At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey. sex of bugs regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers and hopefully make you see the world anew Radiolab adventures on the edge of what we think we know wherever you get your podcasts.
Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley and this is Sunday Morning. Two weeks ago, federal immigration authorities arrested a Columbia University graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil, for his role in campus protests against Israel. Khalil who says he was exercising his right to free speech is a legal permanent resident. He hasn't been charged with a crime. but Trump administration officials say they intend to deport him and other pro-Palestinian activists.
This morning, as Khalil awaits his fate, his wife, Michigan-born Noor Abdullah, is speaking with our Erin Moriarty. However, our main demand, which is divestment from the Israeli occupation, there's an impasse. In the last two weeks, a lot has been said about Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student who was detained by federal agents.
This is another voice from someone who knows him well. Tell me a little bit about your husband. You smile when you even think about him. I do. I remember thinking like, wow, this guy is going to change the world. And then we fell in love, we got married, and we're having a baby. Ahead on Sunday morning, a conversation with Noor Abdullah, American citizen and Khalil's wife. Hard to believe, but Shakespeare's Othello has graced New York City stages since the mid-1700s.
All these centuries later, a new production of the classic play, starring two of Hollywood's biggest stars, is the hottest ticket on Broadway. Bill Whitaker has a front row seat. The stars are aligning on Broadway tonight with the opening of Othello, featuring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal. And it isn't just the ticket holders who are feeling the excitement.
You know, you get to a point where you're like, oh, I've worked my whole career for this, for this moment. Me too. Is that what it feels like? That's what it feels like for me too. I've worked my whole career for this moment. Rise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell.
The moment they've all been waiting for, coming up on Sunday morning. For much of his professional life, Few people had more influence on style, news and pop culture than Graydon Carter, who for 25 years was editor of Vanity Fair magazine. Hold All Calls this morning. The title of your book. It's all about him. Oh, my goodness. That's me. I'm sorry. A renowned chronicler of the fashionable and celebrated.
And a family man. Sweetheart, I'm just being interviewed by Jane Pauly, okay? Hi, I can't tell you how glad I am to see you. I love you, I'll call you back, okay. Bye, sweets. Bye. Who was that? That's my daughter, Bronwyn. Graydon Carter. Later. Luke Burbank traces the surprising Hollywood rise of independent filmmakers and brothers Mark and Jay Duplass.
David Pogue winds up our look at America's energy future with a report on the concept of carbon capture and more on this first Sunday morning of spring, March 23rd, 2025. We'll be right back. At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing. Or politics. Country music. Hockey.
sex of bugs regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers and hopefully make you see the world anew Radiolab adventures on the edge of what we think we know wherever you get your podcasts to begin this morning the legal battle between the Trump administration and Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist it intends to deport.
A few days ago, Aaron Moriarty talked with his wife, who's expecting the couple's first child next month. You know, my husband was taken away from me in the middle of the night. It was one of the most terrifying times of my life. I don't think I've ever experienced anything scarier than that.
Noor Abdullah, a 28-year-old dentist born and raised in Michigan, has suddenly found herself in the center of a storm she never saw coming. She and her husband, 30-year-old Mahmoud Khalil, had been living in Columbia University Housing while he completed his master's degree, and they awaited the birth of their first child.
I was so excited, like we were setting everything up for like the nursery and his clothes, and I'm just so excited too. Turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around. That all changed on the evening of March 8th, when federal aid... arrived at their door. And he was like, are you Mahmoud Khalil? Mahmoud said yes. And the man said, we're with the police. You have to come with us. What's going through your mind at that point? I was scared.
I was terrified. Yeah, they just like handcuffed and I don't know what to do. Abdullah used her phone to document what happened next. At this point, Mahmoud was like, go take the keys, grab my green card. He thought maybe like if he shows the green card, you know, we'll be fine. Did you think that if you showed the fact that your husband was a legal resident with a green card? Yeah.
that he'd be OK. Because I was like, this is just a misunderstanding. They're going to take him away. They're going to take him to 26 Federal Plaza, see that he has a green card. He'll be home in a few hours. Excuse me. They're not talking to me. I don't know. excuse me the lawyer would like to speak to somebody oh my god they're literally running away from me
She has not seen her husband since. Khalil, who has been in an immigration detention center in Louisiana for two weeks, is one of many international students that the Trump administration says... plans to deport for their alleged actions in student protests on college campuses. The unrest began in the fall of 2023 following the October 7th Hamas terror attack on Israel. When Israel retaliated with deadly bombings in Gaza, students across the country erupted in protest.
At Columbia University in New York, demonstrations against the war, while mostly peaceful, also led to the occupation and vandalizing of buildings. And what many Jewish students described as a threatening anti-Semitic atmosphere on campus. We know now that there are students in our class that simply hate us because we're Jewish.
Noor Abdullah says her husband Khalil, a Palestinian born in Syria, became the lead negotiator between protesters and the universities. This encampment is a minor inconvenience compared to the... generational shaping events taking place now in Gaza. People really, really trusted him to be good in that role because he's so calm and good under pressure. But in the days following Khalil's arrest... White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt painted a quite different picture.
This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro- Pro-Hamas propaganda. You also know that the press secretary said that your husband circulated pro-Hamas flyers. Did he? That's not true. Is Mahmoud...
Pro-Hamas? These are accusations that the Trump administration keeps pushing on him. But what do you say to those? I think it's ridiculous. It's disgusting that that's what they're resorting to, that that's the tactic that they're using to make him look like this person that he's not. Literally, it's so simple. He just does not want his people to be murdered and killed. He doesn't want to see...
little kids' limbs being blown off, you know? The university led us to this situation, unfortunately, through bringing the police here. Mahmoud Khalil has not been formally charged with any crimes, and the government has showed no evidence. he provided material support to terrorist groups. Instead, Khalil's been arrested and detained under the Immigration Act that allows the Secretary of State to deport any person whose
presence or activities would, quote, have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the US. If you are in this country to promote Hamas, to promote terrorist organizations, to participate in vandalism, to participate in acts of rebellion and riots on campus. We never would have let you in if we had known that. If you violate the terms of your visitation, you are going to leave.
In fact, Khalil was never charged with vandalism on campus. CBS News asked the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security for comment. We did not receive a response. what happened to Khalil, isn't it? There are many things about this that I think are sort of without precedent or with very little precedent.
I was really shocked. Lindsay Nash, an associate professor at Cardozo's School of Law in Manhattan, teaches and practices immigration law. They haven't said that he's committed a crime that makes him deportable. They haven't said he's committed any kind of... crime at all. What's more, says Nash, the provision that the government relies on was once determined to be too vague and unconstitutional. The federal judge who made that ruling
Judge Mary Ann Barry, President Trump's sister, who died in 2023. Her decision was ultimately overturned on procedural grounds. So this particular provision that Secretary of State Rubio is leaning on is really untested. I think it is. I think we'll have to see and courts will have a lot to consider. Yesterday we had a very long session with the university negotiators.
So who is Mahmoud Khalil? Insider or conciliator? Legal experts say this case is about a lot more than a single man. The idea that Mahmoud Khalil... one grad student at Columbia is imperiling the foreign policy of the United States is absurd. Connor Fitzpatrick is a senior attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
or fire he believes the true reason that khalil and other students are being targeted is because of their polarizing viewpoints freedom of expression is hard It requires listening to, tolerating, and even defending views that you or I might find completely repugnant, that make our blood boil. But the alternative is so much more dangerous. The students were violently attacked by public safety without any warnings.
But Khalil is the face of campus protests. He's been accused of helping to create an environment of anti-Semitism. I think to a lot of Americans, why shouldn't he be deported? So the First Amendment and principles of free speech are designed to protect the unpopular speakers. There is no such thing as an un-American viewpoint in the eyes of the First Amendment.
Sure, if the administration could come forth with new evidence that they haven't provided so far, showing that Mr. Khalil engaged in vandalism or engaged in conduct that would rise to the level of harassment, we would be having a very, very different conversation. government establishes that he is a leader or a representative of a terrorist organization or advances or espouses their cause, that is grounds for stripping him of his green card and removing him.
Ilya Shapiro is Director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. Shapiro, who has called for a crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, says this case is not about speech, but what he says are illegal actions. Nobody is being prosecuted for their speech. It's not that American citizens can speak freely, but non-citizens can't.
not the issue. But with these immigration regulations, if you are a supporter of, if you're organizing together with others to conspiring to do certain things, those are actions. And it's those actions that put you askance. of the immigration law. If he wasn't charged with those crimes at that time, and he hasn't been accused of them now, should he be deported simply because people think he did it? You don't have to be charged, let alone convicted of a crime, to be deported.
Federal court and immigration judges will have the final word. While the case plays out in court, Khalil's attorneys have asked for bail. Noor Abdullah fears he'll miss the birth of their first child. Meanwhile, a Rasmussen poll released this past Thursday finds 45% of likely U.S. voters believe he should be deported. I know I'm sorry. His wife, a U.S. citizen, has now taken on a role she never wanted, answering questions she feels are often unfair, trying to change public perception.
It gets offensive when you're constantly having to say, I'm not this, I'm not this. It kind of brought back a lot of... things that I experienced growing up in the United States. In New York the other day, me and my husband were walking and someone said, like, called me a terrorist. So it's like constantly... throughout my whole life and I think most Muslims in this country can relate to that. It doesn't matter what I say, that's what they think of me and that's what they're gonna think of me.
they're brothers born in louisiana not much money but bound and determined to make movies and as luke burbank now shows us just like in the movies mark and jay duplass have all but rewritten the script for Hollywood success. Even when they are the ones being interviewed, Jay and Mark Duplass can't help but try to direct things.
Are you still rolling? Helpfully offering some random audio-video transitions that might come in handy for us in the editing room. In an interview, you need good transitions, and you may not have them, you know? Sure. Couple of transitions courtesy of Jay and Mark Duplass. That's Jay on the left and Mark on the right. Yeah, I get it. Well, the most important thing is... That's true, yeah. Oh, big time. Big time. You have no idea.
Let me tell you something. Who knows, maybe we should let them direct this story. After all, over the past 20 years, they've quietly become some of the most prolific producers, writers, directors, and actors working in Hollywood. This was not motivated by greed. This was evil. Like the Emmy-winning Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country about a religious cult in Oregon. What is happening is historic. God, I can't believe I'm like, know you, know you now. You're a big...
And the HBO sleeper hit Somebody Somewhere. Over their career, the brothers have created literally hundreds of movies and TV shows, many of which they've self-financed, an ethos they developed as kids making movies in the New Orleans suburbs. You know, we were not... the Coen brothers running around with Sam Raimi. You're not going to look at these movies and be like... This is prophetic. Future greatness. These are the movies you look at and you say...
Should we tape over this? I hope they're okay with law school. Yes. Undeterred, the brothers spent their teens and early 20s playing in bands, editing other people's projects, and making their own full-length films. But nothing quite seemed to click. Until one day, broke... depressed and sitting on the couch mark had an idea i'm like pushing 30 i'm like i can't do this to myself to my family like it's just it's not working
And Mark was like, okay, you come up with an idea and I'm going to the corner store and I'm buying a tape. And I was like, a tape? And he's like, yeah, we're going to use mom and dad's home video camera, which was just sitting in my bedroom. The result was a seven-minute improvised film called This Is John about a guy having a breakdown while trying to record the outgoing message on his answering machine. Hi, it's John Ashford. Hello! It's weird.
and Raw, and very Duplass Brothers. The video was accepted to the Sundance Film Festival. and changed the brothers lives, as did their next big project, The Puffy Chair, an indie movie they shot for $10,000 borrowed from their parents. What are you doing? The movie was a hit on Netflix and established what would become their signature voice Films and TV shows that portray real people navigating life's big and small moments
as best they can. Something the brothers have been doing with their own relationship for almost 50 years. We don't belong in this business, we don't know anybody, we don't know anything, and we're just making it up as we go. For me, there has been nothing more essential in my life from a career standpoint.
from a mental health standpoint than my partnership with Jay through these critical years, which for me basically started at birth. Mark has been public with his struggles with depression and mental health. when you're unstable for as long as I have been or people who share this affliction have been. and you have some sense of stability, you're so hesitant to change that. And Jay says he's dealt with many of the same issues and even the occasional bout of jealousy.
mostly back during the years he was behind the camera and Mark was the face of the operation. more expansive idea of what things could be to me i just wanted to be the coen brothers with mark things changed though when jay was cast in the amazon hit transparent when i was a kid I imagined a very different picture of success. Molly and I haven't had an active sex life in years. These days, he's one of the stars of the new FX series, Dying for Sex, along with Michelle Williams.
Are you trying to hurt me? No, it's not about you. This is about what I want. This is about how I feel, and I want to feel things. You know what I do when I have something... Really scary at work like this. Meanwhile, Mark is one of the leads in the Hulu drama Good American Family. I jumped the jitters out. The brothers are even trying to keep movie theaters alive. Or at least...
a movie theater in Eagle Rock, California that they helped establish. We're at church. That's where we are right now. We are at Vidiot's in Eagle Rock. It is a movie theater. Video store. It is a gathering place for a third place as people like to talk about it Meanwhile, over on the video store side, Jay is still coming to terms with the fact that there's an entire shelf dedicated to his and Mark's work. Just to my left here is the Duplass section.
Of the video store, what's that feel like? It feels pretty good. I mean, you know, like... When I first started going to cool movie stores, you would definitely just go to the director's section and definitely had dreams of having a director's section. It's very surreal.
Also a bit surreal, just as we ended one of our interviews and turned off our fancy TV cameras, Jay got word that his latest film, The Baltimoreans, which he directed, won the Audience Prize at the South by Southwest Film Festival.
A huge honor. And the first person there to congratulate him was, of course, his little brother Mark. There's never any fighting with me and Jay. There's sadness. There's hurt feelings. There are long conversations where we work things out. I don't think I've ever... raised my voice at jay since i hit puberty that's incredible yeah considering how intertwined your lives are your careers are i just i just um
I just love him so much is really what it comes down to. And like to be in his sidecar with the little goggles on and know that I'm a part of his journey and look up at him driving that motorcycle is like. I just, I can't explain it. It's, yeah, it's just everything. Few who knew George Foreman as this Ever imagined he would become this? It's the grill that does the cooking. It's so simple.
But such was the enduring charm of the fearsome fighter of the 1970s who transformed into an affable celebrity pitchman in the 90s. Foreman, a two-time heavyweight boxing champion, died Friday at age 76. He started boxing at 16. Just three years later... He won gold at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Along with Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Foreman defined a golden age of boxing in the 1970s.
His stunning knockout of Frazier in 1973 made him heavyweight champion. But he would lose that title to Ali the following year, in perhaps the most famous bout in history. The Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire. Foreman retired from boxing in 1977, but short on money, he returned a decade later. Critics said he was too old, too heavy. But in 1994, at age 45, Foreman knocked out Michael Moorer to become the oldest heavyweight champion of all time.
Married five times, Foreman had 12 children, including five sons, all with a familiar name, as he told Sunday morning in 2005. Five sons all named George. People hit you on the head and see how many names you're going to remember. I kept it simple. I never forget a name. Said a man who was himself unforgettable to the end. For a quarter century, Graydon Carter was at the center of the media universe as editor of Vanity Fair, the glossy magazine that under his stewardship defined an era. Now 75,
Carter is looking back on his life and times with a new memoir. The title of your book, When the Going Was Good. That's me. I'm sorry. While I fumble for my phone, Graydon Carter just takes it all in. Sweetheart, I'm just being interviewed by Jane Pauly, okay? Hi. Hi. I can't tell you how glad I am to see you. I love you. I'll call you back. Okay. Bye. Who was that? That's my daughter, Bronwyn. Okay, that was my son, Tom. Okay, there we go. A family man, father of five grown children.
Better known for his signature white hair and urbane elegance. Never without a handkerchief. Hermes. He has 30 of them. This is my greatest luxury, my Hermes handkerchiefs. Chronicler of the privileged set. of which he is a member, though not born to it. Growing up middle class in Ottawa, he credits a mix of Canadian affability and inner strength for his enduring career at the top of the glittering world.
of magazines. Canadians are not weak. We may look affable on the outside, but if you can survive playing hockey on an open rink in 30-degree weather, you develop a spine. You tell the story about the superliner. that we are.
Goes by and I can see that in the light of the sort of the amber light of the window and a very attractive couple and they were sort of dressed up having I guess cocktails or dinner and I just thought I wanted to be on that side of the window rather than the side I was standing on before that would you have described yourself?
as having driving ambitions? No, I had absolutely no ambition whatsoever. He left college before graduating, but with a passion for magazines. And in 1978, set his sights on New York.
It was summer in the city. He was not dressed for success. I had a Canadian tweed coat on. It was about as thick as this chair. And I've never felt heat like this in my entire life. And I was... drenched in sweat water was squirting out of me and i went there i had the interview but he said why don't you just sit in front of the air conditioner for a while so i sat there for half an hour just to try like doing this sort of thing try to cool down he left with a job
that launched a career in the golden age of magazines, as he writes in his memoir, when the going was good. And the timing was, too. In 1985, New York City was ripe for satire. With the invention of the investment bankers, everything changed in New York. People were showing off their money in a big way. A co-founder of Spy magazine, cheeky and fearless. I guess it had to come up at some point. That's where you notice. a real estate mogul named Donald.
I had met him a couple of years before. I'd been assigned to do a story on him. I hung around with him for three weeks, and I wrote the story. And I did point out that he was sort of a Sharpie from Queens. He was trying to make it. But I pointed out that his story...
That his hands appeared to be too small for his body Well, he hated that and so at spy we came up with funny epithets for people and and in Trump's case It was we called him a short-fingered Bulgarian every time we mentioned his name. He hated that Wonder why so you started that? Yeah, do you have dual citizenship? I do Canadian and American So how does that feel at this point in time? Especially in the last month or so I
I feel very strongly Canadian and very proud and very happy that Mark Carney is the prime minister. The New York Observer was a weekly Manhattan newspaper, memorable for the color of paper it was printed on. When Carter saw possibilities, leaving Spy in 1991. I thought, I can make this a thing. And in a year, The Observer could be seen in offices of major editors all over Europe.
because Graydon Carter had sent them. But a visiting American publisher took note. He comes back thinking, this is a huge international hit. Cy Newhouse, head of the Conde Nast magazine empire. makes Graydon Carter editor of Vanity Fair, where the going was very good indeed.
I flew the Concorde more than 60 times. When you went to another city, you had a car and driver. You had a car and driver in New York. It was very heady. But at the same time, it was all predicated on you making a successful magazine. and his own outsized persona, Carter was often described as a tastemaker, quietly shaping pop culture, someone making who's who and saying what's what.
he was responsible for bringing monica lewinski back for a reset revealing the identity of deep throat squiring diana princess of wales in london the worldwide exclusive introductions of Tom Cruise and his family, and of Caitlyn Jenner. But she was the all-time best-selling cover. Jennifer Aniston, you look back now, you think, what was all the fuss? But she had just broken up with Brad Pitt, and this is her talking about him. And crying. And crying.
is something greater than the sum of subscription and newsstand sales. Are we the first people to arrive? Are you celebrity starved right now? For 31 years, Vanity Fair has been synonymous with Oscar party. Jennifer! Hollywood's party of the year was Graydon Carter's magic. It became not how to get people in, but how to keep people up. So what is it about parties that...
you are so good at. We had no VIP sections. Once you got in, everybody's the same. And with a party it's about the right curation of people. Curation is very important to everything you've done successfully. If it's interesting to me, I think it might be interesting to others. Graydon Carter resigned from Vanity Fair in 2017 and retired to the south of France. It didn't take. Your idea of retirement...
is to start something brand new. I wanted to produce something that would be like a dispatch. Air Mail is an email newsletter. It began six years ago. and is said to have half a million subscribers in 219 countries, filled with thoughtful features and travel and shopping recommendations, all carefully curated, of course.
So you are a Greenwich Village man. At 75, Graydon Carter is still finding ways to bring in readers. The impresario. Well, stumbled a lot along the way, but yes. Define a stumble. Look. Life is made. It's a boneyard of minor mistakes and fumbles. You know, I've always felt that introductions would be far more interesting if you skip the highlights. 100%. It's the lowlights. Right.
where everything happens. Successes are really boring. Failures are much more fascinating. They are two of Hollywood's biggest stars, now generating excitement on Broadway. Bill Whitaker of 60 Minutes talks with Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal about their new production of Shakespeare's Othello. With stars like Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, maybe it's no wonder Othello just became the highest grossing Broadway play ever.
pulling in $2.8 million in a single week. This is the most excited I've been this century. Seriously. This century, the 21st century. I haven't been this excited about anything I've done. as I am about this. That's saying something coming from Denzel Washington. Known for roles in films like Glory. Come on! and training day. I ain't holding no hands, you understand? I ain't babysitting. You got today and today only to show me who and what you're made of. Denzel Washington and Gloria.
He's been called the greatest actor of the 21st century. But be careful before you call him a Hollywood actor. So this is a pretty star-studded season. On Broadway, lots of Hollywood actors and producers coming to... What's the definition of a Hollywood actor? Myself, I'm from Mount Vernon, so I'm a Mount Vernon actor. I don't know what Hollywood means. That's something... I know it's a place. I think it's somebody who's...
famous on film, a film actor, great success on film. I'm a stage actor who does film. It's not the other way around. I did stage first. I learned how to act on stage, not on film. Movies are a filmmaker's medium. You shoot it, and then you're gone, and they cut together and add music and do all of that. Theater is an actor's medium. The curtain goes up, and you're on, and nobody can help you.
Othello is the Tony winner's sixth Broadway show. Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell! Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne to tyrannists! Hate! Swell, bosom! Washington plays the title character, Othello. The military commander stirred into a murderous rage. After his ensign, Iago, convinces him his wife Desdemona has been unfaithful. Weave thou for him to my face. Banish me, my lord, but kill me not. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the villain.
I hate the Moor. The deceitful Iago who seeks revenge on his longtime comrade and commander because he was passed over for a promotion. Shakespeare wrote Othello around 1604. But this production sets the play in the near future, adding modern themes like soldiers suffering from PTSD. People. You know, they ordinarily think, oh, yeah, it's about jealousy and he betrays him. No, it's about two soldiers who trust each other with their lives. And, uh, go ahead.
Well, then. Yeah, what are you so pissed off about? What did I do to you? What you know, you know. See, that's a lie from the player. That's a great list D-line from the player. But I mean, what is shared is theirs. And what is shared is beyond something that they would share with others. That's what makes their bond so strong. At 44 years old...
Gyllenhaal is widely celebrated for the emotional range and intensity he brings to roles. But you didn't want it, Ennis! So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain! And like Washington, he is a theater veteran, with Othello marking his fourth appearance on Broadway. I told him no more than what he found himself was apt and true. But this is his first time performing Shakespeare. You told a lie.
Well, almost. You know what I realized? I did do Much Ado About Nothing in high school. And I realized that this morning when we were speaking. You forgot. I'd probably, the audience and I would probably like to forget that performance. His mother loved him. That's exactly right. She thought I was great. We visited him before a performance this past week. So how does it feel to be back on the stage? It is extraordinary. It's my favorite place to be.
You get to interact with all of these people. Yes. So you're getting their feedback as well. Yeah. He does have a lot of moments. He has interactions with the audience. They kind of become, you know, his partner in it. And every night it is different. And that's what I love so much about it. Denzel Washington, now 70, is no stranger to Shakespeare. On stage, he's played Richard III and Julius Caesar and starred in the movie versions of Much Ado About Nothing.
and an adaptation of Macbeth. Is this a dagger which I see before me? He first played Othello as a student at Fordham University in New York City. How are you relating to this language and this play differently from when you were 22? I know a lot less now. I thought I knew everything then. I didn't really like the part. because I wasn't wise enough to understand it. Now I understand it's really about a bond, you know, that these characters have. He loves not wisely, but too well.
Now I die my lieutenant. I am your own forever. Othello has been staged on Broadway more than 20 times. For most of those performances, Othello was played by a white actor in blackface. That changed in 1943 when Paul Robeson gave a legendary performance in the role. The last actor to play him was James Earl Jones. James Earl Jones was my northern star when I was in college.
He was who I wanted to be. I didn't get to see you as Othello, but I know it wasn't as good as my 22-year-old interpretation. But, you know, it's my turn. And what a turn it's been. It's already a box office hit, but record-breaking sales have driven prices sky-high. Prime seats go for nearly a thousand dollars, drawing some criticism. But audiences are showing up and by the sound of it enjoying themselves as are the stars
You know, you get to a point where you're like, oh, I've worked my whole career for this, for this moment. Me too. Is that what it feels like? That's what it feels like for me too. I've worked my whole career for this moment. This is a 48-year journey for me. It's fascinating to have been too young for the part, and some may say now too old, but 48 years of experience, so 48 years of pain and pleasure and life has informed.
my approach to playing the role. I feel tremendous gratitude. And he makes me feel it when I walk into that rehearsal room every day. Time to clear the air. about a technological innovation some say could have a profound impact in the battle against climate change. David Pogue has a crash course. By this point, we know that all this is a result of all this.
We are cutting back on our emissions, but the science says not fast enough. We're currently emitting about 6 million tons per hour, and it's like pulling a warm blanket over us that's causing climate change. Lori Gaytree runs commercial strategy for a company called 1.5, a company with a radical idea. In essence, what we're building is a big vacuum cleaner for the CO2 molecules in the air.
It's a technology called direct air capture, and it sounds like magic. You push a button and the plant starts to work. But actually, it's just chemistry. Huge fans blow outside air across a liquid that absorbs the carbon dioxide molecules. The clean air then returns to the outside. They convert the trapped carbon dioxide into pellets, and when you heat them up, you get pure carbon dioxide gas flowing into collection tanks.
And then what happens to the carbon dioxide you've sucked out of the air? So today people are simply burying the CO2 underground. They're also turning the carbon into synthetic fuel so we can put it into an airplane or a truck or a ship. those hard to decarbonize sectors. People are putting the carbon dioxide into concrete, people are making diamonds, people are making fizzy drinks. This demonstration plant in British Columbia, Canada can pull four tons of carbon dioxide a day out of the air.
it's been built by carbon engineering a sister company of 1.5 its next project opening this summer will be a much bigger deal what we have here is a model of our first a commercial plant that's being built in Texas. So this one's about 300 times bigger than what we see here. So how many tons a year will this pull out? So this pulls out 500,000 tons per year. How many plants like that will it take to...
avoid disaster. Climate experts believe that by 2050 we would need to build 10,000 to 20,000 of those one megaton building blocks to be a compliment to all of the other work that we're doing to solve climate change. So it's a big build out of new... basically just like the water treatment industry now we're going to have an air treatment industry will they be better looking this looks fabulous this is so exciting this is as beautiful as chemical plants get well wow
Direct air capture sounds like a perfect solution. We can save the planet with chemistry. Really, there's only one little problem. Direct air capture is not a real solution. We do not have time to waste with this useless technology. Mark Jacobson is a professor of environmental engineering at Stanford University. He thinks that direct air capture is a huge boondoggle for one key reason. You need these big fans and you need the chemical and it takes a lot of electricity.
to do this. Even in the best case when renewable electricity is used to run it, it's preventing that renewable electricity from reducing more carbon dioxide by replacing a fossil fuel power plant or a fossil fuel heating source. In other words, we get about 60% of our electricity from dirty fuels. So why would we use our renewable sources to remove the pollution from gas and coal? Wouldn't it be simpler, easier, and more effective to use that clean energy directly and then just eliminate?
The whole fossil fuel infrastructure? You have to think about who's proposing this technology. Plants capture CO2. What if other kinds of plants captured it too? Who stands to benefit from carbon capture and direct air capture? It's the fossil fuel companies. And sure enough, most air capture companies are funded by the oil industry. Today, Oxy is a carbon management leader.
For example, Occidental Petroleum owns 1.5 and Carbon Engineering. They're just saying, well, we're extracting as much CO2 as we're emitting, therefore we should be allowed to keep polluting, keep mining. Do the oil reps... hate you? Oh, yeah. Diesel people hate me. Gasoline people hate me.
Ethanol people hate me, nuclear people hate me, coal people hate me. They do, because I'm telling the truth that we do not need any of these technologies. How do we know that the oil and gas company's ultimate motivation... is to just do a big number on the public saying, you don't have to stop with the emissions anymore because we're going to invent this to suck it down. Keep on driving those cars. We get that question a lot, I guess.
That is all of our job and not their job. We need to get ourselves... off fossil fuels and that will dry up the market for those fossil fuel producers and we need to create the market for them and doing what they call carbon management which is really taking carbon out of the air and putting it underground or creating carbon products for us. But big chemical plants aren't the only way to pull carbon out of the air.
Experiments are underway with algae. So I'm guessing it works because algae is a plant and plants breathe carbon dioxide. Breathe carbon dioxide. And give us oxygen in return. That's right. and smaller, more efficient plant designs. One potential way is the concept of like a rotating packed bed in the place of an absorber tower. John Northington is the director of the National Carbon Capture Center in Alabama.
With funding from the Department of Energy, it's nurturing new technologies that can remove carbon from our air and bring down the costs. So today's costs for direct air capture range anywhere from $500 to $600 a ton. And we're working to drive that cost down to where we're in the neighborhood of less than $200 a ton. And it could go lower. I mean, in 50 years, people could look back on this.
as the beginning of the technology that helped save the planet. Yeah, and how great would that be? In the meantime, controversy or not, the carbon removal industry is charging ahead. 130 air capture plants are in the works around the world. Lori Gaytree emphasizes that they won't be a silver bullet, but they will be an important part of the answer.
When we put all the tools together, wind, solar, electric vehicles, and carbon dioxide removal at scale, we have everything. We actually know how to get to net zero. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Thank you for listening. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning.
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