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Sports April 29, 2019

London Marathon Takes A Small Step To Go Green

The BBC reports 47,000 plastic water bottles were tossed at last year’s race. This year, organizers gave runners edible water pods. They’re biodegradable because they’re made from seaweed.



DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Good morning. I’m David Greene. Eliud Kipchoge won the London Marathon yesterday for a fourth time. That’s a record, and that is amazing. And in other news, the marathon took a small step to go green. The BBC reports, last year, racers and onlookers tossed 47,000 plastic water bottles. This year, organizers tried to prevent a mess. They gave runners edible water pods. They’re biodegradable because they’re made from seaweed. The startup that makes them says they’re tasteless. It’s MORNING EDITION.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Health April 28, 2019

Melinda Gates On Marriage, Parenting, And Why She Made Bill Drive The Kids To School

Melinda Gates at a panel discussion in New York City in February. She is the author of a new book, “The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World.”

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Melinda Gates, the co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has written a new book, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes The World.

Published this week, the book calls on readers to support women everywhere as a means to lift up society. She pulls from her lessons learned through the inspiring women she’s met on her travels with the Gates Foundation, which funds projects to reduce poverty and improve global health in the developing world (and is a funder of NPR and this blog).

But Gates also addresses gender equality in the United States — using her own personal story as an example. Opening up about her marriage to Bill, she talks about some of the challenges they faced in sharing the burden of parenting. And she reveals her struggle to balance her role as a mom of three, her career as a tech pioneer and philanthropist, and the public life of being married to one of the world’s richest men.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In the opening pages, you talk about how you learned to renegotiate the terms of your marriage — once you stopped working at Microsoft — to focus on raising the kids. Why did you think it was important to share this?

In society there are so many issues that women face and we don’t even realize what we’re up against. So I chose to write my story so that hopefully people and women and men could relate to me and understand that yes, these issues exist in every single marriage.

I wanted to have both a family and I knew I wanted to go back to work. And so [Bill and I] had some negotiation to do. We said, “OK who’s going to do what in our home? And how were we going to split up those roles?”

There’s a cute story in your book that speaks to that. You talk about how you asked your husband to start sharing the responsibility of dropping the kids off at school. After a couple of weeks, you said you noticed that a lot more men were doing the drop offs. And you asked one of your friends about and she said that when we saw Bill driving, we went home and said to our husbands: Bill Gates is driving his child to school. You can too. Why did you choose to highlight this story?

The reason I wrote that specific story [is that it’s] an example of this unpaid labor that women do all over the world. In the U.S., women do 90 minutes more of unpaid labor at home than their husbands do. That’s things like doing the dishes, carpooling, doing the laundry.

Unless we look at that and redistribute it, we’re not going to let women do some of the more productive things they want to do.

The Gates Foundation is primarily focused on solving challenges in the developing world. But what are you doing to address issues a big topic you discuss in your book, women’s equality in the United States?

When I would be flying home from various countries in Africa or Bangladesh, I’d be saying to myself: Why aren’t women more empowered in those countries? And it wasn’t until I turned the question back on myself and I said, “How far are we here in the United States?”

That is why I set up a separate office from the foundation, Pivotal Ventures, to start tackling these inequities for women and the barriers in the United States.

We are the only industrialized nation in the world that does not have paid family medical leave. So I would say to young women and men in this country who are in their 20s and 30s: Gender roles change when you start to have children. You need to question them, and you also need to say what should we do, public policy-wise, to support women.

A lot of the book is focused on your story, but you also talk about women around the world who are facing extreme poverty and violence in their homes. The subtitle of your book is “How Empowering Women Changes The World.” What’s the short answer?

I believe that in empowering women, you do empower everybody else because you lift up a woman. She lifts up the rest of her family and her community and her society and her economy. And so this is absolutely about lifting up women and lifting up people of color.

You quote a friend several times in this book who was very skeptical of the ability of American billionaires to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those facing extreme poverty. Is this something you think as a society we should be talking about?

Bill and I are on record saying we believe high-income people should pay more than a middle-income family [who would] then pay more than a low-income family. It’s time to revisit some of the tax policies in our society.

But make no mistake. Living in a capitalistic structure is a fabulous place to live. I meet so many families around the world who want to live in the United States and have the system we have. Warren Buffett, our co-trustees, my husband Bill — they could not have started the companies they have in Malawi or in Senegal or in Niger. We benefit from the structure we have in the United States. But we don’t have it all right. And it’s time to revisit the pieces that create some of these inequities.

How do you feel now that you’ve put your life all out there in the book?

At the moment, I feel really great. I am really comfortable at age 54 with who I am. And so I’m kind of like, take it or leave it.

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Business April 28, 2019

The Record-Breaking Box Office Of ‘Avengers: Endgame,’ By The (Huge) Numbers

Chris Evans as Captain America in Avengers: Endgame. And yes, Cap, these are apparently the real numbers.

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Avengers: Endgame is the culmination of a hugely profitable series of films that began with Iron Man in 2008. It makes sense that the opening weekend of the concluding chapter — which also happens to be a very good movie with a 96 percent critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes — would make a lot of money. But if there’s a place in box office coverage for “whoa, Nellie” anymore, it is perhaps here. And so let us say: Whoa, Nellie.

It’s already made an estimated one billion dollars around the world. Well, $1.2 billion, actually. So, you know. Big. Even for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its gargantuan hauls, this was a gargantuan haul.

Just how big was opening weekend, domestically? Well, Thursday night previews earned $60 million, which is more money than all but 11 2019 films have made in their entire runs. The weekend as a whole is estimated at $350 million, which makes it — per Disney’s eager press release breaking down everything but the inevitable popcorn shortage — the first film to ever make $300 million on opening weekend. Friday, it had the biggest single day for any film ever, making $156.7 million in one day. It also had the biggest Saturday ever and the biggest Sunday ever. This is all in spite of the disadvantage of being three hours long, which might limit the number of showings — except that it’s being shown at a record-breaking 4,662 theaters. It’s an opening weekend that beat the last Avengers film, Avengers: Infinity War, by more than $100 million.

(One funny grace note to all this is that in second place in U.S. box office this weekend was the MCU’s Captain Marvel with an estimated $8.05 million, meaning that the same character appears in the two top films, even if the one in first place made more than 40 times as much this weekend as the one in second place.)

Avengers: Endgame is also an international smash: biggest international opening weekend ever on the whole, and record-breaking weekends in China and 43 other markets (Spain! Korea! Brazil! And so forth!). Disney calls the Chinese box office receipts of $330.5 million “astounding,” if it does say so itself.

According to box office site Box Office Mojo, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is now a 22-film series that’s about to pass $20 billion internationally.

Whoa, Nellie.

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Sports April 27, 2019

NBA’s Lack Of Latino Players

Now that the NBA playoffs are in full swing, there’s an element missing: Latino players. Just 2% of NBA players are Latino and that has the league looking for ways to increase the number of Latinos.



MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Switching gears now, it’s a big weekend for sports fans, what with the NFL Combine, baseball season and the NHL and NBA playoffs. All these sports have gotten more diverse, but with a growing Latino fan base, the NBA is hoping to attract more Latino players. Esteban Bustillos from member station WGBH in Boston is going to tell us more about that.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting).

ESTEBAN BUSTILLOS, BYLINE: You can’t even begin to talk about Latino basketball players without talking about Manu Ginobili.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Cheering).

BUSTILLOS: The Argentinian shooting guard is widely considered the best Latin American player ever. He spent 16 seasons with the San Antonio Spurs and won four championships. Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich says his presence off the court with the Latino community was always something special.

GREGG POPOVICH: He allowed it to happen. He’s a very warm individual and understood his responsibility to the community.

BUSTILLOS: Ginobili bowed out last year, but the team retired his jersey last month when the Spurs took on the Cleveland Cavaliers. Billed as Gracias, Manu, the night was a celebration of Genobili and his heritage.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MICHELLE LECLERCQ: (Singing in Spanish).

BUSTILLOS: Before tip-off, an Argentinian singer performed the country’s national anthem. And when it was Ginobili’s time to talk after the game, he gave a bilingual speech to the sold-out arena.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MANU GINOBILI: (Speaking Spanish).

BUSTILLOS: It was a fitting sendoff for the NBA’s most successful Latin player in one of the country’s most Latino cities.

ARNON DE MELLO: The Latino demographic is the one that grows, I believe, the most in the states already.

BUSTILLOS: Arnon de Mello is the senior vice president and managing director of NBA Latin America. According to the league, Hispanics comprise 17% of the U.S. fan base. That’s roughly 15 million fans. In Latin America, NBA programming reaches dozens of countries and territories and is broadcast in four different languages. De Mello says it’s even starting to gain ground on that other sport involving a ball and a net – soccer.

DE MELLO: You know, if you look at the Caribbean and Brazil and Mexico, you see that in that region, basketball clearly is a contender for the No. 2 spot, not only in terms of participation but also affinity and popularity of the sport.

BUSTILLOS: But as popular as the game is becoming among fans, Latino professional players are still scarce. According to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, the NBA was only 2.3% Latino last season. That translates to just 11 players. But the league has made a point of focusing on fostering talents outside the United States.

Along with junior NBA programs in Latin America, the league just opened an academy in Mexico City to help develop the region’s best prospects. And de Mello says they’re trying to get a G League team, the NBA version of a minor league club, set up in the Mexican capital. This is all a big switch from when Boston Celtics center Al Horford was growing up in the Dominican Republic, and basketball was just becoming popular.

AL HORFORD: You going in the yard, and you drive around, and you see everybody, you know, playing basketball out of basketball courts. And people are hungry. You know, they really enjoy basketball.

BUSTILLOS: Horford is using his influence to help grow the game. Last year, the Celtics star was part of an initiative to renovate courts in the Dominican Republic.

HORFORD: One of the things that I want to continue to work on is to continue to help to develop the game over there so – because the passion is there.

BUSTILLOS: Now, as Horford and other Latino players help to carry the torch first lit by people like his father Tito, who was the first Dominican player in the NBA, and Ginobili, Horford is aware of the example he’s setting for the community.

HORFORD: It’s something that, you know, that I’m proud of – to be a Latino.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE HERBALISER’S “TAKEDOWN (SALT POPCORN REMIX)”)

MARTIN: That was Esteban Bustillos in Boston.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Entertainment April 27, 2019

Baloji Finds His Freedom In Between Genres

Baloji’s Kaniama: The Yellow Version is due out May 3.

Kyle Weeks/Courtesy of the artist


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Baloji is an artist who finds strength in his roots but freedom in between genres. He was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but has lived in Belgium most of his life. The rapper is a well-known name in Belgium and France. He’s received music honors for his work, but his life has been a journey of struggle and perseverance.

At 3 years old, Baloji’s father took him to Belgium without telling his mother. After dropping out of school and leaving home at 14, Baloji discovered hip-hop. Performing under the name MC Balo, the young upstart joined the hip-hop group Starflam. As the group began to gain popularity, Baloji received a letter from his mother that changed the course of his life and career.

“I was 26 years old when I received that letter for my mom. I thought at first it was fraud,” Baloji says. But his mother knew his birth date and sent him photos of when he was a baby. The letter impacted him greatly.

Baloji’s mother had seen him on TV performing with Starflam. “Your dad told me that he brought you to Belgium … to the land of Marvin Gaye,” she wrote. The American artist used to reside in Ostend, Belgium, the same city Baloji first moved to. Gaye’s music became the inspiration for his first solo project, especially the song “I Am Going Home.” “That really stuck in my head and inspired me to do my first album, which is dedicated to my mom,” Baloji says.

Baloji’s debut album, 2008’s Hotel Impala, was a collection of all his life experiences leading up to seeing his mother again. Ten years later, the artist’s 2018 album, 137 Avenue Kaniama and his upcoming follow-up, Kaniama: The Yellow Version, relate back to the message of Hotel Impala. For example, on “La Derniere Pluie,” the centerpiece of the album, Baloji remembers meeting his mother for the first time as an adult in the DRC and realizing their cultural differences.

“This song is talking about how we met physically, how it happened, how I was feeling, how she was feeling and how we were both nervous,” Baloji explains. Baloji had invited his mother to an upscale restaurant, but the expensive menu made his mother uncomfortable. “Every meal costs at least 20 dollars, we can buy a pack of rice for that price that will last a month,” she told him. “I was expecting us to hug and be in a loving relationship, and for her — I had to take care of her and his siblings,” Baloji adds.

Baloji music tackles issues large and small. From his family history, to the experience of refugees in Europe, to our dependence on smartphones. His goal, he says, is to create art that lasts and he can be proud of.

Listen to the conversation at the audio link.

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Sports April 26, 2019

Tyreek Hill Barred From Kansas City Chiefs After Audio Alleging Child Abuse Surfaces

The Kansas City Chiefs have barred Tyreek Hill from the team. This follows a recording of the wide receiver’s fiancée accusing him of abusing their young child.



ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

A star NFL player has been barred from his team over suspicion that he abused his 3-year-old son. The Kansas City Chiefs say wide receiver Tyreek Hill cannot take part in any team activities, including offseason workouts. On a newly released audiotape, two people said to be Hill and his fiancee discuss a police investigation into the child’s broken arm. On the tape, Hill’s fiancee accuses Hill of causing the injury.

Joining us now is NPR’s Tom Goldman. Hi, Tom.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.

SHAPIRO: Catch us up on the background to this story. I understand prosecutors initially said they would not file any charges in this potential case of child abuse.

GOLDMAN: That’s right. The DA said he thinks a crime was committed against the child, just couldn’t prove who did it. So on Wednesday of this week, there were no charges filed against Hill or his fiancee, who I should add is also now pregnant with twins.

SHAPIRO: And now there is this audiotape. Describe where it came from and what’s in it.

GOLDMAN: Yeah. It emerged the day after the prosecutor made his announcement about no charges. It was first played on a local TV station in Kansas City Casey, KCTV. And it was described as a tape made in March while Hill and his fiancee, Crystal Espinal, were walking through the Dubai International Airport. Now, we haven’t independently verified that it’s actually Hill and Espinal, but the tape is out there; nobody has denied its authenticity. In fact, the Chiefs, Hill’s team, say they are deeply disturbed by what’s on it.

The whole tape is about 11 minutes long. We have a couple of short excerpts. On this first one, Espinal appears to accuse Hill of breaking their son’s arm. Hill speaks first, and the child’s name, I should say, is bleeped out on the tape.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TYREEK HILL: I didn’t do nothing.

CRYSTAL ESPINAL: Then why does (beep) say, Daddy did it? Why? Why does (beep) say, Daddy did it?

HILL: I don’t know. He says Daddy does a lot of things.

ESPINAL: Like what?

HILL: A lot of things.

ESPINAL: A 3-year-old’s not going to lie about what happened to his arm.

GOLDMAN: Now, Ari, in this next clip, Hill appears to threaten Espinal. Here it is.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

ESPINAL: He is terrified of you. And you say that he respects you, but it’s not respect.

HILL: He respects me.

ESPINAL: It’s terrify – he is terrified.

HILL: No, you [expletive]. You need to be terrified of me, too.

SHAPIRO: Wow. So Tom, what have prosecutors said about this tape?

GOLDMAN: We haven’t heard anything publicly from the prosecutors, but there are a number of reports out today, Ari, that the DA has reopened the case in light of this new audiotape.

SHAPIRO: And what about Tyreek Hill? Has he issued a statement?

GOLDMAN: He has. He released a statement saying in part, quote, “I love and support my family above anything. My son’s health and happiness is my No. 1 priority.” I contacted his lawyers today. They declined to comment because of what they called confidentiality laws. They have said, though, that Hill maintains his innocence and that he has cooperated with law enforcement.

SHAPIRO: Tom, this painful and upsetting story is unfolding in the middle of one of the NFL’s biggest offseason events, the NFL draft. So what’s the impact?

GOLDMAN: Yeah, that’s right. Well, the draft goes on of course. But this is the kind of publicity the league obviously hates, especially, as you point out, in the middle of this crown jewel moment that the NFL always loves as a way to, you know, keep sports fans consumed by the NFL even when there’s no football being played – so bad PR again for a league, you know, that seems to often deal with controversy.

SHAPIRO: And also for the Chiefs, which has dealt with this problem in the past.

GOLDMAN: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Chiefs are one of the best teams in the NFL. They almost got to the Super Bowl last season. But controversy has been following them even before this week. Kansas City star running back Kareem Hunt – he led the league in rushing yards his rookie season in 2017. Last year, he was videotaped shoving and kicking a woman, and he was released by the team just a few months ago. Also, the Chiefs just traded for a top defensive lineman, Frank Clark. He was arrested on a domestic violence charge in 2014, kicked off The University of Michigan football team. And let’s not forget, Ari, that Kansas City drafted Tyreek Hill in 2016 knowing that he had pleaded guilty to a charge of domestic violence against his then-girlfriend, who is now his fiancee.

SHAPIRO: That’s NPR sports correspondent Tom Goldman. Thanks, Tom.

GOLDMAN: You’re welcome, Ari.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Business April 26, 2019

U.S. Economy Grows 3.2% During First Quarter Of 2019

The U.S. economy started 2019 with a bang, growing at a better-than-expected rate of 3.2% in the first three months of the year.



ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The U.S. economy started 2019 with a bang. A report from the Commerce Department shows the economy grew at an annual rate of 3.2% percent in the first three months of the year; that’s a full point faster than it was growing at the end of last year. And as NPR’s Scott Horsley reports, it’s an encouraging sign that while other economies around the world may be tapping the brakes, the U.S. is still humming along.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: The first quarter growth rate of 3.2% was better than anyone expected – well, almost anyone.

KEVIN HASSETT: Do you remember what our forecast for this year is? Three point two. And what was the first quarter?

HORSLEY: White House economist Kevin Hassett hit the bull’s-eye with his growth forecast. And while there’s no guarantee the rest of the year will see similar growth, President Trump couldn’t help gloating, as he prepared to board his helicopter outside the White House.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re knocking it out of the park, as they say, and we’re very happy about that.

HORSLEY: Many forecasters outside the administration say first quarter growth was boosted by temporary factors, and they don’t believe the economy will continue to grow at this pace. Economist Ben Herzon of IHS Markit notes, with demand weak early in the year, many of the goods produced during the first quarter piled up in warehouses and on store shelves.

BEN HERZON: I think what’s going to happen is, after a first quarter burst in inventory building, that inventory building’s going to slow down and contribute to a slowing in overall GDP growth.

HORSLEY: White House economist Hassett agrees – sometimes a buildup in inventory is followed by a slump in production. But he’s counting on a jump in demand the rest of this year to keep factories and other producers busy.

HASSETT: So I’m not as concerned about the inventories as I normally would be.

HORSLEY: Consumer spending did start to heat up towards the end of the quarter, as shoppers set aside their winter concerns over the government shutdown and stock market gyrations. Jack Kleinhenz of the National Retail Federation says consumers do have the money to spend more, thanks to a healthy job market.

JACK KLEINHENZ: Every new job, we get new income into the economy, and that creates more spending.

HORSLEY: Wage gains have been solid, if not spectacular, and some of the biggest raises have gone to those at the bottom of the income ladder, who are especially likely to spend the extra cash. Fears of an all-out trade war also eased during the first quarter. Chief economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics says most observers are now counting on the president to strike a deal with China and avoid a costly escalation of tariffs.

MARK ZANDI: If he fails to follow through on that, I think there’s going to be a lot disappointment around the globe, stock markets will fall, and the year is going to turn out to be much less positive than anyone would expect at this point.

HORSLEY: Trade talks with China resume in Beijing next week. White House economist Hassett says the two sides are making progress towards an agreement.

HASSETT: Last time I used a wedding analogy – I said we’re at the point where we don’t want the groom to see the bride. But now I think we’re past that point. I think now we’re at the point where we don’t want Dustin Hoffman to show up at the wedding (laughter).

HORSLEY: Just like that scene from the classic movie, “The Graduate,” the course of the economy can offer unexpected twists. But for the first three months at least, 2019 got off to a good start. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

(SOUNDBITE OF SIMON AND GARFUNKEL’S “MRS ROBINSON”)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Health April 26, 2019

Does Taking Time For Compassion Make Doctors Better At Their Jobs?

Studies show that when doctors practice compassion, patients fare better, and doctors experience less burnout.

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For most of his career, Dr. Stephen Trzeciak was not a big believer in the “touchy-feely” side of medicine. As a specialist in intensive care and chief of medicine at Cooper University Health Care in Camden, N.J., Trzeciak felt most at home in the hard sciences.

Then his new boss, Dr. Anthony Mazzarelli, came to him with a problem: Recent studies had shown an epidemic of burnout among health care providers. As co-president of Cooper, Mazzarelli was in charge of a major medical system and needed to find ways to improve patient care.

He had a mission for Trzeciak — he wanted him to find answers to this question: Can treating patients with medicine and compassion make a measurable difference on the wellbeing of both patients and doctors?

Trzeciak wasn’t convinced. Sure, compassion is good, Trzeciak thought, but he expected to review the existing science and report back the bad news that caring has no quantitative rationale. But Mazzarelli was his colleague and chief, so he dove in.

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After considering more than 1,000 scientific abstracts and 250 research papers, Trzeciak and Mazzarelli were surprised to find that the answer was, resoundingly, yes. When health care providers take the time to make human connections that help end suffering, patient outcomes improve and medical costs decrease. Among other benefits, compassion reduces pain, improves healing, lowers blood pressure and helps alleviate depression and anxiety.

In their new book, Compassionomics: The Revolutionary Scientific Evidence that Caring Makes a Difference, Trzeciak and Mazzarelli lay out research showing the benefits of compassion, and how it can be learned. One study they cite shows that when patients received a message of empathy, kindness and support that lasted just 40 seconds their anxiety was measurably reduced.

But compassion doesn’t just benefit its recipients, Trzeciak and Mazzarelli learned. Researchers at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania found that when people spent time doing good for others (by writing an encouraging note to a gravely ill child), it actually changed their perception of time to make them feel they had more of it.

For doctors, this point is crucial. Fifty-six percent say they don’t have time to be empathetic.

“The evidence shows that when you invest time in other people, you actually feel that you have more time, or that you’re not so much in a hurry,” Trzeciak says. “So when 56 percent say they don’t have time in that survey, it’s probably all in their heads.”

The good news is, the same study that found doctors didn’t have time for empathy, also showed that a short training in the neuroscience of empathy made doctors interact with patients in ways patients rated as more empathetic.

Compassion also seems to prevent doctor burnout — a condition that affects almost half of U.S. physicians. Medical schools often warn students not to get too close to patients, because too much exposure to human suffering is likely to lead to exhaustion, Trzeciak says. But the opposite appears to be true: Evidence shows that connecting with patients makes physicians happier and more fulfilled.

“We’ve always heard that burnout crushes compassion. It’s probably more likely that those people with low compassion, those are the ones that are predisposed to burnout,” Trzeciak said. “That human connection — and specifically a compassionate connection — can actually build resilience and resistance to burnout.”

Trzeciak and Mazzarelli hope their evidenced-based arguments will spur medical schools to make compassion part of the curriculum.

For those outside the health care system, acting with compassion can be a kind of therapy as well, the authors say. They cite the phenomenon of the “helper’s high,” the good feeling that comes from helping others, and explain how giving to others benefits the givers’ brains and nervous systems.

“I can say this with confidence,” Trzeciak says. “Other-focused behavior is beneficial to your own mental health.”

For Trzeciak, the research had a personal effect. When he started into the project, he’d been

going through his own existential crisis, triggered by his son’s middle school homework assignment that asked, “What is the most pressing problem of our time?” While he believed his work to that point was meaningful, it was definitely not the most pressing problem of our time.

Along the way, he says, he realized he was feeling burned out after 20 years of practicing medicine. So, armed with data from his book research, he decided to test his own hypothesis.

“The recommended prescription is what I call ‘escapism’ — get away, detach, pull back, go on some nature hikes or whatever but I was not believing it,” Trzeciak explains in a TEDxPenn talk.

Instead, he says, he applied the techniques he’d been studying, including spending at least 40 seconds expressing compassion to patients. “I connected more, not less; cared more, not less; leaned in rather than pulled back. And that was when the fog of burnout began to lift.”

He prescribes the same for anyone, not just health care providers, suffering from mental or emotional exhaustion.

“Look around you and see those in need of compassion and give your 40 seconds of compassion,” he says. “See how it transforms your experience.”

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Business April 25, 2019

Selling A T-Rex On eBay

A recreation of the rare Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton currently up for grabs on eBay.

Alan Dietrich


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Alan Dietrich

More than 60 million years ago, the Tyrannosaurus rex roamed North America. Today, they’re fetching 7 figures from museums and private buyers all over the world. There is a thriving market for dinosaur fossils and T-Rex is at the top of the food chain… but some people say this market is bad for science.

Today on The Indicator: the economics of dinosaur fossils. How does one come to own a T-Rex? Who buys them? And… aren’t fossils priceless?

Music: “Dinosaur Rock”. Find us: Twitter / Facebook / Newsletter.

Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, PocketCasts and NPR One.

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Sports April 25, 2019

2019 NFL Draft Could Be Big For Tight Ends

Thursday is draft day for the National Football League. Two tight end players from Iowa are predicted to be drafted in the first round, breaking a long tradition in a changing game.



AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

It’s draft day for the National Football League. Usually, quarterbacks and defensive players rule the first round, but this draft could be big for tight ends.

LINDSAY JONES: Historically, in the NFL, a tight end has been kind of used as an extra blocker, and that has really changed as the league is transforming more into a passing game. The most valuable skill that a tight end can have now is his skills as a receiver.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

That’s Lindsay Jones, who covers the NFL for The Athletic. She’s in Nashville for the draft, where two tight ends are likely to get picked early; T.J. Hockenson, in particular, may go very early.

(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: T.J. Hockenson – touchdown Iowa.

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: And guess what? It’s a tight end – T.J. Hockenson.

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #3: It’s back to the end zone. Touchdown – it’s Hockenson.

JONES: He’s the guy who a team’s probably – that drafts him, especially if he drops into the top 10, they’re going to see him as a guy who can catch 100 passes a year, a guy who can have double-digit touchdowns. So that’s the ideal type of tight end that you’re looking for right now – a guy who is big, fast, strong, but you don’t think that there’s anybody on the opposing defense who’s going to be able to cover him as a pass-catcher.

CORNISH: Hockenson and his fellow Iowa Hawkeye Noah Fant have serious shots at going in the first round.

JONES: That would be exceedingly rare and just a sign of just how valuable tight ends are becoming in today’s NFL.

SHAPIRO: Two tight ends, both from Iowa – some are calling it Tight End U. Another Hawkeye, George Kittle, set records at tight end for the San Francisco 49ers last year.

JONES: You know, I don’t know if it’s anything about their specific schemes that they’re running there, but it is very interesting that they kind of have these two guys that are built very similarly that are coming out right now, and people in Iowa should be very proud to have the two tight ends coming out tonight.

CORNISH: That’s Lindsay Jones, NFL reporter at The Athletic.

(SOUNDBITE OF PARCELS’ “COMEDOWN”)

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