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Business November 11, 2019

Brexit Among Reasons For Rising Real Estate Prices In France

Paris is becoming unaffordable as prices are pushed up partly by Brexit, as wealthy people and companies relocate from London.



ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Paris has become one of the most expensive housing markets in Europe. One reason for the rising costs is Brexit, the U.K.’s long effort to leave the European Union. NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley looks at the factors driving the market.

ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: The Gutierrez family has just moved into their spacious four-bedroom apartment in the center of Paris, part of a wave of expats who have crossed the channel from London. Pilar Gutierrez, a Spanish national, is employed by the European Banking Authority. She remembers the shock of Britain’s referendum on whether to leave or remain in the European Union.

PILAR GUTIERREZ: I remember on the 25th of June when we went to bed, it was like – still remain winning. But when we woke up on the 24th, it was the other way around, so it was a big shock for us. It was a big shock. Since the 24th of June 2016, we knew that we would have to move.

BEARDSLEY: Aside from EU organizations, international banks and businesses have also left London and relocated to continental cities like Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt in order to stay inside the EU. Gutierrez says it’s not easy to move big organizations. It’s been hard enough to move her own family.

GUTIERREZ: It’s always challenging when you move to a new country, a new city and even more if you cannot to speak the language, right?

BEARDSLEY: But France is putting out the welcome mat. The French government has cut red tape and wealth taxes, and several new international schools are opening in Paris.

MARIE-HELEN LUNDGREN: (Speaking French).

BEARDSLEY: High-end realtor Marie-Helen Lundgren says buyers have always chosen Paris for its beauty, cuisine and culture. But now it’s also an economic choice. She says in 22 years, she’s never seen such a booming market.

LUNDGREN: Oh, no. We have not enough properties. We are in the scarcity market. We sell about three, four properties a day.

BEARDSLEY: According to newspaper Le Parisien, the price of real estate in the French capital has risen 248% in the last two decades. Lundgren says Brexit is not the only reason people are flocking to Paris. She also credits low interest rates and the pro-business policies of President Emmanuel Macron.

LUNDGREN: We saw that many expats – French expats and also international clients came back to Paris and wanted to invest in Paris.

BEARDSLEY: The rise in apartment prices is also pushing some middle-class families out of the city. To stop the exodus, the Paris mayor has introduced new regulations to keep rents affordable. But Thierry Delesalle, head of Paris’ Chamber of Notaries, says that won’t stop the rise in property prices because people aren’t buying apartments to rent them out.

THIERRY DELESALLE: (Through interpreter) Even at these high prices, people are buying to live in Paris. Ninety percent of buyers are buying to live in their new properties.

BEARDSLEY: Delesalle says the Paris housing market is not a bubble waiting to burst. Paris real estate, he says, is a solid, long-term investment.

Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.

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 November 10, 2019

#MeToo Hits High-End Wine Industry

NPR’s Michel Martin talks with Bon Appetit wine editor Marissa Ross about sexual harassment in the high-end wine industry.



MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

In recent years, the phrase #MeToo has become a hashtag and a movement that’s helped survivors of sexual violence feel more connected and less alone. That movement has also forced many industries to reckon with patterns of sexual misbehavior that were ignored or tolerated for years.

A similar conversation is now taking place in the wine industry, which is dominated by mostly male winemakers and influential sommeliers. Last week, The New York Times wrote about a rising star in that world, a sommelier who was accused by four women of assaulting them or trying to do so. That sommelier has since resigned. But we wanted to hear more about the environment for women and wine, so we’ve called Marissa Ross, who’s a columnist and wine editor for Bon Appetit. Marissa Ross is with us now.

Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us.

MARISSA ROSS: Thank you for having me, Michel.

MARTIN: When you first got into the industry, did it seem like a very male space to you? I mean, I know that sometimes, you know, people walk into certain rooms, and they look around and go, gee, this is a pretty male environment. Did it feel that way to you when you got into the business?

ROSS: Absolutely. Even before I got into the business, I was going to a lot of tastings to learn about wine. And I remember there was always so many men there. And this one man in particular – like, I’ll never forget this. I do curse from time to time. I’m a human (laughter). And I remember this man that was next to me that I hadn’t even been talking to turning to me and being, like, ladies can’t talk that way. And if you can’t be a lady, you shouldn’t be in here. You know, it just felt, like, woah – like, I can’t be in this space and be myself.

And I was one of the only women in there at the time. And then, once I became a part of the business, it became very clear to me very quickly that I was always going to be one of the few women in the room. Luckily, things have changed over the last five years, but there’s still a lot more room to grow and change.

MARTIN: And in terms of the behavior that has been exposed, has been written about, have you experienced that as well? Because, as I mentioned, The New York Times published an article by Julia Moskin which detailed allegations against a particular person. But it also talked about people feeling like they can touch you, groping…

ROSS: Oh, absolutely.

MARTIN: …And worse. I mean, is that something that you and other women in the industry have experienced?

ROSS: That is something that I experience on a regular basis. I was at a wine-tasting festival just this past spring, and a winemaker came up to me and, like, grabbed me from behind and grabbed my breasts and, like, whispered in my ear that, like, one day he’d have me and then, like, kissed my neck. And I’m, like, what are you doing? And those behaviors get excused because, oh, they’re French. You just don’t understand their culture. You know, I do my best to try to leave events early, and I monitor how much I drink.

And, you know, there’s so much that women have to do to protect themselves in these environments, and that’s why it’s really scary for younger women that are entering this industry – because they possibly don’t have those skills yet. They don’t have that knowledge of, like, oh, I have to be consciously aware of how much I’m consuming, how much everyone around me is consuming, what everyone around me is doing, and where am I, like, fitting into all that? And it’s a lot of mental work.

MARTIN: And I say that because you also wrote a piece about this for Bon Appetit, and the title of which is, “To Make The Wine Industry Less Toxic, We Need To Get Loud.” And one of the things that you point out in your piece is that drinking is part of the job. You know, in a lot of workplaces, you know, right before a holiday party, for example, the company will issue guidelines saying…

ROSS: Yeah.

MARTIN: …Watch how much you drink, and, you know, don’t drink if you have to drive and things like that, and – but drinking is, in fact, part of your job. And I wanted to ask – when you are at these events, is there any effort made to watch the behavior of people, to – are there any steps taken to ensure people’s safety? Is there anything like that?

ROSS: I don’t think that there really has been yet. There really isn’t even any, like, self-policing. But now, we’re going to have to do something about it. If we can’t rely on people to take it upon themselves to act appropriately, then I believe that it is the leaders in our community’s job to start making sure that they do. And I don’t think – a lot of it too is it’s, like, well, that’s not very fun to make rules. Well, you know what’s not really fun? When you don’t feel safe in a space. And something has to change.

MARTIN: So how – what has been – the reaction been? I understand that you actually – you helped gather some of the accusations about this particular sommelier who, as we said, has since resigned, that were published in The New York Times piece. And I know that you wrote about the fact that people have been sharing stories with you. I mean, this has all happened within the last week. What reaction have you been seeing to the fact that something that apparently you all have been talking about privately has now become public?

ROSS: The response has been actually really quite wonderful in terms of the way that the community has come together to spread the word and to get people to come to me. I’m still having survivors that are coming to me, which is incredible. And people are – have been overall very supportive. Of course, there are the same sort of detractors that all stories like this get, where they blame it on a generational thing or, you know, whatever. But it’s not a generational thing, I don’t personally believe. I think it’s a systemic problem.

And overall, I’m very, very, very happy that it’s resonating with so many people and that they can see that if it’s happening in this industry, it’s all industries. It’s all walks of life where this is happening, and we have to keep talking about it in order to make sure that it stops happening in all of our lives.

MARTIN: That is Marissa Ross, wine editor for Bon Appetit magazine. You can read her piece “To Make The Wine Industry Less Toxic, We Need To Get Loud” at the Bon Appetit site.

Marissa Ross, thanks so much for talking to us.

ROSS: Thank you so much, Michel.

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 November 10, 2019

The Controversy Around Virginity Testing

NPR’s Michel Martin talks with Sophia Jones, senior editor for The Fuller Project, about the controversy surrounding virginity testing.



MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

We’re going to turn now to a story that made all kinds of waves on social media last week. And here is where I feel I should say we’re going to get into a level of detail about anatomy that some may find uncomfortable.

The story is this. The rapper and producer T.I. said in an interview with the host of the “Ladies Like Us” podcast that he has been taking his now 18-year-old daughter to her annual visit with her gynecologist every year to confirm that she’s not sexually active. How would he confirm this? By insisting that the doctor determine whether her hymen is intact. It’s a practice known as virginity testing, and it’s a practice that has been widely condemned by medical professionals around the world, including the World Health Organization, as unscientific, medically meaningless and even abusive.

We wanted to learn more about this, including how widespread this practice remains, so we’ve called Sophia Jones. She’s a senior editor and journalist with the Fuller Project. That’s a nonprofit journalist organization reporting on global issues affecting women. She’s written widely about this. And she’s with us now from Istanbul, Turkey.

Sophia Jones, thank you so much for talking with us.

SOPHIA JONES: Thank you for having me.

MARTIN: So, first of all, how widespread is this practice?

JONES: So that’s a good question, and most people don’t really know. So I started reporting on this about a year ago, when I was planning a trip to Afghanistan, where – virginity testing is widespread there. And I started asking researchers and physicians in the United States if they had ever heard of this happening in the U.S. And so I started asking that question – how common is this? Have you heard of this?

And it took a few months for people to really start to get back to me and to talk about this. They said that they were routinely asked to perform hymen exams to determine virginity, which is not scientific, and that they had occasionally actually performed the exams themselves or they had heard of colleagues performing them.

MARTIN: And, just to clarify for people who may not know, what exactly is the hymen? What function does it serve? Does it serve any biological function that we know?

JONES: The hymen is a thin piece of mucous membrane that can be found near the entrance of the vagina. It has no proven purpose whatsoever. Doctors and experts really don’t know why the hymen exists. Some baby girls are born without a hymen. Many are born with a hymen. But it comes in many different shapes and sizes.

MARTIN: What in your reporting have you indicated has been the consequence of these kinds of tests on women? I mean, one of the things that you wrote about is that there are a number of women who have been subjected to these tests who have found it extremely traumatic for years afterwards. Could you just talk a little bit about what your reporting indicated around this?

JONES: It was really difficult to get women to open up and talk about this issue because it’s incredibly private. And of the women that I did interview, there was a handful that had undergone this procedure as children, in their teen years around puberty. And all of them said that they found it incredibly traumatizing. And some said that they considered it to be sexual assault or rape.

MARTIN: One of the things that intrigued me is the fact that a doctor would participate in this when you’ve told us that there is no medical purpose to it. I mean, there is no medical purpose to it. So why would a doctor perform this test on a healthy person?

JONES: That’s a really good question, and that’s a question I’ve asked several dozen physicians and nurses and sexual assault nurses. And they say – they have a variety of different answers. Some just don’t want to talk about the fact that they’re performing these exams because it might be due to ignorance. Even in medical school, the hymen is not widely studied, and even among doctors that I interviewed in the States, there was sort of a lack of understanding around the hymen and the role that it plays or does not play in the female anatomy.

MARTIN: So before we let you go, I noted that this story about T.I., who’s, you know, a very well-known figure – and I know a lot of people reacted with kind of horror and disgust when he was discussing this issue in this way – you know, so freely on a public forum. And I just wondered, how did you react to this as a person who’s reported on this?

JONES: So I wasn’t totally surprised. I was just surprised that about a week after I published this year-long investigation about virginity testing, and it was so difficult to find women and medical professionals to come forward and talk about this issue, that this story popped up in my news feed that T.I. was bringing his daughter to get her hymen checked. And it sort of blew up the story in a much bigger way and gave it a platform where people were actually discussing this issue – where before, before this investigation, I had not ever read a story about virginity testing in the U.S.

MARTIN: That was Sophia Jones, senior editor and journalist with the Fuller Project. It’s a project that reports on issues affecting women and girls around the world.

Sophia Jones, thank you so much for talking to us today.

JONES: Thank you.

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 November 9, 2019

You Can Get A Master’s In Medical Cannabis In Maryland

Maryland now offers the country’s first master’s degree in the study of the science and therapeutics of cannabis. Pictured, an employee places a bud into a bottle for a customer at a weed dispensary in Denver, Colo.

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Summer Kriegshauser is one of 150 students in the inaugural class of the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s Master of Science in Medical Cannabis Science and Therapeutics, the first graduate program of its type in the country.

This will be Kriegshauser’s second master’s degree and she hopes it will offer her a chance to change careers.

“I didn’t want to quit my really great job and work at a dispensary making $12 to $14 an hour,” says Kriegshauser, who is 40. “I really wanted a scientific basis for learning the properties of cannabis — all the cannabinoids and how they interact with the body. I wanted to learn about dosing. I wanted to learn about all the ailments and how cannabis is used within a medical treatment plan, and I just wasn’t finding that anywhere,” she adds.

The program stands largely alone: Some universities offer one-off classes on marijuana and two have created undergraduate degrees in medicinal plant chemistry, but none have yet gone as far as Maryland.

Stretched over two years and conducted almost exclusively online, the program launched as an increasing number of jurisdictions across the country legalize pot — primarily for medical uses, but in some places recreational, as well.

As of mid-October, nearly three dozen states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands had legalized medical cannabis, creating an ever-expanding universe of opportunities for people looking to grow, process, recommend and sell the drug to patients. And given how quickly attitudes and laws on cannabis are shifting, those opportunities are expected to keep expanding.

But even as the industry has quickly grown, expertise has remained largely informal. And for people looking to change careers, like Kriegshauser, getting into the legal cannabis field can seem risky, with the likely job options hard to come by.

The University of Maryland credits the overwhelming response to its graduate program to that desire for more information and opportunity. More than 500 hopefuls applied for what was supposed to be a class of 50, prompting the university to increase the size of the inaugural class threefold. And the class is geographically diverse, coming from 32 states and D.C., plus Hong Kong and Australia.

The students take four required core courses — including one on the history of medical weed and culture, and two basic science classes. Students then choose between a number of electives.

Leah Sera, a pharmacist and the program’s director, says officials at the university see a parallel trend. More and more of their graduates were entering a professional world where cannabis is seen as an alternative medicine for any number of ailments, and one that more patients are curious about.

“There have been a number of studies, primarily with health professionals, indicating that there is an educational gap related to medical cannabis — that health professionals want more education because patients are coming to them with questions about cannabis and therapeutic uses,” Sera says.

Pharmacist Staci Gruber teaches at Harvard Medical School and is leading one of the country’s most ambitious research projects on medical marijuana at McLean Hospital in Boston.

She says Maryland’s program is proof that as the drug becomes ever more present among patients, more research on its effects will be needed.

“I know some say, ‘Oh, it’s just a moneymaker for the institution,’ but it’s because people are asking for it,” she says. “People are interested in learning more and knowing more, so [Maryland’s program] underscores the need to have more data.”

That’s the challenge for an academic program on cannabis; the drug remains largely illegal under federal law, which has hampered its study over the years and means very little concrete research exists for students to dig into. But as that changes, Sera says, the program will continue to evolve.

And she expects that students will see immediate opportunities in the rapidly expanding industry once they graduate.

There remains plenty of uncertainty, of course, and as the recreational use of weed is made legal in more places, established medical cannabis programs, and their associated jobs, may dwindle. But Summer Kriegshauser says making the leap into Maryland’s program made sense for her — and she bets it will pay off.

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Business November 9, 2019

A Smart Home Neighborhood: Residents Find It Enjoyably Convenient Or A Bit Creepy

Lennar New Home Consultant Brittney Svach is selling “smart homes” at the Amazon Experience Center in Black Diamond, Washington, about an hour south of Seattle.

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When the Ferguson family decided they wanted to live in the Seattle suburb of Black Diamond they weren’t in the market for a smart home. But they wound up with one, a house packed with Internet-connected devices.

Fifteen-year-old Macey Ferguson loves it. “I just feel really fancy,” she says about having Amazon’s Alexa there to turn on the lights for her, or to remind her when to go to cheerleading practice. “I feel like she’s my little servant, or butler.” Her older brother uses it for math homework, her younger sister for calling grandma. Her three-year-old brother asks Alexa for cake recipes so he can stare longingly at the photos.

Kelli Ferguson, the mom in this household, is more ambivalent. On the one hand, it’s nice to ask Alexa to heat up the house before crawling out of bed in the winter. On the other, there’s all those cameras. “If I’m walking on our street, I walk on the other side of the street,” she said, meaning the side without the smart homes. “Just because I don’t feel like being on everyone’s cameras.”

Living in a smart home neighborhood, the Fergusons experience both convenience and surveillance. And that’s typical in Black Diamond, where Lennar Homes offers smart homes as part of a 4,800 unit development that includes other builders. This neighborhood isn’t a one off. There are smart home developments in suburbs outside of cities such as Miami and San Francisco. Lennar is making Amazon tech standard on each of the 45,000 homes it builds this year.

This partnership between builders and Amazon benefits both sides. Amazon wants to push for wider adoption of its Echo smart speaker. Lennar relies on Amazon to help distinguish it from other home builders in communities like Black Diamond.

But do users really need smart home technology?

Amazon really wants you to think so. In Black Diamond, the pitch starts at the Amazon Experience Center, a model home just around the corner from the Fergusons.

Lennar New Home consultant Brittney Svach throws out commands like a smart home samurai, using her voice to lock the door, start up the robot vacuum, dim the lights, close the blinds, and call up a feed on the smart television from one of the home’s many surveillance cameras. “Alexa, show me the backyard,” she commands. Up pops a video. “And now we can spy on whoever’s having a drink out on the patio,” she says with a smile.

Amazon has a lot of ground to cover if it wants to build a market of consumers hungry for smart homes. A Zillow survey says smart homes technology is down the list of desired home features, lagging far behind air conditioning and ample storage. It’s roughly as important as a hot tub for those shopping for a home.

But Dave Garland thinks the technology will take off once people try it. He’s with Second Century Ventures, an investment arm of the National Association of Realtors. “There’s a new narrative when it comes to what ‘home’ means,” he says. “It means a personalized environment where technology responds to your every need. “

Black Diamond resident Drew Holmes buys that line. Like the Fergusons, he wasn’t looking for a smart home, but the technology came with the one he happened to like. Now he enjoys all the smart home features. “I would not live without them,” he said.

His favorite is a Ring doorbell that logs visitors. “I have teenagers,” he said. “It’s nice to confirm when they come home. And I have proof of it.”

Therron Smith had a very different reaction to the smart home pitch. “The thought of having cameras in every room and that potential exposure… just kind of made us nervous about it,” he says.

Smith works in tech, and says that’s how he knows the risks. It’s not just cameras, even light switches capture information. “That data’s not just sitting there, just… empty,” he says. “Somebody’s gonna look at it and leverage it, to try to turn a profit, or try to create an ad, or try to create some revenue.”

When newcomers purchase a home in Black Diamond, they’re not just buying property – they’re staking out a position on how far they’ll allow tech companies to intrude into their lives. That’s something many us will need to navigate if this technology becomes standard in more neighborhoods.

You can learn more on how Amazon is changing us by subscribing to the KUOW podcast, “Primed.”

Editor’s note: Amazon is one of NPR’s recent financial supporters.

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Sports November 9, 2019

Saturday Sports: LA Clippers, 49ers, Bruins

The LA Clippers get fined, the San Francisco 49ers are the winningest team in the NFL, and the Boston Bruins are out for revenge. Scott Simon talks to Howard Bryant.



SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Know what gets me through the week? Time for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: The NBA debate, should coaches bench their superstars just so they can take a rest? And holy, Garoppolo, the 49ers are undefeated. And the Bruins are cruising. We’re joined by Howard Bryant of ESPN. Howard, thanks so much for being with us.

HOWARD BRYANT: Scott, the derisive way in which you said rest. Do you really mean that?

SIMON: Well, all right.

BRYANT: (Laughter).

SIMON: Let me pose the question for you, you know, in perhaps a better stated way. The NBA fined the LA Clippers $50,000. Coach Doc Rivers said Kawhi Leonard – he didn’t start him. The league said he was injured. Coach Doc said, you know, actually he was fine. He was OK. He was great, in fact. Now…

BRYANT: (Laughter).

SIMON: …Should superstars be benched particularly early in the season because the coach, maybe only meaning to be conscientious, wants to save them for important games further on into the season and the playoffs?

BRYANT: Yeah, I understand the perspective. The NBA season is a grind. It’s a very, very long season. You’re starting out in October. You get to the playoffs in late April. And then the playoffs last two months. So the regular – the postseason doesn’t even end until almost July. So I understand the impulse. I also understand when you’re a coach, your attitude is, look; you’re paying me to win important games. You’re paying me to win championships, especially when you’re the Los Angeles Clippers, where you get Kawhi Leonard from Toronto, you – who just won a championship a few months ago. And the end goal for the Clippers is to be hosting the trophy a few months from now.

I also understand it from a consumer standpoint, which is where if you’re going to pay 150 bucks a ticket to go see the best players play, then for that one game that you’re going to, you want to see Kawhi Leonard against Giannis Antetokounmpo, which is – which was the matchup. You had the Milwaukee Bucks team that is supposed to go to the NBA Finals against the Clippers team that is supposed to go to the NBA Finals. And so if you’re the paying customer, you show up at that the arena, and that matchups not going to happen, that’s a bitter pill. That’s the reason why you paid all that money.

SIMON: Yeah. I mean, the NBA sells itself as entertainment. And, you know, great entertainers show up when the curtain goes up.

BRYANT: Well, exactly. And the bottom line on that is if you’re Doc Rivers, if you’re the coach, you’re thinking to yourself, OK, what are you going to remember more? Are you going to remember me not playing Kawhi Leonard in November, or are you going to remember Kawhi Leonard not being healthy and ready to go when the big games start when the playoffs begin?

SIMON: NFL season is halfway over. The San Francisco 49ers, who were 4-12 last year, are now 8-0. They’ve got a big Monday night game against the Seahawks. Are they as good as 8-0?

BRYANT: Well, they’re good. They’re really good. And we’re going to find out how good they are because the Seahawks are 7-2. And that’s a rivalry game. And we know how big that is. You haven’t had that kind of excitement in San Francisco for a really long time, haven’t won a Super Bowl since 1995, haven’t been to the Super Bowl since Colin Kaepernick took them there back in 2011 against the Ravens. And so when you are looking at this team, you get – you’re excited. You’re excited. And I think that Garoppolo’s a great, great quarterback. They’re doing it with defense. Their defense is almost as good as the Patriots. So – it may be better. And you’ve got George Kittle. You’ve got a nice tight end there. And so they run the ball. They catch it. They do everything you’re supposed to do to win. And they turn the ball over, as well. So they get turnovers. So they’re doing all the things that championship teams have to do. But it’s halfway there. It’s going to be a big game Monday night.

SIMON: NHL, the Bruins, of course, lost Game 7 in the Stanley Cup, but they’re back with a vengeance. Can they keep it up?

BRYANT: Well, once again, long season. You go out and you lose the Stanley Cup at home, and you want to go on a revenge tour, but you’ve got to play a long way. The Bruins have lost two in a row now. And it’s – a lot of good teams out there. St. Louis is still a good team. I think that what they have to do is you’ve got to maintain that emotion, but at the same time realize it’s a marathon. But they’re really good to watch.

SIMON: Howard Bryant of ESPN, thanks so much for being with us my friend. Talk to you soon.

(SOUNDBITE OF LARI BASILIO’S “A MILLION WORDS”)

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 November 8, 2019

With Blackouts, California’s Electric Car Owners Are Finding New Ways To Charge Up

Clarence Dold used his 2013 Nissan Leaf to power his house during a four-day blackout in Santa Rosa, Calif., as a result of the Kincade Fire.

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Lawrence Levee’s evacuation call came at 4 a.m. The Getty fire was just a few miles away. He and all of his Mandeville Canyon neighbors needed to evacuate.

He grabbed what he could and threw it into his bright blue electric Chevy Bolt. His car battery was only charged halfway, but that left him with plenty of power to make a quick getaway and then some.

But after driving around the next day, running errands in an area he didn’t know well, he was in a pickle. He couldn’t find a charging station. And he had 25 miles left to his tank.

“Where are the cheap charging stations?” Levy asked a Facebook group for Bolt owners, where members have been talking about how to charge up in a disaster situation.

Levee is one of hundreds of thousands of electric car drivers in California, many of whom are caught in a state-wide struggle for electric power. As flames rip through rural and urban areas, utilities are cutting about a million customers off the grid. The blackouts sometimes last for days at a time, forcing some electric car owners to find alternative ways to charge up.

It’s an ironic conundrum in a state that’s home to more electric cars than any other other. California has just under half of the electric cars in sold in the U.S., according to EV Volumes, a group that tracks electric car sales.

In Levee’s case, he didn’t expect to be away from his house for so long. Normally, he’d pull into his garage and connect to a solar-powered battery. But that was impossible. Instead, he tried to hit up a nearby public charger that he remembered driving past a couple of times. But when he got there, it was broken.

Dreaded “range anxiety” set in. If he didn’t plug in soon, he could end up stranded.

But his trusty Bolt Facebook group came to the rescue. That’s where electric car fans commiserate, offer advice and do the occasional gas-car-driver bashing. Lately, they’ve been talking about blackouts. They pointed him to an app, and he found a free charger at a mall a few miles away.

Levee has only owned his Bolt for eight months, and already he says he’ll “never go back to a regular car.” Despite the brief inconvenience and the fire evacuations that are in his future, he notes California has better electric car infrastructure than any other state, with 18,000 public charging stations, according to the California Energy Commission.

And some electric car owners are taking advantage of these charging stations in new ways.

Clarence Dold lives in Sonoma County, which had been ravaged by the Kincade fire. Dold owns a 2013 Nissan Leaf and was left without power for four days.

But Dold found an ingenious use for his car: as a generator to power his house.

All it took was a pair of jumper cables that he connected to the Leaf’s battery and an inverter about the size of a dictionary. The inverter box changes direct current (DC) power, the kind that powers electric cars, into alternating current (AC), the electrical current that powers homes.

After that, he ran a series of heavy duty extension cords into the main rooms of his ranch house. Throughout the blackout, Dold said, “were watching TV, and had a cold fridge and a couple of lights and things seemed normal.”

The whole thing cost about $200 — a fraction of the price of a generator, which can run thousands of dollars.

Every few hours, Dold said, he’d make his way back into the car to check the battery gauge. He wanted to make sure the house wasn’t depleting the car of too much power. If it did, he’d disconnect the cables and drive 5 miles away to recharge at a public charging station.

“The power outages are not over a broad area; this isn’t like a hurricane hitting Florida,” he explained.

During the blackout, the rest of the neighborhood was a cacophony of gas and electric generator rumblings. Meanwhile, his Nissan Leaf was virtually silent.

For Dold, and other enterprising electric car owners like him, that’s the secret sauce to surviving what’s becoming the new normal in California.

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Sports November 8, 2019

Nike To Investigate Runner Mary Cain’s Claims Of Abuse At Its Oregon Project

Mary Cain says she endured constant pressure to lose weight and was publicly shamed during her time at the Nike Oregon Project. She’s seen here in the 1500-meter race at the 2014 USA Track and Field Championships. Cain won silver in that race; she had turned 18 just a month earlier.

Christopher Morris /Corbis via Getty Images


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Christopher Morris /Corbis via Getty Images

Nike says it’s investigating claims of physical and mental abuse in its now-defunct Oregon Project in response to former running phenom Mary Cain’s harrowing account of her time under disgraced coach Alberto Salazar.

Cain says she paid a steep price during her time with the elite distance-running program, from self-harm and suicidal thoughts to broken bones related to her declining health.

She is speaking out less than a month after Nike shut down the Oregon Project in the wake of a four-year doping ban against Salazar, which he has said he plans to appeal. A string of elite athletes — Cain’s former Oregon Project teammates — say they back her claims.

“I joined Nike because I wanted to be the best female athlete ever,” Cain says in an opinion video produced by The New York Times. “Instead, I was emotionally and physically abused by a system designed by Alberto and endorsed by Nike.”

Cain, 23, shot to fame in 2012 as a blazingly fast New York teenager who shattered national records. She began training with Salazar full time after finishing high school, skipping the NCAA track circuit altogether. At the time, she was seen as a prodigy, a sure bet to win Olympic gold and set world records. In 2013, she won the International Athletic Foundation’s Rising Star Award.

But Cain says that Salazar and other staff members constantly pressured her to lose weight — and that her health suffered dramatically as a result.

“When I first arrived, an all-male Nike staff became convinced that in order for me to get better, I had to become thinner and thinner and thinner,” Cain says in the Times video.

Cain says that mantra — and public shaming about her weight — led to a spiral of health problems known as relative energy deficiency in sport, or RED-S syndrome. Also called the female athlete triad, the condition is triggered when athletes take in too few calories to support their training. Next, they stop having menstrual periods — and lose vital bone density as a result.

“I broke five different bones” because of RED-S, Cain says.

Cain says that after a disappointing finish in a race in 2015, Salazar yelled at her in front of a large crowd, saying he could tell she had gained 5 pounds.

“It was also that night that I told Alberto and our sports psych that I was cutting myself and they pretty much told me that they just wanted to go to bed,” Cain said. Soon afterward, she says she decided to leave Salazar’s program and return home to Bronxville, N.Y.

Salazar denies Cain’s accusations against him. NPR’s attempts to contact Salazar for comment so far have been unsuccessful. But The Oregonian quotes a statement from the famous coach in which he says, “To be clear, I never encouraged her, or worse yet, shamed her, to maintain an unhealthy weight.”

In that message, Salazar also says that Cain “struggled to find and maintain her ideal performance and training weight.” But he says he discussed the issue with Cain’s father, who is a doctor, and referred her to a female doctor, as well.

In response to Cain’s allegations, Nike says, “We take the allegations extremely seriously and will launch an immediate investigation to hear from former Oregon Project athletes.”

The company calls Cain’s claims “deeply troubling,” but it says that neither she nor her parents had previously raised the allegations.

“Mary was seeking to rejoin the Oregon Project and Alberto’s team as recently as April of this year and had not raised these concerns as part of that process,” a Nike spokesperson said in an email to NPR.

On Friday morning, Cain addressed her recent attempt to rejoin the team, saying via Twitter, “As recently as this summer, I still thought: ‘maybe if I rejoin the team, it’ll go back to how it was.’ But we all come to face our demons in some way. For me, that was seeing my old team this last spring.”

No more wanting them to like me. No more needing their approval. I could finally look at the facts, read others stories, and face: THIS SYSTEM WAS NOT OK. I stand before you today because I am strong enough, wise enough, and brave enough. Please stand with me.

— Mary Cain (@runmarycain) November 8, 2019

Over the summer, Cain says, she became convinced that Salazar only cared about her as “the product, the performer, the athlete,” not as a person. She adds that she decided to go public with her story after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency punished Salazar earlier this year. Now Cain is calling for Nike to change its ways — and to ensure the culture that thrived under Salazar is eradicated.

“In track and field, Nike is all-powerful,” Cain says in the Times video. “They control the top coaches, athletes, races, even the governing body. You can’t just fire a coach and eliminate a program and pretend the problem is solved.”

She adds, “My worry is that Nike is merely going to rebrand the old program and put Alberto’s old assistant coaches in charge.”

The list of runners who have stepped forward to support Cain includes Canadian distance runner Cameron Levins, a former Olympian and NCAA champion who trained in the Oregon Project.

“I knew that our coaching staff was obsessed with your weight loss, emphasizing it as if it were the single thing standing in the way of great performances,” Levins said in a tweet directed at Cain.

“I knew because they spoke of it openly among other athletes,” he added.

Another athlete, former NCAA champion Amy Yoder Begley, said she was kicked out of the Oregon Project after she placed sixth in a 10,000-meter race in 2011.

After placing 6th in the 10,000m at the 2011 USATF championships, I was kicked out of the Oregon Project. I was told I was too fat and “had the biggest butt on the starting line.” This brings those painful memories back. https://t.co/ocIqnHDL8F

— Amy Yoder Begley OLY ???? (@yoderbegley) November 8, 2019

“I was told I was too fat and ‘had the biggest butt on the starting line,’ ” Begley said via Twitter. “This brings those painful memories back.”

Cain says her parents were “horrified” when she told them about her life in the Nike Oregon Project. “They bought me the first plane ride home,” she says. “They were like, ‘Get on that flight, get the hell out of there.’ “

On Friday, Cain thanked Levins for his support and said, “For so long, I thought I was the problem. To me, the silence of others meant that pushing my body past its healthy limits was the only way. But I know we were all scared, and fear keeps us silent.”

As for what changes Cain would like to see, she tells the Times that her sport needs more women in power.

“Part of me wonders if I had worked with more female psychologists, nutritionists and even coaches, where I’d be today,” Cain says. “I got caught in a system designed by and for men which destroys the bodies of young girls. Rather than force young girls to fend for themselves, we have to protect them.”

After being off the track-and-field radar for several years, Cain ran a 4-mile race on Mother’s Day in Central Park. In an interview earlier this year, she talked about what she would write in a letter to her younger self.

Here’s part of what Cain told Citius Mag:

“I think my letter would say, ‘Go have that milkshake. Go see that movie. Go out with that friend. Love running and commit to running but the best way to do that is to love yourself and commit to yourself. Make sure you’re doing those other things as well so that once you go out for a run, you’re so happy to be there.’ ”

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Health November 8, 2019

High-Ranking Dog Provides Key Training For Military’s Medical Students

Service dogs can be trained to provide very different types of support to their human companions, as medical students learn from interacting with “Shetland,” a highly skilled retriever-mix.

Julie Rovner/KHN


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The newest faculty member at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences has a great smile ? and likes to be scratched behind the ears.

Shetland, not quite 2 years old, is half-golden retriever, half-Labrador retriever. As of this fall, he is also a lieutenant commander in the Navy and a clinical instructor in the Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology at USUHS in Bethesda, Md.

Among Shetland’s skills are “hugging” on command, picking up a fallen object as small as a cellphone and carrying around a small basket filled with candy for harried medical and graduate students who study at the military’s medical school campus.

But Shetland’s job is to provide much more than smiles and a head to pat.

“He is here to teach, not just to lift people’s spirits and provide a little stress relief after exams,” says USUHS Dean Arthur Kellermann. He says students interacting with Shetland are learning “the value of animal-assisted therapy.”

The use of dogs trained to help their human partners with specific tasks of daily life has ballooned since studies in the 1980s and 1990s started to show how animals can benefit human health.

But helper dogs come in many varieties. Service dogs, like guide dogs for the blind, help people with disabilities live more independently. Therapy dogs can be household pets who visit people in hospitals, schools and nursing homes. And then there are highly trained working dogs, like the Belgian Malinois, that recently helped commandos find the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Shetland is technically a “military facility dog,” trained to provide physical and mental assistance to patients as well as interact with a wide variety of other people.

His military commission does not entitle him to salutes from his human counterparts.

“The ranks are a way of honoring the services [of the dogs] as well as strengthening the bond between the staff, patients and dogs here,” says Mary Constantino, deputy public affairs officer at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. “Our facilities dogs do not wear medals, but do wear rank insignia as well as unit patches.”

USUHS, which trains doctors, dentists, nurses and other health professionals for the military, is on the same campus in suburban Washington, D.C. Two of the seven Walter Reed facility dogs ? Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Sully (the former service dog for President George H.W. Bush) and Marine Sgt. Dillon ? attended Shetland’s formal commissioning ceremony in September as guests.

The Walter Reed dogs, on campus since 2007, earn commissions in the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines. They wear special vests designating their service and rank. The dogs visit and interact with patients in several medical units, as well as in physical and occupational therapy, and help boost morale for patients’ family members.

But Shetland’s role is very different, says retired Col. Lisa Moores, USUHS associate dean for assessment and professional development.

“Our students are going to work with therapy dogs in their careers and they need to understand what [the dogs] can do and what they can’t do,” she says.

As in civilian life, the military has made significant use of animal-assisted therapy. “When you walk through pretty much any military treatment facility, you see therapy dogs walking around in clinics, in the hospitals, even in the ICUs,” says Moores. Dogs also play a key role in helping service members who have post-traumatic stress disorder.

Students need to learn who “the right patient is for a dog, or some other therapy animal,” she says. “And by having Shetland here, we can incorporate that into the curriculum, so it’s another tool the students know they have for their patients someday.”

The students, not surprisingly, are thrilled by their newest teacher.

Brelahn Wyatt, a Navy ensign and second-year medical student, says the Walter Reed dogs used to visit the school’s 1,500 students and faculty fairly regularly, but “having Shetland here all the time is optimal.” Wyatt says the only thing she knew about service dogs before — or at least thought she knew — was that “you’re not supposed to pet them.” But Shetland acts as both a service dog and a therapy dog, so can be petted, Wyatt learned.

Brelahn Wyatt, a Navy ensign and second-year medical student, shares a hug with Shetland. The dog’s military commission does not entitle him to salutes.

Julie Rovner/KHN


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Julie Rovner/KHN

Having Shetland around helps the students see “there’s a difference,” Wyatt says, and understand how that difference plays out in a health care setting. Like his colleagues Sully and Dillon, Shetland was bred and trained by America’s VetDogs.

The New York nonprofit provides dogs for “stress control” for active-duty military missions overseas, as well as service dogs for disabled veterans and civilian first responders.

Many of the puppies are raised by a team made up of prison inmates (during the week) and families (on the weekends), before returning to New York for formal service dog training. National Hockey League teams such as the Washington Capitals and New York Islanders also raise puppies for the organization.

Dogs can be particularly helpful in treating service members, says Valerie Cramer, manager of America’s VetDogs service dog program. “The military is thinking about resiliency. They’re thinking about well-being, about decompression in the combat zone.”

Often people in pain won’t talk to another person but will open up in front of a dog. “It’s an opportunity to start a conversation as a behavioral health specialist,” Cramer says.

While service dogs teamed with individuals have been trained to perform both physical tasks and emotional ones — such as gently waking a veteran who is having a nightmare — facility dogs like Shetland are special, Cramer says.

“That dog has to work in all different environments with people who are under pressure. It can work for multiple handlers. It can go and visit people; can go visit hospital patients; can knock over bowling pins to entertain, or spend time in bed with a child.”

The military rank the dogs are awarded is no joke. They can be promoted ? as Dillon was from Army specialist to sergeant in 2018 ? or demoted for bad behavior.

“So far,” Kellermann says, “Shetland has a perfect conduct record.”

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit, editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. KHN is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Business November 7, 2019

Feds Say Self-Driving Uber SUV Did Not Recognize Jaywalking Pedestrian In Fatal Crash

The self-driving Uber SUV that struck pedestrian Elaine Herzberg on March 18, 2018, in Tempe, Ariz.

Tempe Police Department via AP


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Tempe Police Department via AP

The self-driving Uber SUV involved in a fatal crash that killed a Tempe, Ariz., woman last year did not recognize her as a jaywalking pedestrian and its braking system was not designed to avoid an imminent collision, according to a federal report released this week.

The conclusions by the National Transportation Safety Board were published ahead of a Nov. 19 meeting in Washington, D.C., called to discuss the cause of the crash and safety recommendations.

The self-driving vehicle struck and killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg on March 18, 2018, as she was walking across the street with her bicycle outside of a crosswalk.

According to the NTSB report, the SUV had “a fusion” of three sensor systems — radar, lidar and a camera — designed to detect an object and determine its trajectory. However, the system could not determine whether Herzberg was a pedestrian, vehicle, or bicycle. It also failed to correctly predict her path.

“The system design did not include a consideration for jaywalking pedestrians,” the report said.

At 1.2 seconds before the fatal crash, the system identified Herzberg as a bicycle moving into the path of the Uber, but by then it was too late to safely brake and avoid a collision.

The Uber SUV — a Volvo XC90 — was supervised by Rafaela Vasquez. The Tempe police had previously determined that Vasquez was watching an episode of The Voice while operating the test vehicle, according to The Arizona Republic.

Uber said that it regrets the crash that took Herzberg’s life and is committed to “further prioritize safety.”

“We deeply value the thoroughness of the NTSB’s investigation into the crash and look forward to reviewing their recommendations once issued after the NTSB’s board meeting later this month,” the company said in a statement.

The Tempe crash has amplified calls for regulating the testing of self-driving vehicles.

“We hope Uber has cleaned up its act, but without mandatory standards for self-driving cars, there will always be companies out there that skimp on safety,” Ethan Douglas, senior policy analyst for Consumer Reports, said in a statement as quoted by the Associated Press. “We need smart, strong safety rules in place for self-driving cars to reach their life-saving potential.”

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