8.13.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the reading of the New York Times for Wednesday,
August thirteenth, twenty twenty five. As a reminder, RADIOI is
a reading service intended for people who are blind or
have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
Your reader for today is Scott Johnson and will begin

(00:21):
with the Merriam Webster Word of the day, and today's
word is calculus. Calculus Calculus refers to an advanced branch
of mathematics that deals mostly with rates of change and
with finding lengths, areas, and volumes. The word can also
be used more broadly for the act of calculating, that is,

(00:45):
estimating something by using practical judgment, or solving or probing
the meaning of something, as in by my calculus, the
more efficient air conditioner will have paid for itself within
a span of five years. Here are today's front page

(01:05):
headlines in the national print edition of The New York Times.
Ex Trump officials warn of manipulation by putin meeting will
test US leader, analysts say as he pushes to end
war in Ukraine, a key inflation measure rises, indicating the
effects of tariffs with takeover. Viewing DC as a real

(01:28):
estate mess to fix a strange trip to psychedelics for
a governor. An ivy leaguer propels a siege on top
schools and bonds over the babe. Statisticians say it's so
across any era, state of the art rating of players

(01:48):
in history. We'll begin with the story headlined when Trump
meets Putin, anything could happen. It's by Michael Crowley. Standing
beside President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Finland's presidential
Palace on a Midsummer's day seven years ago, President Trump

(02:09):
proved that he still had the power to shock. At
a news conference after meeting privately with the Russian leader,
mister Trump sided with mister Putin on whether the Kremlin
had meddled in the twenty sixteen US presidential election. President
Putin says, it's not Russia. I don't see any reason
why it would be, mister Trump said, contradicting his own

(02:31):
intelligence officials, before recounting discredited conspiracy theories. Top Republicans were horrified.
Senator John McCain called it a disgraceful performance. Mister Trump's
own national security adviser at the time, John R. Bolton,
would later write that Putin had to be laughing uproariously

(02:51):
at what he had gotten away with in Helsinki. Mister
Trump plans to see mister Putin on Friday in Alaska
for the first time since his return to the White House,
to discuss the U. S. President's goal of ending the
war between Russia and Ukraine. With mister Putin pressing peace
proposals that heavily favor Russia, many analysts and former Trump

(03:15):
officials worried that he will once again turn a meeting
with mister Trump to his advantage. During mister Trump's first term,
he and mister Putin met six times in person and
had several more phone conversations. His successor, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Met mister Putin only once in June twenty twenty one,

(03:36):
before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Those interactions alarmed many
of mister Trump's senior aides, who watched as the U. S.
President disregarded their advice, excluded them from meetings with the
Russian leader, and proposed impractical ideas that appeared to have
been planted by mister Putin, like creating a U. S.

(03:57):
Russia impenetrable cybersecurity union. The idea was dropped as soon
as mister Trump got back to Washington. The relationship has
grown more complicated in mister Trump's second term. In recent months,
mister Trump, eager to fulfill his promises of settling the
war between Russia and Ukraine, has grown irritated by mister

(04:18):
Putin's unwillingness to de escalate the conflict. Mister Putin will
land in Alaska, determined to rewind mister Trump's view of
the war to February when he berated President Vlogimiir Zelensky
of Ukraine at a contentious White House meeting for not
showing more gratitude for US support while speaking warmly about

(04:42):
mister Putin. Since the blow up between Trump and Zelensky
in the Oval Office, Europeans, Ukrainians, and Ukraine's supporters inside
the administration have cobbled together a policy of helping Ukraine
stay in the fight and preventing the lurch by Trump
to embrace Russia's view of the conflict, said Andrew Weiss,

(05:03):
the vice president for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. The real test on Friday will be how
much of that policy survives. The first in person contact
between Trump and Putin in his second term. Mister Weiss added,
the White House portrays the meeting as an example of

(05:24):
mister Trump's dedication to stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine and
defends his unconventional style as a needed break from slow
moving diplomatic customs. But critics worry that the hastily planned
conversation will play into the hands of mister Putin, a
former KGB agent known as a master manipulator. I think

(05:47):
he believes he should reel Trump back in and believes
his KGB skills will do that, mister Bolton said in
an interview with News Nation last week. The Russian leader
may also benefit from the fact that mister Trump, in
contrast to his first term, has few advisers pushing back
against mister Putin's worldview. For his trip to Helsinki, for instance,

(06:09):
mister Trump was surrounded by such Russia Hawks as mister Bolton,
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Today,
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the lone member of
mister Trump's inner circle with a clear record of criticizing
mister Putin. But even mister Rubio, who also serves as

(06:30):
mister Trump's National Security advisor, has softened his tone since
joining mister Trump's cabinet. The Alaska meeting was set after
mister Trump's Special envoy, Steve Whitcoff, met with mister Putin
in Moscow last week. Mister Whitcoff, a friend of mister
Trump and a fellow real estate mogul, had no diplomatic

(06:51):
experience before joining government. He has been criticized for meeting
with mister Putin without other US officials and for echoing
his talking points afterward. To be sure, the Russia hawks
around mister Trump in his first term often had little success.
When mister Trump called mister Putin after the Russian president

(07:11):
was re elected in a March twenty eighteen vote widely
seen as illegitimate, mister Trump's aides placed a clear instruction
in his briefing papers, do not congratulate mister Trump did
so anyway, Not even a federal investigation into twenty sixteen
Russian election interference was enough to restrain mister Trump. When

(07:34):
the two leaders last met in person on the sidelines
of a twenty nineteen Group of Twenty gathering in Osaka, Japan,
mister Trump joked with mister Putin about the subject. Don't
meddle in the election, mister Trump said, with a smirk
and a finger wag. Mister Putin grinned in delight. The

(07:54):
investigation and the presence of Putin critics at high levels
of his administration may have led mister Trump to conduct
his conversations with unusual secrecy. However, when the men first
sat down together at a Group of twenty summit in Hamburg,
Germany in twenty seventeen, mister Trump was joined only by
his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson and an interpreter. After

(08:18):
the meeting, mister Trump took the interpreter's notes and ordered
him not to disclose what he heard. That evening, mister
Trump and mister Putin had an impromptu conversation initiated by
mister Trump at a group dinner. No other Americans were present,
and the White House confirmed the meeting only after surprised
witnesses spoke to reporters. Asked by reporters what he had

(08:41):
told mister Trump in Hamburg about the twenty sixteen election,
mister Putin replied, I got the impression that my answers
satisfied him. For his part, mister Trump called a New
York Times reporter in Hamburg just as he was departing
from the summit meeting and said mister Putin had told
him that Russia could would not have been involved in
the twenty sixteen election because its operations were so sophisticated

(09:06):
they never would have been detected. Mister Trump said he
was very impressed by that argument, a case he went
on to make in public. Analysts say they have low
expectations for the sort of breakthrough on Ukraine that mister
Trump is hoping to achieve in Alaska. Mister Putin has
shown every sign that he believes he can gain more

(09:27):
on the battlefield than in negotiations, at least on the
terms that mister Trump has so far required. Maria Snegovaya,
a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, noted that in his first term,
mister Trump tried to strike major deals with the authoritarian

(09:47):
leaders of such nations as China and North Korea, with
limited results. In general, Trump's history of meetings with strong
men from Shijinping to Kim Jong lun does not lead
to a successful deal. That follows, she said. Fiona Hill,
who was Senior Director for Europe and Russia on the
National Security Council in the first Trump White House, agreed

(10:11):
that any breakthrough appeared unlikely. Mister Putin and his aides
have been frustrated at a lack of diplomatic progress with
the Trump administration, and Miss Hill said she sees little
fresh ground for a deal, even one favorable to mister Putin.
The Russians always want something they can take to the
bank in agreement. They can hold the US too. She said.

(10:33):
They were excited by Witkoff at first, since he's a
direct channel to Trump, but they're frustrated there's no structure
around it. While mister Putin might welcome a leader to
leader meeting, she said, he wants the details to be
worked out later, and Trump isn't a details guy. That's
a quote. Our next story is headlined Russia is suspected

(10:57):
to be behind breach of federal court court filing system.
It's by Adam Goldman, Glen Thrush, and Mattathias Schwartz. Investigators
have uncovered evidence that Russia is at least partly responsible
for a recent hack of the computer system that manages
federal court documents, including highly sensitive records with information that

(11:21):
could reveal sources and people charged with national security crimes.
According to several people briefed on the breach, it is
not clear what entity is responsible, whether an arm of
Russian intelligence might be behind the intrusion, or if other countries
were also involved, which some of the people familiar with
the matter described as a year's long effort to infiltrate

(11:45):
the system. Some of the searches included mid level criminal
cases in the New York City area and several other jurisdictions,
with some cases involving people with Russian and Eastern European surnames.
The disclosure comes as pre President Trump is expected to
meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin in Alaska
on Friday, where mister Trump is planning to discuss his

(12:08):
push to end the war in Ukraine. Administrators with the
court system recently informed Justice Department officials, clerks, and chief
judges in federal courts that persistent and sophisticated cyber threat
actors have recently compromised sealed records, According to an internal
Department memo reviewed by The New York Times, The administrators

(12:30):
also advised those officials to quickly remove the most sensitive
documents from the system. This remains an urgent matter that
requires immediate action, officials wrote, referring to guidance that the
Justice Department had issued in early twenty twenty one, after
the system was first infiltrated documents related to criminal activity

(12:53):
with an overseas tie across at least eight district courts
were initially believed to have been targeted. Last month, the
chief judges of district courts across the country were quietly
warned to move those kinds of cases off the regular
document management system. According to officials briefed on the request,
they were initially told not to discuss the matter with

(13:16):
other judges in their districts. In recent weeks, judges of
the Eastern District of New York have been taking corrective measures.
On Friday, the chief Judge of the district, Margot K. Brody,
issued an order prohibiting the uploading of sealed documents to PACER,
the searchable public database for documents and court dockets. Ordinarily,

(13:39):
sealed documents would be uploaded to the database, but behind
a wall, in theory preventing people without the proper authority
from seeing them. Now, those sensitive documents will be uploaded
to a separate drive outside PACER. Peter Kaplan, a spokesman
for the Administrative Office of the U S Courts, which
helps admit winister the system, declined to comment. A Justice

(14:04):
Department spokesman declined to comment. Federal officials are scrambling to
determine the patterns of the breach, assess the damage, and
address flaws in a spiraling, heavily used computer system long
known to have serious vulnerabilities that could be exploited by
foreign adversaries. Last week, administrators with the US Court system

(14:26):
publicly announced they were taking additional steps to protect the network,
which includes the case management electronic case file system used
to upload documents and PACER. They did not address the
origin of the attack or what files had been compromised.
The breach also included federal courts in South Dakota, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota,

(14:50):
and Arkansas, said an official who requested anonymity to discuss
a continuing investigation. Sensitive documents can be the targets of
interest to a range of threat actors, the authors of
last week's notice wrote. To better protect them, courts have
been implementing more rigorous procedures to restrict access to sensitive

(15:12):
documents under carefully controlled and monitored circumstances. Politico earlier reported
that the system had been under attack since early July
by an unnamed foreign actor. Concerns about the hacking of
the court's electronic filing system predate this summer. The courts
announced in January twenty twenty one that there had been

(15:34):
a cyber attack, but did not name Russia. Former federal
law enforcement officials said Russia was behind that hacking. It
was not clear if other countries also exploited vulnerabilities in
the system, but the former officials described the breach as
extremely serious. After the announcement in twenty twenty one, federal

(15:56):
investigators were told to take significant precautions to mitigate the
That meant hand delivering search warrants with potential source information
to the courts and filing sensitive complaints or indictments by hand,
at least in some districts, particularly in the Southern District
of New York, where prosecutors were encouraged to file documents

(16:18):
on paper. Former Justice Department officials said their efforts to
keep filings secret, while an improvement, did not entirely mitigate
the risk. Given the vast scale of the system and
the complexity of the cases, the courts had already begun
taking defensive measures by the spring of last year. According
to two court officials, judges were barred from gaining access

(16:42):
to internal court filing systems while traveling overseas, and were
sometimes given burner phones and new email addresses to communicate
with their own chambers and court clerks, and in May,
the Administrative Office of the US Courts announced that it
would institute multi fact authentication to gain access to the system.

(17:04):
In twenty twenty two, Representative Gerald Nadler, Democrat of New York,
claimed he had obtained information that the court system's computer
network had been breached by three unnamed foreign entities dating
to early twenty twenty. Matthew Olson, then the director of
the Justice Department's National Security Division, later testified that he

(17:28):
was working with court officials to address cybersecurity issues in
the courts, but downplayed the effect on cases his unit
was investigating. Now a story headlined for Trump cities like
Washington are real estate in need of fixing up. It's
by Zolancano Youngs, who covers the White House he reported

(17:51):
from Washington to hear President Trump tell it, the nation's
capital is something akin to a blighted property in need
of repair. Washington, he says, is unsafe and dirty and disgusting.
It is menaced by bloodthirsty criminals and marred by homelessness.

(18:11):
It needs to be cleaned up and made beautiful again.
Mister Trump's bleak description of Washington is consistent with his
view of American cities as dangerous and violent, dating to
his time in New York City in the nineteen seventies
and eighties during a period of rampant crime. On Monday,

(18:31):
as he announced a temporary federal takeover of Washington's police,
mister Trump suggested that his background as a New York
real estate developer made him more suited than the local
authorities to blot out crime and homelessness in the nation's capital.
It's a natural instinct as a real estate person, mister

(18:52):
Trump told reporters as he compared his envisioned makeover of
Washington to his recent gold trimmed makeover of the White
House US. I was very good at that, and I
was very good at fixing things up. I like fixing
things up. That's a quote. He promised to rid Washington
of trash, graffiti, potholes, homeless people, and more, even as

(19:15):
he ignored the fact that violent crime has fallen recently
to a thirty year low. While Washington has struggled with
youth crime, particularly robberies and carjackings, overall crime has fallen
sharply in recent years. In twenty twenty four, Washington had
a violent crime rate of about one thousand and five

(19:37):
per one hundred thousand residents, according to data reported to
the FBI. That is far less than cities with similar
population sizes like Memphis and Detroit, but also more than
cities like Denver, Seattle, and Louisville. We're going to make
it beautiful again, mister Trump said. We're going to fix

(20:00):
exit with crime, and we're going to also as we're
doing that, we're going to start doing things that we
know how to do, that I know how to do
better than anybody, I guess because of my experience from
previous life. In that previous life of real estate and
business deals, mister Trump oversaw many failing businesses, including multiple

(20:22):
declarations of bankrupt casinos in New Jersey. He was known
to invoke crime in a way that stoked racial tension.
In nineteen eighty nine, he bought newspaper advertisements, including in
The New York Times, calling for New York State to
adopt the death penalty after five black and Latino men

(20:43):
were arrested and later wrongfully convicted of the rape of
a jogger. Even after the men, known as the Central
Park Five, were exonerated, mister Trump never apologized, and while
he has long denied any discrimination on his Trump properties,
his family business for years faced accusations of discriminating against

(21:06):
black tenants. Mister Trump opened a one hundred million dollar
countersuit accusing the Justice Department of defamation after the federal
government in nineteen seventy three sued Trump management for discriminating
against black people. As president, mister Trump has continued to
stir up fears over violent crime and disorder, particularly in

(21:30):
diverse metropolitan areas held by Democrats, and critics point out
that he has done little to address underlying causes of poverty, crime,
and homelessness, noting that his policies have undercut safety net
programs and added to inequality with tax cuts tilted toward
the wealthy. Beyond mister Trump's actions, the federal government has

(21:54):
significant sway over Washington. Mister Trump can nominate judges and
the U. S. Attorney, who served as the chief prosecutor
in most criminal cases. Laws passed by the d C Council,
as well as the city's budget, are subject to congressional approval.
The police Union in DC, which represents more than three

(22:14):
thousand officers, said in a statement that it supported the
President's decision to take over the city's police force, insisting
that it was needed to address quote, violent crime surges,
historic officers shortages, and eroded morale. But the statements of
the takeover quoting again, must be a temporary measure with

(22:37):
the ultimate goal of empowering a fully staffed and supported
police department. In his remarks on Monday, mister Trump appeared
to be espousing the widely debated broken windows theory of
policing adopted by city officials during his time in New York,
which is based on the idea that cracking down on

(22:58):
low level offenses can prevent serious crime. Mister Trump recalled
a lesson from his father, Fred Trump, who mentored him
as a real estate developer. He used to say, son,
when you walk into a restaurant and you see a
dirty front door, don't go in, because if the front
door is dirty, the kitchen's dirty. Also, mister Trump said

(23:21):
same thing with the capital. If our capital's dirty, our
whole country is dirty, and they don't respect us. Mister
Trump has often seen the world through the lens of
real estate and property values. On Monday, he said Russia
had taken over very prime territory from Ukraine. You know,
in real estate, we call it ocean front property. He said,

(23:43):
that's always the most valuable property. He characterized the humanitarian
catastrophe in Gaza as a potential real estate opportunity. Days
after entering office, mister Trump proposed seizing control of the
territory and forcibly dis placing the entire Palestinian population to

(24:03):
revamp the land into what he called the Riviera of
the Middle East for tourists from around the world. When
it comes to Washington, critics say mister Trump is misrepresenting
a city he barely knows. The district is a vibrant
city with a rich history and strong and diverse communities,

(24:24):
said Sky Perryman, the president of Democracy Forward, a left
leaning nonprofit based in Washington. The president is again overreaching
and engaging in draconian tactics that do not make anyone
safer and threaten the civil liberties and freedom of the
American people. Miss Perriman said, if this can happen in

(24:47):
one city, it can happen in any city or community.
Maya Wiley, the president and chief executive of the Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights and a city official
in New York, said she saw a through line between
mister Trump's remarks as a real estate developer in New
York City and his approach to diverse cities as president.

(25:10):
He has definitely shown that he hasn't changed much from
those days. Miss Wiley said, what we're seeing in this
rhetoric is not just about cities and them being dirty
and crime ridden. They're always coded to people of color.
Monday was not the first time mister Trump tried to
assert control over Washington. During his first term, Mister Trump

(25:32):
deployed a hodgepodge of federal agents and National Guard troops
to Washington in response to racial justice protests that were
mostly peaceful but included some acts of vandalism. His administration
also dispatched military helicopters to conduct low level maneuvers to
disperse protesters that are usually reserved for combat zones, but

(25:56):
those measures stand in stark contrast to his response to
one of the most violent days in the city's recent history.
Soon after taking office for his second term, mister Trump
pardoned thousands of people who had committed crimes in Washington
when they rioted at the capitol on January sixth, twenty
twenty one. Now a story headlined key inflation gage sped

(26:21):
up in July as companies grappled with tariffs. It is
by Colby Smith, who covers the US economy and the
Federal Reserve. A key measure of underlying inflation rose in
July as businesses grappled with President Trump's tariffs, although the
overall increase was most likely not significant enough to deter

(26:44):
the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates at its next meeting.
The Consumer Price Index stayed steady at two point seven
percent compared with the same time last year. On a
monthly basis, prices rose two tenths of one percent from June,
but an important gauge tracking consumer prices that strips out

(27:04):
volatile food and energy prices accelerated more rapidly. Core CPI,
which is closely watched by the Central Bank, jumped three
tenths of a percent over the course of the month,
or three point one percent year over year. That is
one of the largest monthly increases so far this year
and the fastest annual pace in five months. In June,

(27:28):
core inflation rose two tenths of a percent from the
previous month, or two point nine percent from June of
twenty twenty four. The July data, which was released by
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, provides a clear sign that
businesses are being affected by tariffs. Some have begun to
pass along those related costs more readily to their consumers

(27:51):
after a prolonged period of muted price gains. Still, the
inflation data came in more or less as expected, suggesting
this central bank can move ahead with plans to soon
restart interest rate cuts, which it put on hold in December.
The economy is weaker because of tariffs, said Stephen Stanley,

(28:12):
chief US economist at Santander. Businesses are being very cautious,
They're not investing, and they're not hiring, he added, noting
that consumers were also pulling back in the face of
higher prices. US companies that import products have largely been
able to hold off un raising prices, despite a ten

(28:32):
percent tariff that's been in place on all imports since April,
along with higher levees on steel, aluminum, and products from
China and Canada. Mister Trump's more punishing tariffs on individual
countries went into effect on Thursday, and so were not
reflected in the July data. Businesses have managed to avoid

(28:54):
passing along price increases because of a strategy earlier in
the year to stockpiled goods goods that were likely to
be subject to mister Trump's levies. Many companies have also
sought to absorb the costs themselves to avoid driving away customers,
some of whom are increasingly under financial strain. But the

(29:15):
July data showed more businesses reaching a tipping point, left
with little option but to raise prices. After June's notable uptick,
services inflation accelerated in July, posting the largest monthly gain
since the start of the year after energy costs were
stripped out. Mister Stanley warned that mister Trump's tariffs were

(29:38):
high enough that prices across most categories would have to
go up for companies. He said, quote, it's just a
matter of when and how do I do it? Unquote.
The biggest impact has so far been concentrated in categories
such as furniture, appliances, and other household wares, as well

(29:59):
as recreation, hoods and footwear. In July, the broader household
furnishing Z index rose seven tenths of a percent from
the previous month after a one percent increase in June.
Compared with the same time last year, those prices were
up two point four percent. Recreation related prices rose four

(30:20):
tenths of a percent. Some of the larger gains in
July came in apparel and footwear categories that are exposed
to tariffs on countries around the globe, including India, Vietnam,
and China. Prices on infant and toddler apparel were up
three point three percent in July. Footwear was up one

(30:41):
point four percent. Airfares rose four percent in July after
several months of declines. Hotel related expenses continued to be muted. However,
new and used vehicle price increases have stayed relatively subdued,
as car makers have shielded their customers from mister Trump's
duties rather than forcing them to bear the brunt of

(31:04):
the higher costs that changed in July, with used car
and truck prices rising half of a percent. New vehicle prices, however,
were flat for the month. A sharp drop in energy
prices helped to offset rising costs elsewhere, which kept the
headline inflation figure steady. The overall energy index dropped one

(31:26):
point one percent, with gasoline prices down two point two percent.
Americans have become choosier about how they spend as hiring
across the country has slowed in recent months, which Nancy Lazarre,
chief Global economist at Piper Sandler, said could help to
blunt how significantly inflation would rise over time. Consumer incomes,

(31:52):
once adjusted for inflation, have stalled, she said, quote the
consumer doesn't have the wherewithal to go in and net
pay higher prices. July's jobs report showed that just seventy
three thousand jobs added for the month, and gains registered
in May and June were revised down by an unusually

(32:15):
large total of two hundred and fifty eight thousand positions.
Companies have yet to lay off workers in droves, but
economists worried that they will be forced to cut back
on costs as tariffs continue to eat into their margins.
Tuesday's data is important for the FED, which is facing
a challenging economic situation in which prices are rising while

(32:38):
the labor market is weakening. It's a difficult backdrop given
the Fed's duty to keep inflation low and stable while
also ensuring that unemployment does not rise too much. Officials
at the Central Bank have kept interest rates steady since
the start of the year as they have sought more
clarity on how Trump's policies, including tariffs, would affect the

(33:03):
economy the approach. That approach has attracted significant criticism from
the President, who has taken to directly insulting Jerome H. Powell,
the chair of the Central Bank, as well as the
powerful Board of Governors that he heads. On Tuesday, mister Trump
again attacked mister Powell, calling him a loser and accusing

(33:24):
him of causing incalculable economic damage. The President had also
threatened to allow what he described as a major lawsuit
against mister Powell to proceed over costly renovations at the
Fed's headquarters in Washington. The project has become one of
the primary targets of mister Trump's anger over the Fed's
reluctance to cut interest rates this year. The President announced

(33:48):
last week that he would install a temporary governor to
join the board, which votes on interest rates at every
policy meeting. The next one is in September. A vacancy
unexpectedly opened up at the start of the month when
Adriana Coogler announced that she was leaving before her term
as governor expired at the end of January. The President

(34:11):
tapped a long standing critic of the FED, Stephen Mran,
who most recently served as chair of mister Trump's Council
of Economic Advisors. On Tuesday, mister Miran said the inflation
report showed that there was no evidence whatsoever that tariffs
had caused a spike in prices. It just hasn't panned out,

(34:31):
he said. Mister Miran, who still requires Senate confirmation, would
join a group of FED officials who have started to
splinter over the right time to restart interst rate cuts.
Two policymakers previously appointed by mister Trump have already called
for the FED to cut interest rates. More policy makers

(34:53):
appear to be joining that camp after the most recent
data showed far less monthly jobs growth since the start
of the summer than initially expected. Mister Powell conceded this
summer that were it not for tariffs, the Fed most
likely could have reduced borrowing costs already. July's inflation report
is also the first big economic data release from the

(35:15):
Bureau of Labor Statistics since mister Trump fired its head
After the weaker that expected jobs report, the President claimed
without evidence that Erica mcintarfur, who had run the agency
since twenty twenty four, had rigged the federal hiring data
to harm him politically. Economists decried that move, warning that

(35:36):
any attempt to undermine what has always been considered reliable,
independently produced statistics from the government agency would be economically
and financially damaging. On Monday, the President announced his decision
to nominate E. J. And Tony, an economist at the

(35:57):
Conservative Heritage Foundation who has criticized the BLS in the past,
to lead the agency. Now it's turned to sports for
a story headlined Bonds Beats the Babe. Statistical model crowns
a new greatest in baseball. It's by Alexander Nazarian. Every

(36:21):
sport has its arguments over which player was the greatest,
but no sport takes the debate as seriously as baseball does.
It is a gamed informed by an obsession with statistics,
such that passions are often checked by numbers. How could
anyone love a player with such a miserable on base percentage?

(36:42):
It is something consequential, then, when anyone makes a declarative
statement regarding anything about baseball. But a team of statisticians
did just that. They have spent years devising a definitive
ranking of baseball's best performers, no matter what era or
which team was involved. Their new method compared players across

(37:06):
history by placing the respective achievements within the context of
a given year's pool of eligible baseball talent. The controversial answer,
the greatest of all time title no longer belongs to
the New York Yankee legend Babe Ruth, but to Barry Bonds,

(37:27):
the poor Bambino isn't even second. That spot belongs to
Roger Clemens, who pitched for both the Boston Red Sox
and the Yankees. He is followed by Bonds's godfather, Willie Mays.
Both men are generally associated with the San Francisco Giants,
though they played for other teams as well. Ruth ranks fourth,

(37:48):
followed by Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee and later Atlanta Braves.
Mickey Mantle, who won seven World Series rings while wearing
Yankee pinstripes, falls to twenty third. Baseball purists may object,
noting that Bonds and Clemens are among several high profile
Major league players accused of using steroids during the nineteen nineties.

(38:12):
This likely explains why neither player is enshrined in Cooperstown,
the Sports Hall of Fame in upstate New York. But
statistics tell their own story. Daniel J. Eck, a statistician
at the University of Illinois Urbana Champagne, who led the
new study and has been working on the model for
about a decade, noted that because so many other players

(38:35):
took performance enhancing drugs or peds, any improvement from banned
chemicals is reflected in players achievement models for those years.
I'm okay with a ped laden person being number one,
oversay a person who played before baseball was integrated, doctor
X said. In other words, despite Bond's steroid use, he

(38:57):
put up more outlandishly impressive numbers in era adjusted terms
than Ruth. Needless to say, trying to calculate the size
of the baseball talent pool in an entire society, not
just those who ended up in Major League baseball requires
an enormous amount of historical data, as well as many

(39:19):
carefully considered assumptions, But several experts in baseball statistics or
sabermetrics said the new ranking methodology, devised by statisticians at
the University of Illinois or Ban of Champaign and published
recently in the Annals of Applied Statistics, was a home run.

(39:39):
It's arguably the state of the art at this point
for player evaluation over time, said doctor Michael J. Schell,
an oncologist and biostatistician at the Moffat Cancer Center in
Florida who also writes about baseball. Some years ago, as
an outside expert, he reviewed a draft of the Illinois
team's work and found its calculations less than fully persuasive.

(40:04):
That was no longer the case. They've moved the ball forward,
doctor Shell said. Doctor X said he knew of no
other serious ranking system that had Bonds in first place
as its starting point. The Illinois analysis used a well
established measure known as wins above replacement or war whether

(40:27):
a player is a designated hitter, a skilled shortstop, or
a closer with a blistering fastball. His war value indicates
how many wins he contributed to his team in a
given year relative to a generic player. But the researchers
wanted to know how each player's achievements stacked up against

(40:48):
all of the latent talent available to the sport of
baseball that year, an immense undertaking that involved accounting for racism, demography, war,
and the rise of bothoth basketball and football. The statistical
model we developed is entirely new, not just a tweak
of existing ideas. Doctor X sat Doctor K linked the

(41:11):
distribution of talent to the distribution of achievement, allowing for
a comparison between the two that works as well for
a player in nineteen twenty five as it does for
one in twenty twenty five. To have a high talent score,
one must stand out from their peers in their own
time and be a product of a large talent pool.

(41:33):
The study notes the new rankings skewed toward players in
the post segregation era because the talent pool greatly expanded
after Jackie Robinson broke the racial barrier by joining the
Brooklyn Dodgers in nineteen forty seven. This statistical rebalancing has
led to accusations that the Illinois model tried to leave

(41:55):
segregation era standouts such as Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby
out of the record books. They're not junk, doctor Schall
said of those players, although he allowed that they may
have previously been overrated, having played at a time when
the talent pool was small and relatively unimpressive. Training and
nutrition also improved. Still, no study can yet measure the

(42:21):
emotional appeal of one player over another. Christopher Kinson, one
of the statisticians who worked on the new model, has
been pained by charges that he and his colleagues were
trying to engineer outcomes. We didn't set out to do
this because we believe that the great players are not white,
he said. White players continue to dominate the twenty five

(42:43):
player list, which does not include recent stars like the
japan born wonder kind Shohei o Tani, a Los Angeles Dodger.
The people who are writing this paper are very sophisticated statistically,
very sophisticated mathematically, said Gregory J. Matthews, a statistician at
Loyal University Chicago, who also consults for the Cincinnati Reds.

(43:08):
It's a very rigorous, well written study. Adrian Burgos, Junior,
a historian of Latino and sports history at the University
of Illinois and an author on the study, conceded that
the new rankings were certain to rankle. One of the
things that's always been fascinating is how much we undervalue
the performance of the super talented players of a much

(43:31):
bigger talent pool today, he said. Nostalgia for an older era,
doctor Burgos said, can blind baseball diehards to elite performance
in more contemporary moments. Doctor Matthews praised the researchers for
being transparent about the assumptions they made, a key marker
of sound scientific research, he said. They enumerate every single

(43:54):
one of those assumptions, and they test how much those
assumptions matter. Important assumption the researchers made is that the
most talented baseball players in any year were playing the
game professionally. In their new paper, they acknowledged that this
is no longer the case, pointing to Kansas City Chiefs

(44:14):
quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who chose to play football over baseball.
They ran tests where the model is adjusted accordingly with
talent and professional achievement no longer in synchrony. There's this
idea of reproducible research in science. Doctor Matthews said, you
should be able to take someone's research and go from

(44:36):
the raw data through their analysis and match their numbers exactly.
The talent based methodology known as full house modeling is
based on the title of a book by Stephen J. Gould,
the evolutionary biologist and a baseball enthusiast. In his book
full House, doctor Gould explains how batting averages above four

(44:57):
hundred vanished because of the evolution of talent and convergence
of achievement, making unconventional standouts less likely. Baseball is this
system that's really rare and desirable for scientists because it's
a closed system operating under essentially the same rules with

(45:18):
very careful data collection. Doctor X said, under that circumstance,
you should be able to calculate and infer things extraordinarily well.
Having been refined by the Illinois researchers, the concept of
full house modeling could find use beyond baseball. I definitely

(45:39):
could not could see it applied to other disciplines in
other sectors of life, not just sports. Doctor Kinson said,
as for the game, no metric can resolve debates about
its greatest players. For some, it is unquestioningly Ruth, who
pointed to the outfield before slamming a home run against
the Chicago Cubs during the nineteen thirty two World Series.

(46:03):
Unless it's Maze with his over the shoulder catch at
the Polo Grounds in nineteen fifty four, or Clements, who
was honored with seven Cy Young Awards, given each year
to each league's best pitcher during his career. Then there's Otani,
whose other worldly prowess at the plate and the mound,
yes he also pitches, has earned credible comparisons to the Babe.

(46:28):
John Thorne, the official historian for Major League Baseball, said
that the Illinois study confirmed a truth readily evidenced whenever
Otani sends a pitch sailing into the skies above Chavez Ravine,
or the crowd at Boston's Fenway Park launches into Sweet
Caroline during the eighth inning. Quote, baseball is better than

(46:50):
ever unquote Now. A story headlined the Long, Strange Trip
of Rick Perry. It's by Robert Draper, reporting from Washington
and Round Top, Texas on a Tuesday morning in September
twenty twenty three, in a medical clinic just outside of Tijuana, Mexico,

(47:13):
Rick Perry, the former Republican presidential candidate, Enregie secretary and
Texas governor, lay down on a mattress, put on an eyemask,
and soon began to believe he was hurtling through space.
Objects flew past him, some of them appeared to resemble
Maya higher hieroglyphics. He saw an arm reaching out for him,

(47:35):
and attached to it was a figure with horns. Satan,
get behind me, he heard himself say. The figure instantly disappeared.
Mister Perry's hallucinations, induced by the powerful psychotropic drug ibocaine
he had taken about forty five minutes before putting on
his eyemask, continued for more than twelve hours. Experience was

(48:01):
an ordeal. He vomited intermittently and lost much of his
body coordination. It took all of Wednesday to recover, but
on Thursday morning, mister Perry recalled, in describing his experience
publicly for the first time, quote, I woke up very
clear headed, with this very warm feeling in my body.

(48:22):
I was as calm and as happy as I'd been
in memory unquote. Since that experience, mister Perry, seventy five,
a social conservative, has emerged as a leading champion of
ibogain as a potential treatment for brain trauma, addiction, and
even cognitive decline. He was an unlikely keynote speaker at

(48:45):
the Psychedelic Science Conference in Denver in June. His allies
in the effort include the former Senator Kirsten Cinema, a
progressive on social issues who underwent ibogain treatment in May
with the aim of preventing dementia of the sort that
claimed her grandmother a few years ago. In an interview,
Miss Cinema described mister Perry as quote one of the

(49:09):
very few conservative individuals in this space with high credibility
among what i'd call a non traditional audience for psychedelic
medicine unquote. To mister Perry, Miss Cinema and several others
who described their eyebogaine experiences for this story. The psychoactive
compound derived from the bark of the tabernanth iboga plant,

(49:32):
a Central African rainforest shrub, is a kind of miracle drug.
They say it can arrest substance abuse, reduce suicides, reverse
neurodegenerative disorders, extend brain life, and even reconnect individuals to
their spirituality. It has literally given people their lives back,

(49:54):
mister Perry said. Small recent studies have suggested the drug
hold's unusual therapy potential. One treatment with ibogain has been
shown to achieve significant results, but the powerful drug, which
is illegal in the United States, comes with risks. Because

(50:14):
ibogain lengthens the time between heartbeats, a user who gets
the wrong dosage, is taking other drugs, or whose heart
rate is not being monitored during treatment can go into
cardiac arrest. Even under the most scrupulous of circumstances. Ibogain
therapy is a long and grueling inward journey that Miscinema

(50:36):
described as the opposite of a pleasant experience. It is
because of the drug's potency that mister Perry, Miscinema, and
other ibogain advocates have adopted a baby STEP's approach. Rather
than promote wholesale decriminalization or even widespread availability. They are
seeking public funding for the development of an ibogain compound

(51:00):
in the United States, with the initial aim of treating
military veterans. Mister Perry helped lead a successful effort earlier
this year to make Texas the first state to appropriate
funds to research the clinical treatment of veterans with ibogain.
During the same time period, Miss Cinema worked with an

(51:22):
Arizona Republican state legislator, Justin Wilmouth, to make Arizona the
second state to provide public funding for clinical trials. Other states,
including Mississippi and South Carolina, have discussed scheduling hearings to
consider similar ibogain research. Political leaders in both states have

(51:45):
received strategic support from mister Perry, who has co founded
the nonprofit Americans for Ibogain. Mister Perry, who said he
has no financial stake in the effort, now describes his
ibogain crusade as my lifeife's mission. A veteran of eleven local, state,
and federal campaigns, mister Perry still possesses a flare for

(52:08):
retail politics. At a cafe in the pint size, Texas
town of round Top, near his home, mister Perry asked
the name and shook the hand of every customer, lingering
with those who like him, wore a Texas A and
m class ring. Without looking at the menu, he ordered
a cheeseburger from the waitress, whom he addressed by her
first name. When the food arrived, mister Perry commented favorably

(52:32):
on the burgher's Olympian dimensions, then blessed the meal with
a short prayer before diving in. Over lunch, mister Perry
described his personal journey that led him to become IBILL
Gain's most prominent ambassador. His otherwise bucolic adolescence at his
parents' farm in Paint Creek, a dot of a town

(52:53):
on the plains of West Texas, was marred by three
severe concussions, two on the football field and one while
unloading a trailer of horses. I was knocked out for
over one minute each time, mister Perry recalled. The concussions
led to some damage in my brain, he said. Mister
Perry said that he experienced episodes of mild to moderate

(53:16):
anxiety and insomnia beginning in nineteen seventy two when he
was in pilot training for the Air Force. Later, after
winning his first race for the Texas State Legislature in
nineteen eighty four, quote, I came to realize that I'd
picked an avocation that tended to exacerbate the anxiety unquote.

(53:38):
As a three term Texas governor, mister Perry exemplified the
Marlborough Man swagger that had been popularized by his predecessor,
George W. Bush. I managed my anxiety, mister Perry said.
No one knew about it other than my wife and
a chief of staff or two. But in trying to
follow in mister Bush's footsteps by running for president, mister

(54:01):
Perry said that his anxieties likely got the better of him.
During a Republican candidate debate in November twenty eleven, the
Texas governor boasted that he would eliminate three federal agencies
and proceeded to mention the Department of Commerce and Education.
Mister Perry then froze. Unable to recall his third intended target,

(54:23):
the Department of Energy, He weakly mumbled oops. The moment
became an instant punchline. Two months later, mister Perry suspended
his presidential campaign. By then, he had concluded that the
US government had absolutely failed to address the well being
of the troops it had sent into combat in Iraq

(54:45):
and Afghanistan. As governor, he often rather visited the Brook
Army Medical Center at Fort sam Houston, where he encountered
veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan with brain injuries, severe burns,
and PTSD. The staff would give these kids lollipops to
suck on on. The lollipops contained opioids, he said. One

(55:07):
veteran mister Perry became close to was Marcus Latreuell, a
former Navy seal who moved into the Governor's mansion in Austin.
I had nowhere else to go, mister Littrell said in
an interview. At one point, mister Latrell said that he
frantically searched the medicine cabinet of mister Perry's wife, Anita
Thigpen Perry, for painkillers, and then asked her if she

(55:29):
would order a prescription of the powerful opioid OxyContin. That's
when I realized how bad this addiction problem was among
our veterans, mister Perry said. In twenty seventeen, mister Perry
became mister Trump's first term Energy Secretary, the head of
the department he had forgotten to include in his debate Littany,

(55:50):
and brought on mister Littrell's twin brother, Morgan Latreell, another
Navy seal and a neuroscientist as part of his team.
The following year, Morgan Latreuelle told mister Perry that he
would be taking time off to go to Mexico for
IBA Gain treatment for persistent psychological issues he had faced

(56:11):
since returning home from combat. Morgan Latreuelle said that several
other Navy seals had undergone the treatment and that it
had changed their lives for the better. It was the
first mister Perry had heard of Ibogain. Morgan, you need
to be careful with that kind of stuff, mister Perry

(56:31):
told him. O the stories in Today's Times in international news,
deadly heat in South Europe, wildfires erupted in France, Spain,
and Portugal as temperatures soared above one hundred ten degrees fahrenheit.
And in national news, Democrats have work to do. Working

(56:52):
class Americans who long voted Democratic said the party should
not count on a backlash to President Trump to win
them back. This concludes the reading of The New York
Times for Today. Your reader for today has been Scott Johnson.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions concerning this program,
please feel free to call us at eight five nine

(57:15):
four two two sixty three nine zero eight five nine
four two two sixty three nine zero. Thank you for listening,
and now please stay tuned for continued programming on Radio
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