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Promised Land

Director: Gus Van Sant

Genre: Drama

Running time: 106 minutes

Rated R for language

With: Matt Damon, Frances McDormand, John Krasinski

(Recommended)

There's no deal on the fiscal cliff; there's no deal on guns. There won't even be Ben Affleck in the U.S. Senate. But we might see more of former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. Even worse, you have to listen to NPR's Ken Rudin and Ron Elving explain all of that in this week's episode of the "It's All Politics" podcast.

Brazilian health officials say an epidemic is taking hold – an outbreak of crack cocaine use nationwide, from the major cities on the coast to places deep in the Amazon.

It's an image at odds with the one Brazil wants to project as the country prepares to host soccer's World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics two years later. But it has become too big to ignore.

The Luz district of central Sao Paulo was once grand, with its old train station and opulent buildings. Now, this neighborhood is known as Cracolandia – Crackland.

And on a recent night, skeletal figures in tattered, dirty clothes emerge – mostly men, but some women. They're glassy eyed and jumpy and looking for a quick fix, oblivious to the police helicopters overhead.

The only buffer between them and the rest of society this evening is Isabel Campos, a health worker who tries to convince addicts to seek help.

"They're here all day," she says, "smoking crack."

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Gerard Depardieu, one of France's most iconic and beloved film stars, is now at the center of a national uproar over French taxes and patriotism.

Depardieu, who has been in around 200 films, says he's moving to Belgium to avoid paying a new 75 percent tax on the superwealthy. The move has divided the country and has focused attention on the Socialist government's controversial new tax policy.

The uproar began just before Christmas, when it came to light that Depardieu bought a home in Nechin, a drab Belgian village less than a mile over the French border. Depardieu admitted to establishing a foreign residence to escape new French tax rates.

French President Francois Hollande is counting on the rich to balance the country's budget for the first time since 1973. So Depardieu's move didn't go over well with the government.

"It's pathetic really," Prime Minister Jean Marc Ayrault said earlier this month. "Paying taxes is an act of patriotism and we're asking the rich to make a special effort here for the country."

Depardieu shot back at Ayrault in an open letter published in a major Sunday newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche.

"I am leaving because you consider success, creativity and talent grounds for sanction," the actor wrote. Depardieu said he has paid more than $190 million in taxes over the last four decades. He said he no longer recognized his country and offered to surrender his passport if he was, indeed, so pathetic.

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What counts as a book these days, in a world of Kindles, Nooks and iPads — and eager talk about new platforms and distribution methods?

Traditional publishers are traveling a long and confusing road into the digital future. To begin with, here's the conventional wisdom about publishing: e-books are destroying the business model.

People expect them to be cheaper than physical books, and that drives down prices. But the story's not that simple — for one thing, digital publishers have the same problem that record labels do: piracy. And there's just not the same stigma attached to pirating an e-book as there is to holding up a Barnes & Noble.

It turns out, though, that some publishers are doing pretty well despite the piracy problem. "We've had an incredible year," says Sourcebooks president Dominique Raccah. "Last year was the best year in the company's history. This year we beat that, which I didn't think was even possible." Raccah adds that her company is doing well because of digital publishing, not in spite of it. "It's been an amazing ride," she says.

It turns out there are some huge advantages — at least for publishers. A big one: the price of an e-book isn't fixed the way it is with physical books. Ten years ago, a publisher would have sent out its books to the bookstore with the price stamped on the cover. After that, they were done — they couldn't put it on sale to sell more books.

New Horizons in Publishing

Books

Change Is The Only Constant In Today's Publishing Industry

The publishing industry has been in flux for years — first chain stores, then Amazon, then e-books — many forces have combined to create dramatic change in the traditional publishing model.

Mike Shatzkin is the founder and CEO of the publishing industry consulting firm Idea Logical. He says one of the biggest changes happining in publishing right now is the planned merger of two of the biggest players in the field, Penguin and Random House — with whispers of further mergers to come.

Already, there's a lot of debate about what that kind of consolidation will mean for the industry. Shatzkin tells NPR's Audie Cornish that the size of the merged company will give it the clout — and the backlist — to create book sales anywhere it wants to. Even the corner drugstore might have a real bookstore — filled, of course, exclusively with Penguin and Random House titles — and not just a rack of pulp paperbacks.

"Another way they might create additional distribution is through a subscription, e-book subscription service," he says. "Before Random and Penguin merged, no single publisher would have had enough of the most commercial titles to make something like that work. They might. So they may be able to create distribution channels that are extra, compared to what we have now, and proprietary, in that other publishers won't be able to get at them."

New Horizons in Publishing

Books

E-Books Destroying Traditional Publishing? The Story's Not That Simple

States in this country are becoming like an unhappy couple. They've always had their differences, but their arguments have gotten so chronic that they're hardly talking to each other.

Whether the topic is abortion, tax policy, marijuana or guns, Democratic "blue" states such as California and Illinois are bound to take a different tack than Republican "red" states such as Georgia and Kansas.

"We're very likely to have legal gay marriage in most of the blue states and some of the purple states before the next presidential election," says Whit Ayres, a Republican consultant. "You'll never have gay marriage in Mississippi and Alabama unless a court happens to impose it."

Ayres argues that states taking not just different, but opposite approaches to the most contentious issues of the day is a healthy expression of different attitudes and "an indicator of the genius of our federal system."

Not all political observers are so sanguine. Having states moving rapidly apart from one another naturally makes finding consensus in the country far more difficult.

People in California becoming convinced that those in Tennessee are "crazy" — and vice versa — has fed polarization not only within states but in Washington, where everyone is supposed to get together and work things out.

"We've seen polarization among [political] elites for quite some time," says Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, who chairs the political science department at the University of Nebraska. "It's gotten wider at the national level, and we're seeing it more and more at the state level."

Deeper Shades

Last month, states voted mostly according to their usual patterns — only more so.

At the presidential level, Barack Obama carried the exact set of states he won four years ago, excepting Indiana and North Carolina, which reverted to their usual habit of voting Republican.

While Obama's margin of victory was less than it was in 2008, the number of states that were decided narrowly (by fewer than 5 percentage points) actually went down. "That means more states are voting heavily for one candidate or another," The Economist concludes.

States may have gotten bluer or redder at the presidential level, but that was nothing compared with the deep partisan divides in voting for state offices. Only three state legislatures — Iowa, New Hampshire and Kentucky — are now divided, meaning both parties control one chamber each.

That's the lowest number since 1928, although the picture has gotten a bit more complicated since the election, with bipartisan power-sharing arrangements in places such as New York and Washington state.

In most states, not only does one party have control; it dominates. Fully half the legislative chambers in the country are now held by supermajorities. That makes compromise unnecessary — especially since the same party will hold the governorship as well as the legislature in all but a dozen states.

Rather than a wave moving in one party's favor, crosscurrents have moved the states apart. "This hardly ever happens, where the blue states get bluer and the red states redder, instead of the whole country going in one direction," says Thad Kousser, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego.

Pulling Apart

It's the opposite of a collision course. With such contrasting political cultures, states are bound to move further and further away from one another when it comes to setting policy.

This was evident almost immediately following the recent school shootings in Newtown, Conn. Even before the National Rifle Association issued its call to arm school personnel, legislators in red states such as Tennessee and Missouri had proposed legislation to require just that.

In Democratic states such as California, however, there was talk of tightening restrictions on assault-style weapons and ammunition, with gun buyback programs hastily arranged at the local level.

"It's magnified in the moment, but I expect red states will vote to expand gun rights and the blue states will seek to enact gun control legislation," says Scott Melzer, an expert on gun politics at Albion College in Michigan.

It's the same on issue after issue, whether it's government-funded health care, climate change or teaching evolution. That necessarily moves people further from the notion of compromise, says Bill Bishop, editor of The Daily Yonder, which covers rural issues.

"There are fewer of those crosscutting issues where you're enemies one day and friends the next," he says. "It will further reinforce the movement of people to get in their tribes."

Still Sorting

Bishop wrote about the increasing tendency of Americans to live among people who think politically like themselves in his book The Big Sort.

In 1976, he says, just over a quarter of all Americans lived in what he called landslide counties, which either of the presidential candidates carried by margins of at least 20 percent. Now, more than half reside in landslide counties.

There are plenty of Republicans living in every blue state, of course, and the same is true about Democrats living in states dominated by the GOP. But increasingly, states are voting entirely one way or the other.

If you look at the map of state control, it looks an awful lot like the presidential map, with only a few exceptions — notably GOP control of a few Obama-supporting states such as Virginia, Florida and parts of the Upper Midwest.

Open Airing Of Difference

Ayres, the Republican consultant, says that's just fine. Alabama's political culture is a lot different from Oregon's, so it's "perfectly reasonable" for public policy in those states to represent differing attitudes.

With Washington so mired in argument, it might not be entirely a bad thing for states to address marijuana regulation and health care differently, says Lara Brown, a political scientist at Villanova University.

"Maybe the most productive way out of this current polarization is to stop making it an 'either or' and start making it a 'both' kind of reality," she says. "All our people's diversity of beliefs may end up better expressed and realized."

That's putting things in a positive light. But constant disagreement about how to tackle issues may instead make it harder to forge agreement on a national level, suggests Theiss-Morse, the Nebraska professor.

Voters in different states seem increasingly convinced that people who live elsewhere and think differently are not just wrong, but unreasonable.

"What we increasingly see in politics and government is that it's a zero-sum game — that one side wins and the other side loses," Theiss-Morse says. "It's this view that if the other side gets anything, then we've lost."

Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz of Hawaii was appointed Wednesday to succeed the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie announced the appointment after receiving a list of three candidates from the state Democratic Party earlier in the day. The other candidates were U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa and Esther Kiaaina, a deputy director in the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Inouye died Dec. 17 of respiratory complications at the age of 88. He had sent Abercrombie a letter that day, saying he would like Hanabusa, 61, to succeed him.

"Sen. Inouye conveyed his final wish to Gov. Abercrombie. While we are very disappointed that it was not honored, it was the governor's decision to make," Jennifer Sabas, Inouye's chief of staff, said in a statement. "We wish Brian Schatz the best of luck."

Inouye's wishes weren't the only factor he had to consider, Abercrombie said.

"No one and nothing was preordained," he said.

The Two-Way

Sen. Daniel Inouye Remembered As Quiet Inspiration

Saying that he does not see "any reasons why I should not sign it," Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated today that he will approve legislation to bar Americans from adopting Russian children.

As NPR's Corey Flintoff explained on All Things Considered, Russia's parliament on Wednesday approved the legislation, which is in retaliation for an American measure that bans some Russian officials from entering the U.S. or putting their money in American banks. That move by the the U.S., Corey said, was designed to "expose Russian officials who are alleged to have been involved in a massive tax fraud and the death of a Russian lawyer who ... uncovered that crime."

The American action angered Russian politicians, Corey added. They decided to take aim at U.S. adoptions of Russian orphans because that's long been "a sore point with Russian officials. ...They see it as an admission that Russia can't take care of its own children."

According to NPR's Michele Kelemen, the State Department estimates that more than 60,000 Russian children have been adopted by American families since 1992. The Associated Press adds that "UNICEF estimates that there are about 740,000 children without parental custody in Russia, while only 18,000 Russians are now waiting to adopt a child."

Owners of Toyota vehicles that experienced sudden and unintended acceleration have reached a settlement that could require the carmaker to pay as much as $1.4 billion in claims, according to the auto maker and the law firm representing Toyota customers.

U.S. District Court Judge James Selna, at whose direction the many lawsuits over the "runaway car" fears were consolidated in 2010, will review the proposed settlement Friday.

The plaintiffs' law firm, Hagens Berman, says the final settlement has a value of between $1.2 and $1.4 billion, with the money going toward either direct payments to consumers or to pay for work on their vehicles — specifically, the installation of a brake-override system.

"This was a difficult decision – especially since reliable scientific evidence and multiple independent evaluations have confirmed the safety of Toyota's electronic throttle control systems," said Christopher P. Reynolds, chief legal officer of Toyota Motor North America. "However, we concluded that turning the page on this legacy legal issue through the positive steps we are taking is in the best interests of the company, our employees, our dealers and, most of all, our customers."

Reynolds' remarks were made in a statement posted on the company's website. Toyota has established a separate site especially to handle questions and claims from owners.

The proposal includes $250 million in compensation for the reduced value of vehicles sold by Toyota owners between Sept. 1, 2009 and Dec. 31, 2010. An additional $250 million would compensate owners whose vehicles aren't eligible for a brake-override system.

"The amount consumers receive depends on the model and year of their Toyota, and the state in which the car was purchased," according to the release.

While reports of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles made headlines a few years ago, the carmaker wasn't alone in being suspected of building "runaway cars," as they came to be known.

As NPR's investigative unit reported in 2010, "other automakers have had high rates of complaints in some model years, including Volkswagen, Volvo and Honda — in some cases resolving the apparent problems through evolving technology and recalls."

In Toyota's case, the carmaker recalled more than 8 million vehicles to deal with the claims; its executives also testified on Capitol Hill, as the reported cases spread.

And in 2011, a Transportation Department investigation concluded that the dangerous incidents did not stem from faulty electronics. NPR's Tracy Samilton reported that the carmaker admitted that "in some cases loose floor mats could get trapped on gas pedals, and that some gas pedals had become sticky, and wouldn't always fully release.

But Tracy also said that NASA engineers who had looked at the problem found an additional possible cause: pedal misapplication, or what one dealer termed "driver error."

This past January, an independent panel found "that no fatalities occurred because of the car's electronics," as NPR's Sonari Glinton reported.

On the business side of things, Toyota says that it will record "a one-time, $1.1 billion pre-tax charge against earnings to cover the estimated costs of the economic loss settlement and possible resolution costs of civil litigation brought in California by the District Attorney of Orange County and an investigation by a multi-state group of Attorneys General stemming from previous recalls."

President Obama is "cutting short" a vacation that he'd already said he would cut short. "See you next week," he told reporters last week before leaving for Hawaii. The president is now due back at the White House on Thursday, which is pretty much what was expected. His family will stay in Hawaii until after the New Year.

Senators are also coming back to Washington, but many aren't likely to get to the Capitol until Thursday evening.

And the House? According to The New York Times, "Republican leaders told members last week they would be given a 48-hour notice before they should return, and that notice has not yet been given."

So, the Times notes, though there's "so much at stake," there seems to be "little sense of urgency" when it comes to avoiding a plunge over the so-called fiscal cliff of automatic tax increases and spending cuts due to kick next week as 2012 turns into 2013.

One reason the urgency might not be there is that we're likely headed for another "kick the can" kind of partial solution, Slate's Money Box blog says. That's pretty much what The Wall Street Journal also concludes:

"With so little time, hopes are dimming for anything other than a partial agreement, which would prolong the uncertainty and leave in place some tax or spending measures that act as a serious drag on the weak recovery. This could even trigger another recession, exacerbating the global economic slowdown."

As part of our year-end wrap up, we are sharing the best Fresh Air interviews of 2012. This interview was originally broadcast on April 2, 2012.

During a recent stand-up tour, the comedian and star of Parks and Recreation, Aziz Ansari riffed on what he calls the "fears of adulthood."

You know, babies. Marriage. That kind of stuff.

"I see a lot of my friends are kind of entering serious stages of their lives where they're getting married and having children, and I'm getting to the age where that stuff is getting expected of me," Ansari tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "And it's all very terrifying to me. It still feels like it's so far away."

Ansari certainly has a lot on his plate at the moment. He plays a low-level administrator on the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, and recently released a new comedy special, called Dangerously Delicious, online. He got the idea partially from Louis C.K., who released his own $5 comedy special on the Web last year.

"Obviously, it was a tremendous success when [Louis C.K.] released it that way, and I started getting tweets and things saying, 'Can you release your stand-up special this way? I think it'd be great if you did it,' " Ansari says. "I thought, 'Well, if that really worked and people are really behind it, why try to fight that trend?' [Louis C.K.] clearly hit a nerve with that release strategy. So I did it and as soon as I did it, the overwhelming response was, 'I'm so glad you did it, too. I hope more comedians do this.'"

Ansari has been involved in the comedy world for a long time. He acted in MTV's sketch series Human Giant, and he played the part of a xenophobic fruit vendor in HBO's Flight of the Conchords. Now, on Parks and Recreation, his character, Tom, dreams of becoming a mogul like Russell Simmons or Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.

"But he's in this really small town, and he's too scared to go to New York or L.A. to try and make that happen, so he really tries to live those dreams in the confines of this very small town," says Ansari.

A Childhood Filled With Boredom

Ansari himself grew up in a small town in South Carolina, where he says there was frequently nothing to do.

More Comedians On 'Fresh Air'

Movie Interviews

Comedian Joan Rivers Is A Real 'Piece Of Work'

Home prices were up 4.3 percent in October from the same month a year before in the 20 major U.S. cities where the data are tracked, according to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices report.

"Looking over this report, and considering other data on housing starts and sales, it is clear that the housing recovery is gathering strength," economist David Blitzer, , chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, says in the report. "Higher year-over-year price gains plus strong performances in the southwest and California, regions that suffered during the housing bust, confirm that housing is now contributing to the economy."

The city-by-city changes in prices; October 2012 vs. October 2011:

Atlanta: 4.9 percent
Boston: 1.6 percent
Charlotte: 4.1 percent
Chicago: -1.3 percent
Cleveland: 1.8 percent

Dallas: 4.6 percent
Denver: 6.9 percent
Detroit: 10.0 percent
Las Vegas: 8.4 percent
Los Angeles: 6.2 percent

Miami: 8.5 percent
Minneapolis: 9.2 percent
New York: -1.2 percent
Phoenix: 21.7 percent
Portland: 5.2 percent

San Diego: 6.0 percent
San Francisco: 8.9 percent
Seattle: 5.7 percent
Tampa: 5.9 percent
Washington, D.C.: 4.4 percent

20-city composite: 4.3 percent

It was another busy year for federal authorities pursuing insider trading cases. Seventy-five people have now been charged in the last three years, and investigators say that success comes largely from their decision to attack insider trading the way they take down the Mafia and drug cartels — with tools such as wiretaps, informants and cooperators.

The story behind how the government decided to go after insider trading as hard as it goes after the mob is really just a story about dead ends.

"It was a product of sitting around the table and saying, 'OK, nothing else has worked. Where do we go now?'" said FBI Agent David Chaves, sitting in the FBI's New York field office in downtown Manhattan.

No Willing Cooperators

Chaves and his colleague Patrick Carroll head securities fraud and white collar crime units at the FBI. These guys have taken down Bernie Madoff, Martha Stewart and WorldCom chief Bernie Ebbers. But when they started getting whispers more than 10 years ago that there was an epidemic of insider trading at hedge funds, Carroll said, they were stumped.

"We had people who were telling us things, but we didn't have anybody who was in a conspiracy that was going to tell on what the others did," he said.

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Now that the Christmas feast is over, you may be looking at all the extra food you made, or the food that you brought home from the store that never even got opened.

And you may be wondering: How long can I keep this? What if it's past its expiration date? Who even comes up with those dates on food, anyway, and what do they mean?

Here's the short answer: Those "sell-by" dates are there to protect the reputation of the food. They have very little to do with food safety. If you're worried whether food is still OK to eat, just smell it.

One of the places that knows most about the shelf life of food is a scientific establishment in Livermore, Calif., called the National Food Lab. At the NFL, they put food on shelves for days, or weeks, or even years, to see how it holds up.

Sometimes, they'll try to accelerate the process with 90-degree heat and high humidity.

And then, from time to time, they'll take some of the food — whether it's bagged salad greens, breakfast cereal, or fruit juice — off the shelf and place it in front of a highly trained panel of experts who check the taste and smell and texture.

"You would think that everybody can taste and smell food, but some of us are much better at it than others," says Jena Roberts, vice president for business development at the NFL. The lab has 40 of these food tasters on staff. "They are the most fit people in the group," says Roberts. "Because they don't eat the food. They expectorate it. Which is a fancy college word for spit it in a cup."

The experts give the food grades, in numbers. The numbers go down as the food gets older. Bread gets stale. Salad dressings can start to taste rancid.

John Ruff, president of the Institute of Food Technologists in Chicago, says the companies that sell this food take a look at those grades and decide where they will draw the line, to protect the reputation of their products.

"If the product was designed, let's say, to be a 7 when it was fresh, you may choose that at 6.2, it's gotten to the point where [you] don't want it to be on the market any more," he says.

"If it's 6.0, would most people still find it reasonably good? Absolutely," he says. "But companies want people to taste their products as best they can at the optimum, because that's how they maintain their business and their market shares."

This is all organized and carried out by food companies; there's no federal law that requires dates on any food except for infant formula, although some states do require sell-by dates on milk or meat.

Still, these dates don't really tell you anything about whether food is safe.

According to Ruff, most products are safe to eat long after their expiration date. In fact, even meat or milk that's clearly starting to spoil is not necessarily dangerous. "Very often, you won't eat it because of the smell, and you probably won't like the taste, but in a lot of cases, it's unlikely to cause you illness," he says.

That's because it's not the food that sat on the shelf too long that makes you sick, Ruff says. It's the food that got contaminated with Salmonella or Listeria bacteria, or disease-causing strains of E. coli. And that food might not smell bad as it might have arrived in the store only yesterday.

"In 40 years, in eight countries, if I think of major product recalls and food poisoning outbreaks, I can't think of [one] that was driven by a shelf-life issue," Ruff says.

Canned food, in particular, can stay safe for a really long time. In 1974, scientists at the National Food Processors Association in Washington, D.C., got their hands on several old cans of food.

Janet Dudek, now semi-retired and living in Vienna, Va., was among the scientists who analyzed this old food. Her assignment was a can of corn, vintage 1934, that was found in someone's basement in California.

When they opened the can, Dudek says, the contents looked and smelled pretty much like ordinary canned corn. Analysis showed that it had most of the usual complement of nutrients — although there were lower levels of a few, such as vitamin C.

Results were similar for century-old canned oysters, tomatoes, and red peppers in cans recovered from a sunken steamboat, buried in river silt near Omaha, Neb.

Dudek says, as far as she knows, nobody actually tasted this food. That just wasn't done, she says. But they probably could have. "It would have been safe to eat if the can itself maintained its integrity," she says.

When food in supermarkets passes its sell-by date, though, it gets swept off the shelves. Often, it's donated to food banks. Sometimes it's auctioned off.

But if you discover such food in your pantry at home, there's really no reason to throw it out. Ruff says you should just sniff the meat and milk. If it smells funny, go ahead and toss it.

But for most foods, don't worry. "As a consumer, I've certainly opened packages of food that were five years old."

Yesterday came and went, but I never finished Ulysses. I never took up skydiving. Come to think of it, I didn't even really finish cleaning up my closet before the "Mayan Apocalypse," which did not occur yesterday, Dec. 21.

I remember thinking,"Finally, I get a Friday off — but there's an apocalypse."

When I first heard that the Mayan Long Count calendar was coming to an end at the end of this year — which, we cannot repeat enough, even Mayans never meant was the end of the world — I began to mentally make a few plans. But, they kind of got lost in the daily business of work, children and watching cat videos on YouTube.

I never saw The Ring Cycle, which I'm told, doesn't exactly pick up your mood in any case. I never learned Latin or how to tap dance. I never wrote an epic poem about the Chicago fire. The Cubs didn't win the World Series, which come to think of it, is an event that a lot of people thought would bring on the apocalypse.

And yet, I've kind of valued having the prospect of apocalypse in front of us, however preposterous, down to the very date. Like birthdays and holidays — like the gradually rising pencil scratches on a kitchen wall that mark a child growing up — seeing Dec. 21 approach this year served to remind us that even though an apocalypse may not be at hand, life is fleeting, fragile and unpredictable — and therefore infinitely precious. We've learned that in the hardest way just this past week.

Simon Stinson, the grump in the graveyard in Thornton Wilder's Our Town, tells Emily Webb after she has spent a few minutes back on Earth, "That's what it was to be alive. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years." These days we might add, "So how much time do you want to spend playing Angry Birds?"

But we don't have a million years, no matter how many anti-oxidants we ingest. But that's what puts joy and meaning into the moments we do have.

Even if we could say when our time would end, I wonder how many of us would really want to learn another language, make a surreptitious meal of the Ortolan bird, or spend our last months trying to decipher every last enigmatic Joycean joke in Finnegan's Wake. It would be nice to think that a lot of people would choose to just look at those around us, hold them close and say, "I guess I didn't do anything special this past year. And I wish I could do it all over again."

"Big Data" hasn't made any of the words-of-the-year lists I've seen so far. That's probably because it didn't get the wide public exposure given to items like "frankenstorm," "fiscal cliff" and YOLO. But it had a huge surge in venues like Wired and The Economist, and it was the buzz of Silicon Valley and Davos. And if the phrase wasn't as familiar to many people as "Etch A Sketch" and "47 percent," Big Data had just as much to do with President Obama's victory as they did.

Whether it's explicitly mentioned or not, the Big Data phenomenon has been all over the news. It's responsible for a lot of our anxieties about intrusions on our privacy, whether from the government's anti-terrorist data sweeps or the ads that track us as we wander around the Web. It has even turned statistics into a sexy major. So if you haven't heard the phrase yet, there's still time — it will be around a lot longer than "gangnam style."

More From Geoff Nunberg

Commentary

When Words Were Worth Fighting Over

It was three, maybe four o'clock in the morning when he first saw them. Grad student Jeff Bowman was on the deck of a ship; he and a University of Washington biology team were on their way back from the North Pole. It was cold outside, the temperature had just dropped, and as the dawn broke, he could see a few, then more, then even more of these little flowery things, growing on the frozen sea.

"I was absolutely astounded," he says. They were little protrusions of ice, delicate, like snowflakes. They began growing in the dry, cold air "like a meadow spreading off in all directions. Every available surface was covered with them." What are they?

"Frost flowers," he was told. "I'd never heard of them," Jeff says, "but they were everywhere."

They aren't flowers, of course. They are more like ice sculptures that grow on the border between the sea and air. On Sept. 2, 2009, the day Jeff's colleague Matthias Wietz took these pictures, the air was extremely cold and extremely dry, colder than the ocean surface. When the air gets that different from the sea, the dryness pulls moisture off little bumps in the ice, bits of ice vaporize, the air gets humid — but only for a while. The cold makes water vapor heavy. The air wants to release that excess weight, so crystal by crystal, air turns back into ice, creating delicate, feathery tendrils that reach sometimes two, three inches high, like giant snowflakes. The sea, literally, blossoms.

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In the United States, popular holiday gifts come and go from year to year. But in Iceland, the best Christmas gift is a book — and it has been that way for decades.

Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country in the world, with five titles published for every 1,000 Icelanders. But what's really unusual is the timing: Historically, a majority of books in Iceland are sold from late September to early November. It's a national tradition, and it has a name: Jolabokaflod, or the "Christmas Book Flood."

"The culture of giving books as presents is very deeply rooted in how families perceive Christmas as a holiday," says Kristjan B. Jonasson, president of the Iceland Publishers Association. "Normally, we give the presents on the night of the 24th and people spend the night reading. In many ways, it's the backbone of the publishing sector here in Iceland."

A Centuries-Old Literary Culture

Iceland has a long literary history dating to medieval times. Landmarks of world literature, including the Sagas of the Icelanders and the Poetic Edda, are still widely read and translated there, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

Today, Icelandic isn't spoken by many more people than the roughly 319,000 who live in the small country. But in 2009, book loans at the Reykjavk City Library totaled 1.2 million — in a city of only 200,000 people. There's a popular TV show in Iceland, Kiljan, which is devoted entirely to books. And in 2011, Reykjavk was designated a UNESCO City of Literature.

So Icelanders love books. And that love involves most of the population, according to Baldur Bjarnason, a researcher who has written on the Icelandic book industry.

"If you look at book sales distribution in the U.K. and the States, most book sales actually come from a minority of people. Very few people buy lots of books. Everybody else buys one book a year if you're lucky," Bjarnason says. "It's much more widespread in Iceland. Most people buy several books a year."

“ The book in Iceland is such an enormous gift, you give a physical book. You don't give e-books here."

Throughout the debate over taxes and the "fiscal cliff," there's been a lot of looking backward — to the 1990s. The economic expansion of the 1990s was the longest in recorded American history.

Democrats say the economy thrived under the leadership of President Bill Clinton, including his tax rate increase on high earners. Republicans say government didn't spend as much then and that growth didn't really take off until the GOP took control of Congress in 1995.

So what actually happened in the '90s? What made them tick?

A Unique Boom

First, some numbers. Unemployment averaged just 5.7 percent in the '90s. The stock market returned 18 percent a year for the decade. Inflation was tame. And the federal government actually ran surpluses for a few years.

"The '90s was a very special period that's unlikely to be repeated for a while," says Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO, the world's largest bond fund.

Many of the developments worked to the advantage of the U.S. El-Erian says the Cold War was over and new markets were opening around the world.

"Not only was there a peace dividend in terms of reallocating resources but there were more people to sell to and there was cheaper labor, so the U.S., as the dominant consumer and dominant producer at that time, benefited disproportionately from what was going on globally," says El-Erian, who President Obama is appointing as chairman of an advisory group on global economic development.

Domestically, the economic mojo was working too.

Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson says those little microchips being pumped out in Silicon Valley were transformational. As they got faster, cheaper and more powerful, the computer revolution reached into the workplace.

"There was an incredible boom in information technology equipment and software," says Jorgenson, who has written extensively about the productivity gains of the '90s. "People who hadn't been using information technology found they were able to apply it in their jobs. People who had been using it were upgrading their products very quickly."

'A Story About Microchips'

As the president and the Democrats like to point out, the economy did just fine after tax rates on high earners were raised in 1993. Tax rates were also cut — on capital gains in 1997.

Jorgenson doesn't think either change did much to fuel the boom.

"It was entirely a story about microchips," he says.

John O'Farrell, a partner in the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, agrees that huge improvements in computer technology — both software and hardware — propelled the economy.

"The U.S. really led this entire shift in the way the world works," O'Farrell says.

What he remembers is how the Internet unlocked the ability to communicate.

In 1997, O'Farrell left his job with a landline phone company to join a broadband startup, @Home Network.

"I was part of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of talented, smart, experienced people from all around the world, from other industries often, to take advantage of this enormous explosion of creativity," O'Farrell says.

He says Washington wasn't as central to the economy back then. The real action was in Silicon Valley, New York and Hollywood.

Washington's Role

El-Erian, the PIMCO CEO, says Washington did make a positive contribution. The Federal Reserve finally conquered inflation. And the budget was under control.

"Government played a large role domestically and globally, but it was as an enabler as opposed to someone directly involved in the economy."

“ The irony of capitalism is that stability tends to encourage excesses. Excesses encourage bubbles. Bubbles encourage crises."

Throughout the debate over taxes and the "fiscal cliff," there's been a lot of looking backward — to the 1990s. The economic expansion of the 1990s was the longest in recorded American history.

Democrats say the economy thrived under the leadership of President Bill Clinton, including his tax rate increase on high earners. Republicans say government didn't spend as much then and that growth didn't really take off until the GOP took control of Congress in 1995.

So what actually happened in the '90s? What made them tick?

A Unique Boom

First, some numbers. Unemployment averaged just 5.7 percent in the '90s. The stock market returned 18 percent a year for the decade. Inflation was tame. And the federal government actually ran surpluses for a few years.

"The '90s was a very special period that's unlikely to be repeated for a while," says Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO, the world's largest bond fund.

Many of the developments worked to the advantage of the U.S. El-Erian says the Cold War was over and new markets were opening around the world.

"Not only was there a peace dividend in terms of reallocating resources but there were more people to sell to and there was cheaper labor, so the U.S., as the dominant consumer and dominant producer at that time, benefited disproportionately from what was going on globally," says El-Erian, who President Obama is appointing as chairman of an advisory group on global economic development.

Domestically, the economic mojo was working too.

Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson says those little microchips being pumped out in Silicon Valley were transformational. As they got faster, cheaper and more powerful, the computer revolution reached into the workplace.

"There was an incredible boom in information technology equipment and software," says Jorgenson, who has written extensively about the productivity gains of the '90s. "People who hadn't been using information technology found they were able to apply it in their jobs. People who had been using it were upgrading their products very quickly."

'A Story About Microchips'

As the president and the Democrats like to point out, the economy did just fine after tax rates on high earners were raised in 1993. Tax rates were also cut — on capital gains in 1997.

Jorgenson doesn't think either change did much to fuel the boom.

"It was entirely a story about microchips," he says.

John O'Farrell, a partner in the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, agrees that huge improvements in computer technology — both software and hardware — propelled the economy.

"The U.S. really led this entire shift in the way the world works," O'Farrell says.

What he remembers is how the Internet unlocked the ability to communicate.

In 1997, O'Farrell left his job with a landline phone company to join a broadband startup, @Home Network.

"I was part of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of talented, smart, experienced people from all around the world, from other industries often, to take advantage of this enormous explosion of creativity," O'Farrell says.

He says Washington wasn't as central to the economy back then. The real action was in Silicon Valley, New York and Hollywood.

Washington's Role

El-Erian, the PIMCO CEO, says Washington did make a positive contribution. The Federal Reserve finally conquered inflation. And the budget was under control.

"Government played a large role domestically and globally, but it was as an enabler as opposed to someone directly involved in the economy."

“ The irony of capitalism is that stability tends to encourage excesses. Excesses encourage bubbles. Bubbles encourage crises."

An Army brigade from Fort Riley, Kan., some 4,000, soldiers, will begin helping to train African militaries. The idea is to help African troops beat back a growing terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida.

The American troops will head over in small teams over the course of the next year. The Dagger Brigade returned to Kansas last year from a deployment to Iraq, where it trained and advised that country's security forces.

Now unit commander Col. Jeff Broadwater is preparing to do the same kind of mission but in a different place. So Broadwater is scouring his brigade for unique skills.

"We're fortunate enough to have some African speakers, Swahili," Broadwater says.

Swahili is spoken in much of East Africa. And the colonel says he's also happy to have a handful of soldiers with first-hand experience on the continent.

"We do have some soldiers who either came over from Africa and went to school here and then joined the military or came over with their families," Broadwater says.

The brigade is expected to deploy in small teams beginning next spring throughout Africa. The soldiers will take part in military exercises and train African troops on everything from logistics and marksmanship to medical care.

Meanwhile, the Defense Intelligence Agency is already placing more of its military spies in Africa.

The top American commander for Africa, Gen. Carter Ham, says this is all new. He spoke recently at an appearance in Washington: "Africa has not been a part of the world in which we have focused a lot of attention, certainly not during the majority of my career."

Enlarge image i

For nearly 150 years the world-renowned beer manufacturer Anheuser-Busch was a family company. It was passed from father to son for five generations. A couple drops of Budweiser were put onto the tongue of each first-born son before he even tasted his mother's milk. That trademark brew, Budweiser, is known to the world as the "King of Beers," and the Busch family wasn't too far from American royalty.

William Knoedelseder, the author of Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's King of Beer, spoke with NPR's Guy Raz about the family and their company.

The story begins in ­­1857 when a young man, Adolphus Busch, came to St. Louis from Germany. With his meager inheritance — he was one of 22 children — he bought a brewery supply company. Making beer was something that he knew how to do, and could do well.

Ebert Anheuser, on the other hand, couldn't. He was one of Busch's buyers and was a wealthy soap manufacturer who'd come into owning a failing brewery. The Bavarian Brewing Co. produced such horribly tasting beer that "people would spit it back across the bar at bartenders," Knoedelseder says.

Eventually Busch took over the company, changed the recipe, changed the name, and Anheuser-Busch was born.

Busch took that failure of a local brewery and turned it into a national brand of beer. "He was vertically integrated before there was a name for it," Knoedelseder says. Busch was the first person to pasteurize beer so that it would stay fresh on cross-country trips. He also owned the company that built the railroad cars that transported his beer. He owned the company that made his bottles. He even owned a coal mine that fired his plant.

The brand took off. Beer became the national drink, and Anheuser-Busch was reeling in the profits, "They were selling a million barrels a year, which was just unthinkable back then," says Knoedelseder.

Soon, though, prohibition, not alcohol, was on the lips of Americans. Busch launched pre-prohibition ad campaigns to try to curb the movement. Taglines read, "Budweiser Spells Temperance." He claimed the beer was a "light, happy" beverage.

When meeting the president at a political function, Busch launched into a 30-minute lecture about the dangers of the impending prohibition. He would stop at nothing, but his worst nightmare was upon him. His only product was now illegal to sell in the United States.

His son, August Anheuser-Busch, or August A., floated the company through prohibition by selling the raw ingredients instead of the full product. "It wasn't illegal to sell the ingredients, it was illegal to assemble them," Knoedelseder explains. "Their yeast profits saved the company. That was the cash engine that was able to keep the company open."

Prohibition wiped out most of Anhesuser-Busch's competition, but as Knoedelseder points out, August A. was able to keep 2,000 people working and they were poised to forge ahead as the leading American manufacturer of beer — now legal!

For two more generations, ambitious Busch sons pushed the company to international beer power, but it wasn't without trial. The next 75 years were mired in family struggles for power, unexpected deaths, drug addiction, alcoholism and more.

In 2008 Anheuser-Busch was a $19-billion-a-year Fortune 500 company and still operating as a family business. August IV, the great-great-grandson of Aldolphus, and then-CEO, showed up to speak at a beer industry convention but he couldn't seem to get a word out. "He's stoned, he's loaded, he cannot deliver the speech," Knoedelser says. Just a few weeks later, it all came crashing down.

InBev, a company that had not existed four years before, moved in for a hostile takeover, and with that, the reign of the Busch family was over.

Read an excerpt of Bitter Brew

'Tis the season for end-of-year lists. Fresh Air movie critic David Edelstein stubbornly refuses to either place his top picks in numerical order or make his list an even number of 10. Instead, he places his 12 favorite films from 2012 in alphabetical order, from Amour to Zero Dark Thirty.

Of the 12 films he picked for 2012, not one, Edelstein says, would he call the "M word" — a masterpiece. That designation he reserves for the new extended DVD cut of Kenneth Lonergan's film, Margaret.

When he first saw that movie, Edelstein says, "I thought the first half was brilliant and the second half was a fiasco. Lonergan got hold of it. He extended it by at least 45 minutes. He clarified certain things. I think that the film that exists now on DVD is an absolutely bonafied masterpiece. The story of a young woman's moral and emotional coming of age, unlike I think any that we've seen on screen in decades and decades. People must rent it or buy it. They must see it, but they must see the extended cut. It really is the greatest film of the year."

Without further ado, the list:

Amour

Beasts of the Southern Wild

The Deep Blue Sea

Friends with Kids

The Gatekeepers

Holy Motors

How to Survive A Plague

Life of Pi

Lincoln

Oslo, August 31

Pitch Perfect

Zero Dark Thirty

Boyd Applegate never set out to become a real bearded Santa Claus. No, the calling found him.

The 56-year-old, who was last on StoryCorps talking about volunteering at the polls on Election Day, is a big-rig truck driver. He's logged nearly 5 million miles on the road.

"Santa Claus was a byproduct of truck driving," he explained to his sister, Rhonda Dixon, at StoryCorps. "Because I drive a truck, I can have a beard that's a little bit longer than most people."

But impressive facial hair wasn't enough to qualify him for the trade.

Years ago, while on the road, Applegate stopped by a Wal-Mart because his head was cold. He serendipitously spotted a rack of Santa hats, picked one up and plopped it on his head. Moments later, a 4-year-old boy walking with his mother yanked her to a stop and exclaimed, "Look, it's Santa!"

Applegate hasn't spent a single Christmas Eve or Christmas Day at home with his family in the 18 years since that encounter.

Spirit Of The Season

At A Real-Life Santa's Workshop, Christmas Comes Early

Amid the aftershocks of the senseless shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., our ever-more-complex society goes on to publicly discuss what happened and how to avoid such tragedy in the future.

But there are also private considerations and quieter questions of how to respond — on a personal level — to suffering parents.

What can you say to parents who have lost a child? What can you do?

No one is an expert when it comes to this most horrific, most out-of-the-natural-order-of-things disaster. The grief a bereaved parent feels resides deep within and is individually expressed. Different people respond in different ways.

Tragically, my wife, Jan, and I have experience. Our two beautiful, brilliant and ebullient sons, Stone, 24, and Holt, 20, were killed when an out-of-control tractor-trailer crashed into their car — while the boys were stopped in traffic — on a Virginia interstate in the summer of 2009. In one cruelest instant, we lost all of our children.

And so we speak only from our own experience.

++

As bereaved parents ourselves, we feel deep empathy and compassion for any parent who loses a child of any age — and especially now for the parents of Newtown.

We have an intense knowledge of the personal horror, the chaos, the confusion, the total shock and disbelief the mothers and fathers are feeling. We share their all-consuming pain and that deepest of human longings for it simply to ... not ... be ... true.

We cry for the lost children of Newtown, and we cry for their parents.

But what can you say to someone who has lost a child? "I am so sorry," is a start. And, we have discovered, it is also possibly all there is to say. There is just not much else to speak of. At least, that's the way we feel.

And what can you do? There are many things that people have done since Holt and Stone were killed that have been helpful and meaningful. The gestures are simple — and yet profound because of the courage and restraint and, yes, love, it takes to do them.

On hearing the reality-wracking news, dear friends of the boys and of ours came to us to cry with us.

A large group set up a food calendar, a dinner-delivery system that fed Jan and me for months and months — on many days that we did not want to get out of bed, much less shop and cook and take care of ourselves. Friends took turns, preparing one meal a day, bringing it by around sunset, speaking to us a little if we felt like it or leaving it at the front door if we didn't. We are forever grateful to those who participated.

Other friends have stepped in to do other simple things. One swept our driveway. Others raked leaves and cleaned up the yard. Many have come to the house, one at a time, to spend a couple of hours helping Jan address hundreds of thank-you notes. Others dropped off fresh flowers once a week, offered to go shopping for us, left thoughtful gifts at our doorstep, such as a homemade moss garden and heart-shaped rocks. People donated to various charities in honor of our sons. A neighboring family appeared one morning to shovel heavy snow from our driveway.

Another bereaved parent told us about The Compassionate Friends, a support group for parents and family members who have lost children.

Some friends simply gave us long, deeply felt hugs and held us as we sobbed inconsolably.

++

And above all, the most important thing people have done — and still do for Jan and me — is to remember Holt and Stone. In little ways, such as posting Facebook messages, texting us on their birthdays or holidays, sharing sweet memories with us. And in big ways, such as establishing memorials at their high schools in Maryland and their colleges in Delaware, Florida and Texas.

Many people helped us establish a foundation to honor the beautiful lives that our sons lived — and many continue to support it.

Simple yet profound gestures.

During the past 3 1/2 years, people have said to us: "I just can't imagine ..." We never, ever imagined this either. But now that this horror has happened to Stone and Holt, and to Jan and me, we ask our friends to try to imagine. The tender ones who have imagination and compassion sit with us quietly and listen — and try to help us feel less alone.

As retired Presbyterian minister and author Eugene Peterson told NPR following the Newtown shootings: "Silence is sometimes the best thing to do, holding a hand, hugging somebody. There are no adages that explain or would make any difference to the suffering. Sometimes people say, 'I don't know what to say to these people.' You know, I say don't say anything. Just hold their hand. Hold them, hug them and just stay around for an hour or so in silence and just be there. That's what we need at times like this ..."

Actually, it's what Jan and I, as bereaved parents, will need for the rest of our lives. The world may recover from the deaths of our children. We will never fully recover from such life wounds. How could we?

We imagine that, like us, the parents of Newtown will need love and support and room to grieve — in their own ways and at their own pace. For a long, long, very long time.

Interview Highlights

On when he saw the film for the first time

"I saw It's A Wonderful Life the first time when I was on the road doing a play. It was a two-man show and my cast mate Brent Briscoe kept saying, 'You've got to see It's A Wonderful Life.' It happened to come on television and he called me and I went to his hotel room and we sat and watched it, and I was pretty blown away and I've introduced many people to it since."

On why he loves It's A Wonderful Life

"I think the film is often viewed by those who haven't seen it or only seen it once as some sort of perfect little fairy tale, but it is a dark piece and it blends drama and humor in such a delightful way."

On how the movie influenced him

"Jimmy Stewart is such a wonderful actor for anyone to observe. He's got such a wide range in that film and he's not afraid of the darkness. He doesn't care about, obviously, looking good at all times or being a movie star the whole time he's on screen. He's a very human character. Jimmy Stewart's performance is so brave it reminded me early on before I'd ever been in films that if I ever had a chance to go as deep as I could as an actor into a role, to try to disappear into it and to not be afraid of the result."

After years of recession and slow recovery, maybe you didn't notice. But it turns out, 2012 was a fairly good year for the U.S. economy.

The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index has risen nearly 14 percent this year and the unemployment rate has fallen to 7.7 percent, the lowest point in four years. Inflation and interest rates have stayed low, allowing families to cut their debt loads.

"Consumers are feeling better now," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm. Compared with December 2007, when the Great Recession was just starting, "the burdens on consumers have eased quite a bit," he said.

Final data aren't in yet for the full year, but in the period from July through September, U.S. household net worth rose by 2.7 percent compared with the previous three months, according to the Federal Reserve. Combined with overall economic growth of 3.1 percent in that same period, the pace of improvement — both for individuals and corporations — could be described as decent, though far from robust.

Perhaps the key to the overall improvement has been the fairly steady growth in job creation. Employers have been adding an average of 151,000 jobs each month in 2012.

"Job growth was not great, but it was good enough to make people feel like things are getting better," Behravesh said.

That potent combination of greater job security, lower bill payments and rising wealth sent shoppers heading off to car dealerships, malls and restaurants for most of the year.

To be sure, the fourth quarter had big problems that likely reduced the growth rate as the year wound down. Hurricane Sandy depressed retail sales and jobs in the New York-New Jersey region, and the budget negotiations drama in Washington depressed consumer sentiment all over the country, said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist for RBC Capital Markets.

He added that the child murders in Newtown, Conn., may have discouraged some holiday trips to the mall as the mood of the country turned somber in the run-up to Christmas. As the year draws to an end, "you have a consumer moving sideways," Porcelli said.

But most economists believe the effects of those recent problems will not linger long into the new year and that when economic historians look back on 2012, they may see it as the year when the battered U.S. economy finally turned a corner.

Here are some of the glad tidings that Americans might want to celebrate.

Autos

Consumers went car shopping again, largely because their old vehicles were wearing out. As 2012 was beginning, the average age of vehicles on the road was running at nearly 11 years — a record high.

That meant millions of people were itching to get to a showroom. Sales strengthened throughout the year and by November, the industry was selling vehicles at a pace of 15.5 million a year — the best performance since February 2008.

Housing

Home construction started to tank in 2006 and its plunge pushed the country into the Great Recession five years ago this month. The number of housing starts tumbled from a pace of more than 2 million units a year at the peak of the boom to around a half million a year during the worst of the downturn in 2009.

Between 2009 and 2011, housing indicators bumped around on the bottom, with listless upturns quickly fading. But this year, a real turnaround took hold. By fall, housing starts were up to an annual rate of nearly 900,000 units — the best pace in four years.

And prices too have ticked up after the dramatic slide that started in 2006. In the country's 100 largest metropolitan areas, prices rose at an average of 0.5 percent after adjusting for inflation in the third quarter, according to a Brookings Institution economic index.

"The rise in metropolitan home prices indicates that a broadly rooted recovery may be underway in the housing market," said Alec Friedhoff, a research analyst and lead developer of the index.

Energy

The U.S. energy industry is suddenly and dramatically expanding, thanks to the new technologies and drilling techniques that are unleashing supplies of oil and gas. As a result, energy companies are gearing up to train and hire many more workers. In North Dakota, for example, hiring has been so strong in the energy sector that the state's unemployment rate has fallen to just 3.1 percent.

For the moment, big energy companies like Exxon Mobil and Shell are seeing lackluster earnings because of relatively weak prices, especially for natural gas. But for workers, the outlook keeps getting brighter as it becomes clearer that America has abundant energy resources. Studies suggest the "unconventional" oil and gas resources could lead to the creation of nearly 2 million jobs in less than two decades.

Retail

At least up until December, stores saw more customers in 2012, and did more hiring. In November, the retail sector reported 53,000 new jobs — more than a third of all the jobs created that month. That was up sharply from November 2011, when retailers added just 34,000 new jobs.

Shoppers have been particularly eager to spend money at electronics outlets and clothing stores. They have had a little more money to spend, thanks to lower gasoline prices and tame inflation in general. Overall, consumer prices rose only about 2 percent in the past year.

The National Retail Federation, a trade association, has predicted a 4.1 percent sales increase this holiday season — higher than the 3.5 percent average annual forecast for the past decade. "This is the most optimistic forecast NRF has released since the recession," Matthew Shay, the group's president, said in a statement.

After years of recession and slow recovery, maybe you didn't notice. But it turns out, 2012 was a fairly good year for the U.S. economy.

The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index has risen nearly 14 percent this year and the unemployment rate has fallen to 7.7 percent, the lowest point in four years. Inflation and interest rates have stayed low, allowing families to cut their debt loads.

"Consumers are feeling better now," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm. Compared with December 2007, when the Great Recession was just starting, "the burdens on consumers have eased quite a bit," he said.

Final data aren't in yet for the full year, but in the period from July through September, U.S. household net worth rose by 2.7 percent compared with the previous three months, according to the Federal Reserve. Combined with overall economic growth of 3.1 percent in that same period, the pace of improvement — both for individuals and corporations — could be described as decent, though far from robust.

Perhaps the key to the overall improvement has been the fairly steady growth in job creation. Employers have been adding an average of 151,000 jobs each month in 2012.

"Job growth was not great, but it was good enough to make people feel like things are getting better," Behravesh said.

That potent combination of greater job security, lower bill payments and rising wealth sent shoppers heading off to car dealerships, malls and restaurants for most of the year.

To be sure, the fourth quarter had big problems that likely reduced the growth rate as the year wound down. Hurricane Sandy depressed retail sales and jobs in the New York-New Jersey region, and the budget negotiations drama in Washington depressed consumer sentiment all over the country, said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist for RBC Capital Markets.

He added that the child murders in Newtown, Conn., may have discouraged some holiday trips to the mall as the mood of the country turned somber in the run-up to Christmas. As the year draws to an end, "you have a consumer moving sideways," Porcelli said.

But most economists believe the effects of those recent problems will not linger long into the new year and that when economic historians look back on 2012, they may see it as the year when the battered U.S. economy finally turned a corner.

Here are some of the glad tidings that Americans might want to celebrate.

Autos

Consumers went car shopping again, largely because their old vehicles were wearing out. As 2012 was beginning, the average age of vehicles on the road was running at nearly 11 years — a record high.

That meant millions of people were itching to get to a showroom. Sales strengthened throughout the year and by November, the industry was selling vehicles at a pace of 15.5 million a year — the best performance since February 2008.

Housing

Home construction started to tank in 2006 and its plunge pushed the country into the Great Recession five years ago this month. The number of housing starts tumbled from a pace of more than 2 million units a year at the peak of the boom to around a half million a year during the worst of the downturn in 2009.

Between 2009 and 2011, housing indicators bumped around on the bottom, with listless upturns quickly fading. But this year, a real turnaround took hold. By fall, housing starts were up to an annual rate of nearly 900,000 units — the best pace in four years.

And prices too have ticked up after the dramatic slide that started in 2006. In the country's 100 largest metropolitan areas, prices rose at an average of 0.5 percent after adjusting for inflation in the third quarter, according to a Brookings Institution economic index.

"The rise in metropolitan home prices indicates that a broadly rooted recovery may be underway in the housing market," said Alec Friedhoff, a research analyst and lead developer of the index.

Energy

The U.S. energy industry is suddenly and dramatically expanding, thanks to the new technologies and drilling techniques that are unleashing supplies of oil and gas. As a result, energy companies are gearing up to train and hire many more workers. In North Dakota, for example, hiring has been so strong in the energy sector that the state's unemployment rate has fallen to just 3.1 percent.

For the moment, big energy companies like Exxon Mobil and Shell are seeing lackluster earnings because of relatively weak prices, especially for natural gas. But for workers, the outlook keeps getting brighter as it becomes clearer that America has abundant energy resources. Studies suggest the "unconventional" oil and gas resources could lead to the creation of nearly 2 million jobs in less than two decades.

Retail

At least up until December, stores saw more customers in 2012, and did more hiring. In November, the retail sector reported 53,000 new jobs — more than a third of all the jobs created that month. That was up sharply from November 2011, when retailers added just 34,000 new jobs.

Shoppers have been particularly eager to spend money at electronics outlets and clothing stores. They have had a little more money to spend, thanks to lower gasoline prices and tame inflation in general. Overall, consumer prices rose only about 2 percent in the past year.

The National Retail Federation, a trade association, has predicted a 4.1 percent sales increase this holiday season — higher than the 3.5 percent average annual forecast for the past decade. "This is the most optimistic forecast NRF has released since the recession," Matthew Shay, the group's president, said in a statement.

All over India, an unusual name has been popping up on signs in restaurants and businesses: Hitler.

Yes, Hitler. As in Adolph. Just last year there was even a Punjabi movie called Hero Hitler in Love.

To understand why a name generally associated with mass murder is turning up on storefronts around the country, reporter David Shaftel investigated and wrote about it in a recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek.

He tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that he first started to notice the Hitler fascination when he'd pass booksellers around Mumbai.

"Mein Kampf and some various other biographies of Hitler ... are displayed rather prominently," Shaftel says. "Because these guys know what sells."

It's easy enough to spot swastikas anywhere in India – they're a Hindu symbol. The Nazis reversed the image when they made it their sign. "Every now and then, you see one that's the Nazi symbol — that's clearly the Nazi symbol," Shaftel says. "It's something you notice."

Enlarge image i

The women's shoe department at Nordstrom's flagship store in Seattle is bustling. Shoppers are trying on everything from stilettos to rain boots — and when they're ready to buy, they can pay up right where they are.

The sales associate simply whips out a modified iPod Touch and scans the shoe box's bar code. The handheld device contains a credit card reader, too, so the customer can just hand over the plastic and sign with a fingertip. There's no trek to the cash register and no line to wait in.

At department stores like Nordstrom and at other traditional retailers, mobile devices are slowly beginning to supplement, and even replace, other methods of payment. In many cases, buying something is becoming more efficient and more personal.

No More 'Clunky' Cash Registers

"We think the days of the big clunky cash register ... anchoring down a department are really going away," says Colin Johnson, public relations director for Nordstrom.

"We are always going to have a place for the cash and we'll certainly take care of however the customer wants to pay," Johnson says. "But we do see the future as essentially completely mobile."

Mobile payments certainly make shopping easier. And while customers like it, retailers benefit, too. When shoppers pay on the spot, they don't have time to change their mind and decide they don't really need what they are about to buy.

In addition to boosting sales, mobile technology is often less expensive than the old-fashioned kind. And removing cash registers also frees up valuable real estate inside the store, say industry experts like Brian Brunk of Boston Retail Partners.

"There isn't a retailer we talk to that isn't embracing at least a blended, if not an 'all-in,' approach to mobile point-of-sale," Brunk says.

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In the 1980s, Japan appeared to be a world beater — the China of its day. Japanese companies were on a tear, buying up firms in the U.S. and property around the world.

But these days, Japan is considered a cautionary tale for post-industrial economies around the world. The country is facing its fourth recession in what are commonly known as the "lost decades."

Japan's story resonates this holiday season as American politicians try to reach a debt deal.

"I really hope the U.S. is not getting into a Japanese situation," says Hiromichi Shirakawa, chief economist for Credit Suisse in Japan.

Shirakawa says a rapidly aging society, rising public spending and political paralysis have contributed to years of stagnation in Japan and that Americans should pay attention.

"If you look at some economic indicators, they're very, very similar," he says. "My concern is the U.S. economy may — not will — may follow the Japanese economy's path."

Over the years, the economies of Japan and the U.S. have faced some similar problems, albeit at different times and to different degrees.

Both had real estate bubbles that burst and banking systems that racked up tons of bad loans. Both Japan and the U.S. also have ultimately unsustainable public debts. Shirakawa says Japan's economic problems are about 10 years ahead of America's.

"The American people should learn from Japan that the economy could be like Japan without the political will to change the economic system," he says.

A Rapidly Aging Society

Robert Feldman, chief economist for Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities in Tokyo, says one big problem is Japan is rapidly aging, driving up health care and pensions costs. But the country's electoral system favors the elderly, so most politicians are afraid to slash services.

"It means they can't cut medical benefits, even though they are overgenerous," he says. "There's only a 10 percent copayment for older people when they go to the doctor, and they pay no insurance premiums."

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My favorite "best of the year" list is the Bad Sex in Fiction award, even — or perhaps because — it eschews the romance genre. This year's winner was just announced: Nancy Huston's Infrared, whose heroine celebrates the "countless treasures between [her] legs." But I'm not writing a Best Romance of the Year list, because I don't think the idea even works for my genre.

Romance subgenres are strictly partitioned by readers; one woman's favorite romantic hero, who turns into a lion in his spare time, is another's anathema. The five books I discuss here are great examples of their individual subgenres. And not one of them belongs in a Bad Sex list. There's only Good Sex here, though nothing that reaches the ecstatic heights of Huston's "carnal pink palpitation that detaches you from all colour and all flesh, making you see only stars, constellations, milky ways." Maybe next year.

Interview Highlights

On when he saw the film for the first time

"I saw It's A Wonderful Life the first time when I was on the road doing a play. It was a two-man show and my cast mate Brent Briscoe kept saying, 'You've got to see It's A Wonderful Life.' It happened to come on television and he called me and I went to his hotel room and we sat and watched it, and I was pretty blown away and I've introduced many people to it since."

On why he loves It's A Wonderful Life

"I think the film is often viewed by those who haven't seen it or only seen it once as some sort of perfect little fairy tale, but it is a dark piece and it blends drama and humor in such a delightful way."

On how the movie influenced him

"Jimmy Stewart is such a wonderful actor for anyone to observe. He's got such a wide range in that film and he's not afraid of the darkness. He doesn't care about, obviously, looking good at all times or being a movie star the whole time he's on screen. He's a very human character. Jimmy Stewart's performance is so brave it reminded me early on before I'd ever been in films that if I ever had a chance to go as deep as I could as an actor into a role, to try to disappear into it and to not be afraid of the result."

"The challenge I laid out to all my actors when I cast them — to Russell [Crowe], to Eddie Redmayne, Samantha Barks, to Hugh [Jackman] — was, 'You are all performing these globally iconic songs, and yet you need to make it appear that your characters have invented these songs in these times of crisis — have ripped them from their soul. You are not doing a rendition of a song, you are offering a song as a character does a soliloquy.' And I want to give them all the weapons at their disposal to do this."

On how Les Miserables has affected his directing style

"The thing I've really been trying to grapple with in the last few days is why the film has the emotional effect it has. I mean, there are people who say that they start crying at 'I Dreamed a Dream' and basically don't stop crying — or people cry four, five times, and they make jokes like, 'You made a grown man cry,' or you know, 'It was ugly tears, Tom. It was ugly tears.'

"And I was very affected the other day when a friend of mine told me, you know, a friend of mine lost his father in October and saw the film, and I said, ... 'I'm sorry that you had to, you know, go through watching the movie given the themes of the movie. It must have been very hard.' And he said, 'No, an extraordinary thing happened.' He felt better about the loss of his father, and he felt closer to his father. And that was when I thought, god, there's something fascinating ... going on here.

"And it — I think it also happens in the musical — which is, as you watch these songs, you, in your mind you make connections to suffering in your own life story, or suffering of those nearest and dearest to you, or even suffering that you know may happen, may be coming down the line. You know, we all face the challenge of our mortality ultimately, and the musical has ... this extraordinary ability to process part of that suffering and to make you feel better about it. And it offers a catharsis. I think that's what I'll take forward, is a new understanding of what catharsis means."

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President Obama's nomination of Democrat John Kerry to be secretary of state sets off a chain of events that could put another Kennedy in the Senate, at least on an interim basis.

And it gives ousted Republican Scott Brown a fighting chance of returning to the Senate by midyear.

On Friday, Obama nominated Kerry, the senior senator from Massachusetts, to replace Hillary Clinton as the nation's chief diplomat. A 27-year veteran of the Senate and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry should win easy Senate confirmation early in the new year.

Brown, the junior senator from Massachusetts, won a 2010 special election after the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, and then in November lost his bid for a full term to Democrat Elizabeth Warren. He leaves office Jan. 3.

Brown has not announced his interest in the upcoming special election, but in a farewell to Senate colleagues last week, he pointedly called it "my closing floor speech for this session in the United States Senate." And The New York Times called his candidacy a "foregone conclusion," noting that his popularity would likely preclude serious GOP opposition in the solidly blue state.

A poll by WBUR, Boston's NPR news station, found high favorability ratings for Brown, a moderate who was the first Senate Republican to back a renewed assault weapons ban after the Connecticut school shootings.

Massachusetts law requires Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick to appoint an interim successor to Kerry and then to hold a special election between 145 and 160 days after the vacancy is created. The New York Times explains:

"A special election for the Kerry seat would likely occur in May or June. ... A vacancy is deemed to occur once the departing senator files a letter of resignation, even if the resignation is not effective until a later date.

"It is not clear if Mr. Kerry will submit such a letter right away or if he will wait until he is confirmed by the Senate. Even Republicans have said that Mr. Kerry would sail through the confirmation process."

At a service for the late Sen. Daniel K. Inouye at the Washington National Cathedral on Friday, President Obama said if it weren't for the example of the long-serving Hawaii Democrat, he might not have gone into public service.

Inouye "hinted to me what might be possible in my own life," Obama told the crowd, which included Vice President Joe Biden and other friends and former Senate colleagues.

Inouye, who passed away Monday at the age of 88, was the body's most senior member. He was the first congressman to serve the new state of Hawaii beginning in 1959 before moving to the U.S. Senate four years later, where he became the first Japanese-American to serve in both houses of Congress. As a U.S. soldier during World War II, Inouye fought in Italy, where he lost an arm and was later awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery.

Obama said that Inouye asked only to remembered as someone who had represented his constituents honestly and to the best of his ability.

He "embodied the spirit of aloha," the president said.

"May God grant us more souls like him," he said.

Earlier, House Speaker John Boehner praised Inouye for "all the good" that he did in Washington.

"Helping to build a new state, gaining rights and benefits for veterans, supporting agriculture, speaking out against injustice, becoming one of the most revered senators in our history," Boehner said.

Inouye's body laid in state at the Capitol rotunda Thursday and will be flown home to Hawaii for a final service before being interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific on Sunday.

Since the mid-1980s, the U.S. Border Patrol has quintupled in size — growing from about 4,000 to more than 20,000 agents.

The government has constructed some 700 miles of fencing and vehicle barriers. It has placed thousands of ground sensors, lights, radar towers and cameras along the border. And Customs and Border Protection is now flying drones and helicopters to locate smuggles and rescue stranded immigrants.

So here's the question: Is the Southwest border secure?

The statistics paint a picture that says "yes." The number of illegal crossers apprehended is at a 40-year-low, which can be partly attributed to a weak U.S. job market and improving economy in Mexico. Drug seizures continue near historic highs and violent crime in border cities on the U.S. side has gone down.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says all those facts are indicators of progress in the right direction.

"If I were a police chief of a major city and I came in and I said we had reduced crime in four years by 70 to 80 percent, people would say, 'That's a great job. You're a great police chief,' " she says. "If you took that and you applied it to what's been going on along the Southwest border, you'd have to say objectively the same thing."

A Byzantine Immigration System

But more and more people are realizing that illegal immigration is tied directly to the broken legal immigration system, not necessarily security.

People come for work without visas because they can't easily get visas. Employers who need guest workers say it's a long, frustrating, costly process to get the workers.

Here's an analogy: Imagine immigration, especially from Latin America, as a two-lane residential street with a 20-mile-an-hour speed limit. Over the decades, it's grown to an eight-lane superhighway. But the speed limit is still 20 mph. That is, visas for needed workers haven't risen along with the traffic.

"If you want to keep it at 20 miles an hour, you have to put a cop every 20 feet. And that's what the 'secure the border first' people are in effect trying to do," says Daniel Kowalski, a Texas-based immigration attorney and editor of Bender's Immigration Bulletin. He says demanding border security first is backward.

"You need to line the border with border patrol, shoulder to shoulder, and that's just the wrong way to do it," he says. "It's too expensive. It's easier to fix the numbers, rather than militarizing the border."

Because the immigration system is so byzantine, up to half of the estimated 11 million people illegally in the U.S. came in legally, then overstayed their visas. No amount of border security would have stopped that.

How Can Security Be Measured?

Congress still wants to know whether all the resources along the border are working. There is no single objective measure of border security.

Until two years ago, the Department of Homeland Security used something called "operational control," which Arizona Republican Senator-elect Jeff Flake wants the department to keep using.

"In essence, it basically means if someone sneaks across, you have a reasonable expectation of catching them," Flake says. "We're talking about something that is achievable and measurable."

The House has passed a bill requiring DHS to use operational control, but the department says it's obsolete. The measure only counts territory where actual Border Patrol agents are located.

DHS says something it calls the Border Security Index will take into account other things as well: areas covered by technology, air power, the rate of violent crime.

It's been nearly three years since that new index was announced and it hasn't been implemented yet. Even the Government Accountability Office said last year that DHS needs to do a better job of reporting its effectiveness on the border. But, even taking that into account, almost everyone agrees the border is more secure than it was 20 or even 10 years ago.

Napolitano says people who demand complete border security before immigration reform are not being realistic.

"There's no border in the world that doesn't have some form of migration, legal and illegal," she says. "So saying it has to be zero is like saying we have to put the United States under some sort of Tupperware container and seal it off. That's not how our country operates."

Many lawmakers who've been blocking it now seem to realize that some sort of comprehensive immigration reform is necessary. The political reality is that more border security — or at least more accountability — is still likely to be part of any legislation.

Are the days of "daily deal" coupons about to expire? Shares of email coupon company Groupon are down nearly 80 percent since going public last year. And its smaller rival, Living Social, plans to lay off as many as 400 employees, after reporting a net loss of more than $560 million in the third quarter.

Those struggles have raised questions about the future of the daily deal strategy, and whether a company like Groupon can stay in business.

"It's ... an evolution of the company that's happening," says Arvind Bhatia, managing director of equity research for the investment firm Sterne Agee, in an interview with NPR's David Greene. "They have a decent balance sheet," Bhatia says of Groupon. "As long as they continue to generate profitability, I think the business can survive." Stern Agee trades in Groupon shares and has an investment banking relationship with Groupon.

Interview Highlights:

On the coupon business model

"I think fundamentally, the model can work. But it needs scale. Keep in mind that Groupon was born out of the recession ... at a time when people wanted to see deals. So they were right in the sweet spot of what people really wanted. And they've grown really fast.

"But ... the daily deal business seems to be peaking. And in some ways, Groupon is a victim of its own success. It's hard for them to continue to grow the daily deal business the way they did before."

On the need for scale

"Both Living Social and Groupon — Groupon, in particular — have spent tons and tons of money in acquiring these customers. They have something like 160 million people whose email list that they have. That is what is attractive to merchants. So, you need scale to succeed."

On complaints about deals

"The deals that merchants offer are deeply discounted deals. And those are meant to be deals that bring customers in. And hopefully, customers like the product and keep coming back.

"Sometimes what happens is, the merchants that are using this product maybe don't know how to use it appropriately. And maybe their service isn't good enough — and they were hoping this would be this one last desperate move to get customers in before they go out of business. So, it depends on the merchant itself."

On the evolving "daily deal" business

"In the beginning, it was all about, let's acquire customers at all costs. Now, particularly for Groupon, it's OK, you've got the customers. Now show us how you can make money with this business model.

"So one thing they have to do is slow down on their spending. And they're doing exactly that."

On moving past email

"What they've talked about is tapping into, perhaps, search engines like Google and Bing to attract more customers. And that's a pretty significant move. Keep in mind that 25 percent of all searches ... are for local products.

"But right now, they're driving very little business from these search engines. So that's an opportunity for them to now go after customers that are looking for deals in general, not just through the emails."

The Labor Department's glad tidings Friday about the uptick in job creation last month might morph into bad news next month for many of the long-term unemployed.

December 7, 2012

Are the days of "daily deal" coupons about to expire? Shares of email coupon company Groupon are down nearly 80 percent since going public last year. And its smaller rival, Living Social, plans to lay off as many as 400 employees, after reporting a net loss of more than $560 million in the third quarter.

Those struggles have raised questions about the future of the daily deal strategy, and whether a company like Groupon can stay in business.

"It's ... an evolution of the company that's happening," says Arvind Bhatia, managing director of equity research for the investment firm Sterne Agee, in an interview with NPR's David Greene. "They have a decent balance sheet," Bhatia says of Groupon. "As long as they continue to generate profitability, I think the business can survive." Stern Agee trades in Groupon shares and has an investment banking relationship with Groupon.

Interview Highlights:

On the coupon business model

"I think fundamentally, the model can work. But it needs scale. Keep in mind that Groupon was born out of the recession ... at a time when people wanted to see deals. So they were right in the sweet spot of what people really wanted. And they've grown really fast.

"But ... the daily deal business seems to be peaking. And in some ways, Groupon is a victim of its own success. It's hard for them to continue to grow the daily deal business the way they did before."

On the need for scale

"Both Living Social and Groupon — Groupon, in particular — have spent tons and tons of money in acquiring these customers. They have something like 160 million people whose email list that they have. That is what is attractive to merchants. So, you need scale to succeed."

On complaints about deals

"The deals that merchants offer are deeply discounted deals. And those are meant to be deals that bring customers in. And hopefully, customers like the product and keep coming back.

"Sometimes what happens is, the merchants that are using this product maybe don't know how to use it appropriately. And maybe their service isn't good enough — and they were hoping this would be this one last desperate move to get customers in before they go out of business. So, it depends on the merchant itself."

On the evolving "daily deal" business

"In the beginning, it was all about, let's acquire customers at all costs. Now, particularly for Groupon, it's OK, you've got the customers. Now show us how you can make money with this business model.

"So one thing they have to do is slow down on their spending. And they're doing exactly that."

On moving past email

"What they've talked about is tapping into, perhaps, search engines like Google and Bing to attract more customers. And that's a pretty significant move. Keep in mind that 25 percent of all searches ... are for local products.

"But right now, they're driving very little business from these search engines. So that's an opportunity for them to now go after customers that are looking for deals in general, not just through the emails."

Antonio, Domingo and Pepe are old friends in their late 40s and 50s. All unemployed, they meet most mornings for coffee and cigarettes in Madrid's Puerta del Sol square and rant about the government.

The nation's civil service is a particularly attractive target. The men grumble about what they imagine is the life of a government worker — long coffee breaks, siestas and lots of paid time off.

"They earn much more than they're worth," Antonio says. "That's something that's got to change. They earn a lot, and they hardly do anything."

Jobs For Life

Spanish civil servants do earn a lot, compared with their private sector counterparts. Virtually all the best and brightest young graduates want to work for the government, and many are willing to stay on waiting lists for years — without pay — in hopes of snagging a position.

Civil servants took a recent hit when the government decided to cut their holiday bonuses this year, but even so, Spanish public workers are still the envy of their countrymen.

When Spain's economic crisis hit, the private sector immediately started shedding jobs and cutting wages. New labor reforms have made it even easier for companies to do so, and unemployment now tops 25 percent.

In contrast, most public employees still have jobs for life, says economist Gayle Allard of Madrid's IE Business School.

"They have had their wages frozen. Hiring has been frozen. But it's not the kind of severe adjustment you're seeing in the private sector," Allard says. "You hear people say, 'Wait a minute! In my company, we've cut all of our costs 30 percent. What's their problem? We're doing this, why can't they do it?' "

Strong Unions, Strong Numbers

One reason is the civil service's strong union contracts; another is the sheer number of civil servants in Spain. Bureaucrats, doctors, teachers and other public workers amount to 2.6 million people, more than 11 percent of the population. That makes politicians think twice about crossing them.

Spaniards also have a different attitude toward the state. The Pew Research Center recently found that while 6 in 10 Americans say they want to be free of interference from the state, more than 6 in 10 Spaniards say the opposite — that it's the government's job to make sure nobody is in need.

"It's a funny thing," says Allard. "I think Americans ... have a hard time understanding it, because we don't assign such a high value to security. But for Spaniards, that's really, really important."

Europe

Spain's Crisis Leads To Rise Of Grass-Roots Groups

Earl Gray is about the closest thing to a celebrity that the small Appalachian town of Magguson has. In Chris Sullivan's debut animated feature, Consuming Spirits, Gray (Robert Levy) hosts a gardening show on the local radio station, and the occasional event around town.

His commentary tends to start practical, morph into poetic reveries, and then become impassioned — sometimes aggressive or despairing rants. His gravelly voice and edge-of-sanity delivery call to mind an alternate-universe Garrison Keillor after a career-long bender of whiskey, cigarettes and disappointment. One caller to his show asks about using the ashes from a trash-burning bonfire as garden fertilizer; Gray recommends against it, calling them the "bitter remains of charred memories."

That phrase might well be applied to Sullivan's emotionally raw, thoroughly original film as well, a labor of painstaking (and, one suspects, pain-exorcising) love 15 years in the making. Sullivan incorporates autobiographical details from a childhood heavily influenced by social services intervention, and from that seed springs a story about the fallout of broken homes, poverty, alcoholism and mental illness in small-town America.

He tells that story in an experimental stew of animation styles, using stop-motion miniatures for establishing shots, multilayered moving cutouts for the primary action, surrealist pencil sketches for dreams and memories, and occasional animated newsprint clippings thrown into the mix as well.

The effect is that of disjointed, haunted reverie, of alternate realities colliding, soundtracked by mumbled asides and an uneasy murmur of background noise. Gray's story intersects with that of Gentian Violet (Nancy Andrews) and Victor Blue (Sullivan), a sad-sack pair of middle-aged lovers who work in the paste-up department of the local newspaper, play together in a traditional Irish music duo, and steal kisses at Violet's house when they can get away from her mother — who suffers from dementia and is prone to wildly inappropriate sexual comments and attending dinner in the nude.

Christopher Sullivan/Film Forum

Earl Gray is a local radio and paper personality, notorious for his program and column, "Gardeners Corners."