Transcript

8.17.26 · Washington Post

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Speaker 1: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the reading of the
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Speaker 1: Washington Post for this Monday, August seventeenth. As you know,
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Speaker 1: Radio I is reading service intended for people who are
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Speaker 1: blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to
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Speaker 1: read printed material. You're a reader for today's Rod Brotherton.
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Speaker 1: And since we are in the middle of August and
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Speaker 1: it's hot and humid, let's go ahead and take a
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Speaker 1: look at the weather for the week. Seven day forecast
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Speaker 1: looks like this Today a shower and a thunderstorm, high
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Speaker 1: eighty five, but the humidity makes it feel like it's
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Speaker 1: ninety five. Tonight mostly cloudy, low sixty seven. Tuesday, mostly cloudy,
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Speaker 1: high eighty eight, low sixty six. Wednesday periods of sun
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Speaker 1: high eighty nine, low sixty nine. Thursday there's a shower
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Speaker 1: and thunderstorm, high eighty two, low sixty seven.
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Speaker 2: Friday is humid, high eighty four, low sixty two.
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Speaker 1: Saturday plenty of sunshine but humid, high eighty two, low
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Speaker 1: sixty four, and Sunday again sunshine, high eighty three, low
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Speaker 1: sixty three. Looking at the almanac, yesterday's high and low
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Speaker 1: ninety three and seventy three, normal eighty seven and sixty six.
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Speaker 1: Last year it was ninety two and seventy two. The
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Speaker 1: record high was one hundred and one and twenty oh
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Speaker 1: seven and the record low was fifty one and twenty
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Speaker 1: oh four. Precipitation on Saturday eight hundreds of an inch,
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Speaker 1: but we've had five point eight inches this month. Normal
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Speaker 1: is only one point ninety eight. Year to date has
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Speaker 1: boosted us back to the normal area of thirty three
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Speaker 1: point eighty six, while the mean has been thirty three
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Speaker 1: point four to six. Last year, of course, we'd had
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Speaker 1: a flood with forty three point one four. The record
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Speaker 1: for yesterday's date was sixty two hundreds of an inch
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Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five. Or the sun in the moon.
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Speaker 1: The sun rose this morning at six fifty five. It
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Speaker 1: will set tonight at eight twenty nine. The moon came
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Speaker 1: up today at twelve fifteen. It will set at ten
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Speaker 1: fifty two tonight. Whether trivia. What was the first country
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Speaker 1: to use male names for hurricanes? Well, blind me. It
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Speaker 1: was Australia and the practice started in nineteen seventy five.
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Speaker 1: All right, let's look at the news from the Washington Post.
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Speaker 1: The first story is interesting. It says, what I learned
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Speaker 1: about the American dream from Europeans pretending to live in Ohio.
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Speaker 1: Our premium myth is starting to burn. It's going to blow.
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Speaker 1: Hoyt shouts as smoke clouds in the kitchenette, sweating in
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Speaker 1: a hazmat suit. I switch off the burner. The goo
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Speaker 1: bubbling in our saucepan is supposed to be blue, sky blue.
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Speaker 1: The boss won't like it that it now resembles tar.
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Speaker 1: It's nearly midnight and we're eight hours into an elaborate
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Speaker 1: game that almost no one wins. Live action role playing
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Speaker 1: more typically deals in history or fantasy, the dramas of regency,
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Speaker 1: debutantese or goblin assassins, but this loose script reflects how
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Speaker 1: its Polish authors view modern American struggles. While the United
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Speaker 1: States was celebrating with flyovers and fireworks, I joined dozens
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Speaker 1: of Europeans acting out a grittier version of the Fourth
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Speaker 1: of July in a pine forest outside of Warsaw, Poland.
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Speaker 1: For twenty eight straight hours, we'd pretend to scrape by
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Speaker 1: as dwellers of an Ohio trailer park. My character Delilah
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Speaker 1: evoked Aaron Brockovich meets Walter White, fired from a corporate
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Speaker 1: lab after flagging lethal toxins. The chemist was turned to
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Speaker 1: concocting street drugs with a gangster half her age, which
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Speaker 1: is a straining her already wobbly marriage to a garbage man.
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Speaker 1: What Hot and I have botched in our makeshift lab
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Speaker 1: is nothing more sinister than blue raspberry rock candy. It's
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Speaker 1: not gonna blow, I say, recalling my temporary alter egos
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Speaker 1: chemistry degree. I'm committed to the bet and figure the
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Speaker 1: sign of the singed gunk on our stove is still
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Speaker 1: our best shot at what counts here as happily ever after.
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Speaker 2: Yet I can't tune.
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Speaker 1: Out the surreal weirdness of skipping the holiday back home
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Speaker 1: to embed in fictional universe of Pristine Park, exploring a
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Speaker 1: theme called the larp writers deemed Broken American Dream. What's
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Speaker 1: with all the cowboy hats, ripped Georg's and ranch dressing?
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Speaker 1: This place is an uncanny valley of cultural regurgitation, down
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Speaker 1: to the Taylor swift lyrics painted on the back of
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Speaker 1: an Italian woman's jean jacket, darling, I'm a nightmare dressed
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Speaker 1: like a day dream. Over our weekend together, my sixty
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Speaker 1: six fellow LARPers revealed themselves to be.
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Speaker 2: A largely studious bunch.
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Speaker 1: They hadn't come from across Europe and a few US
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Speaker 1: states to mock the hard scrabble Midwest. I saw an
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Speaker 1: eagerness to explore the awkward contrast between our vaunted national
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Speaker 1: ideal and the darker stories we broadcast about ourselves. Everyone
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Speaker 1: had thoughts on America, having listened to our pop stars,
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Speaker 1: watched our shows, and worked with us in the far
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Speaker 1: less fantastical realms of business, engineering and quantum physics. Now
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Speaker 1: they want to know what it felt like to be us,
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Speaker 1: or who they imagined us to be. We'd fashioned many quests,
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Speaker 1: applying for jobs, paying rent, writing scholarship essays, and baking
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Speaker 1: apple pie. Our characters were supposed to scream and cross
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Speaker 1: and otherwise guys are emotion But I hear the rawest
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Speaker 1: insights into the American dream and sideline chats with the
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Speaker 1: humans behind the rolls. What would stay with me at
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Speaker 1: one point freaked me out? Or flashes of real in
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Speaker 1: the make believe. But first I'd have to salvage what
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Speaker 1: was left of our blackened blue sky. Every society has rules.
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Speaker 1: Christine Park mandated littering trash goes on the ground. Our
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Speaker 1: guide told us an orientation except for food, and that
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Speaker 1: could attack rabid foxes. This is a trailer park, so
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Speaker 1: it's supposed to be shitty, the millennial woman and a
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Speaker 1: fourth of July branded baseball cap said, matter of factly,
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Speaker 1: So speech could be free and offensive here too, we
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Speaker 1: learned the safe words yellow to de escalate and red
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Speaker 1: to stop. How to feign emacy, tickling another partner's arms
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Speaker 1: with consent constituted sex out of stage, and execution, aim
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Speaker 1: a blank shooting revolver well above your victim's head if
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Speaker 1: the action got too intense. A designated off game breakroom
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Speaker 1: offered loungers and blankets. Down the stone path, other crew
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Speaker 1: members were transforming a timber framed pavilion into Joyce's Diner,
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Speaker 1: stringing up dozens of little American flags.
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Speaker 2: We could order.
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Speaker 1: Tea there, our guide said, but coffee would be more
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Speaker 1: American coffee more American, I jotted down, straining to keep
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Speaker 1: up with the sensory overload designed by those who knew us,
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Speaker 1: mainly through screens. At the entrance, I spied a crudely
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Speaker 1: scribbled red, white and blue sign Ohio Broken Dream. The
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Speaker 1: grass was covered with red solo cups. Paper play, and
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Speaker 1: what a ramen sauce packet or a condom wrapper? What
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Speaker 1: was that a portable speaker? Blair to battle him of
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Speaker 1: the Republic. Someone was pumping air into an inflatable pool.
8:13
Speaker 1: Someone else unfurled rainbow banner from the window of the
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Speaker 1: hippie trailer. Four months earlier, I began scrolling Instagram at
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Speaker 1: home in Washington when a bond in jeorts everywhere georts
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Speaker 1: stared up from my feet. In Poland, there is a
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Speaker 1: LARP group that role plays as contemporary Americans, the photo
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Speaker 1: captain said. Some light googling revealed a production studio called
8:42
Speaker 1: LARP Venture had scheduled the next run for the weekend
8:46
Speaker 1: of America's two hundred and fiftieth I texted a screenshot
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Speaker 1: to my editor. Please confirm this is true, he replied,
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Speaker 1: so we could book the first flight to Warsaw. Soon,
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Speaker 1: I was on a video call with one of the
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Speaker 1: creators who never visited the United States. When I was
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Speaker 1: a kid, everybody knew that America was the best country
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Speaker 1: in the world, with no problems at all. Bartow's Bruski
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Speaker 1: thirty three told me New York City looked so cool
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Speaker 1: in every single movie Harrison Ford, al Pacino Batman. His
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Speaker 1: idols were American, But then Bruski said, it was a
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Speaker 1: huge clash between that vision of the US the vision
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Speaker 1: that came to us later through social media. His team
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Speaker 1: hadn't intended to construct Downerville before the pandemic. They'd been
9:42
Speaker 1: scouting locations for a LARP that blended Stranger Things with
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Speaker 1: the X Files. This looks like a trailer park. When
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Speaker 1: staff equipped the Vinyl cablins had resort ilky in a
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Speaker 1: new direction, bloom barely making ends meet, Teaser asserted, and
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Speaker 1: slightly stilted English. They tried to be good parents for
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Speaker 1: their families and proud Americans. Years of devouring American pop
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Speaker 1: culture and formed the script, Bruskie said. Larpe Venture's website
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Speaker 1: named two nonfiction books as key sources, Jade Vance's memoir
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Speaker 1: about his troubled Appalachian upbringing, hill Billy Elogy and Nomad
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Speaker 1: Land A look it would be retirees chasing seasonal work
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Speaker 1: in RVs. A native of Indiana, I grew up steeped
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Speaker 1: in the conviction that anyone, no matter where they start,
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Speaker 1: can make it in America. Maybe Hollywood seated that programming
10:44
Speaker 1: or healthy interest in jay z journalistic nosiness later led
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Speaker 1: me to where the American dream first appeared in print,
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Speaker 1: The Epic of America at nineteen thirty one, book by
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Speaker 1: historian James Truslow Adams. He defined it as a land
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Speaker 1: where life should be better and richer and fuller for
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Speaker 1: every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability
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Speaker 1: or achievement. Dreamers have applied their own meanings ever since.
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Speaker 1: I asked Bruski if I could observe the Europeans channeling
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Speaker 1: proud Americans. Only lawpers, employees and their friends could enter
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Speaker 1: Pristine Park. He replied, Well, what if I larped? Anyone
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Speaker 1: can buy a ticket, he said, so I did. We'd
11:36
Speaker 1: agreed on a plan. I document what I witnessed and
11:40
Speaker 1: conduct interviews before or after the game, so as not
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Speaker 1: to interrupt anyone's creative flow. Interacting with the Washington Post
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Speaker 1: reporter was optional. The organizers would announce. Luckily, everyone I
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Speaker 1: met dozens of Europeans, and those few Americans wanted to gab.
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Speaker 1: My cultural references were their cultural references. It didn't always
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Speaker 1: work the other way around. Have you heard that song
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Speaker 1: We're all living in America? Jonathan Kucinski, a fifty four
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Speaker 1: year old Dutch physicist playing a marine veteran on the
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Speaker 1: break of eviction, asked me he was quoting the German
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Speaker 1: rock band Ramstein's lyrics about America's cultural dominance.
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Speaker 2: I joke that it's not fair.
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Speaker 1: I can't vote in your elections, he said. By the
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Speaker 1: time I signed up, just three roles remained open, a
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Speaker 1: teenage runaway, a twenty something woman and serious did and
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Speaker 1: forty somethingter Delilah. I was thirty six, so close enough.
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Speaker 1: The organizers sent me Delilah's seven page backstory. Secretly cooking
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Speaker 1: meth was a reprieve from her frosty home life. Following
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Speaker 1: a traumatic childbirth. She'd never managed to connect with her
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Speaker 1: own grown daughter, Charlene Noodle no longer stand her husband Roger.
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Speaker 1: I'd have to use standoffishness, not a bad option for
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Speaker 1: a gal who dreads the spotlight. Nailing the myth, however,
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Speaker 1: would take practice, Brunski advised me so. In late June,
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Speaker 1: before flying to Warsaw, I stirred a myth mix of
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Speaker 1: granulated sugar, water and corn syrup into a pot and
13:27
Speaker 1: watched it boil to three hundred degrees fahrenheit. Then I
13:32
Speaker 1: added blue food dye, poured the glop onto a baking
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Speaker 1: sheet and waited it to cool to the consistency of
13:39
Speaker 1: a jolly rancher. The instructions included a note of Nanny
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Speaker 1: state caution, take care, or so that no one gets
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Speaker 1: burned with hot sugar. What was hardening on my stove
13:53
Speaker 1: in Pristine Park looked like a char grilled glass. Smashed
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Speaker 1: it with a meat tenderizer into crispy shit yards.
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Speaker 2: We didn't have time for.
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Speaker 1: A redo before the trailer door flung open in barge Frank,
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Speaker 1: the ruthless head of the mafia, though his neat gray
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Speaker 1: suit suggested he didn't do his own whacking. May I
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Speaker 1: inspect the product? He asked, as if this late night
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Speaker 1: surprise was a routine quality control visit. Yes, sir, hoychirp
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Speaker 1: grabbing my arm. Every LARPer had a wordy backstory to
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Speaker 1: lean on as we improvised, but bits of our own
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Speaker 1: personalities tended to melt into our character Ego bleed. The
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Speaker 1: enthusiast called it Trying on someone else's live can be therapeutic.
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Speaker 1: My more seasoned co players told me you may encounter
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Speaker 1: new sensations or unlock hidden parts of yourself, or discover
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Speaker 1: how you perform under pressure. Siri Talvitsu, a thirty four
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Speaker 1: year old aerospace engin from Estonia, said she signed up
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Speaker 1: to play Delilah's lab sidekick to work through a nagging
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Speaker 1: worry her character couldn't afford an out of wedlock ambulance bill.
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Speaker 1: She'd come to the larp to linger in that discomfort.
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Speaker 1: Thinking you are one mishap away from ruin. Getting quacked
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Speaker 1: wasn't as scary as the crush of medical debt.
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Speaker 2: In real life. The Siri he worked in.
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Speaker 1: Switzerland, where, thanks to universal health coverage, the most she'd
15:31
Speaker 1: ever spent on healthcare per year was nine thousand dollars,
15:34
Speaker 1: including her monthly payments for what she called kind of
15:38
Speaker 1: fancy private insurance that was high for Europe. A Belgian
15:43
Speaker 1: player was in remission for colon cancer, even through a
15:47
Speaker 1: month of chemo, three surgeries, four years of talk therapy.
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Speaker 1: He told us his biggest bill was ninety five cents
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Speaker 1: for a hospital water bottle. In here, gesturing to our
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Speaker 1: phony slice of America, you get cancer and lose everything.
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Speaker 1: Swiss safety nets prevented such collapses, Seri knew, but since
16:12
Speaker 1: moving to Lasan five years ago, she had nightmares about
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Speaker 1: some unforeseen calamity draining her savings. It didn't take a
16:21
Speaker 1: shrink to unmasked why here he was fixated on staying
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Speaker 1: ready to rent an apartment with beds for her parents
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Speaker 1: and little sister in case Russia ever attacked their home
16:32
Speaker 1: city talent. No one was LARPing a Russian invasion, so
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Speaker 1: she settled for confronting existential threats in a fake Ohio.
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Speaker 1: Not bad, Frank was saying, shockingly, as he'd been over
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Speaker 1: our product. Perhaps he couldn't see the mess clearly in
16:50
Speaker 1: the trailer's dim light. Thank you, sir, I mumbled, I'll
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Speaker 1: be in touch.
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Speaker 2: He told me.
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Speaker 1: That sounded vaguely positive. I glanced down on my phone
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Speaker 1: to see a text from my larp husband. Where are you,
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Speaker 1: Roger asked by the lake. I lied, don't worry about me.
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Speaker 1: You're tougher than an old boot. He wrote back, I
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Speaker 1: know you can take care of yourself. Yuck, I thought,
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Speaker 1: summoning Delilah's frustration with her marriage, Roger was forever trying
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Speaker 1: to win her back, was just widen the distance. Clemens Candler,
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Speaker 1: who's thirty five, willed his character to exude a dopey sweetness,
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Speaker 1: which he acknowledged didn't come naturally. The social security worker
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Speaker 1: in Vienna at what he called a resting bitch face. Roger,
17:43
Speaker 1: though smiled at everyone. That's because when Clemens thought of Americans,
17:48
Speaker 1: he thought of optimism. That's our great asset, a great delusion,
17:53
Speaker 1: and perhaps the reason I studied newspaper journalism during the
17:56
Speaker 1: Great Recession. Our hustle culture would crumble without it. The
18:01
Speaker 1: Austrian felt, in his worldview, glorifying individual triumph can hinder
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Speaker 1: collective and cohesiveness and progress. Not that Austrians were immune
18:14
Speaker 1: to what he saw as the grind, said a portmanteau
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Speaker 1: of grind and mindset popularized by American podcasters. Lifting taxes
18:24
Speaker 1: for the rich is also politically contentious in this nation,
18:28
Speaker 1: he argued, because everyone likes to think they could one
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Speaker 1: day strike it big. Yet Clemens could appreciate the American
18:35
Speaker 1: dreams allure, though he was a bigger fan of state
18:38
Speaker 1: intervention like the New Deal. What is more motivating than
18:42
Speaker 1: hope someone will lend the lottery? And that's the logic
18:47
Speaker 1: behind the catchphrase he'd advise for his character, Well things
18:51
Speaker 1: ain't too bad. Christine Park's garbage man said as he
18:55
Speaker 1: cleared the beer cans we chucked on the ground right
18:58
Speaker 1: in front of him. Baked into Roger's essence, Clemens decided
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Speaker 1: was faith in a better future. So against the odds,
19:07
Speaker 1: Roger kept trying to engineer a better future for us.
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Speaker 1: I just feel easier knowing what's going on, He texted me.
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Speaker 1: Let's talk in the morning, I replied, I didn't want
19:18
Speaker 1: to talk in the morning. I wanted our meth distributor
19:22
Speaker 1: to cough up the seven hundred dollars he owed me,
19:24
Speaker 1: or I'd go to work for Frank the gangster with
19:28
Speaker 1: a ki G tattooed across his fingers. Didn't like my tone.
19:33
Speaker 1: He pulled what looked like a revolver from the waistband
19:36
Speaker 1: of his blue jeans. Max Whiplinger of the thirty one
19:40
Speaker 1: year old German playing Villainous Dwayne wouldn't tell me until later,
19:44
Speaker 1: but he felt confident about drawing his weapon. The gun
19:48
Speaker 1: can cut a scene short their slim room for debate
19:52
Speaker 1: if your opponent is unarmed. Plus, it disturbed him how
19:57
Speaker 1: much he enjoyed holding even a prop. A Tom Clancy
20:01
Speaker 1: inspired video game had stoked his interest in firearms. On
20:06
Speaker 1: a lark, Max and a friend took an all day
20:09
Speaker 1: training course to small arms in small caliber handguns at
20:13
Speaker 1: a shooting range south of Munich. Such controls are standard
20:16
Speaker 1: in Germany, were roughly two percent of the population legally
20:20
Speaker 1: owns a gun, compared with nearly a third of Americans.
20:25
Speaker 1: The power shocked Max. One twitch of a finger can
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Speaker 1: destroy someone. The cloud technology engineer told me he'd never
20:36
Speaker 1: been to the US, but wondered how Americans in open
20:40
Speaker 1: cary states like Ohio coped with knowing lethal force could
20:44
Speaker 1: be anywhere, even in the grocery store. I would feel
20:47
Speaker 1: incredibly afraid, Max confessed. Do you get used to it?
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Speaker 2: He asked me.
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Speaker 1: I never actually had a gun that close to my nose. Mercifully,
20:58
Speaker 1: Max kept it pointed at the alium floor. You either
21:02
Speaker 1: work for me or you're not living his character growled
21:06
Speaker 1: as he sniffed me. I backed out of the trailer,
21:09
Speaker 1: thinking it was time for a one dollar taste of
21:11
Speaker 1: freedom Logger and Joyce's diner. Outside, a woman in a
21:15
Speaker 1: tope cowboy hat smoked cigarette. I recognized her as a
21:20
Speaker 1: Swedish player. Was she crying? Before I could approach, she
21:24
Speaker 1: headed in the direction of the off game. Breakroom made
21:28
Speaker 1: a mental note to check on her later. Researchers have
21:33
Speaker 1: traced role playing back to ancient Egypt, but Anika learn
21:38
Speaker 1: and LARP scholar at Uppsala University in Sweden guessed the
21:42
Speaker 1: game was as old as humanity. Children in every culture
21:46
Speaker 1: learned through pretend Adults compare it to interactive theater on
21:51
Speaker 1: magical mushrooms. You step into somebody else's shoes to expand
21:56
Speaker 1: in your perspective, but no one wearing said should expect
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Speaker 1: one hundred percent authenticity. Our vance's recollections of Ohio representative
22:06
Speaker 1: of the state. Can poles truly capture Americans striving? Probably not.
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Speaker 1: We're all imperfect narrators, seeing the world through the forces
22:18
Speaker 1: that shaped us. You are so steeped in your own
22:22
Speaker 1: culture that it could be hard to see what is
22:25
Speaker 1: ingrained there, Warren told me. Playing someone else's approximation of American,
22:31
Speaker 1: she added, could be a really strong experience or just
22:34
Speaker 1: really frustrating. One of the other Americans quit before the
22:39
Speaker 1: game started. A Marylander who'd moved to Germany. Lindsay, had
22:44
Speaker 1: come to celebrate America to fifty I'm Over It, the
22:48
Speaker 1: forty seven year old dance movement therapist told me after
22:51
Speaker 1: the prelap orientation, going in the heavy themes didn't bug Lindsay,
22:57
Speaker 1: who didn't want her last name attached to what she
23:00
Speaker 1: described as bullsh Hollywood. As long mind poverty, violence, drugs,
23:07
Speaker 1: and despair for our entertainment, those stories can deepen empathy,
23:12
Speaker 1: or they just trend on Netflix. From a distance, this
23:17
Speaker 1: gamified Fourth of July looked to her like a reflection
23:20
Speaker 1: of what we pump out up close in the Polish woods. However,
23:25
Speaker 1: the pop pop pop of blank guns made her queasy.
23:30
Speaker 1: Back in her Baltimore neighborhood, a bullet had killed a
23:33
Speaker 1: three year old girl.
23:35
Speaker 2: Lindsay also witnessed the tragedy of addiction.
23:39
Speaker 1: And here we were playmaking another drug that crushed so
23:43
Speaker 1: much potential. I love my country, she said, tearing up.
23:48
Speaker 1: We're tired, We're exhausted. We were exhausted. I recalled gallop
23:54
Speaker 1: Pole from February, showing optimism in America had slid to
23:57
Speaker 1: a record low. Division was raging, Prices for all kinds
24:03
Speaker 1: of basics were rising upward, mobility was cratering. Thus far,
24:09
Speaker 1: I had been absorbing Pristine Park through the analytical lens
24:13
Speaker 1: of a full time journalist. When I reported from the
24:16
Speaker 1: conflict zones and towns devastated by mass shootings. I tend
24:20
Speaker 1: to suppress my feelings until my next forty five minute
24:23
Speaker 1: therapy session ran me two hundred dollars. Now, Lindsey was
24:27
Speaker 1: miles from Pristine Park, having rerouted her trip to a
24:31
Speaker 1: chill Polish village. If you're tired and need a break,
24:35
Speaker 1: she texted me, You're welcome to visit. I wasn't ready
24:39
Speaker 1: to tap out. With four hours left in the game,
24:43
Speaker 1: the LARPers were gearing up for their climaxes. How would
24:47
Speaker 1: Europeans playing proud Americans handle their dreams getting broken? At
24:52
Speaker 1: six point thirty pm, if we were lucky enough to
24:56
Speaker 1: get to the option, we could decide to stay in
24:59
Speaker 1: Pristine Park or catch the bus to the fictional city
25:02
Speaker 1: of Lincoln, ditching all we knew for a quintessantly American
25:07
Speaker 1: fresh start. Delilah's endgame was clear. I headed back to
25:12
Speaker 1: my cab and tell Roger I'd be moving out. I
25:16
Speaker 1: opted to break the news in our porch. It's over,
25:20
Speaker 1: I said, leaning over to the crescendo spirit. Across the street,
25:24
Speaker 1: another couple was loudly splitting. I really did love you,
25:29
Speaker 1: the cheating husband, yelled Roger, though kept his voice low.
25:34
Speaker 1: He didn't seem to believe his wife was actually leaving.
25:38
Speaker 1: Upstrolled my old friend Linda, unaware of the movement's gravity,
25:43
Speaker 1: want to go for a walk. She asked me, anything
25:46
Speaker 1: to get out of this, I said, springing up from
25:49
Speaker 1: my fold out chair. That reaction matched Delilah's check out personality.
25:55
Speaker 1: But I hadn't thought about before about speaking. The whole
25:59
Speaker 1: body was ten. Even a faux breakup was excruciating. You
26:04
Speaker 1: can't always run away from this, Roger shouted. As we
26:07
Speaker 1: headed into the woods. Everything okay, Linda ask with a
26:12
Speaker 1: tenderness that registered as genuine. Her actual name was Denise,
26:17
Speaker 1: an American filmmaker in Paris. The fifty something had come
26:21
Speaker 1: to Pristine Park for research. Neither of us had turned
26:24
Speaker 1: out were bonafide LARPers. Guards down. We chatted about our storylines,
26:31
Speaker 1: and we're wrapping up. As we trekked so deep into
26:33
Speaker 1: the forest we lost cell service. Eventually, the one hundred
26:37
Speaker 1: foot pine trees gave way to a pale blue lake. Beautiful,
26:42
Speaker 1: Denise gushed as we snapped photos of each other on
26:44
Speaker 1: the remote shore. It was just us an overturned rowboat.
26:49
Speaker 1: And what the hell? There stood Roger, hands in his pockets.
26:55
Speaker 1: How long had he been watching us? Forget breaking up?
26:59
Speaker 1: This was a even king jump. Scare you stalking us?
27:03
Speaker 2: I asked? May I talk to my wife?
27:06
Speaker 1: Roger asked Denise alone. A jolt of fear ripped through
27:11
Speaker 1: my chest. What I said next did not appear anywhere
27:15
Speaker 1: in my seven page backstory. The number one cause of
27:20
Speaker 1: murder for women is intimate partner violence, I blurted out.
27:25
Speaker 1: Over preceding four months, I'd written three short stories about
27:30
Speaker 1: men killing or trying to kill their partners. The statistic
27:34
Speaker 1: had lodged in my brain. The most dangerous time in
27:37
Speaker 1: a woman's life is when she is ending her relationship.
27:42
Speaker 2: Homicides all over the.
27:43
Speaker 1: United States, we're dropping except for domestic violence killings, Delilah,
27:50
Speaker 1: Roger said, looking hurt. You know I'd never lay a
27:53
Speaker 1: finger on you. My reaction had started, had startled the
27:59
Speaker 1: Austrian by behind the persona. Then he thought she has
28:03
Speaker 1: a point. Before the game started, I'd quickly assess Clemens
28:08
Speaker 1: to be a gentleman. He'd offered to bring our groceries
28:11
Speaker 1: and inquired about my comfort level and playing husband and wife,
28:15
Speaker 1: our characters were supposed to share a twin bed, but
28:18
Speaker 1: respecting my desire for space, he nixed any awkward negotiation
28:23
Speaker 1: by suggesting I bunk with Charlene, our scripted daughter larp
28:28
Speaker 1: enthusiast he'd come to steep in his discomfort, he told
28:32
Speaker 1: me following Delilah ind of the Woods reflected a misguided
28:36
Speaker 1: twist on Roger's optimistic grindset. That's why I didn't say
28:41
Speaker 1: yellow or red, even though despite this knowledge, despite the
28:46
Speaker 1: fact that we were all pretending, I was rattled and
28:50
Speaker 1: could tell Denise was.
28:51
Speaker 2: To everything okay.
28:54
Speaker 1: She asked again, and I nodded, and Denise turned back
28:57
Speaker 1: towards the foliage. Then Roger plopped into the rowboat. I'd
29:01
Speaker 1: have done anything for us, he said, choking up. Later,
29:06
Speaker 1: I'd learned that Denise hadn't actually left us alone. She'd
29:09
Speaker 1: hid behind the trees. She told me make sure I
29:12
Speaker 1: was safe. The next morning, the game was over and
29:16
Speaker 1: we all were ourselves again. The lawfers gathered for scrambled
29:20
Speaker 1: eggs and what remained of Joyce's diner. Down came the
29:24
Speaker 1: American flags. The letter was mostly gone too. A couple
29:28
Speaker 1: of Germans, who detested seeing trash on the ground, were
29:31
Speaker 1: beating the staffers to the cleanup. The Swedish player, i'd
29:35
Speaker 1: been smoking through her tears, grabbed only a cup of coffee.
29:39
Speaker 1: Willemina said she didn't have much of an ipatite. Her
29:42
Speaker 1: blue eyes were puffy, and she sat on a bench
29:45
Speaker 1: and let another camel blue our time as o'hian's had
29:50
Speaker 1: hit a little too close to home. That was hours
29:54
Speaker 1: of constant crying, she told me. The thirty five year
29:58
Speaker 1: old graphic artist had been intrigued by the game's critique
30:01
Speaker 1: of the American dream, a concept that first enticed now
30:05
Speaker 1: haunted her. It had been nine months and she returned
30:08
Speaker 1: Stockholm from Houston, her husband's hometown. Both longtime lawpers, the
30:14
Speaker 1: couple met at a Texas vampire masquerade. Christine Park offered
30:19
Speaker 1: some of their Texas friends, who blasted it as poverty tourism.
30:24
Speaker 1: Wilhelmina disagreed to her this was an exercise in probing
30:29
Speaker 1: what she called the intense hope at the core of
30:31
Speaker 1: American identity. No other countries, she said, is marketed as
30:37
Speaker 1: going from nothing to do everything as much as the US.
30:40
Speaker 1: In Houston. The everyday luxury stunned her. So many families
30:46
Speaker 1: had their own pools and swing sets and air conditioning
30:49
Speaker 1: on full blast. Those amenities tended to be public in Sweden.
30:55
Speaker 1: For the most part, Wilhelmina loved it. She was still
30:59
Speaker 1: working towards green card when she got pregnant and suddenly
31:02
Speaker 1: routinely fined Stockholm renew her visitors status was no longer manageable.
31:08
Speaker 1: Months before the twenty twenty four presidential election, her attorney
31:12
Speaker 1: advised her to overstay her visa as they worked on
31:15
Speaker 1: her case. Wilhelmina was married to an American with a
31:19
Speaker 1: baby on the way and no criminal record.
31:22
Speaker 2: What was the worst that could happen?
31:24
Speaker 1: Ice rates, one of her immigrant groups on Facebook soon worn.
31:29
Speaker 1: Others in her position got detained when they showed up
31:32
Speaker 1: to court hearings. Then her daughter was born in Houston,
31:36
Speaker 1: and her husband started thinking every car behind them was
31:38
Speaker 1: a federal agent. A long distance marriage was safer, they reasoned.
31:43
Speaker 1: While he applied for Swedish residency, Wilhelmina asked me just
31:47
Speaker 1: to use her middle name because she fears retaliation if
31:50
Speaker 1: she ever tries to move back to the US. Now
31:54
Speaker 1: her two year old girl was in Texas for two weeks,
31:57
Speaker 1: and Wilhelmina tried to distract herself with one of her
32:01
Speaker 1: favorite activities, juicy scripts. She thought her character had secretly
32:06
Speaker 1: given up a baby for adoption fifteen years ago, and
32:09
Speaker 1: that teenage ager had materialized to find her in Pristine Park.
32:15
Speaker 1: The storyline though on cork the agony, this was the
32:19
Speaker 1: longest she'd ever been away from her toddler. She thought
32:22
Speaker 1: of the parents and kids that deportation had separated. Tears
32:27
Speaker 1: kept slicking her cheeks. In her thirteen years of LARPing,
32:31
Speaker 1: she told me, this was the most intense game I'd
32:33
Speaker 1: ever played. Siri felt the same way, though she was beaming.
32:39
Speaker 1: In the end, she evaded calamity Hell, She'd reach New Heights.
32:43
Speaker 1: She'd faked a religious conversion to avoid jail time, and then,
32:46
Speaker 1: in a stroke of classic American reinvention, escaped injury free
32:51
Speaker 1: to the imaginary bus to Lincoln. Players sent videos they
32:56
Speaker 1: recorded of her inflatable pool baptism and Syria lapped and
32:59
Speaker 1: cringed Americans. She said, you gotta be resourceful no longer.
33:06
Speaker 1: Roger Clemens was back to not freaking me out, as
33:11
Speaker 1: my actual bus departed to Warsaw Chopin's airport. I found
33:15
Speaker 1: a sweatshirt I'd accidentally left in our cabinet, offered to
33:18
Speaker 1: mail it to Washington. Merritt doesn't always equal success, he
33:23
Speaker 1: texted me a few days later, reflecting on all that
33:25
Speaker 1: had transpired. Hard work doesn't equal a comfortable life.
33:30
Speaker 2: Clemens was right.
33:31
Speaker 1: The American Dream, after all, was coined during the Great Depression,
33:35
Speaker 1: injecting radical optimism into the historian's definition. Millions had worked
33:41
Speaker 1: hard only to lose their jobs, life savings.
33:43
Speaker 2: And homes hunger was rampant.
33:46
Speaker 1: The Epic of America still became a mega bestseller. Here's
33:52
Speaker 1: a difficult dream for the European upper class to interpret adequately,
33:55
Speaker 1: Adams had written, And too many of ourselves have grown
33:58
Speaker 1: weary and mistrust The historian might have underestimated how closely
34:04
Speaker 1: some of our oldest allies would pay attention. America's ultimate
34:09
Speaker 1: lore has always been a fantasy or a whore, or
34:12
Speaker 1: a romance, or an action adventure, or all of the above,
34:16
Speaker 1: depending on the narrator.
34:19
Speaker 2: Like so many.
34:19
Speaker 1: Before them, the lawpers took what they needed from the
34:23
Speaker 1: American Dream and made.
34:25
Speaker 2: It their own.
34:27
Speaker 1: And next Navy weighs major warship redesign to match Trump's preferences.
34:34
Speaker 1: The United States Navy is considering a major redesign of
34:37
Speaker 1: its new aircraft carriers to better match President Trump's preferred
34:41
Speaker 1: esthetics for warships. According to seven current and former US
34:44
Speaker 1: officials familiar with the matter, the services evaluating the feasibility
34:50
Speaker 1: of moving the multi story tower that acts as the
34:53
Speaker 1: carrier's command center farther forward toward the middle of the
34:57
Speaker 1: ship to resemble older vessels. The official sten the review,
35:02
Speaker 1: which has not been previously reported, is in response to
35:05
Speaker 1: Trump's concern about the look of the new Forward class ships,
35:09
Speaker 1: where the towers near the rear. These people said the
35:13
Speaker 1: timing and extent of the Navy's evaluation is unclear, with
35:17
Speaker 1: current and former officials cautioning that the service was concerned
35:22
Speaker 1: that such a change would require significant time and money.
35:26
Speaker 1: Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to
35:29
Speaker 1: discuss the sensitive situation. Moving that command center, known as
35:34
Speaker 1: the island, would be the second major design change prompted
35:37
Speaker 1: by the President, who on Thursday issued a National security
35:41
Speaker 1: memborandum directing the Navy to develop a plan to revert
35:45
Speaker 1: to the older steam powered catapults on future carriers. The
35:50
Speaker 1: system helps launch jets off the ship's flight decks. Trump's preference,
35:56
Speaker 1: current and formal official cit is for the new aircraft
35:59
Speaker 1: carriers to look more like they were in service during
36:02
Speaker 1: World War II. The Navy also examined the issue during
36:07
Speaker 1: the first term as President set a former senior US official,
36:11
Speaker 1: a study found that moving in the island could cost
36:14
Speaker 1: billions of dollars in redesigned costs and significantly delayed the program.
36:19
Speaker 1: The person said it came back that the cost and
36:23
Speaker 1: time to do so would just be extraordinary. The former
36:27
Speaker 1: official sit there are three Ford class carriers in various
36:32
Speaker 1: states of development. The USS John F. Kennedy is undergoing
36:36
Speaker 1: sea trials and getting close to joining the fleet, while
36:40
Speaker 1: the USS Enterprise and USS Doris Miller are under construction.
36:46
Speaker 1: The first carrier in the class, the USS Gerald R. Ford,
36:50
Speaker 1: is already in service and recently finished a lengthy combat
36:53
Speaker 1: tour in the Middle East. Plans call for building up
36:57
Speaker 1: to ten Ford class carriers over the next four decades
37:01
Speaker 1: and projected future cost of twenty two billion dollars each,
37:06
Speaker 1: according to the non partisan Congressional Budget Office and the
37:09
Speaker 1: Navy's most recent shipbuilding plan. Relocating the island would be
37:14
Speaker 1: a major redesign, said Brian Clark, a former Navy officer
37:19
Speaker 1: who studies the service at the Hudson Institute, a right
37:23
Speaker 1: leaning think tank in Washington. Such an altercation, an alteration
37:28
Speaker 1: to the carrier's layout, he said, would affect the ship's
37:31
Speaker 1: buoyancy and weigh and come in at a significant cost.
37:37
Speaker 1: You could change it, but it's very disruptive. The Pentagon
37:41
Speaker 1: and the Navy referred request for comments to the White House,
37:45
Speaker 1: which pointed to a new National Security memorandum When asked
37:49
Speaker 1: about Trump's desire to relocate the island on future forecast
37:53
Speaker 1: CRIASS aircraft carriers, the memorandum.
37:57
Speaker 2: Does not address the issue.
38:00
Speaker 1: Official familiar with both the potential changes to the catapult
38:04
Speaker 1: and the island said that the Navy is taking both
38:07
Speaker 1: matters seriously because of the delays and severe cost overruns
38:12
Speaker 1: it could create. Trump's interest in the redesigned modification marks
38:17
Speaker 1: the Whitehouse's growing influence of the complexity and complex mechanics
38:23
Speaker 1: of naval shipbuilding since returning to office from his promise
38:27
Speaker 1: to resurrect the lagging industry, and he has already issued
38:31
Speaker 1: multiple executive orders addressing the matter. Thursday's National Security Memorandum would,
38:38
Speaker 1: among other changes, revert the Ford class's advanced electromagnetic catapult
38:44
Speaker 1: system to steam power. The document emphasizes the administration's preference
38:50
Speaker 1: for proven, reliable, and affordable technologies in ship design. Such
38:57
Speaker 1: a change multiple official sid would also run into the
39:02
Speaker 1: billions of dollars and exacerbate chronic delays in the US
39:06
Speaker 1: ship building industry. The lead Forward class carrier, the USS
39:11
Speaker 1: Gerald Ford, required seventeen years to construct. Its design incorporated
39:18
Speaker 1: new technology that led to delays, including the electromagnetic catapult,
39:24
Speaker 1: a feature the Navy has since credited as being highly effective.
39:29
Speaker 1: The Forward class of carriers will phase out its predecessor,
39:33
Speaker 1: the Nimitz class, which dates back to the nineteen sixties.
39:39
Speaker 1: Relocating the island to the back of the newer vessels
39:42
Speaker 1: was done for efficiency and safety. Three US current and
39:46
Speaker 1: former officials familiar with the program told The Washington Post
39:51
Speaker 1: it not only creates more parking space for the aircraft
39:54
Speaker 1: close to the carrier's catapults, allowing crews to reduce the
39:58
Speaker 1: amount of time it takes to law launch, but it
40:01
Speaker 1: also improves landing safety by reducing the chance for turbulence
40:05
Speaker 1: when the claims planes come back to land.
40:08
Speaker 2: Official set.
40:10
Speaker 1: The Navy's surface fleet has been plagued by years of
40:15
Speaker 1: delayed maintenance and now in low readiness rates, in part
40:19
Speaker 1: because of how often past US administrations have deployed carriers
40:24
Speaker 1: to confront global crisis. Amid the ongoing Around War, the
40:29
Speaker 1: Pentagon under Trump has further stretched out the readiness of
40:32
Speaker 1: its carrier fleet while surging naval assets to the Middle
40:36
Speaker 1: East to conduct strikes and enforce the blockade of Iranian ports.
40:42
Speaker 1: The USS Ford itself faced an extended deployment that ended
40:47
Speaker 1: earlier this year after a fire rendered many of the crew
40:51
Speaker 1: members sleeping quarters uninhabitable. Officials also acknowledged that the Navy's
40:57
Speaker 1: newest carrier experience problems with vacuum collection, holding, and transfer
41:02
Speaker 1: systems that supports hundreds of toilets on board. Democratic lawmakers
41:08
Speaker 1: this week called on Defense Secretary Pete Hegsith to investigate
41:12
Speaker 1: new reports of rapidly worsening conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln,
41:17
Speaker 1: which had been deployed to the Middle East since November.
41:21
Speaker 1: Families of sailors aboard the Lincoln have been outspoken about
41:25
Speaker 1: the situation and the Navy is investigating a man overboard
41:29
Speaker 1: incident it says may be connected to mental health issues.
41:34
Speaker 1: While speaking to reporters on a trip to Panama on Thursday,
41:38
Speaker 1: Hegsith called the reporters completely misrepresented. On Friday, as questions
41:45
Speaker 1: continued to squirrel around conditions on the ship after its
41:48
Speaker 1: lengthy deployment, Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews of
41:52
Speaker 1: the Lincoln's time and seat had been not nearly long enough.
41:57
Speaker 1: The Lincoln is on an extended common deployment that has
42:01
Speaker 1: seen its sailors at sea for two hundred days without
42:04
Speaker 1: a port call to provide the crew some rest. It
42:08
Speaker 1: is scheduled to be relieved by the USS George Washington
42:11
Speaker 1: in the coming weeks. Trump has repeatedly shown interest in
42:16
Speaker 1: the design of Navy warships. Last year, he unveiled plans
42:21
Speaker 1: for a new class of battleships to lead his vision
42:24
Speaker 1: for a Golden Fleet, prompting criticism from many naval analysts
42:29
Speaker 1: and lawmakers who argued the ships would waste scarce American
42:33
Speaker 1: shipbuilding power on a design the service does not need.
42:39
Speaker 1: Congressional Budget Office has since estimated that the Trump class
42:43
Speaker 1: battleships would cost about two hundred and seventy five billion
42:48
Speaker 1: dollars over thirty years, coming in at a cost of
42:52
Speaker 1: eighteen billion dollars per ship. After finishing the first one,
42:57
Speaker 1: next Democrats abandoned races and the deep red states, boosting independents.
43:04
Speaker 1: Democrats trying to unseat Republican senators in deep red states
43:08
Speaker 1: have pursued a new strategy this year, dropping out the
43:13
Speaker 1: Democratic Senate nominees in Nebraska, Idaho, and South Dakota, all
43:18
Speaker 1: heavily Republican states, withdrew from the ballot after their primaries,
43:23
Speaker 1: clearing the field for independent candidates, and some Democrats hope
43:27
Speaker 1: that these moderate independents will draw enough crossover support from
43:31
Speaker 1: Republicans and centrist voters who would never back a Democrat
43:35
Speaker 1: to make the races competitor. We have to do things
43:39
Speaker 1: differently or more out of the box to try and
43:42
Speaker 1: expand the playing field, said said Doug Sosnik, a Democratic
43:47
Speaker 1: strategist and former political director for President Clinton. But this
43:53
Speaker 1: strategy failed where Democrats thought it had the best chance
43:56
Speaker 1: of working. Montana. Some national demo credit groups backed independent
44:02
Speaker 1: Seth Bodner, the leader at the University of Montana system,
44:05
Speaker 1: but Democratic nominee Alani Blankhead, rejected calls to drop out
44:10
Speaker 1: before the Monday withdrawal deadline. Bankhead, an Air Force veteran
44:16
Speaker 1: a first time political candidate, said the strategy of running
44:19
Speaker 1: independence is a bad idea that hurts Democrats in the
44:23
Speaker 1: long term. If you want to rehabilitate the brand, then
44:28
Speaker 1: you do it by rehabilitating the brand, not supporting independence,
44:34
Speaker 1: she said in an interview. Undermining the voters will by
44:38
Speaker 1: asking the Democratic nominee to withdraw is highly inappropriate and
44:43
Speaker 1: further upsets voters.
44:44
Speaker 2: She said.
44:46
Speaker 1: Democrats once routinely held send its seats and states that
44:50
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly backed Republicans for president, but ticket splitting, or voters
44:56
Speaker 1: backed candidates from different parties for different offices as never
45:00
Speaker 1: has become much rarer. No Democratic senator hailed from a
45:06
Speaker 1: solidly read state anymore. Only one senator, Republican Susan Collins
45:12
Speaker 1: of Maine, represents a seat that her party is lost
45:16
Speaker 1: in the past two presidential elections.
45:19
Speaker 2: The strategy follows.
45:20
Speaker 1: Independent Dan Osborne's twenty twenty four Senate campaign in Nebraska,
45:25
Speaker 1: when without a Democratic candidate on the ballot, he lost
45:29
Speaker 1: by seven points to the Republican incumbent, while Donald Trump
45:33
Speaker 1: carried the state in the presidential election by nearly twenty
45:36
Speaker 1: percentage points. Osborne, a former mechanic turned union leader, is
45:41
Speaker 1: running again this year. The decision to drop out to
45:45
Speaker 1: help Independence demonstrates the growing toxicity of the Democratic Party's
45:51
Speaker 1: brand in many states, according to strategists to both parties. Sosnik,
45:57
Speaker 1: the former Clinton aide, said the party ruggles with voters
46:01
Speaker 1: who aren't college educated and doesn't adequately convince voters that
46:05
Speaker 1: it represents middle class Americans. While it's crucial for the
46:11
Speaker 1: party to rebuild its brand in red states, such long
46:14
Speaker 1: term concerns are secondary to ousting Republicans, said near A Tandem,
46:20
Speaker 1: the president of the Center for American Progress, a Democratic
46:23
Speaker 1: think tank. Donald Trump is president now, It's hard to
46:28
Speaker 1: rebuild a brand in ten minutes. The important thing to
46:31
Speaker 1: do in this election is to have the candidate who
46:35
Speaker 1: has the most likelihood.
46:36
Speaker 2: Of winning, Tendons said.
46:39
Speaker 1: But Julian Boudillon, the former Democratic nominee for Senate in
46:44
Speaker 1: South Dakota, said in an interview before exiting the race
46:48
Speaker 1: that asking Democrats to drop out hurtz state and local parties.
46:52
Speaker 2: More than it does the national brand.
46:55
Speaker 1: Boudion said he's suspended his campaign because of personal chatter
47:00
Speaker 1: challenges not to help the independent Brian Bings.
47:04
Speaker 2: The independent candidates, all.
47:06
Speaker 1: Of whom are military veterans, tend to avoid politically divisive issues,
47:11
Speaker 1: instead focusing on popular policies and borrowing rhetoric from both parties.
47:18
Speaker 1: Bings and Todd Achilles, the independent Senate candidate in Idaho,
47:23
Speaker 1: and two other independent Senate candidates in Colorado and Mississippi,
47:27
Speaker 1: drafted a shared set of policies that include ending jerry mandering,
47:32
Speaker 1: reducing the national debt, and imposing stronger restrictions on insider
47:37
Speaker 1: trading within Congress. They've been seeking to paint Democrats and
47:42
Speaker 1: Republicans as two sides of the same corrupt political establishment.
47:47
Speaker 1: You can't tell the difference between a corporate Republican and
47:51
Speaker 1: a corporate Democrat, Achilles said in an interview. They both
47:56
Speaker 1: take money from the same organizations, the same packs, and
48:00
Speaker 1: so forth, he said, adding that he would align with
48:03
Speaker 1: populist senators challenging concentrated corporate power, including Senators Elizabeth Warren,
48:09
Speaker 1: the Democrat of Massachusetts, and Josh Holly, the Republican of Missouri.
48:14
Speaker 1: While Hawley and Warren have worked together to target large corporations.
48:19
Speaker 1: They have very different positions on abortion, gun control, and
48:24
Speaker 1: many other issues. Osbourne, too strikes a balance between traditionally
48:30
Speaker 1: Democratic and Republican policies. He advocates for strengthening social security
48:35
Speaker 1: and legalizing marijuana, but also supports targeted tariffs and lifts
48:40
Speaker 1: drain the swamp as public priority. But Osborne, Beings, and
48:45
Speaker 1: Achilles rarely mentioned abortion. The Wall opposed a federal ban.
48:51
Speaker 1: They proclaim support for the Second Amendment while supporting what
48:54
Speaker 1: they call gun safety measures. They've all talked tough about
48:59
Speaker 1: illegal immigration, but have also criticized US immigration and customs enforcement.
49:05
Speaker 1: Republicans argue they are essentially Democrats in disguise. They support
49:10
Speaker 1: the same socialist policies and middle class tax heists that
49:14
Speaker 1: made the Democrats toxic across the country, said Joanna Rodriguez,
49:19
Speaker 1: a spokesperson for the party's Senate campaign. Arm. Few non
49:24
Speaker 1: partisan polls have been conducted in the races in Nebraska, Idaho,
49:28
Speaker 1: and South Dakota, but it's expected to be a significant
49:32
Speaker 1: uphill battle for the three independent candidates. Osborne has the
49:36
Speaker 1: best chance in Nebraska, having come within single digits in
49:39
Speaker 1: his last campaign. And now running in a year expected
49:43
Speaker 1: to favor Democrats, but his opponent, incumbent Pete Ricketts, is
49:48
Speaker 1: one of the wealthiest Senators and has spent millions of
49:50
Speaker 1: his own money on the race. The non partisan Cook
49:54
Speaker 1: Political Report currently rates Nebraska race as likely Republican, races
50:00
Speaker 1: in Idaho and South Dakota as solid Republican. Some Democrats
50:05
Speaker 1: hope that even if the independents fail to win, these
50:08
Speaker 1: races will drain Republican money that could be spent on
50:12
Speaker 1: other races. Independent members of Congress usually caucus with one
50:17
Speaker 1: of the major parties, but the independent Senate candidates have
50:21
Speaker 1: insisted they will not, instead hoping that they'll have the
50:25
Speaker 1: power to control the agenda in a narrowly divided Senate.
50:30
Speaker 1: No elected senator in fifty years has declined to caucus
50:34
Speaker 1: with major parties, a move that would probably deny them
50:37
Speaker 1: seats on committees. Achilles, the Idaho candidate, said he believes
50:43
Speaker 1: he'll leverage to join the committees in the Senate if
50:46
Speaker 1: it is closely divided. I'll work with the Republicans where
50:50
Speaker 1: it makes good sense on legislation coming from that side,
50:53
Speaker 1: and I'll work that with the Dems where there's a
50:55
Speaker 1: good legislation coming from that side, Achilles said, So both
50:59
Speaker 1: sides are going to have to work for my vote.
51:03
Speaker 1: While independence and third party candidates had previously won Senate seats,
51:07
Speaker 1: major party nominees have historically not withdrawn from the ballot,
51:12
Speaker 1: and no recent examples did a party's caucus lose control
51:16
Speaker 1: of a Senate in a state where it was favored
51:19
Speaker 1: as Democrats are hoping these independents can pull off Democrats.
51:24
Speaker 1: Even before Osborne's twenty twenty four campaign, have tried to
51:28
Speaker 1: leverage the strategy to break through in Republican states. Independent
51:33
Speaker 1: Greg Orman lost a twenty fourteen campaign in Kansas by
51:38
Speaker 1: Democratic by ten percentage points, out performing past Democrats after
51:42
Speaker 1: the Democratic nominee withdrew. In twenty twenty, independent Hal Gross
51:49
Speaker 1: lost Alaska's Senate election, but did so after winning the
51:53
Speaker 1: Democratic primary and running in the party's nominee. And in
51:57
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, Democrats got behind the right center right
52:01
Speaker 1: independent Evan McMullen in Utah, who lost but again outperformed
52:07
Speaker 1: prior to Democratic nominees. Republicans, though, argue that voters can
52:11
Speaker 1: see through that strategy. People aren't stupid, said Gop strategist
52:17
Speaker 1: Matt Gorman. For it to be a successful strategy, it
52:21
Speaker 1: should probably actually work.
52:24
Speaker 2: And it just doesn't. Next.
52:27
Speaker 1: At least forty seven dead after seven point seven magnitude
52:31
Speaker 1: quake strikes Indonesia. At least forty seven people have died
52:37
Speaker 1: after a seven point seven magnitude earthquake struck off the
52:40
Speaker 1: coast of Indonesian Florides Island early Saturday. Authority SID. The
52:46
Speaker 1: quake took place just before five am, and, according to
52:50
Speaker 1: the US Geological Survey, was centered in waters north of
52:54
Speaker 1: the island, some one thousand miles east of the Czech
52:58
Speaker 1: capital Jakarta. Indonesia sets on the Pacific Ring of Fire
53:03
Speaker 1: and is a hotspot for tectonic activity due to the
53:07
Speaker 1: convergence of the Australian and Sunda tectonic plates. Sunday's earthquake
53:13
Speaker 1: was centered offshore at a depth of around six miles
53:17
Speaker 1: according to USGS, and was followed by several aftershocks. More
53:22
Speaker 1: than two million people were exposed to strong to severe shaking.
53:27
Speaker 1: The agency estimated a tsunami warning led residents to evacuate
53:32
Speaker 1: several coastal areas, but has since been lifted. Indonesian Authority
53:37
Speaker 1: SID Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency, the BNBP, said late
53:44
Speaker 1: Saturday that forty seven people had been killed. About half
53:49
Speaker 1: the victims were found in the Mangaari regions of Indonesia's
53:53
Speaker 1: island on Flores.
53:54
Speaker 2: The agency said at.
53:56
Speaker 1: Least sixteen bodies were pulled from a landslide in one village.
54:00
Speaker 1: Lieutenant General Sukhayato, the head of the BNBP, who goes
54:05
Speaker 1: by one name that is common in the Indonesia, said
54:10
Speaker 1: in televised remarks earlier Saturday. The quake also collapsed buildings
54:15
Speaker 1: and disrupted communication channels and road access Authority sid B
54:21
Speaker 1: NBP SID in an earlier statement that Suharianto would travel
54:26
Speaker 1: to the affected region. Emergency teams have also been deployed
54:31
Speaker 1: to support local authorities in assessing the damage, treating victims,
54:35
Speaker 1: and helping those affected. The agency SID rescue efforts are
54:39
Speaker 1: expected to be complicated by the remote locations and the
54:42
Speaker 1: island's geography. Some two thousand people have been evacuated from
54:47
Speaker 1: the islands Negi Kio area as a precaution, and the
54:51
Speaker 1: public has been urged to remain vigilant as active shocks continued.
54:57
Speaker 1: Indonesia as an archipelago of some seventeen thousand, five hundred islands,
55:02
Speaker 1: and it's prone to earthquakes and volcanoes. Since nineteen fifty
55:07
Speaker 1: there have been thirty seven other earthquakes of a magnitude
55:11
Speaker 1: of six point zero or greater, including a seven point
55:14
Speaker 1: eight magnitude quake and tsunami in nineteen ninety two that
55:18
Speaker 1: killed at least twenty five hundred people and destroyed tens
55:22
Speaker 1: of thousands of homes according to USGS. And finally, a
55:27
Speaker 1: Nazi bunker stands in the way of Berlin's housing plans.
55:31
Speaker 1: If it weren't for the easily missed informational plaque, the
55:35
Speaker 1: sight of Adolph Hitler's demise could be mistaken for a
55:38
Speaker 1: normal parking lot. Construction workers in nineteen ninety nine accidentally
55:43
Speaker 1: dug up parts of the concrete bunker where Hitler died
55:46
Speaker 1: by suicide, igniting a long standing debate over how Germany
55:50
Speaker 1: should deal with Nazi relics. Now more than twenty five
55:54
Speaker 1: years later, plans to build apartments over another Nazi hideout
55:58
Speaker 1: nearby are reanimate the conversation about how to preserve history
56:03
Speaker 1: without glorifying it. The overgrown lot at the center of
56:07
Speaker 1: the controversy a prime piece of real estate you know
56:09
Speaker 1: the pots, demer plots and the glitzy Mall of Berlin
56:13
Speaker 1: was once the home of Hitler's new reich Chancellory administrative building,
56:18
Speaker 1: erected in the late nineteen thirties. A Hamburg based developer
56:22
Speaker 1: has been approved to turn the property into apartments and
56:24
Speaker 1: office space, according to the Berlin publication bided the developer,
56:30
Speaker 1: SMV Berlin did not respond for a request for comment.
56:34
Speaker 1: The Chancellory's above ground billings were destroyed after the war,
56:37
Speaker 1: but preservation advocates say the intact Nazi bunker were the
56:42
Speaker 1: last vestiges of Hitler's center of power ought to be protected.
56:47
Speaker 1: Last year, Berlin's State Monument Council and a memo expressed
56:50
Speaker 1: concerns about the developer's demolition plans and call for relevant
56:55
Speaker 1: authorities to reconsider whether the site should have historical protections.
57:00
Speaker 1: Council said the Chancellory was the planning from the start
57:03
Speaker 1: point of World War II and also stands symbolically for
57:07
Speaker 1: the catastrophic end of the Nazi regime, but the construction
57:12
Speaker 1: project as the support of Christian Gabler, Berlin's Senator for
57:16
Speaker 1: Urban Development, Building and Housing. Facing the Hatting shortage. Gabler
57:21
Speaker 1: has made it clear that he prioritizes residential construction at
57:24
Speaker 1: this location, said Martin Paglin, a spokesperson for the Urban
57:29
Speaker 1: Development Department.
57:31
Speaker 2: There has long been a plan to develop the.
57:32
Speaker 1: Site, Pagan said, and the bunker is not a protected monument.
57:36
Speaker 1: But Nicholas Bernau, an art historian and architect, opposed to
57:40
Speaker 1: the construct the destruction of the chancellery bunker and the
57:43
Speaker 1: construction of the apartments at the site. Better Noa said
57:46
Speaker 1: it's definitely improper to build over the site where countless
57:49
Speaker 1: atrocities were planned by the Nazis, and said the land
57:52
Speaker 1: should serve as a site for people to learn about
57:54
Speaker 1: the history of fascism and the history of power. We
57:58
Speaker 1: have these few original parts, and if these were the
58:01
Speaker 1: original parts of a medieval castle which stood there, then
58:03
Speaker 1: of course nobody would want a debate destroying it. And
58:08
Speaker 1: this concludes the reading of the Washington Post for today, Monday,
58:12
Speaker 1: August seventeenth. Your reader has been Rod Brotherton. If you
58:16
Speaker 1: have any questions, comments, or suggestions concerning the plow programmed,
58:19
Speaker 1: please feel free to call us at A five nine
58:22
Speaker 1: four two two sixty three ninety but as always, thank
58:26
Speaker 1: you for listening, and now please stay tuned for continued
58:30
Speaker 1: programming right here on Radio I