Here and Now

When the weather is warm and the days long, we often get a chance to see and talk to our neighbors more often than we do when winter’s cold keeps people indoors.

Of the range of people you can know in the world, the neighbor occupies a curious spot.

From the Here & Now Contributors Network, Sean Hurley of New Hampshire Public Radio has these thoughts on what he’s learned about the people who live near him.

Volunteers in Iowa are getting a great deal — $900 for eating a banana. It’s part of a human feeding experiment to test genetically-engineered bananas.

Researchers hope that blood drawn from the volunteers will show higher levels of vitamin A, so the bananas can head to Uganda, where bananas are a staple and vitamin A deficiency is widespread.

NPR’s Dan Charles joins Here & Now’s Meghna Chakrabarti to talk about the experiment, and what this may mean for fortified produce.

“On Stage” is our look at what’s happening on the boards across the country, from comedy shows to celebrations of slices of American life.

Today, we turn to the Colorado Black Arts Festival, kicking off in Denver today. The festival features three full stages with jazz, blues, reggae and gospel music, as well as traditional African drumming and dance.

Will Lautzenheiser, a former teacher at Boston University, had just started teaching film at Montana State University three years ago when he lost all four limbs to a group A streptococcal infection.

It was shattering for Will, but also for his identical twin Tom Lautzenheiser. Now, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston has given the OK to a rare, still experimental double arm transplant for Will.

LeBron James, considered by many to be the best player in basketball right now, is deciding where he’ll play next year, after his contract with the Miami Heat comes to an end.

Derek Thompson joins Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson to talk about the economics of the NBA, including player contract negotiations.

Crude oil shipments by rail increased by more than 80 percent, nationally, last year. Most of it is coming from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota. That crude is more flammable than other types of oil, and has been shown to catch fire and explode when trains derail.

More than 15 trains of Bakken oil move through some parts of the Northwest each week, en route to refineries and terminals in Washington and Oregon.

The Battle of Wanat is one of the bloodiest battles of the war in Afghanistan. Nine American soldiers were killed and more than two dozen were wounded when hundreds of insurgents assaulted the Army outpost they were building in Waygal Valley on July 13, 2008. It was just after 4 o’clock that morning when the American soldiers were blasted with machine guns, rocket propelled grenades and hand grenades.

When author Cammie McGovern’s oldest son was diagnosed with autism, she looked for an outlet where he could be with other children with similar difficulties. That led her to form the group “Whole Children,” an after-school and weekend program for children with disabilities.

Now, a decade later, those kids spurred her to write the new young adult novel “Say What You Will” (excerpt below).

Citigroup and the Justice Department are reportedly closing in on a $7 billion deal that would settle allegations that the bank sold shoddy mortgages in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis.

The deal is expected to be announced in the next week and comes after months of tense negotiations between the bank and government officials — negotiations that became so tense that in June, the Justice Department threatened to sue if the bank did not agree to the government’s proposed penalty.

The world’s most storied bicycle competition, the Tour de France, has been imperiled by spectators trying to take selfies.

Riders have taken to social media with pleas for fans to show restraint, since fans turning their backs on the race to take photos are unaware of where the riders are and how fast they may be going.

Here & Now’s Robin Young speaks with Bill Strickland, interim editor of Bicycling magazine about the phenomenon and get his take on this year’s race.

Baseball fans in many cities, including Kansas City, can no longer count on the price of single game tickets during the season. Teams are using variable ticket pricing and selling tickets according to projected attendance.

From the Here & Now Contributors Network, Greg Echlin of KCUR reports that teams are looking at factors including the opposing team, day of the week and who’s on the pitching mound.

This summer, consider going on a journey of a different kind – a trip through time.

Note: See an update on this story here.

City leaders in Leawood, Kansas tonight will take up 9-year-old Spencer Collins‘ Little Free Library.

The boy had put up a slightly larger than a birdfeeder box containing a free book exchange in his front yard, but a neighbor complained it was an eyesore and “an illegal detached structure” that violated the town’s zoning ordinances.

Olga Bielkova, a member of Ukraine’s parliament says, “what is happening between us and Russia right now is a threat to the whole of Europe; Russia is just testing grounds for what it could to do other countries.”

Bielkova told Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson that Ukraine is better prepared to take on pro-Russian separatists, and she thinks that the government will begin winning hearts in Eastern Ukraine where pro-Russian sentiment runs strong.

GoPro stock options began trading today, less than two weeks after it went public. The company, which makes wearable point-of-view action cameras, has come a long way since it was born 10 years ago. GoPro is now one of the best selling cameras in the world, and it’s spawned a whole new category of cameras.

Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks to Lauren Goode, reporter and review columnist for Re/code, about GoPro’s success, its competitors and the future of wearable cameras.

Ben Franklin is arguably the most famous American ever. His youngest sister Jane is mostly lost to history. But a Harvard historian found her in the letters she and her brother exchanged over their long lives.

They were called Benny and Jenny, and Benny wrote more letters to Jenny than he did to anyone else. Most of his survive; many of her’s do not.

In today’s “On Stage” segment, we look at the art of storytelling, which has taken off in venues across the country.

We go to Orlando, Florida, and the Orlando Story Club. The club was co-founded by South African-born Robin Cowie, who has a background in bringing powerful stories to life as a former Hollywood producer. He helped launch the pseudo-reality horror genre as co-producer of the 1999 film, “The Blair Witch Project.”

The cherry on top to yesterday’s encouraging jobs report was a record close for the Dow Jones industrial average.

Derek Thompson, senior editor at the Atlantic talks to Here & Now’s Robin Young about what the record means in context, for the economy as a whole, and for the average American

The German Parliament voted today to set the country’s first national minimum wage, 8.5 euros, which is $11.60 per hour. The new minimum wage will be phased in starting next year.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government supported the move at the insistence of her government coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats. The minimum wage passed over arguments that it would hurt Germany’s economy, which is Europe’s largest.

Walter Dean Myers, the award-winning children’s book author and former ambassador for young people’s literature, died this week at the age of 76.

He was a longtime advocate of children’s reading. Earlier this year, he appeared on Here & Now with his son Christopher to discuss the lack of characters of color in children’s literature.

Our homes are becoming more and more connected. Thermostats, televisions, lights and appliances can all be controlled remotely by our smartphones, tablets and computers, with smart-home software.

But Gunter Ollman, chief technology officer of tech security firm IOActive, tells Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson that technology has not caught up to current security measures, and all this connectivity is leaving us vulnerable to hacking.

The Fourth of July is almost upon us, and for many people that means two things: fireworks and grilling. Here & Now resident chef Kathy Gunst may not have pointers on the pyrotechnics, but she sure knows her way around a grill. Kathy’s special ingredient for burgers? Bacon. Lots and lots of bacon. She also shares recipes for a goat cheese crostada, vegetable kebabs, potato salad (with bacon or without) and corn relish:

There’s a dramatic recovery underway in the forests of New England. Red spruce, a tree that researchers once thought was doomed because of acid rain, is now growing faster than ever.

And it’s not the only tree growing like gangbusters. The story of the red spruce hints that with a changing climate, there will be species that are winners as well as losers.

From the Here & Now Contributors Network, Sam Evans-Brown of New Hampshire Public Radio reports.

Harley Davidson is known for the size of its motorcycles and their distinctive growl. But the bike maker may soon be offering a model that’s a lot quieter.

There’s no shifting and no clutch on the LiveWire, and the motorcycle weighs only about 450 pounds, compared to the 700 to 800 pounds for a more typical Harley.

From the Here & Now Contributors Network, Latoya Dennis of WUWM reports from Milwaukee on the LiveWire, Harley’s possible foray into the electric motorcycle market.

Today in Brazil, it’s do or die, one and done, all or nothing — and any other sports cliche you can think of to describe the winner-take-all World Cup match between the U.S. and Belgium.

Doug Tribou of NPR’s Only A Game tells Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson that while Belgium is the favorite, the “Red Devils” are pretty banged up and some of their key players may not take to the pitch. Meanwhile, U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann says his team will be going on the attack.

July 4th is a day to celebrate the birth of a nation with parades, picnics and in many communities, fireworks.

People in the pyrotechnic business say their job is to entertain people. But the splendor and thrill of a magnificent fireworks display can come with a price.

Last month, a longtime seasonal employee of Entertainment Fireworks, Inc., one of the largest fireworks companies in the Northwest, was killed in an on-the-job explosion and fire.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court left in place lower court rulings in favor of businesses that objected to covering all forms of birth control mandated for coverage in the Affordable Care Act.

It’s a strong indication that the court’s ruling yesterday extending religious rights to “closely held” companies, applies broadly to all forms of birth control covered by the mandate, rather than just the four types objected to by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga.

Comic fans will have more on their mind this summer than whether the beloved, freckle-faced Archie Andrews should chose between Betty or Veronica.

It’s being billed as a revolution in television — a TV with four times the definition of standard high definition television (HDTV), which is also known as 1080p television (a resolution of 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels high).

These new “Ultra HD 4K” TVs have been on sale for about a year, ranging in price from about $1,000 to over $20,000 for the biggest, fanciest models. But is there content available for these new televisions? And can cable companies transmit that much data?

In France, the far right Front National party, under its leader Marine Le Pen, finished on top in the recent European elections. The French prime minister called it a political earthquake, with the ruling Socialist Party pushed into third place. So why did it happen?

The BBC’s Christian Fraser traveled into the French countryside to find out why voters have turned against their main parties.