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All Things Considered

Monday - Friday, 3:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. on KUOW
Melissa Block and Robert Siegel

Hear KUOW and NPR award-winning hosts and reporters from around the globe present some of the nation's best reporting  of the day's events, interviews, analysis and reviews on All Things Considered.

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Law
11:43 am
Fri October 5, 2012

Jailed Domestic Abuse Victims Get Chance At Freedom

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Credit Misty Dameron / Courtesy of Sin by Silence
LaVelma Byrd, photographed at the California Institution for Women in Chino, Calif., was convicted of murdering her husband in 1994. She never let on that her husband beat her on a regular basis. She is not eligible for parole until 2020.
Credit Courtesy of Sin by Silence
Brenda Clubine received a sentence of 15 years to life in 1983 for killing her husband. While in prison, she started the support group Convicted Women Against Abuse to help victims of domestic abuse like herself. When she was released in 2008, her first request was to see the beach in Venice, Calif.
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By editor

Originally published on Sat October 6, 2012 3:21 am

Brenda Clubine is a platinum blonde with focused blue eyes and a no-nonsense demeanor.

She spent 26 years in prison for killing her husband. After enduring beatings and emergency room visits, she says, it finally ended in a locked motel room where he told her to give him her wedding rings.

"I said, 'Why?' He said, 'Because tomorrow they won't be able to identify your body without them,' " Clubine says.

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Solve This
10:32 am
Fri October 5, 2012

Candidates Tout Different Routes To 'Energy Security'

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Credit Mike Hutmacher / MCT/Landov
President Obama and Mitt Romney are both calling on the U.S. to become less dependent on foreign oil, though their plans differ. Here, workers with Bramwell Petroleum set up a derrick for a new oil well near Spivey, Kan., in March.
Credit Lauren Purkey / MCT/Landov
The Obama administration has set higher fuel economy standards for cars and promoted alternative energy sources. Here, a Ford Focus electric car is shown during a test drive in San Jose, Calif., in July.
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Originally published on Fri October 5, 2012 8:07 pm

The pressing energy issue in the 2008 presidential campaign was how to reduce carbon emissions and limit global warming. Four years later, the drive for "green energy" has been replaced by a new imperative: the need to end U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

"I will set a national goal of North American energy independence by 2020," Mitt Romney declared during a campaign speech in August. "That means we produce all the energy we use in North America."

He reiterated that goal in the opening minutes of the presidential candidates' debate in Denver this week.

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Asia
2:33 pm
Thu October 4, 2012

Pakistan Heartthrob Trades Pop For Political Protest

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Credit Shakeel Adil / AP
Pakistani pop singer Shehzad Roy (right) sings for teenage prisoners at a prison in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2008. Known originally for fluffy pop songs, Roy's music has taken a harder, more political edge, protesting injustice in Pakistan.
Credit Lauren Frayer / NPR
Roy is shown here at the Fatima Jinnah Government Girls School in Karachi, a poor public school being refurbished by his education nonprofit, Zindagi Trust.
Credit Lauren Frayer for NPR
Handmade decorations adorn the refurbished Fatima Jinnah girls school, where stray dogs once roamed the classrooms.
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By Lauren Frayer

Originally published on Thu October 4, 2012 5:35 pm

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It's All Politics
2:31 pm
Thu October 4, 2012

Voter Registration Deadlines Begin Passing This Week

Credit Matt Sullivan / Reuters/Landov
A voter registration form and absentee ballot application at a Franklin County polling place in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday. The deadline to register to vote in Ohio is Oct. 9.
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If you want to vote in the November elections and you aren't registered yet — you'd better hurry. The registration deadline in five states is this weekend. By the following weekend, the deadline will have passed in more than half the states.

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Shots - Health Blog
2:12 pm
Thu October 4, 2012

Ketamine Relieves Depression By Restoring Brain Connections

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Credit Ronald Duman/Yale University
A rat neuron before (top) and after (bottom) ketamine treatment. The increased number of orange nodes are restored connections in the rat's brain.
Credit Lianne Milton / For NPR
Chris Stephens, 28, has been battling depression all of his life. At times he wouldn't get out of bed for weeks. In January, he said his depression hadn't returned since he started taking ketamine.
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Scientists say they have figured out how an experimental drug called ketamine is able to relieve major depression in hours instead of weeks.

Researchers from Yale and the National Institute of Mental Health say ketamine seems to cause a burst of new connections to form between nerve cells in parts of the brain involved in emotion and mood.

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Sports
2:12 pm
Thu October 4, 2012

A Look At Major League Baseball's Postseason

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Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

The Major League playoffs begin tomorrow, spinning off a dizzying last day of the regular season, and there's a ton of drama to talk about with Joe Lemire, baseball writer for Sports Illustrated. Welcome, Joe.

JOE LEMIRE: Thanks for having me.

BLOCK: That dizzying last day featured a remarkable finish by the Oakland A's. They won the American League West, but they were all but dead three months ago. They were 13 games behind the Texas Rangers. What happened?

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NPR Story
1:47 pm
Thu October 4, 2012

Google, Publishers Reach Deal On Book Scanning Plan

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Originally published on Thu October 25, 2012 9:19 am

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block. Today, a long legal battle came to an end. On one side, Google; on the other, book publishers. The two have reached an agreement to resolve a lawsuit that's dragged on for seven years. But this does not end Google's legal trouble, as it tries to digitize the world's books. An even more important lawsuit remains unresolved - with thousands of authors of those books that Google has scanned. NPR's Laura Sydell reports.

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NPR Story
1:47 pm
Thu October 4, 2012

Step Aside, Reporters Poets Take On The Debate

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Originally published on Thu October 4, 2012 2:12 pm

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And finally this hour, it's time for a literary take on one of our top stories today. Reporters step aside. Spin doctors drop those talking points. We've asked two writers to reflect on last night's debate in poetry. One from the right and one from the left. This is still politics, after all. First up, conservative commentator Mark Steyn, author of the book, "After America: Get Ready for Armageddon." He was inspired by the fact that last night's debate coincided with the president's 20th wedding anniversary.

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NPR Story
1:47 pm
Thu October 4, 2012

Michelle Obama Bests Ann Romney In Cookie Contest

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Originally published on Thu October 4, 2012 2:12 pm

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Time now for an accounting of a different and sweeter kind.

(SOUNDBITE OF SHOW, SESAME STREET)

FRANK OZ: (as Cookie Monster) Cookie, whoa-num-num. Oh, no. Thank you, Oh...

CORNISH: The votes are in and Michelle Obama's White and Dark Chocolate Cookies have bested Ann Romney's M&M Cookies.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

But just barely. Nine thousand people voted and Mrs. Obama won with a margin of just 287 votes. The two women submitted their recipes as part of Family Circle magazine's First Lady Cookie Contest.

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Planet Money
12:16 pm
Thu October 4, 2012

The Accountant Who Changed The World

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Credit via Jane Gleeson-White
A page from Pacioli's math encyclopedia, Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita.
Credit Museo di Capodimonte
Luca Pacioli is the one on the left. (Nobody knows who the guy on the right is.)
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Originally published on Fri October 5, 2012 1:04 pm

The story of the birth of accounting begins with numbers. In the 1400s, much of Europe was still using Roman numerals, and finding it really hard to easily add or subtract. (Try adding MCVI to XCIV.)

But fortunately, Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) started catching on, and with those numbers, merchants in Venice developed a revolutionary system we now call "double-entry" bookkeeping. This is how it works:

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