Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler on Wednesday issued an emergency declaration that bans the sale of fireworks in the city ahead of the Independence Day holiday, citing increased fire danger and drought conditions.
The move comes comes one day after Portland Fire & Rescue announced a ban on the use of fireworks. Wheeler initially declined to ban sales, but relented Wednesday. Portland Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who oversees the city fire department, had urged him to issue the ban.
“A decision like this doesn’t come easily but it’s imperative that we do all we can to ensure everyone’s safety,” Wheeler said in a statement. “This sales ban is another necessary measure to reduce threats posed by wildfires to the city and all who live here.”
The ban is effective immediately, though fireworks stands have already been doing business leading up to Sunday’s holiday. It is slated to remain in effect until noon on July 14.
There are 90 locations throughout the city of Portland where one could purchase fireworks, according to a city spreadsheet provided to The Oregonian/OregonLive. That includes 46 tents and stands, many of which are run by church groups and youth sports organizations. There are also 44 retail stores in the city limits that sell fireworks, including Albertsons, Bi-Mart, Fred Meyer, Target, Walmart and Safeway.
Fireworks that fly more than a foot off the ground or travel more than six feet on the ground have already been illegal everywhere in Oregon – though all Oregonians know that hasn’t stopped people from setting them off in the past.
Sparklers, rockets and other explosive bric-a-brac caused 44 fires in Portland between June 23 and July 6 last year, including 18 on July 4, city statistics show.
Oregon is in the middle of a drought, and Portland just finished a three-day record-breaking streak of high temperatures. The heat is believed to have contributed to the deaths of more than 60 people in Oregon over the past few days, include 45 deaths in Multnomah County. On Tuesday, Gov. Kate Brown declared a statewide state of emergency “due to the imminent threat of wildfire across Oregon.”
Several other metro and city agencies have banned the use of fireworks, and Clark County, Washington (home to Vancouver) has temporarily banned both the sale and use of fireworks.
-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh contributed to this report
The highly contagious Delta variant is on the rise, and countries that hoped they had seen the worst of Covid-19 are being battered again.
The nightmare is returning.
In Indonesia, grave diggers are working into the night, as oxygen and vaccines are in short supply. In Europe, countries are slamming their doors shut once again, with quarantines and travel bans. In Bangladesh, urban garment workers fleeing an impending lockdown are almost assuredly seeding another coronavirus surge in their impoverished home villages.
And in countries like South Korea and Israel that seemed to have largely vanquished the virus, new clusters of disease have proliferated. Chinese health officials announced on Monday that they would build a giant quarantine center with up to 5,000 rooms to hold international travelers. Australia has ordered millions to stay at home.
A year and a half since it began racing across the globe with exponential efficiency, the pandemic is on the rise again in vast stretches of the world, driven largely by the new variants, particularly the highly contagious Delta variant first identified in India. From Africa to Asia, countries are suffering from record Covid-19 caseloads and deaths, even as wealthier nations with high vaccination rates have let their guard down, dispensing with mask mandates and reveling in life edging back toward normalcy.
Children being tested for the coronavirus Tuesday at a basketball court turned testing center in Binyamina, Israel.Ariel Schalit/Associated Press
Scientists believe the Delta variant may be twice as transmissible as the original coronavirus, and its potential to infect some partially vaccinated people has alarmed public health officials. Unvaccinated populations, whether in India or Indiana, may serve as incubators of new variants that could evolve in surprising and dangerous ways, with Delta giving rise to what Indian researchers are calling Delta Plus. There are also the Gamma and Lambda variants.
“We’re in a race against the spread of the virus variants,” said Professor Kim Woo-joo, an infectious disease specialist at Korea University Guro Hospital in Seoul.
The political debates underway from Malaysia to the Seychelles — whether to institute lockdowns and mask requirements — are starting to echo in countries with far more resources, including plentiful vaccines. On Monday, health officials in Los Angeles County, where Delta variant infections are climbing, urged residents, even immunized ones, to wear masks indoors. (Many scientists, however, say masks are not necessary in areas where the virus is not widespread.)
But while the new images from Nepal or Kenya of overflowing intensive-care units and dying doctors dredge up terrible memories for the West, it is not clear whether they also provide a glimpse into the future.
Most existing vaccines appear to be effective against the Delta variant, and initial research indicates that those who are infected are likely to develop mild or asymptomatic cases. But even in the wealthiest countries — except for a handful of nations with small populations — fewer than half the people are fully vaccinated. Experts say that with new variants spreading, markedly higher vaccination rates and continued precautions are needed to tame the pandemic.
The smoke rising once more from crematories in less affluent nations has highlighted the gulf between the world’s haves and have-nots. Vast inequalities in economic development, health care systems and — despite the promises of world leaders — vaccine access have made the latest surge much bigger and much deadlier.
“The developed countries used up the resources available because they own the resources and they want to protect their people first,” said Dono Widiatmoko, a senior lecturer in health and social care at the University of Derby and a member of the Indonesian Public Health Association. “It’s natural, but if we look it from a human rights point of view, every life has the same value.”
And as the public health officials keep repeating, and the pandemic keeps proving, as long as one region is afflicted, no part of the world is safe.
Demonstrators in London protesting the extension of coronavirus restrictions in response to the Delta variant. Alberto Pezzali/Associated Press
As the Delta variant wreaked havoc in India this spring, when the pandemic killed more than 200,000 people there — an official count that is widely seen as too low — and paralyzed the economy, it also leapt national borders, infecting climbers on Mount Everest, pro-democracy protesters in Myanmar and travelers to London’s Heathrow Airport. Today, it has been detected in at least 85 countries and is the dominant strain in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.
The variant’s ferocious transmissibility was on full display in Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most-populous country.
In May, infections there were at their lowest point since the country was gripped by the pandemic last year. By late June, Indonesia was suffering record caseloads as the Delta variant took hold after a religious holiday scattered travelers across the archipelago. On Tuesday, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent warned that the country was “on the edge of catastrophe.”
Fewer than 5 percent of Indonesians have been fully vaccinated, and frontline medical workers were immunized with Sinovac, the Chinese-made vaccine that may be less effective than other inoculations. At least 20 Indonesian doctors who received both doses of Sinovac have died. But with Western countries hoarding what appear to be more potent vaccines, countries like Indonesia and Mongolia have had no choice but plentiful Chinese-made alternatives.
A drive-through vaccination site in Medan, Indonesia.Dedi Sinuhaji/EPA, via Shutterstock
Last week, the Hong Kong authorities suspended passenger flights from Indonesia, and they are doing the same with travel from Britain starting on July 1.
In May, Portugal tried to resuscitate its tourism industry by welcoming back sun seekers from Britain, despite reports of the Delta variant’s spread there. Within a few weeks, the British government had instituted a quarantine for travelers from Portugal, including returning vacationers.
With Delta variant cases sharply increasing, Lisbon went into weekend lockdown, and Germany deemed Portugal a “virus variant zone.” Now Portugal has backed away from its tourist welcome and is requiring unvaccinated British travelers to quarantine.
Some Portuguese hoteliers are despondent. Isabel Pereira, a guesthouse owner, said half of her bookings have been canceled, and she understands the tourists’ concerns.
“I cannot unfortunately even tell them for sure what to expect tomorrow, let alone next week,” she said.
For others, the past is repeating itself with turbocharged velocity.
In Bangladesh, scientists found that nearly 70 percent of coronavirus samples from the capital, Dhaka, taken between May 25 and June 7 were the Delta variant. Coronavirus test positivity rates this week have hovered around 25 percent, compared to 2 percent in the United States.
On Wednesday, Bangladesh recorded its highest-ever daily case count. The numbers look set to climb higher as migrant workers return to their villages ahead of a July 1 nationwide lockdown, potentially exposing those communities to the virus.
People leaving for home with body of a relative earlier this month at the Medical College Hospital in Rajshahi, Bangladesh.Kabir Tuhin/Associated Press
The nationwide shutdown means that all domestic public transportation networks will be suspended and all shops closed for at least a week. But with Bangladesh’s export-driven economy battered by the pandemic, the government has refrained from idling garment factories and mills.
“They are hard-working people,” said Mohammed Nasir, the former vice president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association. “Their immune systems are stronger.”
If pandemic history is any precedent, such crowded quarters, just like prisons or mass religious gatherings, can turn into petri dishes of infection. Many garment workers, though, are desperate to keep their jobs, especially with annual bonuses due soon.
Despite promises from various countries and international organizations, vaccine deliveries to Bangladesh have been underwhelming. Fewer than 3 percent of Bangladeshis have been fully vaccinated.
“We are working to make a balance,” Mr. Nasir said, “between lives and livelihoods.”
Reporting was contributed by Muktita Suhartono and Richard C. Paddock in Bangkok, Raphael Minder in Madrid, Amy Chang Chien in Taipei, Taiwan and Yu Young Jin in Seoul.
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So instead of cutting spending in the wake of the pandemic, many states are cutting taxes.
Nine states have passed legislation to reduce individual or corporate income tax rates that is awaiting governors' signatures or has been enacted, according to Katherine Loughead, senior policy analyst at the right-leaning Tax Foundation. In some, the reductions are retroactive to January 1, but in others, the cuts don't take effect until next year.
"Most of the states that are doing rate reductions have a big surplus, and that's what they are using," Loughead said. "A lot are pursuing policies they had in mind for a while now, but just didn't have the revenue to do."
Many of the measures cut taxes across the board but provide bigger benefits for the wealthy.
In Ohio, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine was set to sign a two-year budget bill on Wednesday that reduces income tax rates and boosts the bottom bracket so more low-income earners will be exempted. But it also eliminates the top bracket for those earning more than $221,300.
This means that the state's wealthiest 5% of taxpayers will receive nearly 60% of the benefits, while the bottom 80% will get only 23%, according to an analysis for Policy Matters Ohio by the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
"Without veto action by DeWine, the legislature will send a windfall to the wealthiest Ohioans while draining revenue the state needs to get back on track after the pandemic," said Zach Schiller, Policy Matters' research director. "Altogether, the tax cuts and breaks will cost more than $2 billion over the next two years that could be put to much better use."
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, last month signed legislation cutting individual income tax rates by 0.25 percentage point. That reduces the top rate from 5% to 4.75%, the sixth lowest among states that levy income taxes, according to the Tax Foundation.
Also, the state's corporate income tax rate will fall from 6% to 4%, tying it with Missouri's for the second lowest in the nation, behind North Carolina, among states with corporate income taxes.
Meanwhile, Idaho's Republican Gov. Brad Little touted in May that state officials had enacted the largest tax cut legislation in state history -- providing more than $435 million in relief over two measures.
A tax bill signed in May provides $220 million in one-time income tax rebates to residents -- providing a minimum payment of $50 per taxpayer and dependent or about 9% of the tax amount reported on residents' 2019 state income tax forms, whichever is higher.
The legislation also includes $163 million in ongoing tax reductions. It trims the number of income tax brackets to five, from seven, and lowers the top individual and corporate tax rates to 6.5%, from 6.925%.
The primary source of funding for the measure comes from the implementation of a provision several years ago that levies sales taxes on out-of-state purchases made online, according to the Idaho Freedom Foundation.
Helping lower-income workers
Several states also made changes to their earned income tax credits, which benefit lower-income workers, particularly many essential employees who braved the pandemic.
"A lot of the EITC expansion is a lot of states saying: Hey, we know this one group of workers has been particularly hard hit, because the defining characteristic of this last year is that if you were a lower-income worker, you probably lost your job and got hammered," said Richard Auxier, senior policy associate at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
In addition to its rate cuts, Oklahoma made its state-level earned income tax credit refundable again so that lower-wage workers can receive the full amount, even if it exceeds the taxes they owe. It was made nonrefundable in 2016 to address a budget shortfall, according to the left-leaning Oklahoma Policy Institute.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, signed a bill creating a state-level earned income tax credit in May, after more than a dozen years of advocacy by consumer groups. The credit, which will begin in 2023, will provide between $300 and $1,200 to 420,000 households, according to the left-leaning Washington State Budget & Policy Center.
Concerns about federal relief funds
The bevy of tax cuts come even as a coalition of Republican states are suing the Biden administration over a provision in the $350 billion state relief fund contained in the Democrats' $1.9 trillion rescue bill from March. It says that states cannot use the funds to "either directly or indirectly" offset a decrease in net tax revenue resulting from changes such as rate reductions, rebates, deductions and credits.
However, Treasury Department guidance later clarified that states can cut taxes as long as they are paid for through economic growth, measured by increases in tax revenue from fiscal 2019, Auxier said.
Many state officials, particularly Republicans, argue that cutting taxes is a way to bolster their economic recovery from the pandemic -- setting up a clash with left-leaning advocates, who say budget surpluses should be spent on struggling residents.
In Arizona, the state budget that GOP Gov. Doug Ducey signed Wednesday collapses the state's tax brackets into two -- a 2.55% and a 2.98% rate. A flat rate of 2.5% could take effect in the future depending on the amount of general fund revenue that is raised. Also, lawmakers put in a 4.5% rate cap, blunting a 3.5% surcharge on higher earners that voters approved last year to pay for education.
"We're giving a bulk of the surplus dollars back to the people who earned them -- to you," Ducey said in a video message, highlighting that the budget contains the largest tax cut in state history. "This budget puts a giant 'Open for Business' sign on the state of Arizona. We will remain competitive and continue to attract good-paying jobs."
This story has been updated with further developments Wednesday.
BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Gov. Kate Brown has declared a state of emergency due to the imminent threat of wildfires across Oregon, a danger underscored by Central Oregon fire officials.
Much of the state, including Central Oregon, is at high or extreme fire danger, with the current dry and windy conditions.
Brown said Wednesday, “I issued this emergency declaration to ensure every resource is made available for firefighting efforts and to the crews striving to protect our state. With fire seasons increasingly starting earlier and lasting longer, it is up to each of us to do our part to prevent wildfires and be prepared for the ones we can’t prevent. I am urging Oregonians to take charge in preventing human-caused fires by being prepared, safe, responsible, and aware."
The governor's declaration authorizes the Oregon Department of Forestry and the Oregon Office of the State Fire Marshal, in coordination with the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, to utilize personnel, equipment and facilities from other state agencies in order to respond to or mitigate the effects of the wildfire emergency.
Sisters-Camp Sherman Fire Chief Roger Johnson said, "I think the declaration is more of a statement that we are in extreme fire danger at this time, and it does lay the foundation for accessing additional resources, if a fire should begin."
Oregon Department of Forestry spokesman Nick Hennemann said the emergency declaration allows agencies to move firefighters and aviation resources around to respond quickly when there is a fire.
And it allows state agencies to temporarily suspend any rules that impair response to wildfires.
ODF currently has 519 firefighters on staff. That's an increase from the 479 it had last year.
This comes as President Joe Biden is temporarily raising federal firefighter pay to ensure that no one fighting wildland fires is making less than $15 per hour.
Last week, the Office of the State Fire Marshal pre-deployed 2 task force teams to Central Oregon when the area was forecast to see record-breaking heat.
"It was extremely comforting to know that you had additional resources in the region, if you were to need them, and we did have real extreme fire conditions that are still with us today," Johnson said.
Johnson urged Oregonians to exercise great caution during the upcoming Fourth of July holiday.
"We are at extreme risk, and any fire that we can prevent really saves on resources," Johnson said.
Central Oregon / Fire / Government-politics / Local News / News / Sisters / Top Stories
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Twenty years before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called for climate science to be put on trial, an official from the powerful pro-business lobby group crafted what would prove to be a prescient message on global warming.
Harvey Alter, who ran the Chamber's resources policy department at the time, said in 1989 there was "broad consensus" that human-made climate change would likely have a disastrous impact on coastal communities and farmers. Alter warned of rising sea levels and the litany of changes that would accompany a hotter planet.
"Wetlands will flood, salt water will infuse fresh water supplies, and there will be changes in the distribution of tree and crop species and agricultural productivity," Alter said.
The presentation — found in the archives of Delaware's Hagley Museum and Library — also outlined dire climate predictions for New Orleans and other cities, states and countries. It was included in a paper on the Chamber's history of climate obstruction in the 1990s and 2000s, which was published yesterday by the Climate and Development Lab, a think tank hosted by Brown University.
The document and paper shed new light on how drastically the powerful trade association has shifted on climate policy over the years — from acknowledging the problem to climate denial to now rhetorically supporting climate action. And they raise fresh questions about how durable the Chamber's latest reversal will be, according to Cole Triedman, the report's lead author and Brown University undergraduate who unearthed the eye-opening presentation.
"Over the course of these two decades that I investigated, the Chamber proved to have a set of messages that seemed to fit every situation in a way that was ultimately effective" at blocking climate action, Triedman said in an interview. The century-old lobbying juggernaut claims to represent "companies of all sizes across every sector" of the United States economy in the halls of power, but its board of directors has long been stacked with fossil fuel company executives who have the most to lose from potential climate action.
Alter's presentation was intended for a "Symposium on Industrial Development and Climate Change," hosted by the International Environmental Bureau, a precursor organization of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, which was at the time a division of the International Chamber of Commerce.
The event was set to take place in Washington, less than a year after former NASA scientist James Hansen warned lawmakers that "the greenhouse effect is here."
Alter noted that while there were still uncertainties about climate science, "the controversy is how much change can be expected, when it will happen, and where its effects will be most evident," the document shows. He had a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Cincinnati and died last year at age 87, according to an online obituary.
Alter went on to predict that rising oceans would "flood now habitable lands in some countries, such as Bangladesh," and force wealthier nations to build levees and dikes "at considerable cost to avoid major displacements of people and their economic bases."
"These same actions will affect wetlands and it may not be possible [to] protect both coastal and wetland areas," he said. Alter specifically warned of risks to the freshwater supplies of Miami and New Orleans as well as the Netherlands.
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"Global warming will affect snowfall patterns, hence melt, and affect water supplies," he added, singling out the danger such changes could pose to California. The state's "water supplies are from snow melt and if snow is reduced to rain, or melts quickly during the winter, water supplies in the summer will be less than now."
Alter was less certain about climate change's impact on farmers, but the trends he rightly identified were concerning.
"Grain production will move north and productivity may fall because of differing soil types," he said. "Global warming could expand the range of livestock diseases and pests."
Alter's message appears to have had little impact within the Chamber, at least initially. By 1991, with George H.W. Bush in the White House and Congress debating proposals to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the Chamber had begun promoting doubt about climate science.
"While possible global warming is a cause for concern, genuine scientific disputes remain as to the existence, causes, and potential consequences of global climate change," the association said in a legislative briefing book for executives, which Triedman also found in the Hagley archives. The Chamber said it opposed mandating "energy-based policy solely on the global warming theory, especially where environmental and economic impacts are unknown."
Since then, the Chamber's stance on climate change has yo-yoed, seemingly in response to the political landscape of Washington.
In September 2008, a Chamber program unveiled an energy blueprint that said, "We must address the impact of our growing energy consumption on the environment and climate." It included calls for the creation of a "federal multiagency Climate Change Adaptation Program" as well as national and international clean energy lending bodies.
The Chamber's energy plan was released while former Arizona Sen. John McCain was campaigning for president on a Republican platform that included implementing a cap-and-trade system to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases.
But the following year, when President Obama's EPA was preparing to regulate carbon dioxide as an air pollutant, a top Chamber official called for putting climate science on trial. The public backlash prompted by that request led tech giant Apple Inc. and the electric utility companies Exelon Corp., Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and PNM Resources Inc. to all publicly renounced their involvement with the association (E&E News PM, Oct. 5, 2009).
J. Timmons Roberts, a Brown environmental studies professor who assisted Triedman with his report, said Alter's 32-year-old presentation puts the Chamber's subsequent actions in a troubling new light. Rachel Wetts, a sociology professor at the university, also helped with the paper.
"Given how far the Chamber veered into climate denial and consistent efforts to undermine any significant climate policy in the United States, the 1989 presentation to the International Chamber is very revealing," Roberts said in an email. "They knew the seriousness of the issue, and chose to mobilize the American business community against the action we needed to have taken."
The Chamber began its latest swing toward climate action in 2019, when Democrats seeking the party's presidential nomination competed for the boldest climate policies. Since that change, however, the association has continued to discreetly support regulations and lawsuits that would make it harder to address the problem (Climatewire, April 21).
The Chamber didn't comment directly on the report, but touted its recent climate efforts.
"We're proud of the work we're doing across the broad Chamber membership to bring meaningful, achievable solutions to the global climate challenge," Matt Letourneau, a spokesperson for the association, said in a statement. "The business community is at the leading edge of innovation and investment in the technology necessary to reduce emissions, and will be an important voice in the international and domestic policy dialogue."
Triedman and his Brown advisers remain unconvinced.
While the Chamber's new messaging "is encouraging for climate action advocates, the findings of this analysis suggest caution and a heightened level of scrutiny," their paper concluded. "The challenge that the Chamber poses to climate action in 2021 has once again changed form, rather than disappeared."
Two critics on the show’s return — a turning point in live theater and another stage in the rock star’s lifelong evolution.
When the St. James Theater shut down with the rest of Broadway on March 12, 2020, the show playing there, aptly enough, was “Frozen.”
But 471 days later, the show that just reopened the theater — and Broadway more generally — is a totally different beast. Call “Springsteen on Broadway,” the singer-songwriter’s memoir-concert-ghost story, “Unfrozen,” because what’s playing now is an almost geological transformation of the relentlessly austere work that audiences experienced during its acclaimed run from October 2017 to December 2018.
Jesse Green, the chief theater critic, and Lindsay Zoladz, a pop music critic, saw the show on Tuesday night and reconvened on Wednesday to discuss, among many other things, the way changes of scale — and context — remake a rock artist, even in the theater. These are edited excerpts from their conversation.
JESSE GREEN “Springsteen on Broadway” first played the 939-seat Walter Kerr Theater. Now it’s in a theater with nearly double the capacity. To me, the new version couldn’t be more different from the old one. What about you, Lindsay? I presume you’ve seen Springsteen in venues that accommodate thousands.
LINDSAY ZOLADZ The previous two times I’ve seen Bruce were at Madison Square Garden and an open-air festival in Denmark, but this show still felt remarkably intimate to me. One of the most interesting aspects of the performance was the way it felt like a Broadway production constantly teetering on the edge of becoming a full-on rock concert. For the most part, I think it stayed firmly in the latter category, thanks mostly to Springsteen’s incredible command of the crowd — in thwarting their instincts to sing, shout requests or indulge in other arena-etiquette, he plays the audience like another instrument. But the more the show progressed, and especially when Springsteen brought out his wife, Patti Scialfa, for a pair of fiery duets, the more the atmosphere started to feel like something I haven’t had the chance to experience in over a year: a good, old-fashioned rock show. Jesse, did this feel more like a concert than what you’re used to reviewing? And as someone who saw the initial run in 2017 (I missed it on Broadway but caught it on Netflix), did this performance feel different?
Bruce Springsteen and his wife, Patti Scialfa, at the end of “Springsteen on Broadway” at the St. James Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
GREEN On paper, or at least on the set list, the 2017 show and the 2021 show are nearly identical. Only three of the 15 songs have changed. With Scialfa last night, he performed “Tougher Than the Rest” as before but, instead of “Brilliant Disguise,” followed it with the much less theatrical and more traditionally sexed-up “Fire.” He replaced “Long Walk Home” with “American Skin (41 Shots),” written about the killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999 but here a pointed reference to George Floyd and the many other Black people more recently killed by police officers. And he closed with “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” a quiet, doleful song, instead of the barnburner “Born to Run.” These changes (it’s also 30 minutes longer) made it feel more like a concert to me because it is more varied and topical, acknowledging — as he also did in his rewritten narration — the 15 months we’ve just been through. I’m curious about how his demeanor, which is notably different now, compares with what you’ve seen in larger, more explicitly rock venues.
ZOLADZ I definitely noticed that his stage persona and his interactions with the audience felt different than a traditional Springsteen show — a little more irreverent, a little less focused on performing gratitude and thanks-for-coming-out-tonight earnestness at all costs. He opens with a tongue-in-cheek riff about how he’s revealing to us his rock-star “image”: “I haven’t done it yet,” he responds to the requisite applause, then waits a comic beat: “That’s it.” It seemed like that initial wink freed him up to embody this theatrical character of “Bruce Springsteen,” a slightly different construct than the hard-charging bandleader he’s playing in concert. But the fact that he’s able to calibrate so effectively between these different stage-selves shows what an expert’s grasp he has on his own stage presence.
GREEN Is “stage presence” the same in a theater as in an arena?
ZOLADZ One important difference in the grammar of a rock concert versus a Broadway show: Rock-concert banter is often expected to give at least the illusion of spontaneity (even if a lot of arena shows are just as meticulously staged and rehearsed as any play). Audiences want to feel like something special is happening in their city, on that particular night — there’s no greater concert faux pas than greeting a St. Louis crowd, “Hello, Cleveland!” “Springsteen on Broadway” has obviously been worked and reworked to hit the same beats each evening on the same stage, but through the charismatic kineticism of his performance Springsteen is able to enliven it with an energy that effectively keeps it from feeling canned.
GREEN He reads much of the script — which is already a gloss on “Born to Run,” his 2016 autobiography — from quite visible monitors, yet he is surprisingly adept at the illusion you mention: He plays himself, or a series of selves, with great confidence and skill. When he said he doesn’t understand himself even after 40 years of analysis, he sounded almost like a borscht belt tummler. This joke, true as it may be, would not have fit into the bleak cosmology of the original run, which left me stunned and often in tears; in that version Springsteen seemed to go to great pains to strip away all ingratiation in favor of the dark poetry of his story. Keep in mind that he was performing in the aftermath of the election of Donald J. Trump; he seemed to use that moment as a warning. Now, after 15 months of lockdown and worse, he offers much more comedy amid the severity: He does voices, impersonations and even, at the end, some crowd work. He affects a soothing familiarity, an almost Bidenesque folksiness. (I don’t believe it for a second, but it’s effective.) If his aim, as he says, is to be of “service” to society through his music, the show is his judgment about how that might best be done right now. I enjoyed it as much as the first time, and I found its shift in emphasis — its message that we may live with our ghosts and even draw joy from them — timely and moving; yet the earlier incarnation was, for me, more profound.
ZOLADZ So much of the show is about the power of memory, surviving and bearing witness. One of the most affecting segments is still that bluesy, hollered deconstruction of “Born in the USA,” during which Springsteen pays tribute to two young men who never got to grow old, veterans of his local Jersey Shore rock circuit who were killed in Vietnam. “Springsteen on Broadway” was already a show thoroughly haunted by loss (of his father, his bandmate Clarence Clemons, and his mother’s slow deterioration because of Alzheimer’s), so he didn’t have to change much for its tone to meet this particular American moment. Right now, we’re all coming out of hiding, trying to square our gratitude at surviving with the heavy weight of loss we’ve witnessed. Springsteen is certainly up to the challenge of providing that kind of catharsis, and of reminding survivors their responsibility to honor and eulogize the dead — that is, of course, what “Born in the USA” is all about. In the end, as he recited an “Our Father” in his own idiosyncratic cadence, the show felt not so much like a theatrical performance or a concert as a religious sermon — I certainly heard more than one “Amen.”
GREEN That was a new turn in this iteration. Early on he refers to being “duped” by the church as a child, and basically threatened into a lifelong submission to an unloving institution, yet after taking us through all the terrible contradictions of his childhood in the central New Jersey town of Freehold — that two-syllable oxymoron — and the more rewarding ones of a life in rock, he offers, at 71, in the church’s own words, what can only be called a benediction. I’m not even Roman Catholic and I felt forgiven for my trespasses.
ZOLADZ You mentioned earlier the change in the closing number: Instead of “Born to Run,” it’s “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” from his most recent record. He still opens with the wide-eyed “Growin’ Up,” the second track off his 1973 debut album. And while the set list doesn’t run exactly chronologically, this change underscores the fact that we’re watching not only a character’s coming-of-age, but the long evolution of a songwriter learning how to chronicle his inner experience and the world around him. The show’s bare-bones arrangements allow him to crack these songs open and find new riches inside even the most familiar tunes. I must have heard “Thunder Road” a thousand times in my life — at the risk of sounding basic, it’s probably my favorite Bruce song — but I don’t think it’s ever moved me quite as deeply as it did last night, hearing such a stripped-down rendition that focused on the wistfulness of its lyricism.
GREEN Cracking open his songs, he’s cracking open himself, and in the process showing us how many lives we each contain. I thought of that when entering the St. James, where anti-vaccination protesters have been demonstrating against the theater’s requirement that all audience members be completely immunized. The protesters might be happy to know that almost no one inside wore a mask — except, in a way, Springsteen, whose mask, if it ever comes off, merely reveals another and another.
China’s emergence over the past four decades ranks as the biggest and longest-run economic boom in history. Its annual gross domestic product rose from a mere $191bn, or $195 per capita, in 1980 to $14.3tn, or $10,261 per capita, in 2019. It has raised more than 770m people from poverty and transformed the Chinese economy into a high-tech powerhouse that is on course to eclipse America’s in size.
This transformation is the landmark achievement of the Chinese Communist party, which celebrates its 100th anniversary on Thursday. The anniversary is a moment for the west to reflect on how it helped to enable China’s rise.
Ever since reforms began in the late 1970s, western nations first opened their markets to China’s exports then kept them largely open in spite of a progressive chill in political relations. Multinationals invested hundreds of billions of US dollars in China’s economy, assisting greatly in its modernisation.
This symbiosis has been a cornerstone of global prosperity. In recent years, China has driven roughly one-fifth of global GDP growth, outstripping the US contribution by a wide margin.
But it is also reason for misgivings. China under Xi Jinping, who is simultaneously state president and head of the CCP and People’s Liberation Army, has morphed into an uncompromising authoritarian regime. This raises troubling questions over the trajectory of its relations with the west and its own stability.
Xi has reversed several checks and balances on CCP power instituted by Deng Xiaoping, the father of China’s reform era. He has abolished presidential term limits, setting himself up to become the first leader since Mao Zedong to rule until he dies. He also shows scant regard for the principle of “collective leadership” that Deng and his successors advocated and does not appear to be grooming a successor.
The dangers from jettisoning these Deng-era political reforms go far beyond western concerns over human rights. The tragic flaw of CCP rule — shown by the upheavals and terrible loss of life in the 30 years following the 1949 revolution — is that concentrating authority in one man can lead to vicious power struggles, especially at times of political succession. Meanwhile, a lack of debate in policy circles can prolong and exacerbate mistakes.
Haunting memories of the cultural revolution (1966-76) and the Great Leap Forward (1958-62) — to name but two Mao-era catastrophes in which tens of millions of people died — should warn Beijing and the wider world of the risks. It is easy to forget amid China’s stunning economic progress that its political system today is little different from that which Mao bent to his will.
Last year’s imposition of a National Security Law in Hong Kong, since when scores of democracy activists in the territory have been arrested, and the internment of an estimated 1m Uyghurs and other minority peoples in camps in north-west Xinjiang region, signals the gulf in values with the west.
The CCP leadership should reflect that China owes its economic success above all to free market reforms and the political checks and balances that reinforced them. Instead of demonising the west, Beijing ought also to recognise western countries’ enabling role in its rise.
The US and European powers should celebrate China’s endeavours but recall that its achievements have been built on a political edifice that suffered catastrophic reversals in the not-so-distant past. Their wisest approach is no longer the hopeful and largely uncritical engagement of the early reform decades, but a blended policy of limited economic engagement, resistance against CCP influence campaigns and hard-headed strategic preparedness.
Sarah was born in January this year. Despite having a few issues during pregnancy that caused her baby to be born prematurely, Gois says her daughter was generally healthy. But after she took her baby girl to the Casa de Saúde Hospital in São Paulo's coastal city of Santos to treat a urinary tract infection, Sarah started to present persistent fever and flu-like symptoms.
"When her symptoms started, the doctors said it was bronchiolitis, that it wasn't anything serious," Gois explains. But her daughter would not recover.
As Sarah's condition deteriorated, Gois says she felt helpless. "All I knew was that she was in a serious condition and that she could go at any moment. I knew that the only thing I could do was to get on my knees and pray," she said.
Despite her pleas, her daughter died from Covid-19 on May 27. She was just five months old.
Sarah's case is one of many in Brazil. The Brazilian Health Ministry says 1,122 children under the age of 10 have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic started. The Brazilian government records the number people who died from severe acute respiratory diseases -- such as severe cases of the flu, and others.
However, researchers from global health organization Vital Strategies, which works in more than 70 countries around the world, say its studies suggest such case numbers have been severely underreported.
When comparing the number of Brazilian child deaths from such illnesses in 2018 and 2019 with the number of deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, Vital Strategies found an excess 2,975 deaths. The organization says it's likely that the vast majority of these excess deaths -- not just the official number of 1,122 -- were because of Covid-19.
"What we see in Brazil is that the number of kids dying with Covid specified as the cause of death is higher than what we are seeing in other countries of the world -- it's 10 times higher," Dr. Ana Luiza Bierrenbach, an epidemiologist at Vital Strategies, told CNN.
In the United States, the only country in the world with a higher overall official death toll than Brazil's, far fewer children have died from Covid-19 -- 382 Americans under the age of 18, according to CDC data.
Bierrenbach adds that the coronavirus variant known as Gamma or P.1, which was first identified in Brazil, may not be entirely to blame.
"Kids have been dying more in Brazil since the original variant was here, so it was not the addition of the P.1 variant that made kids die more here than in other countries," she said.
Recognizing Covid-19 in children
Covid-19 is widely shown to have a more severe impact on the elderly than the very young. Even if all 2,975 excess child deaths were caused by Covid-19, children are still dying in much lower numbers than adults -- the overall death toll in Brazil is now more than 514,000. Researchers fear that this small representation of children in Covid fatalities is causing some doctors to miss diagnoses in their youngest patients.
"Truthfully, Covid-19 in children was neglected at the beginning of the pandemic," says Brazilian pediatrician Dr. Andre Laranjeira.
"A lot of pediatricians had a certain resistance when it came to requesting Covid-19 tests for children, when they were exhibiting those typical respiratory tract symptom -- runny nose, cough, fever -- practically all children have those symptoms this time of the year, in the autumn, and some doctors were not testing them," he says.
According to Gois, it took 12 days after baby Sarah developed the first symptoms before doctors tested her for Covid-19. It was only when Gois herself was diagnosed with Covid-19 that doctors tested her daughter.
"If a child presents high fever, (skin) rash, abdominal pain, doctors could potentially think of other diagnosis and not relate it to Covid-19," Dolhnikoff says.
"We need to be aware that these different kinds of symptoms can be related to Covid-19 and these children can present a very severe disease."
Disparity in treatment
And while different symptoms might throw off some doctors, most physicians and researchers also agree the main culprit for Brazil's higher Covid-19 death rate in children is likely disparities in the country's health care system -- although Brazilians benefit from universal health care, there are vast differences in quality of treatment between private elite hospitals and small or rural public health care providers.
"In large centers we are prepared to deal with these children and we have very, very good ICUs but it doesn't apply for the whole country," Dolhnikoff explains. "We have a lot of poor regions in the country that struggle to deal with this situation."
Bierrenbach at Vital Strategies agrees that inequality could be at play.
"Why is this happening? Probably due to higher vulnerability, lack of access to good quality health care," Bierrenbach says. "Maybe they are undernourished, and they perish more from Covid."
More than half of Brazilians -- 116 million people -- faced food insecurity in 2020. Of those, 19 million people, or 9% of the population, are starving, according to the Brazilian Network for Research in Sovereignty and Food and Nutrition Security.
Laranjeira says the disparity shows up not just in the quality of accessible health care, but also in how they are affected by the disease.
"When you take the fatalities within the pediatric age group, more than 60% are from vulnerable socio-economic groups," he concludes. "It's impossible to turn a blind eye to that."
Journalists Rodrigo Pedroso and Marcia Reverdosa reported from São Paulo. CNN's Vasco Cotovio and Isa Soares reported from London. Reporting also contributed by Juliana Koch in São Paulo.
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It’s been more than a decade since audiences caught a final glimpse of Tony Soprano munching on onion rings with his family while listening to “Don’t Stop Believing” before the screen abruptly cut to black.
The legendary mob boss from “The Sopranos” is back in “The Many Saints of Newark,” a prequel to the HBO series that focuses on the early years of Tony and his close relationship with Dickie Moltisanti, the father of Michael Imperioli’s Christopher Moltisanti. Tony, or at least his teenage iteration, is front-and-center in a new trailer for “The Many Saints of Newark,” which dropped on Tuesday. And he’s played by Michael Gandolfini, the son of the late “Sopranos” star James Gandolfini, who died in 2013.
The two-minute and change trailer begins with James Gandolfini’s narration as his younger self demonstrates Tony’s hair-trigger temper by beating up a friend. “When I was a kid, guys like me were brought up to follow codes,” the older Tony intones.
There’s also a glimpse of a middle-aged Livia Soprano, played by Vera Farmiga, who appears to have channeled the late Nancy Marchand’s corrosive brand of parenting. Told that her son has a high IQ by a guidance counselor, Livia snaps back “You can’t prove it…he’s got a D-plus average.” There’s that TLC!
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We also get our first extended look of Alessandro Nivola’s Dickie, who mentors a young Tony, just as Tony will later do for Christoper (at least until things take a turn for the worse). Here Dickie is seen offering Tony some “hot” speakers, with Tony worried that accepting the stolen gift will hurt his chances of going to college.
“You take the speakers right at the same time, you say to yourself ‘This is the last time I’m ever going to steal something,'” counsels Dickie. “It’s that simple.”
Well, long-time watchers of “The Sopranos” know how well Tony would follow that advice over six seasons of criminality. “The Many Saints of Newark” was produced in part by “The Sopranos” creator David Chase and directed by Alan Taylor, who previously oversaw several episodes of the series. The movie is set against a backdrop of the Newark riots, which are dramatized in the trailer, and deals with an emerging crop of gangsters who challenge the DiMeo crime family’s control of the Jersey underworld.
The spot features a killer cover of Bob Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody,” which has telling lyrics for a show that deftly weaves in avarice and Catholic guilt, such as this gem: “Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” There’s also a brief snippet of “The Sopranos'” unforgettable theme, “Woke Up This Morning” by Alabama 3.
The film opens on Oct. 1 in theaters and on HBO Max, where it will stream for 31 days following its debut in cinemas. That’s in line with other recent Warner Bros. films such as “In the Heights” and “Wonder Woman 1984,” which deployed a hybrid distribution strategy as a COVID-era concession.
In addition to Nivola, Farmiga and Gandolfini, the cast of “The Many Saints of Newark” includes Leslie Odom Jr., Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Billy Magnussen, Michela De Rossi, John Magaro and Ray Liotta.
Watch the trailer below.
Every legend must start somewhere.
The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel to The Sopranos, will be in theaters and streaming exclusively on HBO Max October 1. pic.twitter.com/qn48MhI6r6
CINCINNATI — Cincinnati Police are searching for Damiko Hunter, who left his home in Bond Hill in an unknown direction and hasn't returned.
Hunter lives with developmental disabilities and is unable to care for himself, police said.
He was last seen wearing blue jeans and a blue shirt. Hunter is a Black man who stands roughly five feet, nine inches tall and weighs 170 pounds. He has brown eyes and black hair.
Police said Hunter may be in Hamilton, though he lives on Joseph Street in Bond Hill. He was last seen Monday at 6:30 p.m.
Anyone with information on Hunter's whereabouts should call Detective Ward at 513.569.8600.
The Pacific Northwest continues to see record high temperatures. Many people in Portland and Seattle don't have air conditioning. Homeless people across the area are especially vulnerable in the heat.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Northwest is sweltering under this week's historic heat wave. Roads are buckling. Cables are melting. In Seattle, many people don't have air conditioning. And Mayor Jenny Durkan is urging people to treat it as a serious health risk.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JENNY DURKAN: Please, everybody, take care of each other. Be smart. Drink lots of water. Don't overexert yourself. Stay in the shade.
SHAPIRO: We're joined by reporter Paige Browning of member station KUOW in Seattle. Good to have you here.
PAIGE BROWNING, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Put this into context for us. How bad is it?
BROWNING: Ari, it's just so hot. It's been more than 30 degrees warmer than normal in Seattle. We've been seeing highs of 110 degrees, a little worse in Portland - closer to 50 degrees above normal, highs near 115 there and even worse in some inland areas, hitting 118. Part of the problem, Ari, is the overnight temperatures. It's just not cooling down overnight. It's still in the mid-70s. We are seeing some relief in the Puget Sound area today. The high is only 91 degrees, if you call that relief. But it's actually getting worse inland. Spokane, the second biggest city in Washington, is at or above 110 degrees for the next couple days.
SHAPIRO: And cities like Phoenix or Palm Springs might be accustomed to temperatures like this. But in Portland and Seattle, people don't have air conditioning. How are they coping?
BROWNING: Yeah, that's the thing. Among major cities, Seattle and Portland have some of the lowest percentages of homes with AC. Estimates put Seattle between 30 to 40% of homes with air conditioning. It's just not normally this hot, so people haven't purchased it. And people are, in general, energy-conscious and not wanting to worsen their impact on climate change. But some people now are giving in. I spoke with one of them, Vanessa Kirk-Riley, who went searching for an air conditioner at a hardware store.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "SEATTLE NOW")
VANESSA KIRK-RILEY: And Bob, the best employee ever, walked by. And I said, is there any chance that you have any? And he said, you know what? There might be one in the back. And that's how we got the last air conditioner in Seattle.
BROWNING: But not everyone's been so lucky. People are getting really creative here. We've seen a lot of people at lakes and rivers - one hack, like putting on wet socks before bed. And a lot of locals are renting hotel rooms.
SHAPIRO: We also know that the population of people who are homeless has grown in Portland and Seattle, like so many cities in recent years.
BROWNING: Right.
SHAPIRO: How is the city helping people who are not housed?
BROWNING: Right. We have an estimated 12,000 people living outside in broader Seattle and King County. So what the city's done is open dozens of cooling centers right now. These are in community centers, Salvation Armies, gyms, churches. Libraries are opened up. And the Seattle Parks Department has put on the sprinklers at large parks. They've opened a ton of wading pools, and they're turning on the public drinking fountains - just places where people can go for free to cool down.
SHAPIRO: And beyond the human toll, as we mentioned, this is hurting infrastructure. Tell us what's happening.
BROWNING: Yeah. We've seen a lot of issues on roads. At least four spots on Interstate 5 that runs through the Seattle area have just buckled under the heat. It's too hot. The concrete's expanding and just breaking into pieces. And there have been some problems on transit as well. The light rail had to be slowed down in Seattle and Portland because the tracks and lines just got too hot. And I should mention the utilities, too. They're being hit hard. And so now there are going to be some blackouts in Spokane, people being given a time that they won't have power.
SHAPIRO: That's Paige Browning of member station KUOW in Seattle.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
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After plunging into a TV series, a filmmaker low on funds but loaded with rich personal narratives pours them into micro-podcasts.
Caveh Zahedi was in a closet in a Brooklyn Heights apartment on a recent Sunday, trying to figure out how to end the story he was telling. He had been talking about a college class he’d taken with the filmmaker Michael Roemer. When Roemer saw Zahedi’s class project, a film titled “Sex and Violence,” he said, “‘I think you need serious help; you really need to be in therapy,’” Zahedi recalled. He cried on the spot when he heard those words.
Zahedi told this story during the 18th recording session of “365 Stories I Want to Tell You Before We Both Die,” his first project undertaken specifically for audio. Zahedi, 61, is a filmmaker best known for experimental personal work like the 2005 movie “I Am a Sex Addict” and, more recently, “The Show About the Show,” an autobiographical television series that began in 2015, in which each episode is about the making of the previous one.
In the closet-turned-recording-studio, Zahedi tried to convey that he looked back on Roemer’s harsh words with gratitude. His producer, Leon Neyfakh, told him to try the ending again. “You kind of mangled ‘gratitude,’” Neyfakh said. “Mangled the word ‘gratitude,’ or the concept?” Zahedi asked with a laugh. At last, he landed somewhere that, for Zahedi, seemed appropriate: “I always thought of him with complete fondness and as a real artist who just had integrity and spoke his truth.”
Zahedi records on Sundays in the bedroom of the producer Leon Neyfakh’s apartment.via Prologue Projects
This might summarize an aspiration for this podcast, which has been released daily since Jan. 1. Each episode is a story, usually one to five minutes long. It is unusually brief in form and unusually intimate in content. Ex-wives appear, as do former girlfriends and crushes. He discusses drug use, sexual encounters, difficult family relationships and unrealized projects. He is alternately sympathetic and less so; in some episodes about childhood he is the bully and in others the victim — but he talks about both experiences with a kind of understated, exploratory openness.
This honesty is a hallmark of his work. During Season 2 of “The Show About the Show,” his marriage fell apart, and the show became a record of its dissolution. But “365 Stories” is more expansive. The challenge of telling daily stories has pushed him to mine every aspect of his life.
“I basically talk about almost every single person in my life, and almost always in a way that is not fully positive,” Zahedi said. Sometimes, there are consequences: After an episode about his experience as a sperm donor and about connecting with his biological daughter, she became deeply angry.
In one story, told during this recording session, he reduced a college girlfriend to sobs after he argued with her mother, calling her “bourgeois.”
“I didn’t understand why she was crying so much just because her mom was mad at me, but it’s because she knew it was over,” he said. This is a quintessential Zahedi story; he is not the protagonist, actively hurting someone, but is retroactively aware of the specifics of the pain, which he articulates so honestly that it’s moving.
The podcast began during lockdown last June, when Neyfakh reached out to Zahedi, saying he liked his work and suggesting an audio project. They met in Brooklyn Bridge Park that day. “I got there, and he was sitting on a bench with a digital recorder,” Neyfakh said. They tossed around ideas, including a podcast about 52 films Zahedi had never made, settling on something broader in scope but bite-size in form, not unlike voice memos from a friend.
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“The brevity of these stories felt to me like an experiment in how something like this could fit into people’s lives,” said Neyfakh, who typically works on longer-form projects. (He hosts the podcast “Fiasco,” is a creator and former host of “Slow Burn” at Slate and the founder of Prologue Projects.) Zahedi records in the bedroom of the apartment where Neyfakh and his wife live. This short-form podcast is unusual in a field increasingly crowded with big-budget productions. John Sullivan, a professor of media and communication at Muhlenberg College, said podcasts are becoming more professionalized as tech companies finance more projects. He attributes this at least in part to the success of “Serial,” which provided a narrative template for a potentially mass-market medium.
On the podcast, “I basically talk about almost every single person in my life, and almost always in a way that is not fully positive,” Zahedi said.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
“What [Zahedi] is doing is really like ‘audio blogging’ which was one alternative name for the medium in the early 2000s,” Sullivan said. “This is more what the earliest days of what we now know as podcasting looked like.”
Each episode is nonetheless tightly crafted, down to the music that plays at the beginning. On recent episodes, Zahedi’s longtime friend, the composer Evan Ziporyn, has begun composing a short, distinct piece of opening music for each episode. “I know his sensibility, so I thought it would have to be somewhere between Philip Glass and the Smiths, but on acoustic piano and five seconds long,” Ziporyn said. “It’s kind of like writing the first line of a haiku, but you don’t have to finish the haiku.” He’s planning to combine all 365 pieces into one longer piece, in another experiment in form.
The unscripted narratives are recorded in batches, often 15 to 20 in a single sitting. Zahedi arrives with a list of subjects he wants to share. On May 30, he talked about a friend who walked for miles to meet him in a cabin in the woods. He told a story about the writer Paul Auster, who once hated a translation Zahedi had done of “The Last Man” by Maurice Blanchot, and then translated it himself. He described a film he once tried to make about the artist Joseph Cornell, that never came to fruition. (Financing projects is a perpetual problem for Zahedi, who is turning to crowdfunding in the hope of a third season of “The Show About The Show.”)
A regular listener, William Pree, says he often tunes in as soon as the notification arrives announcing a new episode. “I’ve always got three minutes,” he said.
After recording more than 320 stories, Zahedi said it’s getting harder to come up with new ones. Putting them out in the world has changed the way he tells them. “I’m more aware of people being upset with me than when I started,” he said. “So maybe that makes me more self-censoring, more cautious, more gentle. I also think I’ve been avoiding some of these stories because they’re darker.”
Some certainly are: In one, Zahedi recalls missing an appointment to visit James Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, in a mental hospital in England; he later learns that she hasn’t had a visitor in years.
Listening to too many of these stories back-to-to back can be almost unbearable. But there is a reward in hearing the elliptical return of characters and themes, building over months of material. It is almost bizarrely intimate to have Zahedi speaking singular stories into your ear, day in and day out.
Zahedi’s best episodes are simply life’s strange moments, shaped by his adept retellings. He speaks of being on the playground at the age of 5, when someone told him it was raining worms.
“I was old enough to know that it doesn’t rain worms, but I was young enough not to be totally sure,” he said. “So I put out my hand, thinking no worm is going to fall into it, and a worm fell into it.”
