The Thistle & Shamrock: World Beat
Hear Afro Celt Sound System on this edition of The Thistle & Shamrock.
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Mark Bennett/Riotsquad Publicity
Circumnavigate the world of Celtic music as we listen to progressive, crossover Celtic roots recordings influenced by Latin, Balkan and African music and rhythms. Artists this week include the Afro Celt Sound System, Eileen Ivers, and The House Band.
Baseball’s Rules For Next Season May Eliminate The LOOGY
Sports commentator Mike Pesca opines on baseball’s left-handed, one-out guy. That’s a left-handed pitcher who’s brought in to face one, usually left-handed, batter. The bullpen staple may be fading.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Major League Baseball officials know the game is a bit slow. The average contest lasted three hours and four minutes last season. New rules for next season would cut down on the number of pitcher changes. Commentator Mike Pesca notes that could end a specialized baseball tradition.
MIKE PESCA: Whither the LOOGY. It’s an acronym. Stands for lefty one-out guy – a left-handed pitcher brought in from the bullpen to face one usually left-handed batter. That’s because lefty pitchers perform better against lefty batters. Then the LOOGY hits the showers. Or, really, maybe just uses one of those body wipes. The job is not that taxing. There are also ROOGYs – righty one-out guys. But as with so much in public life, it would be a false equivalence to compare righties with the lefties. In baseball, it’s much less common for a right-hander to be used in such a specialized manner. Plus, left-handers are a little nuts. Everyone knows that, just like everyone knows redheads are fiery and Canadians are even-keeled. Please don’t bother to test the hypothesis. This is baseball. It’s a lot easier just to go with what everyone knows.
The plan to cut down on how many times a manager can send in a new pitcher will spell doom for the LOOGY. And while baseball is a game of tradition, eliminating LOOGYs next year is a case of conflicting traditions. Normally, the league wouldn’t meddle in how managers use their bullpens. On the other hand, in recent years, managers increasingly used one pitcher to record one out against one batter then sent in an entirely different pitcher to record the next out. This means a pitcher would be removed from the game – pause in the action – a left-hander would be called in from the pen, – pause in the action – he’d get his eight warmup pitches – pause in the action – for enough time to ponder why baseball is the only sport where substitutes get to stop the game and warm up on the field of play. The newly inserted left-handed pitcher might throw one pitch, induce a pop-up or a weak ground out to second and be done.
Now, here’s how it works in real life. I’ll take you to Game Seven of the 2011 World Series, as announced on Fox. The Cardinals’ starting pitcher has reached the seventh inning and then gives up a hit.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: That is rocketed down into the corner.
PESCA: He’s lifted for a LOOGY.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: As Torrealba waits and takes a strike.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD AMBIENCE)
PESCA: And three pitches later, that LOOGY, Arthur Rhodes, gets his one out. And then he is replaced, which brings us to…
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: Kinsler, red hot. Takes a strike.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD AMBIENCE)
PESCA: Delivered by the third pitcher in that one inning. All those pitcher substitutions, just so that a LOOGY could get one guy out, have chewed up nine minutes and 18 seconds. That’s why the LOOGY will go the way of the woolly mammoth and the flip phone. It’s not like change is impossible. The game has changed in the past. The spitball used to be allowed. Now it’s banned. That was before this rule, which threatens the lefty one out guy. So it was never illegal for LOOGYs to use LOOGYs. Today’s LOOGYs say they will evolve, that they will show they have what it takes to last an entire half-inning. So maybe the LOOGY will not die out. Maybe there will be an evolution from LOOGY to LITOOGY (ph), the lefty three-out guy. Or, as they may simply call him, pitcher.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
INSKEEP: Mike Pesca – we brought him in for just that one commentary, and now he’s hitting the showers. He hosts the podcast called The LOOGY? No, no. It’s called “The Gist,” for Slate.
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.
The Month in Movies: What’s in Theaters in April 2019
Are we already entering the summer movie season? April brings us the most anticipated theatrical release of the year, with Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, and there’s a very good chance it will remain the biggest movie through the end of 2019. But there are many other great titles coming out this month, including a new DC superhero movie and some major horror and documentary features.
Below is our guide to all the major titles coming to theaters in April and how to get your tickets now.
April 5:
Shazam!
Starring: Zachary Levi, Mark Strong, Jack Dylan Grazer
The latest entry of the DC Extended Universe is also the franchise’s most standalone effort, following the Big-like adventures of a teenage boy (Asher Angel) who can magically turn into an adult-size superhero (Levy). It’s all fun and games and flying, though, until he must save his city from the evil Dr. Sivana (Strong).
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Pet Sematary
Starring: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, John Lithgow
Based on Stephen King’s classic horror novel, this second adaptation of Pet Sematary centers around a burial ground from which the dead come back to life — yet now they’re evil. That includes pet cats or young children, both in the case of the oft-grieving Creed family, who have just moved into town from the big city.
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The Best of Enemies
Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Sam Rockwell, Ann Heche
Oscar winner Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) plays another bigot in this drama based on the true story of Ku Klux Klan leader C.P. Ellis and his longtime rivalry turned partnership with civil rights activist Ann Atwater (Henson) in Durham, North Carolina, in the early 1970s over a matter of school desegregation.
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Amazing Grace
Starring: Aretha Franklin, Mick Jagger, Rev. James Cleveland
Director Sydney Pollack (The Firm) originally helmed this concert film back in 1972, documenting the late Aretha Franklin’s performance with the choir of the New Bethel Baptist Church in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Unfinished for more than 40 years, the movie is finally hitting theaters thanks to music producer Alan Elliott.
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April 12:
Hellboy
Starring: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane
Rebooting the devilish comic book movie franchise after two adaptations from Guillermo del Toro, this version of Hellboy aims to be darker and more R-rated. Harbour portrays the titular supernatural superhero as he and the rest of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense face a villainous Arthurian witch named Nimue, aka “the Queen of Blood” (Jovovich).
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Missing Link
Starring (voices): Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Zach Galifianakis
From Laika, the stop-motion animation studio behind Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings, comes a comedic adventure about a Bigfoot (Galifianakis) who teams up with an investigator (Jackman) and a free spirit (Saldana) to travel the world in search of his long-lost Yeti relatives. Timothy Olyphant co-stars as the voice of an evil explorer.
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Little
Starring: Regina Hall, Issa Rae, Marsai Martin
In the second Big-inspired movie of the month, Hall plays a ruthlessly successful tech mogul who is magically transformed into her younger self. Martin, who plays the teenage version of the character, also came up with the comedic premise and serves as an executive producer on the movie, one of Hollywood’s youngest ever.
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After
Starring: Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Josephine Langford, Selma Blair
Based on the best-selling romance novel by Anna Todd, which began as One Direction fan fiction involving singer Harry Styles, this drama centers around the love story of a good-girl college student (Langford) with a boyfriend back home who enters a rocky relationship with a cruel bad boy (Fiennes Tiffin) with a dark secret.
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April 17:
Penguins
Starring (voice): Ed Helms
The latest real-life animal adventure from Disneynature takes us to Antarctica for a look at Adélie penguins. Helms narrates the movie, which focuses on the “coming-of-age story” of Steve, one in a million of these flightless birds, as he finds a mate and then cares for their child while avoiding threats, including killer whales and leopard seals.
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Breakthrough
Starring: Chrissy Metz, Josh Lucas, Topher Grace
Based on a true story, this faith-based drama follows the parents (Metz and Lucas) of a teenager who miraculously recovered after he seemingly drowned in an icy lake and then fell into a coma. Mike Colter co-stars as the first responder who saves the boy (Marcel Ruiz), while Grace portrays a local pastor at the family’s church.
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April 19:
The Curse of La Llorona
Starring: Linda Cardellini, Marisol Ramirez, Raymond Cruz
Produced by James Wan and tied to his Conjuring Universe franchise, The Curse of La Llorona is another horror movie inspired by supernatural folklore. Cardellini stars as a widowed mother of two who is haunted by the legendary ghost known as La Llorona, aka “the Weeping Woman,” in 1970s Los Angeles.
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Under the Silver Lake
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Riley Keough, Topher Grace
The latest movie from It Follows writer/director David Robert Mitchell, Under the Silver Lake is a comedic neo-noir thriller in which Garfield plays a man searching for the mysterious woman (Keough) who suddenly came into his life only to immediately go missing.
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April 26:
Avengers: Endgame
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Hemsworth, Brie Larson, Paul Rudd, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, Karen Gillan, Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen, Letitia Wright
This is it, the 22nd installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and potentially the one that ends it all — or at least the franchise as we know it. The follow-up to the cliffhanging Avengers: Infinity War follows the surviving superheroes, led by Captain America, as they attempt to set right what went away when Thanos snapped his fingers. Joined by Captain Marvel, the Avengers might just be able to reverse the devastating genocide of half the MCU’s population.
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The White Crow
Starring: Oleg Ivenko, Ralph Fiennes, Louis Hoffman
Oscar-nominated actor Ralph Fiennes returns to the director’s chair for this biographical drama about Rudolph Nureyev (Ivenko), the brilliant Russian dancer and choreographer who famously defected from the Soviet Union in 1961 at the height of the Cold War. Fiennes also co-stars in the movie as ballet master Alexander Pushkin.
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J.T. Leroy
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern, Courtney Love
The scandal that shook the publishing world is dramatized in this biopic from Justin Kelly (King Cobra) starring Oscar-nominated actress Laura Dern as author Laura Albert, who took on the alter ego “J.T. Leroy” and then had her sister-in-law, Savannah Knoop (Kristen Stewart) portray the suddenly celebrated personality in public.
Federal Judge Imposes New Probation Terms On PG&E To Reduce Wildfire Risk
PG&E crews work to restore power lines in Paradise, Calif., after the Camp Fire destroyed much of the Northern California town.
Rich Pedroncelli/AP
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Rich Pedroncelli/AP
A federal judge in San Francisco is barring utility giant Pacific Gas and Electric from reissuing dividends in favor of using the funds for reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires in Northern and Central California.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup, in a court hearing Tuesday, also said that he will closely monitor PG&E’s compliance with new wildfire prevention rules governing tree-trimming near power lines. Alsup is supervising the utility company’s felony probation stemming from its conviction in the case of a massive natural gas pipeline explosion in 2010.
“A lot of money went out in dividends that should have went into tree trimming,” Alsup said to PG&E acting chief executive John Simon as quoted by the Associated Press. “PG&E pumped out $4.5 billion in dividends and let the tree budge whither. So a lot of trees should’ve been take down that were not.”
The judge’s order does not include the stringent condition requiring PG&E to inspect its entire power grid as he originally proposed.
Company spokesman James Noonan said in an email that “we share the court’s commitment to safety and understand that we must play a leading role in reducing the risk of wildfire throughout Northern and Central California.”
The court’s dividend plan was not a surprise. Last month in a court document, Alsup had signaled his intention to order the company not to issue dividends until it complied with “all applicable vegetation management requirements.”
PG&E initially had resisted the plan, arguing that it had already suspended dividends in 2017. The dividend payments may not resume without Alsup’s permission.
In February, PG&E said that it’s “probable” that it was responsible for the 2018 Camp Fire that killed at least 85 people and destroyed about 14,000 structures. The company, facing billions of dollars in possible liabilities filed for bankruptcy in January. Alsup is also presiding over that filing in separate proceedings.
Congressional Panel: Consumers Shouldn’t Have To Solve Surprise Medical Bill Problem
Surprise bills happen when patients go to a hospital they think is in their insurance network but are seen by doctors or specialists who aren’t.
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One point drew clear agreement Tuesday during a House subcommittee hearing: When it comes to the problem of surprise medical bills, the solution must protect patients — not demand that they be great negotiators.
“It is the providers and insurers, not patients, who should bear the burden of settling on a fair payment,” said Frederick Isasi, the executive director of Families USA. He was one of the witnesses who testified before the House Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee of the Education & Labor Committee.
Surprise, or “balance,” bills happen when patients go to a hospital they think is in their insurance network, but are then seen by a doctor or specialist who isn’t. The patient is then on the hook for an often very high bill — sometimes exceeding thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars.
Stories in the Bill of the Month series by NPR and Kaiser Health News have drawn attention to the problem.
Surprise billing is one of the rare public policy problems that are both bipartisan and in need of a federal solution. Around 60 percent of people are covered by employer-sponsored insurance, which is regulated by the federal government, and aren’t protected by the nearly two dozen state laws governing balance billing.
“We have people on this committee that have done yeoman efforts to come up with solutions in their own states,” said Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., the panel’s ranking member. “I think we have a head start in understanding some of the pitfalls to stay away from and some of the benefits we can go directly toward.”
Several policy solutions have been introduced in Congress and discussed at the White House, but the witnesses testifying before the panel were firm that any answer needed to be worked out between key stakeholders — providers and insurers — instead of forcing consumers to file complaints and go through arbitration processes.
The problem, according to testimony, needs to be solved at the root. Instead of allowing a situation in which patients must negotiate a payment plan after receiving a surprise bill, hospitals and insurers need to remove the incentives for doctors to remain out of network.
Right now, if doctors opt out of an insurance network, they can charge prices that are “largely made up,” said Christen Linke Young, a fellow at USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy.
“We need to limit how much they can be paid in out-of-network scenarios to make it less attractive,” Young said.
Experts offered a few solutions, like capping how much providers can be paid if they are out of network. Ilyse Schuman, senior vice president of health policy at the American Benefits Council, suggested capping reimbursement for out-of-network emergency services at 125 percent of what the physician would get from Medicare.
Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., an obstetrician, expressed concerns that tying payments to Medicare would disadvantage rural communities like his, where Medicare reimburses doctors less.
“We pay our providers less and can keep less than 10 percent of nurses we train in the area because we can’t pay them,” Roe said.
Rep. Susan Wild, a Pennsylvania Democrat, acknowledged that surprise billing is one problem that both parties are motivated to solve, but she was skeptical that a path forward was on the horizon. “The solutions I’m hearing don’t sound workable in the context of our present medical system,” Wild said.
“Isn’t the real problem the fact that we’ve turned over our medical system to private market forces?” she asked.
While price transparency is often touted as the antidote to high medical bills, panelists were adamant that more information alone is not enough to stop balance bills.
Patients usually can’t shop around for an anesthesiologist, for instance, no matter how much information they have.
“Notice isn’t enough here; even if the consumer has perfect information, they can’t do anything with that information,” Young testified. “They can’t go across town to get their anesthesia and go back to the hospital.”
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service and editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. You can follow Rachel Bluth onTwitter: @RachelHBluth
China To Close Loophole On Fentanyl After U.S. Calls For Opioid Action
Liu Yuejin of China’s National Narcotics Control Commission speaks at a Beijing press conference on Monday. He announced that all fentanyl-related drugs will become controlled substances, effective May 1.
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Sam McNeil/AP
China has announced that all variants of fentanyl will be treated as controlled substances, after Washington urged Beijing to stop fueling the opioid epidemic in the United States.
Authorities in China already regulate 25 variants of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid linked to thousands of drug overdose deaths in the U.S. But some manufacturers in China, seeking to evade controls, have introduced slight changes to the molecular structure of their drugs, giving them the legal loophole to manufacture and export before the government can assess the products for safety and medical use.
The decision to regulate all fentanyl-related drugs as controlled substances “puts a wider array of substances under regulation,” Liu Yuejin, an official of China’s National Narcotics Control Commission, said at a press conference in on Monday. The regulation will take effect May 1.
Bryce Pardo, a drug policy researcher at Rand Corporation, tells NPR that in theory, the regulation “future-proofs the law” by including impending chemical modifications.
But China may not be able to enforce the new rules, Pardo says. “[Authorities] already have problems enforcing existing laws.” He says official reports show the country does not have enough inspectors for facilities, and law enforcement would have to “take a sample” from a facility and eventually “analyze whether it’s a fentanyl-related structure.”
Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution who focuses on illegal economies, tells NPR the regulation is “a good step,” but whether China “will have the will and the capacity to do it is a big question.”
The United States and China have been negotiating for better drug control since the Obama era, she adds. In the midst of the trade war with the Trump administration, “China is looking for one area where it can still continue cooperating with the U.S.,” Felbab-Brown says.
The announcement comes after President Xi Jinping vowed in a December meeting with President Trump to classify fentanyl as a controlled substance. After the meeting, Trump called on China to seek the death penalty for fentanyl distributors.
Liu denied on Monday accusations that China is a major contributor to the U.S. opioid crisis, saying Chinese law enforcement has “solved several cases” of illegal fentanyl-related drug manufacturing and distribution. “They are all shipped to the U.S. by criminals through evasive means, through international packages,” Liu said. “The amount is extremely limited and cannot be the main source of the substance in the U.S.”
He said the U.S. opioid problem was mainly caused by “domestic reasons,” according to the South China Morning Post.
According to a 2018 report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, China remains “the largest source of illicit fentanyl and fentanyl-like substances” in the United States and “illicit manufacturers create new substances faster than they can be controlled.”
Chemical exporters in China secretly send drugs to the West through fake shipment labels and other tactics, the report stated.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that relieves extreme pain. It is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also is the drug most often found in overdose deaths in the United States. In 2016, fentanyl was linked to more than 18,000 drug overdose deaths, 29 percent of drug overdose deaths that year, according to a National Vital Statistics System report.
Felbab-Brown says China’s new stance on fentanyl-related substances stems partially from a desire to be a global enforcer on drugs. “From a public relations perspective, it’s difficult for China to be accused of being a source of drugs,” she says.
China does not have a monopoly on fentanyl production, she adds. “Even if tomorrow the United States wouldn’t get fentanyl from China, others would step in. Most obviously India, a major source of addictive drugs.”
Jingnan Huo contributed to this report.
A Crisis Of Consumer Confidence?
Consumer confidence has been falling lately. Not by a ton, but it’s at its second lowest rate in a year. It’s measured by the Conference Board, which crunches a bunch of data and issues a Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) every month. Because consumer spending makes up roughly 70 percent of the economy, economists and politicians pay a lot attention to the way consumers feel, and regard the CCI as an important gauge of the health of the economy.
Right now the CCI stands at 124.1. But what does that mean? How low can the CCI go? And what data goes into the number? So many questions! Stacey called up the Conference Board’s Lynn Franco to talk about the current number and how the Index works.
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Amid Anxiety Surrounding Boeing’s 737 Max Jets, One Airline Wants To Cancel Its Order
The airline Garuda Indonesia wants to cancel its order of 49 Boeing 737 Max 8 planes, but contracts make it expensive to do so.
KORVA COLEMAN, HOST:
Until recently, Boeing’s 737 MAX jet has been extremely popular. The company builds 52 of them a month and has more than 4,600 on order. But after the recent pair of deadly crashes, at least one airline is negotiating with Boeing to get out of its contract. NPR’s Daniella Cheslow reports.
DANIELLA CHESLOW, BYLINE: A meeting between Boeing and Garuda Indonesia, the national flag carrier, took place earlier this week in Jakarta. Garuda spokesman says the airline’s passengers don’t have faith in the 737 MAX 8, and so it wants to cancel an order for 49 of the planes. He says it’s open to swapping out the 737 MAXs for other Boeing models. That’s a tiny fraction of Boeing’s orders, but still a concern.
MARC SZEPAN: I would not be surprised if there would be some airlines trying to reshuffle the order book.
CHESLOW: Marc Szepan is a lecturer in international business at the University of Oxford and a former Lufthansa executive. He says it can be costly to break an airline purchase contract. A MAX 8 cost $122 million. There are discounts for large orders. Airlines pay a deposit to lock in their slot, then they make payments as the plane is built. Boeing could keep those payments if an airline cancels its orders. But Szepan says he expects Boeing to be flexible as airlines lose money while the 737 MAX planes sit idle.
SZEPAN: They could ask for compensation, direct financial compensation. They could ask for delayed deliveries, spare parts at discount, the spare parts for free, training for free.
CHESLOW: The 737 MAX has been Boeing’s best-selling plane. American Airlines captain and pilot union spokesman Jason Goldberg has spent hundreds of hours piloting the aircraft, and he’s a fan.
JASON GOLDBERG: It’s a really nice flying aircraft. The controls feel to it is really solid. It’s a quiet airplane. It’s extremely fuel-efficient.
CHESLOW: American has 24 of the MAX 8s. It’s ordered more than 60 more, over the next few years. Southwest and United also fly the MAX. But Goldberg was stunned to learn that a new automated flight control system called MCAS may have caused the crashes.
GOLDBERG: We were not even informed of the existence of the MCAS system, not to mention how we deal with any particular malfunctions that might occur with that system.
CHESLOW: Senators pressed government officials about that this week. And although Boeing has announced a software upgrade, it could take months until regulators around the world approve the plane to fly. Both the airlines and Boeing need each other to succeed. The other major producer of fuel-efficient single-aisle aircraft is Europe’s Airbus, and it also has thousands of planes to build. Szepan says, even if airlines like Indonesia’s Garuda could get out of their contracts…
SZEPAN: Airbus would not have the capacity to fulfill these orders.
CHESLOW: Financial adviser Susan Kaplan says she still has confidence in Boeing. It’s got more than a century of aviation experience. And until these two crashes, it had a stellar safety record. It’s also probably too big to fail.
SUSAN KAPLAN: Their business is so immense, whether it be fighter jets, helicopters, guided weapons, satellites. They’re just an enormous colossus. And the assumption in the field is they’ll fix it.
CHESLOW: American, Southwest and United all say they’re sticking to their orders. The stakes are high. Southwest revised its revenue forecast downward for this quarter, in part because of the Boeing groundings. Germany’s TUI Group did as well. And Lufthansa says it will soon replace at least a hundred single aisle planes, and it hasn’t decided whether to go with Boeing or its rival, Airbus. But CEO Carsten Spohr says, we have not lost our trust in Boeing. Daniella Cheslow, NPR News.
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.
Saturday Sports: College Basketball, Baseball Begins, NFL Pass Interference Rule
We look at the season openings of Major League Baseball, the NCAA tournaments and all the latest sports news.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Going to take a deep breath because it’s time for sports.
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SIMON: Spring has sprung. The flowers bloom but not in Chapel Hill this morning. Not only did UNC lose, but Duke won. NPR’s Tom Goldman joins us. Good morning, Tom.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hey there, Scott.
SIMON: Auburn, seeded five, defeated the No. 1 seeded Tar Heels, and they didn’t have to sweat too much either, did they?
GOLDMAN: They really didn’t. And No. 1 fan and former star and March Madness broadcaster Charles Barkley – that’s a lot of titles – gets happier and happier. Auburn need…
SIMON: He’s also bald, too. OK. But go ahead.
GOLDMAN: (Laughter) Four titles.
SIMON: Yeah.
GOLDMAN: Auburn was the lower seed (laughter), but they were the better team, surged pass the Tar Heels in the second half for a 97-80 win. But there is a lot of concerns, Scott, about the team’s best player. Forward Chuma Okeke – his knee buckled on a drive to the hoop in the second half. He had to be helped off. And it looks like a serious injury.
SIMON: And Duke won, but they barely held on against Virginia Tech.
GOLDMAN: Man, for a second straight game, Virginia Tech had a chance to tie at the end of regulation, missed a point-blank shot, I mean, from a foot. And Duke escaped – reminiscent of that second round game, a classic versus Central Florida. Remember that when Central Florida had two chances to win at the end, but the ball just would not go in?
Last night, Duke also had to deal with an injury issue. One of its star freshmen, Cam Reddish, didn’t play because of a sore knee. So Duke’s other super freshmen, including the superest (ph) of them all, Zion Williamson, did just enough to move this team to the Elite Eight versus Michigan State. Scott, I should say this Duke team may be a bunch of one-and-done players, you know, in college for a year before moving on to the pros, but they’re getting a college career’s worth of NCAA tournament experience.
SIMON: Over on the women’s side, UConn got a scare against UCLA, didn’t they?
GOLDMAN: Yeah, the Huskies did. UCLA’s a good team, and UConn held on for an 8-point win. You know, there was some surprise going into the tournament that UConn was only a 2 seed. UConn had been a 1 seed every year since 2006, but the Huskies haven’t looked as strong as this tournament’s No. 1s. Louisville, Mississippi State, Baylor, Notre Dame, those teams have – they’ve been cruising, winning easily by double digits each game – each of their games. You know, there’s no real March Madness in the women’s tournament – meaning major upsets in the women’s tournaments so far.
SIMON: Yes. March method it seems to be.
GOLDMAN: Right. Right. Exactly. But, you know, that just means the excitement comes in the later rounds when all of the best, the 1s and the 2s, get together and start to play each other.
SIMON: Major League Baseball started again this week on North American soil.
GOLDMAN: Yeah.
SIMON: Chicago Cubs are undefeated after two games. I’m willing to call it a season right now.
GOLDMAN: Sure, Scott. At 1-0, the Cubs already have a death lock on the NL Central division. Even though they’re tied with Cincinnati, no way the Reds keep up as Chicago builds to its inevitable 162-0 record this season, right?
SIMON: San Diego Padres might be for real this year – right? – not just moving to Montreal or Mexico, but they might be a real factor.
GOLDMAN: The Padres are off to their best start since 2011, and here’s what’s to like about them. A small market team that’s made it clear it wants to win now, which is not always the case with major league teams these days. In fact, it’s a real sore point between management and the union. The players say a number of teams aren’t spending enough on rosters. But they’re doing that in San Diego. They paid Manny Machado $300 million over 10 years. They want to win now, and the Padres should be fun to watch.
SIMON: NPR’s Tom Goldman, thanks so much.
GOLDMAN: You’re welcome.
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.
What’s New on Home Video in April 2019
Strong personalities dominate a slew of strong movies that will be available for home viewing during the next few weeks. It’s a perfect time to catch up with key releases you may have missed before the onslaught of action blockbusters begin arriving in theaters.
Here’s our guide to all the major titles arriving on home video in April 2019, complete with links to more information and how to buy and/or rent on FandangoNow.
April 2
Glass
M. Night Shyamalan concludes a trilogy of films about superpowered humans who face surprising challenges in the modern world. The fractured thriller stars James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sarah Paulson and Samuel L. Jackson.
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April 2
The Kid Who Would Be King
In this beguiling adventure, a young lad named Arthur (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) must join with school friends both new and old on a quest to defeat the powerful and wicked Morgana (Rebecca Ferguson). Patrick Stewart also stars.
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April 2
Replicas
Keanu Reeves stars as a scientist who is desperate to experiment on his family with technology he is still perfecting. Alice Eve and Thomas Middleditch also star in the sci-fi thriller.
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April 9
Escape Room
Six strangers become trapped by deadly circumstances beyond their control and must use their wits to survive. Taylor Russell, Logan Miller and Deborah Ann Woll star.
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April 9
Mirai
A young boy becomes jealous of the attention that his newborn sister receives from their family and then encounters very strange guests from the past and future. The animated adventure features the voice talents of John Cho, Rebecca Hall and Daniel Dae Kim.
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April 16
Miss Bala
Gina Rodriguez stars as a young woman whose life is placed in danger after she becomes unwittingly involved with a deadly international crime gang. Anthony Mackie also stars.
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April 23
Arctic
Airplane pilot Mads Mikkelsen crash lands in a frozen wasteland and then must undertake a long, arduous journey to have any hope for survival. Joe Penna directed.
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April 23
Serenity
Fishing boat captain Matthew McConaughey is tracked down by ex-wife Anne Hathaway, who needs his help. The twisty thriller also stars Jason Clarke, Diane Lane, Djimon Hounsou and Jeremy Strong.
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Also in April
Destroyer
In a searing, memorably performance, Nicole Kidman stars as a police detective who must deal with the professional sins of her past. The action-filled drama also stars Sebastian Stan, Toby Kebbell, Tatiana Maslany and Bradley Whitford.
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