel Torres.
Trio Libre is a different sort of album for Torres
because it's more minimal and stripped down.
Trio Libre is a very interesting project for me
and you challenge,
because instead of going for more instruments,
like I did in my previous albums,
I did a symphonic album,
I did a big band,
I went the other way,
I went to have a minimal sound.
When I began to have this idea
to put this project together,
I didn't know,
and I think I still don't know,
because the magic of life,
the uncertainty,
if it was going to work,
because I'm deciding
to not deal the formula of how a Latin jazz is constructed.
Yeah, that's a tune we have each other.
In that pickup,
that first motif of the piano,
it's my imaginary tribute to Trio Puente,
because that's the motif
and the role of the piano in the tune Oye Comoba.
I think we all music lovers.
We can have many debates about things,
but I think one thing that we can agree is the one,
one of the most influential,
some people say the most influential composer,
or Western music,
was Johann Sebastian Bach.
This piece of Johann Sebastian Bach,
is one, it's called
the duet number one,
on E minor.
It was not one of his most known pieces,
but the way he incorporated,
rhythmic syncopation,
and the way he put chromatic movement
in the harmony,
I was just fascinated.
I wanted to write this song
to my wife Sarah Alden.
She's an incredible violin player here in New York.
It's very personal,
but it means a lot to her.
The first time I ever record my voice,
it's not in the project,
but it's a love letter to her.
That is some well-tores on congas,
playing with Carmen's stuff on piano
and Philip Funeer on vibraphone.
Their debut album,
Trio Libre, is out May 1st.
The first time I recorded this song,
it was the first time I recorded this song.
It was the first time I recorded this song.
