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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, added another meeting today in Vienna in the push toward an agreement on Iran's nuclear program.

Iranian news reports had earlier said Zarif was returning to Tehran for further instructions. And Kerry had been scheduled to leave Vienna for Paris – something he could still do while talks continue — before adding the late Friday meeting.

With a Monday deadline for an accord just days away, Kerry has had three meetings with Zarif and Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign policy chief. The talks in Vienna also involve diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said there was still work to do.

"We're very clear that we have to get more flexibility from the Iranians," he said. "In return, we're prepared to show some flexibility on our side."

At issue are Iran's ability to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel, and the schedule for lifting sanctions against the Islamic republic.

NPR's Peter Kenyon, reporting here, points to the other sticky issues: the Arak heavy water reactor, the Fordow underground enrichment facility, the possible military dimensions of Iran's research, monitoring and verification, and mutual mistrust and supicion.

Kenyon, who is in Vienna reporting on the talks, tells our Newscast Unit: "With intense talks grinding on, speculation is flowing outside the negotiating room, with conflicting accounts of which side may be offering some last-minute proposal."

NPR's Eyder Peralta, who wrote Monday about the current round of talks, provided some background to how the sides got to this point. He wrote:

"If you remember, this round of negotiations kicked off about a year ago, after Iran agreed to pause parts of its nuclear activities while the two sides sought a long-lasting accord. At the time, even that deal was hailed as historic, because the United States and Iran have had no formal ties since 1979.

"So whatever happens this week will be a big deal."

Iran nuclear

Iran

After a nearly two-year investigation, the final report by the House Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA "ensured sufficient security for CIA facilities in Benghazi and ... bravely assisted the State Department" on Sept. 11, 2012, during a deadly attack on U.S. facilities in Libya.

That's the first conclusion of the report, the result of thousands of hours of investigation into the events that led to the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Many of the following conclusions echo a central theme, that "there was no intelligence failure prior to the attacks," as the report states.

But the committee also found that the U.S. diplomats' Temporary Mission Facility "was not well-protected," the AP reports, "and that State Department security agents knew they could not defend it from a well-armed attack."

Benghazi Report (PDF)
Benghazi Report (Text)

In addition, the panel said the Obama administration's "initial public narrative" about the reasons behind the attacks "were not fully accurate."

Citing "a stream of contradictory and conflicting intelligence that came in after the attacks," the report states that while some early information had backed the CIA's initial belief that the violence stemmed from a protest in Benghazi, "contrary intelligence" showed that that was not the case.

"There was no protest," the report reads. "The CIA only changed its initial assessment about a protest on September 24, 2012, when closed caption television footage became available on September 18, 2012 (two days after Ambassador Susan Rice spoke), and after the FBI began publishing its interviews with U.S. officials on the ground on September 22, 2012."

The report also cites a "flawed" process that was used to create talking points that the House panel had asked for so that its members could discuss the attacks publicly. It notes that the same talking points were used in Rice's public statements.

In their summary of the 36-page report (which also has six appendixes), the report's authors — House committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican, and ranking Democratic member C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger — say that their panel "found no evidence that any officer was intimidated, wrongly forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement or otherwise kept from speaking to Congress, or polygraphed because of their presence in Benghazi."

And in a statement that seems to take aim at a theory popularized by some media outlets, the report states, "The CIA was not collecting and shipping arms from Libya to Syria."

Earlier this year, a Senate Intelligence Committee report said that the attacks "were likely preventable."

But as the Two-Way reported back in January, that report also "takes issue with lawmakers who have been using the Obama administration's initial statements about the attacks to make the case that the White House tried to downplay whether they were the work of terrorists."

Noting that the report "was released with little fanfare on the Friday before Thanksgiving week," the AP says, "Many of its findings echo those of six previous investigations by various congressional committees and a State Department panel."

Benghazi attack

Benghazi

Libya

The Imitation Game is the story of Alan Turing: British mathematician, World War II code breaker and seminal theoretician of computer science. "It's a war thriller, it's a love story and a tragic testament to a genius wronged," the star of the film, Benedict Cumberbatch, tells NPR's Robert Siegel.

Turing, who was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was a crime in Britain, talked his way into a job helping the British crack the German code called Enigma. Cumberbatch says the film's script has a "beautifully complex unraveling through time ... the unraveling of both the problem and the man, himself, trying to solve the problem."

Interview Highlights

On the audience's introduction to Turing, who was known to be awkward and eccentric

I think what's extraordinary about Graham Moore's first feature script is how you, layer by layer, sort of uncover this man at the same parallel time as the team he eventually does play a part of. ... And I think, to be fair to Alan, what's beautiful about Graham's script in his introduction to him ... it's utterly uncompromising. There's no vanity, you're not asked to like the character. You're introduced to him, warts and all. And he is ... difficult; he's very stubborn and arrogant.

“ But there's a sort of naive guilelessness about the whole thing. He doesn't come in with an abrasive attitude. He just doesn't have the formal respect for authority. ... And he is utterly brilliant and he knows it and he's been told that and he doesn't mind talking about it. But it's not to show off; for him, it's a statement of fact.

- Benedict Cumberbatch, on playing Alan Turing

But there's a sort of naive guilelessness about the whole thing. He doesn't come in with an abrasive attitude. He just doesn't have the formal respect for authority. ... And he is utterly brilliant and he knows it and he's been told that and he doesn't mind talking about it. But it's not to show off; for him, it's a statement of fact.

On the way the state punished Turing for being gay

It's disgusting to think that within less than 100 years [that] this was going on hundreds — thousands in fact — of men were prosecuted and given the chance to choose simply between two years' imprisonment or two years' state-sanctioned chemical castration through weekly estrogen injections. Alan chose the latter in order to continue his work. But the man was a marathon runner as well as a sexually active homosexual man, and not only did the drug ravage his body and affect his physicality but it also started slowly to impinge on his faculty, on his mind, on his ability to do that work. So he was denied the one door he still had left open to him for love, for freedom, for expressing who he was.

On bringing Turing's story to a wider audience

In comparison to his achievements and his greatness — both as a scientific mind [and] philosopher ... somebody who ... basically was the father of computer science, somebody who was part of an effort that saved, some estimate, 14 million lives by breaking a code that brought about a two-years-early end to World War II. That that man wasn't better-known — I mean, why isn't he on bank notes with Darwin and Newton? Why isn't he on the cover of history books as well as science books? That really was a driving motivation for me to tell this story and bring his legacy to a wider audience.

More On Alan Turing

All Tech Considered

Do Feelings Compute? If Not, The Turing Test Doesn't Mean Much

13.7: Cosmos And Culture

The Turing Test Is Not What You Think It Is

The Two-Way

Britain Releases World War II Code-Breaking Papers

The Two-Way

Alan Turing, Who Cracked Nazi Code, Gets Posthumous Pardon

On the Turing machine

It's more than a machine. I mean, that machine takes on such a personality. .... A replica is still at Bletchley Park, which I advise any of your listeners who are lucky enough to be in that part of the world to go and see it. It's the most extraordinary, chilling, amazing exhibit of all the work. ... You can ask someone to give you a very patient explanation of it because it's quite complex. But basically, it was the machine that Alan adapted from a Polish machine to break the other machine, the Enigma machine — which was capable of ... 159 million, million, million possible variations every single day that would change at midnight. It was beyond the human ability to crack.

On the way these machines are seen in 2014

"Where's the screen?" as one friend's child said. ... Broke my heart when I heard that. But the same kid then went home and Googled — using probably an algorithm very similar in the search engines that were used by Turing, invented by Turing to break the code in the second world war — used a Google search engine in order to look up and research more about Enigma. This is an 8-year-old. I mean, it's fantastic.

On his decision to go by Benedict Cumberbatch (his father, also an actor, is named Timothy Carlton, and Cumberbatch's full name is Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch)

I started as Benedict Carlton. I think Carlton's a great name; it was my grandfather's first name and I never got to meet him, so that alone was a good reason. And I wasn't getting anywhere with my first agent and with that name and when I went to meet someone else at a new agency about six months after I graduated, she said, "Why on earth don't you use your family name? It's the most fantastically extraordinary, unforgettable name." ...

“ Even I can't say it early on a Monday morning. It sounds like a fart in a bath. There's a whole lot of bubbles.

- Benedict Cumberbatch, on the sound of his own name

She rightfully said, "Look, it's pretty unforgettable once you get your head around it." And I said, "Yeah, but even I can't say it early on a Monday morning." It sounds like a fart in a bath. There's a whole lot of bubbles. But, you know, it seems to have worked out all right, doesn't it, Robert?

On whether being famous is fun

It's fun. It's got to be fun. There are moments when, like all of us, you get a bit self-conscious and you'd rather not be living any of your day in public. Those are the awkward times, but you've got to have fun with it.

As Nigeria's military continues to battle Boko Haram fighters for control of towns and territory in the turbulent northeast, fearful residents are leaving — or being driven out of town. More than 200 schoolgirls, abducted by the Islamist extremists in April, are still missing.

The Two-Way

Boko Haram Says Kidnapped Girls Are Now 'Married'

Hoisting the black flag of al-Qaida, the insurgents have imposed strict Islamic law in areas under their control, vowing to establish a caliphate.

The deadly insurgency has displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians, who are ending up in camps around Yola, the capital city of Adamawa, one of three northern states still under emergency rule. Concerned that Yola, too, may be attacked, others are again on the move.

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Civilians who had just recently arrived in Yola prepare to flee again, this time in a large open-top truck headed to the city of Jos. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR

Civilians who had just recently arrived in Yola prepare to flee again, this time in a large open-top truck headed to the city of Jos.

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR

A large open-top truck parked at a gas station on the outskirts of Yola is already overflowing with children and women. Men are hoisting more people, buckets, bundles and spare tires onto the back of the truck, amid much chatter and palpable panic.

Parallels

For Nigerians Fleeing Boko Haram, A Desperate Life On The Run

The Two-Way

Bombing At Nigerian High School Kills Dozens

The Rev. Ishaya Suno seems to be in charge, collecting money for the fares to Jos, 320 miles away in Nigeria's Middle Belt.

Suno and the dozens of men, women and children climbing onto the truck have been in Yola since late last month, when suspected Boko Haram insurgents seized the commercial border town of Mubi and nearby villages, further north along the border with Cameroon, after clashes with the Nigerian army.

The military says it's now in control of Mubi, but the displaced who found their way to Yola are not returning. Instead, they are fleeing further from their homes. Why?

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A woman who had fled to Yola to escape fighting in Mubi, at the border with Cameroon, lifts her son into the truck bound for Jos. Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR

A woman who had fled to Yola to escape fighting in Mubi, at the border with Cameroon, lifts her son into the truck bound for Jos.

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton/NPR

"Yola is not safe. We are hearing rumors," he says. "Boko Haram, they prepare [to] come to Yola. We are afraid."

Clutching her baby girl in her arms, and poised to flee again, Liyatu Joshua, mother of five, just wants out of Yola. In a mixture of English and the local Hausa language, she says they they all are scared of the fighting — and of Boko Haram.

"Yes, we're leaving Yola, but we don't know what will happen, where we're going," Joshua says.

These anxieties are not limited to the displaced, says the Adamawa state governor's spokesman, Phineas Pwanohoma Elisha.

"It is definitely worrisome to the good people of Adamawa state. It's worrisome to the government of Adamawa state," he says. "There is no two ways about that."

But the military will not divulge its security plans, Elisha says.

Sort-of assurances from the governor's spokesman aren't enough to dampen the fears of Liyatu Joshua, The Rev. Suno and others, as they scramble to secure a standing-only place on the truck heading out of town to Jos.

Many Nigerians accuse the army — and the government — of failing to counter Boko Haram and end the insurgency. Mohammed Sanusi II, the emir of Kano and one of the nation's most revered traditional and Muslim leaders, this week called on residents in the north to arm and defend themselves — and to not rely on the military or fear the militants.

"Before the soldiers arrive, the terrorists would already have committed their crimes," says the emir. Speaking Hausa, he says some soldiers throw away their guns and flee.

"These terrorists slaughter our boys and abduct our girls and force them into slavery," he warns, adding that people should not sit by idly and think that prayers are the only solution.

"Be prepared, and acquire what you need to protect yourselves," says the emir, who was until recently Nigeria's central bank governor and an outspoken critic of the government.

refugees

Boko Haram

Nigeria

Andy Cohen started out as a producer with CBS News, doing tough stories from tough places. But his secret dream was to choreograph elaborate cat fights between wealthy, underemployed women. He's the Bravo producer responsible for the Real Housewives franchise and host of Watch What Happens Live.

We've invited Cohen to play a game called "Bzzz ... bzzz ... bzzz." Three questions for the man behind Real Housewives about house flies.

The United States has seen many fundraisers headlined by an Obama in recent years, but this week it won't be the president or the first lady — it will be his step-grandmother, Sarah Obama, who is raising funds to build a school and hospital in her hometown, Kogelo, Kenya.

Obama, who runs the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation and was honored with an Education Pioneer award at the United Nations on Wednesday as part of its Women's Entrepreneurship Day, has spent much of her life helping young people — and particularly young women — in her region get an education.

President Obama's last surviving grandparent, whom he referred to as Granny in his memoir Dreams of My Father, never went to school herself, she tells NPR's Scott Simon through an interpreter.

"It was very hard for women to get an education," when she was growing up, the 94-year-old Obama says. "Only young boys or men were allowed to go to school."

But things are different in Kenya now, she says. United Nations data actually shows a higher percentage of Kenyan girls going to school than Kenyan boys.

"I encourage them — even the ones who have had families at a young age — I encourage them to go to school so that the cycle of poverty can end," Obama says. She sometimes uses her grandson as an example of the doors an education can open.

Often, Obama says, she and her foundation provide much more than encouragement.

"I help the orphans and widows, especially the young girls who have been orphaned by their parents dying of HIV," she says. "I am their sole parent right now, so I help them pay school fees and also get them the things that they need, like sanitary towels, books, necessities like a pencil, school uniforms. That's what I do."

It's an investment that Sarah Obama says she gets an unbeatable return on.

"There's so many kids that I've helped educate, some of them at Nairobi University, Moi University and also Bondo University," she says. "These are orphans who I've helped pay for their school fares, and now it's my joy to see them in the universities about to graduate. There's a lot of success stories, and it just makes me happy and it keeps me going."

Kenya

President Obama

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You need keen eyesight to spot yartsa gunbu when it sprouts in spring. Kids are very good harvesters. Michael S. Yamashita/National Geographic Society/Corbis hide caption

itoggle caption Michael S. Yamashita/National Geographic Society/Corbis

You need keen eyesight to spot yartsa gunbu when it sprouts in spring. Kids are very good harvesters.

Michael S. Yamashita/National Geographic Society/Corbis

People live for — and die because of — the "Viagra of the Himalayas."

That's the nickname for one of the weirdest fungi around.

It starts with the larva of the ghost moth — a caterpillar that lives underground. A fungus invades the larva, kills it and consumes the body. Just the outer skeleton remains.

Eventually, a small brown stalk erupts from the dead caterpillar's head. In the spring, the pinkie-size stalk pokes an inch or two from the earth. That's when people across the Tibetan Plateau head to the high-alpine meadows to harvest the crazy-looking creature.

It's not just for the fun of it. For centuries, people have believed that the fungus known as yartsa gunbu, literally "summer grass, winter worm," is an aphrodisiac. According to ancient Tibetan texts, men who eat it are promised "the delights of thousands of beautiful women." That's why top-quality yartsa sells for around $2,000 an ounce — more than the price of gold. In China, yartsa is a status symbol.

And in Tibet, people fight over it. They sometimes even kill each other. In 2014, a dispute between the local community and a park management committee about the right to collect fees for access to yartsa gunbu led to two deaths.

Related NPR Stories

Caterpillar Fungus: The Viagra Of The Himalayas Oct. 9, 2011

Plus there's a risk that the demand will deplete the grasslands and alpine regions of the Tibetan Plateau. "Any resource of such immense value and key relevance to rural livelihoods as the main cash source runs the risk of being overexploited," says Daniel Winkler, an expert on Himalayan caterpillar fungus.

New research by Washington University associate professor Geoff Childs and graduate student Namgyal Choedup, published in the journal Himalaya, shows how two villages have found a way to sustainably (and peacefully) harvest the precious resource.

In Nubri, village leaders set a date for the start of the harvest. In the weeks prior, residents must check in at the community meetinghouse four times daily.

"The roll call is designed to thwart attempts by any individual to begin collecting earlier than others," the authors say. Since the trek to the nearest gathering ground is several hours away, it's nearly impossible to sneak off and dig for yartsa gunbu. There's also a heavy fine for those who don't check in.

While all residents in Nubri have a right to collect yartsa gunbu, each household is required to register any collectors and pay a corresponding tax — $1 for the first member and $53 for each additional members. That's not just pocket change in a part of the world where the yearly income can range from $24 to $3,500. The tax money funds repairs and services, from fixing the hydroelectric system to hiring a lama to perform an empowerment ritual.

Local rituals and certain Buddhist beliefs have helped keep the harvest under control. Religious decrees prohibit harvesting on certain sacred mountain slopes. This creates a natural sanctuary, ensuring that part of the landscape will remain undisturbed and allowing fungal spores to spread for the next season.

The village of Tsum prohibits outsiders from gathering yartsa gunbu. Locals are using the profits from yartsa gunbu sales to build lodges that cater to foreign tourists and also to purchase gold as a way to hold on to their yartsa wealth.

The money has been invaluable. In some cases, it makes up 80 percent of a household's income. "Tibetans are using the cash to improve their standard of living, and in some cases are reducing dependency on agro-pastoral activities by becoming entrepreneurs," Childs and Choedup write. Profits pay for everything from school supplies and DVDs to solar panels and gold jewelry.

But then there's all that tension to deal with. One man from the Nubri Valley told Childs and Choedup that "Earlier, we only had village meetings once or twice a year. Nowadays there are frequent meetings with more arguments between people, more squabbles. People are becoming selfish."

If Tibetans follow the example of the two forward-thinking villages, then maybe fungus gatherers can learn to get along with each other — and with Mother Nature.

yartsa gunbu

viagra

The United States has seen many fundraisers headlined by an Obama in recent years, but this week it won't be the president or the first lady — it will be his step-grandmother, Sarah Obama, who is raising funds to build a school and hospital in her hometown, Kogelo, Kenya.

Obama, who runs the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation and was honored with an Education Pioneer award at the United Nations on Wednesday as part of its Women's Entrepreneurship Day, has spent much of her life helping young people — and particularly young women — in her region get an education.

President Obama's last surviving grandparent, whom he referred to as Granny in his memoir Dreams of My Father, never went to school herself, she tells NPR's Scott Simon through an interpreter.

"It was very hard for women to get an education," when she was growing up, the 94-year-old Obama says. "Only young boys or men were allowed to go to school."

But things are different in Kenya now, she says. United Nations data actually shows a higher percentage of Kenyan girls going to school than Kenyan boys.

"I encourage them — even the ones who have had families at a young age — I encourage them to go to school so that the cycle of poverty can end," Obama says. She sometimes uses her grandson as an example of the doors an education can open.

Often, Obama says, she and her foundation provide much more than encouragement.

"I help the orphans and widows, especially the young girls who have been orphaned by their parents dying of HIV," she says. "I am their sole parent right now, so I help them pay school fees and also get them the things that they need, like sanitary towels, books, necessities like a pencil, school uniforms. That's what I do."

It's an investment that Sarah Obama says she gets an unbeatable return on.

"There's so many kids that I've helped educate, some of them at Nairobi University, Moi University and also Bondo University," she says. "These are orphans who I've helped pay for their school fares, and now it's my joy to see them in the universities about to graduate. There's a lot of success stories, and it just makes me happy and it keeps me going."

Kenya

President Obama

London Mayor Boris Johnson owes the IRS money — and he's not going to pay it.

Johnson, who was born in the U.S. and lived here until he was 5 years old, holds dual U.S.-U.K. citizenship.

At issue, he told NPR member station WAMU's Diane Rehm Show in an interview, was capital gains on the sale of his first residence, a sum that is not taxable in Britain.

"They're trying to hit me with some bill, can you believe it?" he said on the show, referring to the Internal Revenue Service.

When asked by guest host Susan Page if he was going to pay the bill, Johnson replied: "I think it's outrageous."

Page pressed him.

"Well, saying it's outrageous doesn't respond to whether you're going to pay the bill or not," she said. "Outrageous or not, will you pay this tax bill?"

Johnson's response: "I'm — no, is the answer. I think, it's absolutely outrageous. Why should I? I think, you know, I'm not a — I, you know, I haven't lived in the United States for, you know, well, since I was 5 years old."

Page then proceeded to ask Johnson why he continued to carry a U.S. passport. The London mayor replied that "it's very difficult to give up."

Johnson is widely considered a contender to succeed British Prime Minister David Cameron as head of the ruling Conservatives should the party lose power at the next elections. That means that, at least in theory, he could become prime minister, a point at which he might have to renounce his U.S. citizenship.

Johnson described the chances of his becoming prime minister as "vanishingly small," and said the issue of renunciation was "a luxury problem to deal with."

The Guardian notes that Johnson, in his capacity as mayor of London, has criticized the U.S. Embassy for not paying the city's congestion charge. The U.K. government says U.S. Embassy owes the city about $12 million, but the Embassy says the charge is a tax from which its diplomats are immune. The newspaper adds:

"Johnson would also be liable to pay US income tax as he earns well above the foreign-earned income exclusion — the level up to which no tax is paid on income earned by US citizens overseas — which was set at $97,600 (62,000) last year. As mayor, he earns a salary of 144,000 and on top of that he is paid 250,000 a year for his column in the Telegraph. Johnson did not disclose whether he paid US taxes on his income during the interview. The mayor's spokesman said he would not be commenting further on his US tax affairs."

London Mayor Boris Johnson

Internal Revenue Service

taxes

The new film The Homesman is set in the pioneer days of the American West. It was directed by Tommy Lee Jones, who called on his regular composers, Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders, for the music. But instead of writing a traditional score for symphony orchestra, they became inventors and instrument builders to capture the story's desperate mood. Jones has a simple way of describing his approach to scoring a film: "The process is to derive music from what the lens is looking at," he says.

Jones met with the composers more than a year ago to start thinking about a score that would help tell the story of three pioneer women who lose their minds in the bleak and unforgiving Nebraska territory.

"We certainly didn't want 'crazy' music, the kind of music you hear when the giant ants appear after the flying saucer crashes," Jones says. "We didn't want effects music. We wanted to do something original, and that was reflective of the country and the way the country sounds. We both knew what the movie sounded like. We just had to find it."

Jones usually gives direction in broad strokes, saying something like, "I want it to be folksy, but surrounded by madness."

"You know, when you get a comment like that, you can really run with it," Buck Sanders says. "And he'll let you know very quickly if it's not what he's thinking. And so it was really a dream gig — just to be able to work with a director like that, who would give you artistic freedom."

Sanders and Marco Beltrami first took inspiration from the music of the nature so prevalent in the film's setting.

"You know, wind was a factor for a lot of these women, and just everybody in general there," Beltrami says. "The wind would even make people go crazy, besides the disease and all the hardships. And so we were thinking, 'How can we channel that?' And one of Buck's first instincts was to begin examining Aeolian harps, which — you know, they're basically just strings attached to some surface, wooden surface often, and they resonate with the wind, and you can tune them. And Tommy came up here — actually on a very windy day — and was blown away by how... I think he said basically we just suck the music right out of the air. [Laughs.] Which is sort of true."

Beltrami's Malibu studio sits up high in the Santa Monica Mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean. There, he and Sanders have dreamed up the music for World War Z, 3:10 To Yuma and two other films directed by Jones. Sanders was largely responsible for building the wind harp, which looks like power lines growing out of the back of a weathered old piano.

"So this is the Aeolian wind piano," Sanders says. "It's an old upright that our piano tuner found, like in a basement, that he was willing to donate. We put it on top of a 10-foot-tall metal storage unit. He just put it, like, in a tractor scoop and dumped it up here. And then they strapped it down, and then we have eight piano wires coming perpendicularly out of the piano soundboard, and running 175 feet up the hill to two large metal water-storage tanks to catch the winds."

When they tethered the wires to those tanks, they stumbled onto one of the score's signature sounds.

"You could put your ear up to the water tank, and you can hear stuff's going on in there, and certain frequencies resonate really strongly," Sanders says. "I wasn't too sure what it would get. You know, it was just an experiment, and a fun day on the job. [Laughs.] But it ended up being a beautiful, crystalline-type sound."

It's a sound meant to evoke the characters' unsteady grasp on sanity.

The two composers did use more traditional instruments to capture the film's environment. They recorded a small string ensemble, but they recorded it outdoors.

"It's a very austere environment, this environment of the settlers coming to the plains in the mid-19th century," Beltrami says. "And we're so used to recording scores in warm rooms that have a lot of reverberation, and that are built beautifully and make everything sound great. But it wasn't really the environment of the setting."

In one scene, the woman who volunteers to transport the women back east, played by Hilary Swank, gets lost and ends up nearly losing her own mind.

"She's going around in circles," Beltrami says. "And we thought, this shouldn't have any of the warmth that you would normally have in a room recording the sound. If there's any way it can just dissipate into the air, it would be great."

This may seem like a lot of trouble to go through in an era when the click of a key can do so much to imitate or manipulate music.

"The wonderful thing about this score was just the amount of tactile experience we had, you know, building stuff and working outside," Sanders says. "Because film scoring has become very sort of computer-centric, and a lot of shows have to use samples to get the mockups done. But I think really having that, what really is a physical experience, of building instruments and recording outside — it creates a strong connection with the music that does inspire you, and you know it's yours.

"You have to keep the nature of fun in it," Beltrami says. "If it's just a question of punching keys into a computer, that gets old. This has to remain fun and inspiring in order to come up with new things. And I think we're just continuing along a time-honored tradition of exploration here."

Beltrami says one of the best things about working with Tommy Lee Jones is the leeway he allows the composers.

"Creative freedom, and the opportunity for originality, is about all we had to offer Marco," Jones says. "It's not something he gets every day, and that's really the basis of our working relationship."

YouTube

An outbreak of the plague has sickened at least 119 people and killed 40 in Madagascar, the World Health Organization reports Friday.

The outbreak started back in August in a rural village, WHO said. Then it spread to seven of Madagascar's 22 regions. Two cases have occurred in the country's capital of Antananarivo.

"There is now a risk of a rapid spread of the disease due to the city's high population density and the weakness of the health care system," the WHO writes.

Goats and Soda

Shades Of The Middle Ages: The Plague Popped Up In China And Colorado

Shots - Health News

Decoded DNA Reveals Details Of Black Death Germ

The plague is not new to Madagascar. The disease re-emerged in the country in the 1990s. And now Madagascar reports more cases than any other country — about 300 to 600 each year.

People catch the plague bacteria — Yersinia pestis — from fleas that live on rodents. So the disease thrives in cities with poor sanitation.

After a coup d'etat in 2009, Antananarivo's health and sanitation systems collapsed, Aaron Ross wrote on the Pulitzer Center's website in January. "Trash can go weeks, even months, without being collected and rats have become a common sight along the narrow alleyways that coil around the city's steep hillsides," Ross wrote.

The plague's signature symptom is large, swollen lymph nodes. This form of the disease is called bubonic plague. And it's not very contagious.

When the infection moves to the lungs, it's called pneumonic plague, a form that's more dangerous. It kills quickly, and it spreads from person to person through coughs.

In the current outbreak, so far, only 2 percent of the cases are pneumonic, WHO says.

Both forms of the plague are easily cured with antibiotics when the disease is caught early.

Madagascar

bubonic plague

Infectious Disease

Global Health

The Imitation Game is the story of Alan Turing: British mathematician, World War II code breaker and seminal theoretician of computer science. "It's a war thriller, it's a love story and a tragic testament to a genius wronged," the star of the film, Benedict Cumberbatch, tells NPR's Robert Siegel.

Turing, who was openly gay at a time when homosexuality was a crime in Britain, talked his way into a job helping the British crack a German code called Enigma. Cumberbatch says the film's script has a "beautifully complex unraveling through time ... the unraveling of both the problem and the man, himself, trying to solve the problem."

Interview Highlights

On the audience's introduction to Turing, who was known to be awkward and eccentric

I think what's extraordinary about Graham Moore's first feature script is how you, layer by layer, sort of uncover this man at the same parallel time as the team he eventually does play a part of. ... And I think, to be fair to Alan, what's beautiful about Graham's script in his introduction to him ... it's utterly uncompromising. There's no vanity, you're not asked to like the character. You're introduced to him, warts and all. And he is. He's difficult; he's very stubborn and arrogant.

“ But there's a sort of nave guilelessness about the whole thing. He doesn't come in with an abrasive attitude. He just doesn't have the formal respect for authority. ... And he is utterly brilliant and he knows it and he's been told that and he doesn't mind talking about it. But it's not to show off; for him, it's a statement of fact.

- Benedict Cumberbatch, on playing Alan Turing

But there's a sort of nave guilelessness about the whole thing. He doesn't come in with an abrasive attitude. He just doesn't have the formal respect for authority. ... And he is utterly brilliant and he knows it and he's been told that and he doesn't mind talking about it. But it's not to show off; for him, it's a statement of fact.

On the way the state punished Turing for being gay

It's disgusting to think that within less than 100 years [that] this was going on hundreds — thousands in fact — of men were prosecuted and given the chance to choose simply between two years imprisonment or two years state sanctioned chemical castration through weekly estrogen injections. Alan chose the latter in order to continue his work. But the man was a marathon runner as well as a sexually active homosexual man, and not only did the drug ravage his body and affect his physicality but it also started slowly to impinge on his faculty, on his mind, on his ability to do that work. So he was denied the one door he still had left open to him for love, for freedom, for expressing who he was.

On bringing Turing's story to a wider audience

In comparison to his achievements and his greatness — both as a scientific mind a philosopher ... somebody who ... basically was the father of computer science, somebody who was part of an effort that saved, some estimate, 14 million lives by breaking a code that brought about a two years early end to World War II. That that man wasn't better known — I mean, why isn't he on bank notes with Darwin and Newton? Why isn't he on the cover of history books as well as science books? That really was a driving motivation for me to tell this story and bring his legacy to a wider audience.

More On Alan Turing

All Tech Considered

Do Feelings Compute? If Not, The Turing Test Doesn't Mean Much

13.7: Cosmos And Culture

The Turing Test Is Not What You Think It Is

The Two-Way

Britain Releases World War II Code-Breaking Papers

The Two-Way

Alan Turing, Who Cracked Nazi Code, Gets Posthumous Pardon

On the Turing machine

It's more than a machine. I mean, that machine takes on such a personality. .... A replica is still at Bletchley Park, which I advise any of your listeners who are lucky enough to be in that part of the world to go and see it. It's the most extraordinary, chilling, amazing exhibit of all the work. ... You can ask someone to give you a very patient explanation of it because it's quite complex. But basically, it was the machine that Alan adapted from a Polish machine to break the other machine, the Enigma machine — which was capable of ... 159 million, million, million possible variations every single day that would change at midnight. It was beyond the human ability to crack.

On the way these machines are seen in 2014

"Where's the screen?" as one friend's child said. ... Broke my heart when I heard that. But the same kid then went home and Googled — using probably an algorithm very similar in the search engines that were used by Turing, invented by Turing to break the code in the Second World War — used a Google search engine in order to look up and research more about Enigma. This is an 8-year-old. I mean, it's fantastic.

On his decision to go by Benedict Cumberbatch (his father, also an actor, is named Timothy Carlton, and Cumberbatch's full name is Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch)

I started as Benedict Carlton. I think Carlton's a great name; it was my grandfather's first name and I never got to meet him, so that alone was a good reason. And I wasn't getting anywhere with my first agent and with that name and when I went to meet someone else at a new agency about six months after I graduated, she said, "Why on Earth don't you use your family name? It's the most fantastically, extraordinary, unforgettable name."

“ Even I can't say it early on a Monday morning. It sounds like a fart in a bath. There's a whole lot of bubbles.

- Benedict Cumberbatch, on the sound of his own name

... She rightfully said, "Look, it's pretty unforgettable once you get your head around it." And I said, "Yeah, but even I can't say it early on a Monday morning." It sounds like a fart in a bath. There's a whole lot of bubbles. But, you know, it seems to have worked out all right, doesn't it, Robert?

On whether being famous is fun

It's fun. It's got to be fun. There are moments when, like all of us, you get a bit self-conscious and you'd rather not be living any of your day in public. Those are the awkward times, but you've got to have fun with it.

The turducken – a whole chicken stuffed inside a whole duck stuffed inside a whole turkey, all boneless — is a relatively recent culinary phenomenon. Though popularized in the last 20 years with the help of Louisiana's Chef Paul Prudhomme and John Madden, who brought one to a football game broadcast in 1997, the turducken actually builds on a long tradition of creative bird-into-bird stuffing.

Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reynire, the world's first restaurant critic, in 1803 launched the Almanach des Gourmands, what the Paris-based dining historian Carolin Young calls the world's first serial food journal. He would edit and publish this best-selling guide to seasonal cooking and restaurants until 1812.

Like any good publisher, Grimod de la Reynire knew he needed to slide in some extra flair from time to time. And in 1807, he put out a recipe for rti sans pareil, the roast without equal.

The Salt

Frogs And Puffins! 1730s Menus Reveal Royals Were Extreme Foodies

The daredevil-ish recipe calls for a tiny warbler stuffed in a bunting, inserted in a lark, squeezed in a thrush, thrown in a quail, inserted in a lapwing, introduced to a plover, piled into a partridge, wormed into a woodcock, shoehorned into a teal, kicked into a guinea fowl, rammed inside a duck, shoved into a chicken, jammed up in a pheasant, wedged deep inside a goose, logged into a turkey. And just when you think a 16-bird roast is probably enough, it's not. This meat sphere is finally crammed up into a Great Bustard, an Old World turkey-turned-wrapping paper, for this most epic of poultry meals.

Holiday Recipes

The Veggieducken: A Meatless Dish With Gravitas

While there's no record of anyone actually making the rti sans pareil, Grimod de la Reynire seemingly achieved what is every publisher's goal: capturing (generations of) eyeballs. (If you want a visual of the concoction, check out the illustrations that Wired magazine and Vice came up with.)

And it's clear that culinary stunts with meat started long before chefs were grilling steaks with molten lava. Take the cockentrice, a half-pig, half-turkey combo that rode the line between mythical beast and gastronomic masterpiece during the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century. It's been recreated by Richard Fitch, the project coordinator for the Historic Kitchens at Hampton Palace, who told Vice that while these dishes certainly weren't the norm, Henry VIII once served a cockentrice and a dolphin to the French King, Francis I. (As we've previously reported, royals of that era went to great lengths for a culinary thrill.)

And while the roti may seem freakish or excessive today, we do have the bacon-wrapped alligator, a sort of modern-day meat mummy.

For those who heart turducken, the demand is high enough that big box stores like Sam's Club and Costco now stock them. There's even a vegetarian version, if the stuffing concept floats your boat.

food history

Thanksgiving

i i

You need keen eyesight to spot yartsa gunbu when it sprouts in spring. Kids are very good harvesters. Michael S. Yamashita/National Geographic Society/Corbis hide caption

itoggle caption Michael S. Yamashita/National Geographic Society/Corbis

You need keen eyesight to spot yartsa gunbu when it sprouts in spring. Kids are very good harvesters.

Michael S. Yamashita/National Geographic Society/Corbis

People live for — and die because of — the "Viagra of the Himalayas."

That's the nickname for one of the weirdest fungi around.

It starts with the larva of the ghost moth — a caterpillar that lives underground. A fungus invades the larva, kills it and consumes the body. Just the outer skeleton remains.

Eventually, a small brown stalk erupts from the dead caterpillar's head. In the spring, the pinkie-sized stalk pokes an inch or two from the earth. That's when people across the Tibetan Plateau head to the high-alpine meadows to harvest the crazy-looking creature.

It's not just for the fun of it. For centuries, people have believed that the fungus known as "yartsa gunbu," literally "summer grass, winter worm," is an aphrodisiac. According to ancient Tibetan texts, men who eat it are promised "the delights of thousands of beautiful women." That's why top quality yartsa sells for around $2,000 an ounce – more than the price of gold. In China, yartsa is a status symbol.

And in Tibet, people fight over it. They sometimes even kill each other. In 2014, a dispute between the local community and a park management committee about the right to collect fees for access to yartsa gunbu led to two deaths.

Related NPR Stories

Caterpillar Fungus: The Viagra Of The Himalayas Oct. 9, 2011

Plus there's a risk that the demand will deplete the grasslands and alpine regions of the Tibetan Plateau. "Any resource of such immense value and key relevance to rural livelihoods as the main cash source runs the risk of being overexploited," says Daniel Winkler, an expert on Himalayan caterpillar fungus.

New research by Washington University associate professor Geoff Childs and graduate student Namgyal Choedup, published in the journal Himalaya, shows how two villages have found a way to sustainably (and peacefully) harvest the precious resource.

In Nubri, village leaders set a date for the start of the harvest. In the weeks prior, residents must check in at the community meeting house four times daily.

"The roll call is designed to thwart attempts by any individual to begin collecting earlier than others," the authors say. Since the trek to the nearest gathering ground is several hours away, it's nearly impossible to sneak off and dig for yartsa gunbu. There's also a heavy fine for those who don't check in.

While all residents in Nubri have a right to collect yartsa gunbu, each household is required to register any collectors and pay a corresponding tax — $1 for the first member and $53 for each additional members. That's not just pocket change in a part of the world where the yearly income can range from $24 to $3,500. The tax money funds repairs and services, from fixing the hydroelectric system to hiring a lama to perform an empowerment ritual.

Local rituals and certain Buddhist beliefs have helped keep the harvest under control. Religious decrees prohibit harvesting on certain sacred mountain slopes. This creates a natural sanctuary, ensuring that part of the landscape will remain undisturbed and allowing fungal spores to spread for the next season.

The village of Tsum prohibits outsiders from gathering yartsa gunbu. Locals are using the profits from yartsa gunbu sales to build lodges that cater to foreign tourists and also to purchase gold as a way to hold onto their yartsa wealth.

The money has been invaluable. In some cases, it makes up 80 percent of a household's income. "Tibetans are using the cash to improve their standard of living, and in some cases are reducing dependency on agro-pastoral activities by becoming entrepreneurs," Childs and Choedup write. Profits pay for everything from school supplies and DVDs to solar panels and gold jewelry.

But then there's all that tension to deal with. One man from the Nubri Valley told Childs and Choedup that "Earlier, we only had village meetings once or twice a year. Nowadays there are frequent meetings with more arguments between people, more squabbles. People are becoming selfish."

If Tibetans follow the example of the two forward-thinking villages, then maybe fungus gatherers can learn to get along with each other — and with Mother Nature.

yartsa gunbu

viagra

The turducken – a whole chicken stuffed inside a whole duck stuffed inside a whole turkey, all boneless — is a relatively recent culinary phenomenon. Though popularized in the last 20 years with the help of Louisiana's Chef Paul Prudhomme and John Madden, who brought one to a football game broadcast in 1997, the turducken actually builds on a long tradition of creative bird-into-bird stuffing.

Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de la Reynire, the world's first restaurant critic, in 1803 launched the Almanach des Gourmands, what the Paris-based dining historian Carolin Young calls the world's first serial food journal. He would edit and publish this best-selling guide to seasonal cooking and restaurants until 1812.

Like any good publisher, Grimod de la Reynire knew he needed to slide in some extra flair from time to time. And in 1807, he put out a recipe for rti sans pareil, the roast without equal.

The Salt

Frogs And Puffins! 1730s Menus Reveal Royals Were Extreme Foodies

The daredevil-ish recipe calls for a tiny warbler stuffed in a bunting, inserted in a lark, squeezed in a thrush, thrown in a quail, inserted in a lapwing, introduced to a plover, piled into partridge, wormed into a woodcock, shoehorned into a teal, kicked into a guinea fowl, rammed inside a duck, shoved into a chicken, jammed up in a pheasant, wedged deep inside a goose, logged into a turkey. And just when you think a 16-bird roast is probably enough, it's not. This meat sphere is finally crammed up into a Great Bustard, an Old World turkey-turned-wrapping paper, for this most epic of poultry meals.

Holiday Recipes

The Veggieducken: A Meatless Dish With Gravitas

While there's no record of anyone actually making the rti sans pareil, Grimod de la Reynire seemingly achieved what is every publisher's goal: capturing (generations of) eyeballs. (If you want a visual of the concoction, check out the illustrations that Wired and Vice came up with.)

And it's clear that culinary stunts with meat started long before chefs were grilling steaks with molten lava. Take the cockentrice, a half-pig, half-turkey combo that rode the line between mythical beast and gastronomic masterpiece during the reign of Henry VIII in the 16th century. It's been recreated by Richard Fitch, the project coordinator for the Historic Kitchens at Hampton Palace, who told Vice that while these dishes certainly weren't the norm, Henry VIII once served a cockentrice and a dolphin to the French King, Francis I. (As we've previously reported, royals of that era went to great lengths for a culinary thrill.)

And while the roti may seem freakish or excessive today, we do have the bacon-wrapped alligator, a sort of modern-day meat mummy.

For those who heart turducken, the demand is high enough that big box stores like Sam's Club and Costco now stock them. There's even a vegetarian version, if the stuffing concept floats your boat.

Thanksgiving

When Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) first entered politics in the 1960s, he started out as moderate — pro-abortion rights, pro-union, in support of the civil rights movement. With time, McConnell shifted to the right as the Republican Party shifted.

"I was just really startled by this when I started looking into it," Alec MacGillis tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I knew that he had started out as somewhat more moderate — but I didn't realize just how moderate he really was."

The Cynic

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MacGillis's new book The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell traces how McConnell became one of the most powerful politicians in the country — and it examines McConnell's evolution as a politician.

In the 1960s, McConnell was "firmly pro-abortion rights," says MacGillis.

"In his first elected office in Louisville, Ky., as county executive in Louisville, he repeatedly snuffed out anti-abortion bills that were coming through his office — didn't even let them come up for a vote or a hearing," he says.

But in 1984, McConnell barely won his seat in the Senate — by fewer than 5,000 votes.

"There was no question what had happened — that McConnell had won basically on the coattails of Ronald Reagan," MacGillis says. "And McConnell looked at that very, very close result and basically thought to himself, 'You know what? I don't want it to ever be this close again. I see where the Republican Party is heading; I see where my state is heading; I see where the South is heading politically — and I need to get on that train.' "

McConnell, who has been the Senate minority leader since 2007, will become the majority leader when the new term starts in January.

And according to MacGillis, "This is what he's dreamed about since he was a very, very young man ... and now he's about to achieve that dream."

Interview Highlights

On McConnell's political positions when he first entered politics in the 1960s

There was a big battle back in the Republican Party in the '60s between the conservative wing and a still quite strong moderate wing. This is, of course, during the time of Barry Goldwater's 1964 nomination to the party coming from the conservative wing. But there was still a very, very strong moderate contingent of the party and Mitch McConnell was completely on that side of the line.

He was very firmly pro-union. In his first election back in 1977 in Louisville, he got the endorsement of the AFL-CIO because he backed collective bargaining for public employees, which is something even a lot of Democrats today don't support. He sought out the head of the AFL-CIO at the bowling alley in Louisville and sweet-talked him and got his support.

He was very firmly in support of the civil rights movement, which back in Kentucky was not necessarily the obvious thing to do. He, as a student, would show up at civil rights rallies and was very much in favor of the legislation in Washington in the '60s.

On how McConnell embodies the changes in the Republican Party over the past 30 years

McConnell, to me, embodies two things in politics today: One is the transformation of the Republican Party from a party that used to have quite a few moderate and liberal members and Northern liberal Republicans — Midwestern moderate Republicans — into a party that is now much more monolithically conservative and really Southern-dominated.

“ It's not so much what you do when you're in power in Washington; it's what you do to position yourself for the next time around. ... That mindset has become very prevalent. It's bipartisan and it also suffuses the media — but McConnell embodies it really more than anybody else.

- Alec MacGillis, The New Republic

McConnell really embodies that shift because he himself has evolved with that transformation just to a tee. But at the same time ... he embodies for me the mindset that has become more and more dominant in Washington today ... which is the permanent campaign mindset.

It's the mindset that all that really matters is the next election, the next cycle. It's not so much what you do when you're in power in Washington; it's what you do to position yourself for the next time around, your next re-election, your party's next election cycle. That mindset has become very prevalent. It's bipartisan and it also suffuses the media — but McConnell embodies it really more than anybody else.

On McConnell figuring out how to use the rules of the Senate to benefit his party

He is a master of Senate procedure. That's one of his real strengths. ... He just has studied it very, very closely. [He's] studied how it works ... and figured out how you could use ... [the rules] within this sort of very vague culture-based and nebulous realm of the Senate where these rules are not necessarily written down anywhere — some of them are, but others are just things that have carried over in tradition and culture of the institution. He's figured out how you can use these procedures — and also the customs that have built up over time to really slow things down and gum up the works in ways that hadn't been done before.

On how McConnell lined up support for leadership posts in the Senate

More On Mitch McConnell

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McConnell Concedes GOP Senate Will Not Mean Obamacare Repeal

It's something he campaigned for more aggressively than just about anyone before him. His colleagues in the Senate were struck to see just how determined and eager he was to climb the ladder. And what he would do is he would start quite early, several years before the elections for these various leadership posts, he would start strategizing in how to win those elections. He had a wingman, his colleague [former Sen.] Bob Bennett from Utah ... [who] would go out a year or two in advance and start trying to count up votes and feel people out on whether they would support Mitch or someone else. ...

Again, McConnell was not the most naturally popular or beloved person within his caucus, so he really needed help from someone else to kind of go out and line up those votes for him. They would badmouth the opposition and various rivals for various jobs ... really, in a junior high school kind of way — trying to line up support so that when the time came for the elections for the various leadership posts high up the ladder, it suddenly would become clear that McConnell had, in fact, lined up just enough support to get the job.

Soccer's governing body said today it will further review the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, reopening for scrutiny the mechanism by which Russia and Qatar were awarded the tournaments.

FIFA said Michael Garcia, an American prosecutor, and Hans-Joachim Eckert, a German judge, met today in Zurich and agreed to hand over Garcia's 430-page report to Domenico Scala, the independent chairman of FIFA's financial monitoring body. Scala, The Associated Press reports, would "then recommend details of the confidential dossier for discussion by FIFA's executive committee." That committee meets in Morocco on Dec. 18 for a two-day session.

Eckert, in a report last week, cleared Russia and Qatar of corruption in their controversial winning bids. Garcia criticized Eckert's report, calling it "incomplete and erroneous" and appealed to FIFA.

In a related development on Tuesday, FIFA said it had lodged a criminal complaint against individuals in connection with the two World Cups.

"In particular there seem to be grounds for suspicion that, in isolated cases, international transfers of assets with connections to Switzerland took place, which merit examination by the criminal prosecution authorities," FIFA said in a statement.

Today's development comes as Phaedra Almajid, a former Qatari bid worker, told The Associated Press in an interview that her treatment by FIFA would deter other whistleblowers from coming forward.

The AP adds: "Almajid alleged in 2011 that three FIFA executive committee members were paid $1.5 million each to vote for Qatar. She was named in a July 2011 statement in which she retracted her claims of corruption but says she was coerced to do so by unidentified Qatari officials."

Eckert had said Almajid and Australian whistleblower Bonita Mersiades lacked credibility.

In an interview with the BBC, Almajid said her allegations against Qatar will cause her to "look over my shoulder for the rest of my life."

FIFA World Cup

FIFA

Soccer

Football

Qatar

Russia

Her eyes met the camera. She was there. And yet she wasn't there.

That's how NPR photographer David Gilkey remembers the moment last Saturday when he took a picture of Baby Sesay, a 45-year-old traditional healer in the village of Royail in Sierra Leone.

Goats and Soda

A Deadly Chain: Tracing Ebola In A Sierra Leone Village

Sesay had tried to cure a sick little boy. The boy died, likely of Ebola. Then Sesay herself fell ill. She had come to a community care center a few hours earlier, walking in under her own power, to be tested for the virus.

The man who runs the center called her out to talk with Gilkey and NPR correspondent Nurith Aizenman. Standing behind two rows of fencing, Sesay moved slowly but otherwise seemed OK. Gilkey was standing about 15 feet away.

Two days later, Gilkey learned that Baby Sesay had died.

What were you feeling when you took that photograph?

She's staring right toward me, but her eyes clearly are looking somewhere else. One of the weird things in covering Ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone is that you don't see a lot of suspected cases. This was really someone who had Ebola staring you right in the eye.

And that was very unusual.

Why don't you see a lot of suspected cases?

When they're at a point when they've fallen that ill, you don't have access to them. Normally they're either at home or behind tarp fencing at a holding facility. There was a little tiny break in the fence, and she happened to be standing there. We just happened to walk up to the wrong place at the wrong time, if you want to call it that.

Did you ever think maybe you shouldn't be taking her picture?

I only took a few pictures. I guess I felt sort of ... I don't how to describe it. I felt like I wanted her to not be standing there.

i i

Ten-year-old Saah Exco was found on a beach in Liberia's West Point slum, abandoned and naked, a likely Ebola victim. Our photographer made a picture and hoped the child would recover. A day later, the boy died. David Gilkey/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption David Gilkey/NPR

Ten-year-old Saah Exco was found on a beach in Liberia's West Point slum, abandoned and naked, a likely Ebola victim. Our photographer made a picture and hoped the child would recover. A day later, the boy died.

David Gilkey/NPR

But I also feel like, look, this is what Ebola does to you, and this is something that maybe we need to see. We see survivor pictures. We see the dead. But very rarely do you see someone clearly being affected by Ebola.

Did you think she was going to die?

We all felt like she was in a place where there was at least a possibility she was going to get help. You always leave [these situations] with hope that people are going to be OK. But 48 hours later, Ebola got her. This is the second time this has happened [in covering Ebola]. In Liberia, I photographed a little boy and found out a day later he had died.

Are you sorry you took the picture?

Reporting On Ebola: An Abandoned 10-Year-Old, A Nervous Neighborhood

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Look, I just feel horrible that that was the outcome. I don't regret taking the picture. I feel it's important for people to see what's going on in Sierra Leone. And right now Ebola is really surging in the capital and the rural areas to the north.

In the NPR report that aired this week, Baby Sesay said, "My body weak, I have a headache." Then her body grew rigid, her hands locked on a pole, her eyes were wide and frozen, she was breathing heavily.

The poor woman's about to collapse. The natural response is to jump over the fence and give her a hand, and yet you just can't do that. You really feel helpless here on a lot of levels. We did immediately cut the interview short and urged the man running the facility to tell her to go back inside and lie down.

Have there been other assignments where you photographed someone who died soon after?

Yes, in military situations. But not in a way where it seems so personal. Because she was staring at me.

Sierra Leone

ebola

The United States has transferred five detainees being held at its prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Georgia and Slovakia.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, four of the men are Yemeni and that is important because they are the first Yemeni prisoners to be transferred since 2010. The paper explains:

"The U.S. banned transfers of Yemeni detainees to Yemen after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , a Nigerian man, attempted to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with an underwear bomb made by a Yemen-based terror group.

"Yemeni detainees are the largest group in Guantanamo, and transferring those detainees from the prison remains an obstacle to closing it, according to human rights advocates.

"There now are 143 men held at Guantanamo, including 84 Yemen nationals, according to the Pentagon. Of the Yemenis held at the prison, 54 are eligible to be transferred from Guantanamo and have been cleared for release, the Pentagon said."

If you remember, President Obama has repeatedly vowed to close the Guantanamo prison, but congressional Republicans have opposed those attempts.

The Associated Press explains that despite that, Congress eased restrictions on transferring detainees to countries willing to keep an eye on them.

The AP adds:

"A number of resettlements are expected in the coming weeks. U.S. State Department envoy Clifford Sloan has been trying to persuade countries to accept prisoners, and he praised Georgia and Slovakia.

"'We are very grateful to our partners for these generous humanitarian gestures,' Sloan said. 'We appreciate the strong support we are receiving from our friends and allies around the globe.'

"Georgia took three prisoners from Guantanamo in 2010. Slovakia has taken a total of eight men from Guantanamo."

Yemen

Guantanamo Bay

On Sept. 9, BJ Holloway's life savings were stolen. Six cows worth about $10,000 were taken in the dead of the night from his land in Spencer, Okla.

BJ started raising cows when he was just a teenager. His parents gave him the first two, and he raised those until they had calves he could sell off to buy some more. Over the years, he kept doing that, breeding the cows and selling off the little ones. Raising cows is a business for BJ, and all of his savings are wrapped up in them, which made the theft of the cows absolutely devastating.

"It really hit me that night when everything is quiet in the house ... knowing your investment is gone," said Holloway. "If you ever had anything taken away from you that you worked all your life to try to create — all the sudden, it's gone."

BJ had no idea who took his cattle. And here in Oklahoma, when cows are stolen, lots of times, you never find the thief. The cows all look alike, and BJ hadn't branded of all his cattle, meaning there wasn't any way to tell who they belonged to.

Luckily for BJ, cattle cop Jerry Flowers was on the case.

Jerry Flowers' official job title is chief special agent in charge of the law enforcement section for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture. Jerry is a cowboy through and though. He and his team have an unofficial uniform of starched jeans, starched shirts, "wore-out boots, and a clean, white hat."

i i

Chief Agent Jerry Flowers' says good guys "wear white hats." Nick Oxford for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Nick Oxford for NPR

Chief Agent Jerry Flowers' says good guys "wear white hats."

Nick Oxford for NPR

Jerry got turned on to BJ's case by the owner of the local cattle auction house, OKC West. The owner of OKC West, Bill Barnhart, called Jerry after getting an anonymous tip, a phone call, from someone saying that a man named C. Wright was stealing cattle.

When Jerry looked up C. Wright in the auction house records, he found that the same day BJ's six cows were stolen, C. Wright came into the auction house with six cows to sell. And the cows that C. Wright sold were the same kind of cows that were stolen from BJ.

Jerry been waiting a couple weeks for C. Wright to strike again, and eventually he got another call from the auction house saying C. Wright had shown up and dropped off three more cows.

Buyers examine cattle for auction at OKC West Livestock Market in El Reno, Okla. Nick Oxford for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Nick Oxford for NPR

Jerry watched surveillance video of C. Wright making the drop. And the video shows just how easy it is to sell stolen cattle. In the video, C. Wright gets out of the truck, says a few words to the auction house employee, and the three cows run out of the trailer into the pens to be sold. That's it. No one checks any paperwork, and C. Wright doesn't have to prove he owns the cows. This is the way they do business here in Oklahoma. It's a handshake. It's based on trust.

After Jerry watched the video, he sat in the parking lot of the auction house waiting for C. Wright to show up. Jerry knew he would be back to pick up the money for the three cows he thought the auction house had sold for him.

Jerry watched and waited until C. Wright's truck pulled in. When it did, Jerry approached the truck and got C. Wright and his friend to confess to stealing the three cows in under 20 minutes. They also confessed to taking BJ's six cows.

Later C. Wright and his friend told me stealing cows is easy. They said all you have to do is walk into the pasture with some food in a bucket. You shake the bucket at the cows, and they come over. Once you've got them in the pen — you back up your livestock trailer and chase the cows inside.

"Once they in, I shut my gate, put everything back like it was, and I'm gone," C. Wright told me. He said stealing three cows took about 30 minutes, and it seemed like a perfect crime.

Out here on these ranches there are very few houses, very few people to catch thieves in the act. C. Wright and his friend made a calculation. The amount of money you can get for the stolen cows is high. The chance of getting caught is low.

Which makes you wonder why the ranchers out here don't do more to protect their cattle. They could beef up security by putting in cameras. They could put RFID tags in the cows so they could always know where they are. They could brand all their cattle so auction houses know who they belong to.

Brands from ranches around Oklahoma hang on the wall at OKC West Livestock Market in El Reno, Okla. Nick Oxford for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Nick Oxford for NPR

But the ranchers out here are doing their own calculation. Sure, they could spend the money on RFID chips and security, but for them, cow thefts are still rare enough that it doesn't make economic sense to do that.

Jerry says C. Wright and his friend will be charged next week. They face jail time.

As for BJ, he's unlikely to get his cows back. He could get some money back from the auction house's insurance, but he's still waiting to hear if that will actually happen.

This story is part of the New Boom series on millennials in America.

Welcome to boot camp for the young and unemployed in McAllen, Texas.

"We're going to go ahead and do this," says instructor Marco Lopez, leading a small classroom of millennials through do's and don'ts for job seekers inside a strip mall near McAllen.

In this area, only half of people ages 20 to 24 have a job, according to the Brookings Institution, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. In fact, among the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S., the McAllen area has the lowest employment rate for young millennials. The numbers aren't much better for older millennials between 25 and 34. Their employment rate is just 68 percent, placing the area 95th out of 100 by that measure.

i i

The McAllen metro area of Texas has the lowest employment rate for millennials ages 20-24 among the 100 largest metro areas in the country. Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images

The McAllen metro area of Texas has the lowest employment rate for millennials ages 20-24 among the 100 largest metro areas in the country.

Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images

The statistics are troubling to 20-year-old Dennis Trejo.

"I feel that extra pressure against me," says Trejo, a participant in this workshop for unemployed millennials with little or no work experience.

After a week of training at the Workforce Solutions Center in Edinburg, Texas, he spends a few months working for the local government. It's temporary, but it's also a rare chance, he says, to start building a legitimate career in his hometown.

"I've had a lot of opportunities to get affiliated with the gang here or get in with the cartels in Mexico," explains Trejo, who adds that it's easier to join a gang than to get a job.

Trejo says he wants to join law enforcement one day. He finally received his high school diploma this year after dropping out of high school at 17.

"I really want to be someone in life, because my mom never finished school. My dad never finished school. Most of my family, my uncles never finished school," he says.

'I Need To Get Out Of Here'

"Not many people get to graduate from high school. The few that do don't always find themselves fit for college — like, they feel like they can't do it," says 20-year-old Misty Miller, a student at the University of Texas-Pan American, located just north of McAllen.

Miller, like the majority of residents in the area, is Mexican-American. She says family ties keep many millennials in the area even when job opportunities are scarce.

"Most Mexican kids don't leave home until they're married, if they have a good job or not," she says. "It's just being with your family."

Family drew 30-year-old Olmo Maldonado back to McAllen. His first big break in the tech industry came in California, where he worked as a software engineering intern at Google. At that time, he didn't see a future in the Rio Grande Valley.

"I was really skeptical and pessimistic about the Valley," he says. "My rule of thumb was I need to get out of here as quickly as possible."

That changed after Maldonado came home to help run his mother's marketing company for what was supposed to be a few months. Now, almost five years later, he's working to inspire other millennials, leading monthly "Tech Tuesdays" talks by local entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists.

He wants to add technology to sectors like health care, government and tourism that drive the economy here. As more local leaders in McAllen retire, he says, he sees opportunities for a new generation.

"We can take part in boards. We can be part in legislation," he says. "We can be part in a lot of activities."

'I'll Be Needed Here'

"There is potential here, but not necessarily potential for college students graduating," says Leilani De Leon, 22, who is set to graduate from UTPA next year with a marketing degree.

Born and raised in McAllen, De Leon says she's ready to relocate for her career.

"I am open to going anywhere," she says. "If I got to leave, I got to leave."

For the area to prosper, millennials who do leave need to eventually come back, according to UTPA economics professor Salvador Contreras. He says McAllen's geography — 300 miles away from San Antonio, the nearest major U.S. city — puts the area at a disadvantage.

"The area as a whole is depressed. Millennials, along with Generation X-ers and so on and so forth, everybody's in the same boat," he says.

Contreras says McAllen's population has grown faster than economic development here. That means, for now, there aren't enough good-paying jobs to go around. Highly skilled millennials, he says, will be key to helping break this cycle of poverty in the future.

Miller, the UTPA student, believes she can play a role now. She plans to stay put after graduation and help the community overcome health issues like high obesity rates.

"I am studying nutrition," Miller explains. "So I think I'll be needed here."

And so will other millennials.

Obesity used to be an issue primarily in well-off countries. It was one of those things flippantly dismissed as a "first-world problem." Now people are packing on the pounds all over the planet. In some fast-growing cities in China, for example, half the people are now overweight.

A new report from the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company finds that more than 2.1 billion people nearly 30 percent of the world's population are overweight (a bit chubby) or obese (just plain fat).

The Salt

In China, Finding A New Way To Eat In Times Of Plenty

Over the last decade, no country in the world managed to trim its obesity prevalence. Some of the worst rates of obesity are now in the developing world.

"It seems that many of the emerging markets that are on this phenomenally fast growth trajectory are on an even faster obesity trajectory," says Richard Dobbs, the head of the McKinsey Global Institute and one of the authors of the obesity report.

Indeed, the number of people categorized as excessively heavy is growing faster than the buffet line at a Vegas casino. The report predicts that if current trends continue, 41 percent of adults in the world will be overweight by the year 2030. The report also finds that burgeoning waistlines have a ripple effect.

"This is a massive global economic issue," says Dobbs. "It's largely been left to the health people but actually it's having a huge economic effect and there really hasn't been a systematic view of how to address it."

The McKinsey report estimates the economic impact of obesity around the world at $2 trillion a year. Part of that figure is the cost of caring for diseases that are linked to obesity, like Type 2 diabetes. But there's an even bigger cost in "the loss of productivity," Dobbs says. "People suffering from obesity often work less. They have to take more time off sick. They retire early or even die early."

The United States has the highest obesity rate in the world: 34.9 percent. And while Americans are known for enjoying fast food and being "big," the other countries in the top five fattest nations might surprise you: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico and South Africa.

Dobbs says it's going to take far more than banning super-size sodas to address what the new report calls a "critical global issue."

"The challenge we have with addressing obesity is we are fighting thousands of years of evolution," he says. "Our bodies have a natural inclination to want to horde energy when we have it available. [We want] to horde food and to horde fat."

Programs to get individuals to eat right and exercise more must be a part of any weight loss effort. But the report makes it clear that focusing just on the eating habits of the morbidly obese — in other words, blaming the victim — won't solve anything.

This growing global problem is result of social and economic changes that have swept the world over the last century.

Food, for instance, is relatively far cheaper than it used to be.

"In the United States, the share of average household income spent on food fell from 42 percent in 1900 to 30 percent in 1950 and to 13.5 percent in 2003," the report notes.

McKinsey and Co suggests 74 interventions to combat the obesity crisis — from simple things like requiring food labels to include calorie counts to plans to overhaul urban transportation systems to discourage cars.

Changing what's in your refrigerator will also help.

"Personally I know if there's cheese in the fridge, I eat it," Dobbs says. "If I open the fridge and there's not cheese there, I eat the celery."

overweight

obesity

What would you do with thousands of tons of leftover nutshells? It's a question that Turkey — the world's third-biggest producer of pistachios, behind Iran and the United States — has been asking itself for years.

Usually discarded pistachio shells end up in landfills, but nut-loving Turks think they've found a far better solution by turning it into biogas, an alternative fuel produced by the breakdown of organic matter.

Now Turkey wants to use pistachio shells to power its first eco-city, which will require fermenting tons of the green waste in so-called digesters, and then using the resulting gases — mostly methane — to generate heat.

i i

A rendering of Turkey's first "eco-city," will be founded between Gaziantep and Kilis province on Turkey's border with Syria in the country's southern Gaziantep region. Anadolu Agency/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

A rendering of Turkey's first "eco-city," will be founded between Gaziantep and Kilis province on Turkey's border with Syria in the country's southern Gaziantep region.

Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The idea is not as odd as it sounds. For starters, the green city will be built in what's arguably the best possible location: Gaziantep Province. This southern region near the Syrian border is the heart of Turkey's pistachio production, yielding more than half of the country's nuts.

"When you plan such environment-friendly systems, you take a look at the natural resources you have. So we thought the ecological city could be heated by burning pistachio shells," explains Seda Muftuoglu Gulec, the municipality's expert on green architecture. "If the region was abundant in wind power, we would use wind energy."

This peculiar source of energy is renewable and cheap because Turkey has plenty of shells to go around, so much so that it exported 6,800 tons of pistachios last year — 500 tons shy of the weight of the Eiffel Tower — according to the Southeast Anatolia Exporters Union.

Experts say turning pistachios into biogas, while untested, is not only technically feasible but also extremely convenient. Burgeap, the French environmental engineering company that first proposed the idea to the government, claims that nutshells are the most efficient source of alternative energy in the region and could satisfy up to 60 percent of the city's heating needs.

The planned 7,900-acre, nut-fueled city will be six miles from the province's capital city, Gaziantep, and is expected to become home to 200,000 people.

This is Turkey's first attempt at building an eco-city, and it will be the only one in the world that's heated by pistachios — although in Australia macadamia nutshells are already being turned into biomass. Meanwhile, in Monterrey, Mexico, the methane generated from decaying garbage is being converted into electricity to illuminate city lights.

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Green cities being built in other countries are based on other renewable sources. In China, for example, Tianjin Eco-city will be finished by 2020, with most of its energy coming from solar panels. In India, Narendra Modi wants to build Dholera, a "smart city" twice the size of Mumbai that would be powered by various renewable energies, including wind. But skeptics doubt these idealistic projects will ever be fully realized, insisting that the plans are too expensive and detached from local reality.

For now, Gaziantep's municipality is waiting for the results of exhaustive feasibility reports. Gulec says it's too soon to estimate how much it will cost, but if the project gets greenlighted, construction of the new city will start in the next two years.

A pilot scheme will start with a 135-acre piece of land and, if successful, expand into an entire city during the next following two decades. If the project bears fruit, it might inspire other agricultural regions to look at how to convert what they typically consider waste into fuel for the future.

biogas

food waste

Turkey

On Sept. 9, BJ Holloway's life savings were stolen. Six cows worth about $10,000 were taken in the dead of the night from his land in Spencer, Okla.

BJ started raising cows when he was just a teenager. His parents gave him the first two, and he raised those until they had calves he could sell off to buy some more. Over the years, he kept doing that, breeding the cows and selling off the little ones. Raising cows is a business for BJ, and all of his savings are wrapped up in them, which made the theft of the cows absolutely devastating.

"It really hit me that night when everything is quiet in the house ... knowing your investment is gone," said Holloway. "If you ever had anything taken away from you that you worked all your life to try to create — all the sudden, it's gone."

BJ had no idea who took his cattle. And here in Oklahoma, when cows are stolen, lots of times, you never find the thief. The cows all look alike, and BJ hadn't branded of all his cattle, meaning there wasn't any way to tell who they belonged to.

Luckily for BJ, cattle cop Jerry Flowers was on the case.

Jerry Flowers' official job title is chief special agent in charge of the law enforcement section for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture. Jerry is a cowboy through and though. He and his team have an unofficial uniform of starched jeans, starched shirts, "wore-out boots, and a clean, white hat."

i i

Chief Agent Jerry Flowers' says good guys "wear white hats." Nick Oxford for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Nick Oxford for NPR

Chief Agent Jerry Flowers' says good guys "wear white hats."

Nick Oxford for NPR

Jerry got turned on to BJ's case by the owner of the local cattle auction house, OKC West. The owner of OKC West, Bill Barnhart, called Jerry after getting an anonymous tip, a phone call, from someone saying that a man named C. Wright was stealing cattle.

When Jerry looked up C. Wright in the auction house records, he found that the same day BJ's six cows were stolen, C. Wright came into the auction house with six cows to sell. And the cows that C. Wright sold were the same kind of cows that were stolen from BJ.

Jerry been waiting a couple weeks for C. Wright to strike again, and eventually he got another call from the auction house saying C. Wright had shown up and dropped off three more cows.

Buyers examine cattle for auction at OKC West Livestock Market in El Reno, Okla. Nick Oxford for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Nick Oxford for NPR

Jerry watched surveillance video of C. Wright making the drop. And the video shows just how easy it is to sell stolen cattle. In the video, C. Wright gets out of the truck, says a few words to the auction house employee, and the three cows run out of the trailer into the pens to be sold. That's it. No one checks any paperwork, and C. Wright doesn't have to prove he owns the cows. This is the way they do business here in Oklahoma. It's a handshake. It's based on trust.

After Jerry watched the video, he sat in the parking lot of the auction house waiting for C. Wright to show up. Jerry knew he would be back to pick up the money for the three cows he thought the auction house had sold for him.

Jerry watched and waited until C. Wright's truck pulled in. When it did, Jerry approached the truck and got C. Wright and his friend to confess to stealing the three cows in under 20 minutes. They also confessed to taking BJ's six cows.

Later C. Wright and his friend told me stealing cows is easy. They said all you have to do is walk into the pasture with some food in a bucket. You shake the bucket at the cows, and they come over. Once you've got them in the pen — you back up your livestock trailer and chase the cows inside.

"Once they in, I shut my gate, put everything back like it was, and I'm gone," C. Wright told me. He said stealing three cows took about 30 minutes, and it seemed like a perfect crime.

Out here on these ranches there are very few houses, very few people to catch thieves in the act. C. Wright and his friend made a calculation. The amount of money you can get for the stolen cows is high. The chance of getting caught is low.

Which makes you wonder why the ranchers out here don't do more to protect their cattle. They could beef up security by putting in cameras. They could put RFID tags in the cows so they could always know where they are. They could brand all their cattle so auction houses know who they belong to.

Brands from ranches around Oklahoma hang on the wall at OKC West Livestock Market in El Reno, Okla. Nick Oxford for NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Nick Oxford for NPR

But the ranchers out here are doing their own calculation. Sure, they could spend the money on RFID chips and security, but for them, cow thefts are still rare enough that it doesn't make economic sense to do that.

Jerry says C. Wright and his friend will be charged next week. They face jail time.

As for BJ, he's unlikely to get his cows back. He could get some money back from the auction house's insurance, but he's still waiting to hear if that will actually happen.

He died Wednesday night of a heart attack at age 83, acknowledged as one of the most successful artists in show business. He had earned just about every major award in entertainment, and had an enduring, 26-year marriage to ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer and a family with three children and four grandchildren.

But Nichols once said his life as the ultimate showbiz insider came from lessons learned while growing up as an outsider — emigrating from Germany to New York City at age 7 knowing little English and having few friends.

One of Nichols' greatest talents was pulling unforgettable, landmark performances from Hollywood's acting elite.

In 1966, he delivered Elizabeth Taylor as a sharp-tongued wife tearing into Richard Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? "You see, George didn't have much push, he wasn't particularly aggressive," Taylor says in the film, playing the hard-drinking wife of a college professor whom she loved to torment with harsh criticism. "In fact, he was sort of a flop — a great, big, fat flop!"

YouTube

In 1986, he showcased Meryl Streep slowly unraveling as she talked about her philandering husband, played by Jack Nicholson, in Heartburn.

Her character, a food writer, sits at a dinner party with her husband and friends when talk about relationships leads her to get real about her own marriage: "You sort of notice that things are not the way they were, but it's a ... a distant bell, and then when things do turn out to have been wrong, it's not that you knew all along, it was just that you were ... uh, uh ... somewhere else." The scene ends with Streep hitting Nicholson in the face with a pie intended for dessert.

YouTube

But little compared to Nichols' most famous scene, featuring Dustin Hoffman in his breakout role, playing a bewildered 20-something about to begin an unwise affair with an older, married woman in 1967's The Graduate.

"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me," Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock tells Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's law partner, who is stretched out in a seductive pose that became an iconic symbol for a generation.

YouTube

Nichols was a master at pushing talents like Hoffman and Streep to unexpected places. Their confused characters often highlighted thorny issues in modern life. In The Graduate, Hoffman became a symbol of baby boomers' uncertainty in a changing world, suffering through useless advice from clueless elders.

But Nichols shrugged off credit for leading actors to great performances in a 1990 interview for the Museum of the Moving Image.

"You can't direct actors very much in a movie, because if you tell them what to do, they'll be doing what you told them," he said. "What's interesting in a movie is something happening that nobody planned."

Nichols understood American culture as only someone born outside the U.S. really could.

He was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Germany, the son of a Russian Jew who fled the Nazis in 1939. His physician father died a few years later, leaving a wife and two sons to struggle in New York City.

In 2012, Nichols told NPR his early isolation brought a lifelong advantage.

"The thing about being an outsider, no matter what, is that there's a good part, which is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking," he said.

"Because I learned to hear what people are thinking, quite literally, I think it stood me in good stead," Nichols added. "It's probably why I'm in the theater, because I can hear an audience. ... I could hear an audience thinking when I was in front of them."

That skill at "reading" audiences was crucial when Nichols turned from medical studies to theater in college. By the late 1950s, he had teamed with actress/writer Elaine May to create the improvisational comedy duo Nichols and May. They were all over the TV shows of the day, including The Jack Paar Show.

But performing lost its luster for Nichols, so in 1963, he agreed to direct a play by a TV joke writer. Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park became a blockbuster success.

i i

Nichols (left) and playwright Neil Simon pose together after a show rehearsal in March 1968 in New York City. AP hide caption

itoggle caption AP

Nichols (left) and playwright Neil Simon pose together after a show rehearsal in March 1968 in New York City.

AP

Suddenly, as Nichols told NPR, he realized directing was the job he was really meant to do: "To my surprise, where I never quite got how I was gonna be an actor — 'cause I don't think I'm suited to be an actor — I immediately realized that all this time I thought I was thinking about acting, I was really thinking about directing."

“ To my surprise, where I never quite got how I was gonna be an actor — 'cause I don't think I'm suited to be an actor — I immediately realized that all this time I thought I was thinking about acting, I was really thinking about directing.

- Director Mike Nichols

You could spend a long afternoon listing all the classic stage, film and TV projects Nichols touched as a director or producer. The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, Hurlyburly and Spamalot on Broadway; movies like Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, Working Girl and Primary Colors; along with versions of Wit and Angels in America for HBO on TV.

At times, Nichols could seem like a showbiz version of Zelig. He co-produced Broadway's original, 1977 version of the hit musical Annie and gave Whoopi Goldberg a career in the mid '80s when he brought her one-woman show to Broadway.

So it makes sense that Nichols would be one of only 12 artists to become what industry types call an EGOT — someone who has won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.

More On Mike Nichols

Performing Arts

Mike Nichols: 'Salesman' By Day, Artist Always

Theater

Mike Nichols Warns 'Death' May Be His Final Curtain

But when Nichols talked with NPR about why he loved directing, grand honors weren't a big part of the equation.

"It's a wonderful job," he said. "It's exploring and excavating and analyzing all at once. And plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time, and that's the great excitement."

Despite passion for his work and loads of success, Nichols said, it took his fourth wife, ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, to rescue him from depression in his mid-50s. By 2012, he was predicting his production of Death of a Salesman, which won him his sixth Tony award, might be his last play.

But a year later, he was back on Broadway, leading a revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal; he had worked on adapting a version of the Tony-winning play Master Class for HBO with Meryl Streep before his death.

Ultimately, Nichols couldn't stay away, his passion for the work still driving him after more than five decades at the top of the industry.

He died Wednesday night of a heart attack at age 83, acknowledged as one of the most successful artists in show business. He had earned just about every major award in entertainment, and had an enduring, 26-year marriage to ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer and a family with three children and four grandchildren.

But Nichols once said his life as the ultimate showbiz insider came from lessons learned while growing up as an outsider — emigrating from Germany to New York City at age 7 knowing little English and having few friends.

One of Nichols' greatest talents was pulling unforgettable, landmark performances from Hollywood's acting elite.

In 1966, he delivered Elizabeth Taylor as a sharp-tongued wife tearing into Richard Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? "You see, George didn't have much push, he wasn't particularly aggressive," Taylor says in the film, playing the hard-drinking wife of a college professor whom she loved to torment with harsh criticism. "In fact, he was sort of a flop — a great, big, fat flop!"

YouTube

In 1986, he showcased Meryl Streep slowly unraveling as she talked about her philandering husband, played by Jack Nicholson, in Heartburn.

Her character, a food writer, sits at a dinner party with her husband and friends when talk about relationships leads her to get real about her own marriage: "You sort of notice that things are not the way they were, but it's a ... a distant bell, and then when things do turn out to have been wrong, it's not that you knew all along, it was just that you were ... uh, uh ... somewhere else." The scene ends with Streep hitting Nicholson in the face with a pie intended for dessert.

YouTube

But little compared to Nichols' most famous scene, featuring Dustin Hoffman in his breakout role, playing a bewildered 20-something about to begin an unwise affair with an older, married woman in 1967's The Graduate.

"Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me," Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock tells Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's law partner, who is stretched out in a seductive pose that became an iconic symbol for a generation.

YouTube

Nichols was a master at pushing talents like Hoffman and Streep to unexpected places. Their confused characters often highlighted thorny issues in modern life. In The Graduate, Hoffman became a symbol of baby boomers' uncertainty in a changing world, suffering through useless advice from clueless elders.

But Nichols shrugged off credit for leading actors to great performances in a 1990 interview for the Museum of the Moving Image.

"You can't direct actors very much in a movie, because if you tell them what to do, they'll be doing what you told them," he said. "What's interesting in a movie is something happening that nobody planned."

Nichols understood American culture as only someone born outside the U.S. really could.

He was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Germany, the son of a Russian Jew who fled the Nazis in 1939. His physician father died a few years later, leaving a wife and two sons to struggle in New York City.

In 2012, Nichols told NPR his early isolation brought a lifelong advantage.

"The thing about being an outsider, no matter what, is that there's a good part, which is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking," he said.

"Because I learned to hear what people are thinking, quite literally, I think it stood me in good stead," Nichols added. "It's probably why I'm in the theater, because I can hear an audience. ... I could hear an audience thinking when I was in front of them."

That skill at "reading" audiences was crucial when Nichols turned from medical studies to theater in college. By the late 1950s, he had teamed with actress/writer Elaine May to create the improvisational comedy duo Nichols and May. They were all over the TV shows of the day, including The Jack Paar Show.

But performing lost its luster for Nichols, so in 1963, he agreed to direct a play by a TV joke writer. Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park became a blockbuster success.

i i

Nichols (left) and playwright Neil Simon pose together after a show rehearsal in March 1968 in New York City. AP hide caption

itoggle caption AP

Nichols (left) and playwright Neil Simon pose together after a show rehearsal in March 1968 in New York City.

AP

Suddenly, as Nichols told NPR, he realized directing was the job he was really meant to do: "To my surprise, where I never quite got how I was gonna be an actor — 'cause I don't think I'm suited to be an actor — I immediately realized that all this time I thought I was thinking about acting, I was really thinking about directing."

“ To my surprise, where I never quite got how I was gonna be an actor — 'cause I don't think I'm suited to be an actor — I immediately realized that all this time I thought I was thinking about acting, I was really thinking about directing.

- Director Mike Nichols

You could spend a long afternoon listing all the classic stage, film and TV projects Nichols touched as a director or producer. The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, Hurlyburly and Spamalot on Broadway; movies like Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, Working Girl and Primary Colors; along with versions of Wit and Angels in America for HBO on TV.

At times, Nichols could seem like a showbiz version of Zelig. He co-produced Broadway's original, 1977 version of the hit musical Annie and gave Whoopi Goldberg a career in the mid '80s when he brought her one-woman show to Broadway.

So it makes sense that Nichols would be one of only 12 artists to become what industry types call an EGOT — someone who has won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.

More On Mike Nichols

Performing Arts

Mike Nichols: 'Salesman' By Day, Artist Always

Theater

Mike Nichols Warns 'Death' May Be His Final Curtain

But when Nichols talked with NPR about why he loved directing, grand honors weren't a big part of the equation.

"It's a wonderful job," he said. "It's exploring and excavating and analyzing all at once. And plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time, and that's the great excitement."

Despite passion for his work and loads of success, Nichols said, it took his fourth wife, ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, to rescue him from depression in his mid-50s. By 2012, he was predicting his production of Death of a Salesman, which won him his sixth Tony award, might be his last play.

But a year later, he was back on Broadway, leading a revival of Harold Pinter's Betrayal; he had worked on adapting a version of the Tony-winning play Master Class for HBO with Meryl Streep before his death.

Ultimately, Nichols couldn't stay away, his passion for the work still driving him after more than five decades at the top of the industry.