The World and Everything in It — October 19, 2020

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The Supreme Court considers a 10 year old battle between Google and Oracle over who owns what computer code.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket. 

Also today: the Monday Moneybeat—the 2020 governmental fiscal year is in the books and red ink is on virtually every page!

Plus the WORLD History Book. Today, the start of the longest embargo in U.S. history.

And WORLD commentator Kim Henderson ponders how many people can be in a selfie.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, October 19th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time now for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Pelosi sets Tuesday deadline for pre-election relief bill » House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says a deal on a COVID-19 relief package is still possible, but it has to happen no later than tomorrow. 

Pelosi said she’s optimistic, but plenty of differences remain. She complained that the White House said it agreed with House Democrats on the wording of some provisions, but in fact softened the language. 

She read one example in an interview with ABC This Week.  

PELOSI: ‘Contract tracing will be paid for by the federal government as part of the $75 billion dollars.’ Okay, we agree on that. But ‘given state difference, each state shall establish a strategy that is appropriate to its circumstances. CDC can provide guidance to the states on elements.’ Can, no must! 

The speaker on Sunday set a 48-hour deadline to strike a deal on a pre-election relief package. But either way, she said a deal is still possible after the November 3rd election. 

While there’s still plenty the White House and House Democrats disagree on, there’s even more daylight between the House and the GOP-led Senate. 

The White House has proposed a $1.8 trillion relief bill—following the House’s $2.2 trillion proposal. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, recently unveiled a narrowly focused $500 billion relief bill. 

Trump, Biden look to flip swing states ahead of election » With Election Day now just 15 days away, the Trump and Biden campaigns are hitting the ground hard in battleground states. 

TRUMP: We are telling you, you better get out because we have a group on the other side that doesn’t agree with us, you understand that. And we happen to be right, so get out there on November 3rd or sooner and do your thing.

President Trump heard there during a visit to a Las Vegas church on Sunday, before an evening rally in Carson City. 

Both Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden traveled yesterday to states they’re hoping to flip. Trump lost Nevada in 2016. 

Biden, meantime, campaigned in a state the president carried four years ago… 

BIDEN: This is the most important election in our lifetime. It’s going to make all the difference here in North Carolina. The choice is as clear as it’s ever been and the stakes have never been higher. 

Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris returns to the campaign trail today. Last week, Harris canceled all public events through Sunday after a staffer and one other person tested positive for COVID-19. Harris has since tested negative.

Coronavirus cases surging once again » Coronavirus cases are again on the rise in the United States and elsewhere around the world. 

On Friday, U.S. health officials reported more than 70,000 new cases for the first time since July. That’s a sharp increase since early September, when new daily cases had dipped to about 26,000. On the flip side, new treatments are helping doctors keep more critically ill patients alive. A rolling seven-day average of new COVID-19 deaths has fallen slightly from a September low of 738 to 702 on Saturday. 

Still, some experts warn things will get worse before they get better. Epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm told NBC’s Meet the Press…

OSTERHOLM: We do have vaccines and therapeutics coming down the pike, but when you actually look at the time period for that, the next 6 to 12 weeks are going to be the darkest of the entire pandemic. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he understands people are anxious for life to return to normal. But he urged Americans to remain vigilant. 

AZAR: They’ve been locked down. They’ve been isolated and they’re tired. But the point is, we’re so close. Hang in there with us. We are so close. We are weeks away from monoclonal antibodies for you, for safe and effective vaccines. We need to bridge to that day. 

He said in the meantime, Americans must remember what he called the “three Ws”—wash your hands, watch your distance, and wear face coverings in public. 

U.N. arms embargo against Iran expires over U.S. objection » A decade-long UN arms embargo on Iran that barred it from purchasing foreign weapons expired Sunday, despite objections from the United States. 

The embargo prevented Iran from buying weapons, aircraft, and vehicles like tanks and fighter jets from other countries. Its expiration was part of Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers. 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flatly rejected the expiration. He said “The United States is prepared to use its domestic authorities to sanction any individual or entity” that sells arms to Iran or provides training or other support. 

Iran’s economy remains crippled by broad-reaching U.S. sanctions, and other nations may avoid arms deals with Tehran for fear of American financial retaliation.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: a Supreme Court clash between computing titans.

Plus, Kim Henderson contemplates a selfie for two.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER: It’s Monday morning and we’re back at it for another week of The World and Everything in It. Today is the 19th of October, 2020.

Good morning to you, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard.

BLUMENTHAL: Are you aware of the Supreme Court, as it’s called, “shadow docket”? I am.

That is Sen. Richard Blumenthal last week during the confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett. He’s raising a question that sounds very mysterious.

BLUMENTHAL: Increasingly, the court has turned to this shadow docket. In fact, it’s growing larger, it’s up to 6,000 cases every year.

What is the Supreme Court’s “Shadow Docket?” 

Well, it refers to emergency orders and rulings from the justices that rise up from disputes not formally argued or briefed on the merits.

EICHER: For example, it was just last week the court granted a “Shadow Docket” request from the Department of Commerce. The request was to block a lower court’s decision that would have allowed more time to gather census data.

Another recent example came earlier this month: The court reinstated a South Carolina law that requires a witness to sign a voter’s mail-in ballot.

REICHARD: These orders outside the briefed and argued cases has seized media attention of late … not to mention Senator Blumenthal. 

Media outlets like Slate and The Washington Post  as well as Justice Sonia Sotomayor have criticized the way it’s carried out. 

Shadow docket decisions typically arise in emergency situations. The Trump administration stepped up use of these emergency applications largely due to pandemic shut down challenges and election disputes. Matters in which time is of the essence. 

Another example might be when a lower court judge issues a nationwide injunction beyond his or her jurisdiction. That’s happened frequently to the Trump administration. 

Senator Blumenthal, in his brief exchange, said he wanted Judge Barrett to hear what he said was a strong message: that the increasing reliance on the so-called “Shadow Docket,” to his mind, is anti-democratic and lacks transparency.

I do not think we’ve heard the last of this issue.

EICHER: Duly noted.

Well, now on to oral arguments. 

Today, two cases,  all of them conducted over the phone with eight justices. 

Case one: Google v Oracle. The two computer technology giants are battling over copyright protections. Billions of dollars are at stake. 

Oracle says Google stole software codes that Oracle created and registered for copyright protection. 

But Google says the pieces of code it used are not copyrightable; even if they are, this piece falls into an exception.

Google’s lawyer conceded that Oracle holds a copyright in Java SE as a computer program. But he argued that copyright protection doesn’t cover any method of operation in Java SE.

REICHARD: Maybe think of it this way: when you build a house, you need bricks and you need a blueprint that tells how to put it all together. 

In computer programming, you need data (the bricks) and instructions (the blueprint.) This dispute is over those instructions, also called declarations.

Listen to this exchange between Google lawyer Thomas Goldstein and Justice Clarence Thomas. I’ve edited for flow.

GOLDSTEIN: If there are no substitutes, if we cannot use anything else, then you would be giving Oracle effectively patent rights by preventing us from re-using the declaration.

THOMAS: You know, you could—someone could argue, though, that, look, if a team takes your best players, a football team, that the only way that those players could actually perform at a high level is if you give that team your playbook. I don’t think anybody would say that is right.

GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, our point isn’t that we can’t do it at a high level. Remember, everyone agrees that we have the right as Google to write a computer program that provides all the same functionality as Java SE. And in Android, we wrote new and better versions that were more suitable for use in a modern smartphone. So it’s not like we are trying to take someone’s fan base or their football players or anything else.

Let’s get technical for a minute: this is a fight over APIs. That’s the initialism for Application Programming Interfaces. It’s an interface that lets two computer systems talk to each other. You know when you pay for gas by credit card? The gas station computer talks to your credit card company’s computer to process your payment. That interface, the thing that lets those computers talk to each other, is an API.

Your smartphone is really just a little computer. Most of the world’s smartphones use Google’s Android operating system. To communicate with other computers, the Android operating system uses an interface, a piece of computer code Oracle made.  The blueprint, to use our house building analogy. 

Google lawyer Goldstein underscored how big a deal this is:

GOLDSTEIN: The long-settled practice of reusing software interfaces is critical to modern interoperable computer software. Here, reusing the minimally creative declarations allowed the developers to write millions of creative applications that are used by more than a billion people.

When you boil it down, Goldstein’s argument is that Google transformed the copyrighted material of Oracle into something completely different. Therefore, Google’s use of Oracle’s API falls under a doctrine called “fair use.” 

But Chief Justice John Roberts had his doubts:

ROBERTS: Before you get into fair use you say that was the only way for you to do it. But you know, cracking the safe may be the only way to get the money that you want, but that doesn’t mean you can do it. I mean, if it’s the only way, the way for you to get it is to get a license.

GOLDSTEIN: Well, Your Honor, I think then that analogy would help us because if you get a patent on the safe, you may well be able to keep us out. But if you write a book about the safe that is about how to crack safes, that doesn’t give you the exclusive right to do it.

Oracle’s lawyer, Jeffrey Rosenkranz, picked up on that licensure thread:

ROSENKRANZ: Google is just wrong that the success of the software industry depends on unlicensed copying. Major corporate entities were paying a lot of money just to license our declaring code.

Justice Stephen Breyer wasn’t so sure about that in this exchange with Rosenkranz:

BREYER: What I got out of reading through this very good briefing is look, Java’s people divided the universe of tasks, of which there are billions, in a certain way. All the things that tell the computer to do one of those things, we’ll do. But that which tells the computer which to do? That’s the declaration. Here’s what it’s like: A QWERTY keyboard. You didn’t have to have QWERTY keyboards on typewriters at the beginning. But my God, if you let somebody have a copyright on that now? They would control all typewriters.

ROSENKRANZ: So, this is not like the QWERTY keyboard. There was never anything expressive in QWERTY. Semi, L, K, J, H doesn’t mean anything to anyone. It was purely mechanical. That is true of all of your examples.

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor reviewed the history of copyrights, computer codes, and case law. She emphasized how many people rely on what Google did.

SOTOMAYOR: And on that understanding, industries have built up around applications that know they can copy only what’s necessary to run on the application, but they have to change everything else. That’s what Google did here. That’s why it took less than 1% of the Java Code. So I guess that’s the way the world has run.

So, she wondered, why upend everyone’s understanding about copyright? 

Rosenkranz argued that mere 1% or not, Google flat out plagiarized the structure and organization of Oracle’s computer code.

ROSENKRANZ: I mean, if someone wanted to write a book that preserved, that reproduced the 11,000 best lines of Seinfeld, they couldn’t do it by claiming, “but we had to do it because those are the lines that everyone knows.”

Rosenkranz reminded the court that 1% Justice Sotomayor mentioned is still 37 different APIs, representing more than 11,000 lines of computer code. That’s intricate work. Why should Google be rewarded for taking it?

The overarching worry seemed to be if Oracle wins, innovation will wither. 

When you consider how old copyright protection is—it’s in the US Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8—and how long we’ve had computers by this point- it seems odd we haven’t figured this out. 

But we haven’t. Not yet.

Our final case today I’ll keep brief. 

It’s a consolidated case of two people either injured or killed in car accidents involving Ford vehicles. Tragic facts. The legal question, though, is straightforward: In what court may a legal party sue Ford? Specifically, which state? 

These accidents occurred in Montana and Minnesota and the parties brought the lawsuits there.

Ford says just because people drive its vehicles in those states, that doesn’t give its courts jurisdiction over Ford. 

The tenor of the questions sounded a lot like this. Here’s Justice Breyer questioning Ford’s lawyer, Sean Marotta.

BREYER: Why isn’t there general jurisdiction here? That’s just a preliminary.

MAROTTA: There’s no general jurisdiction because Ford is not at home in Minnesota or Montana. It’s not incorporated there and it’s not headquartered there.

BREYER: All right. So the whole point of this whole doctrine, I take it, is not to put a defendant to the trouble of going to a different state, where it’s really unfair… And, here, they did send the car in. Maybe they didn’t know it would get there. Maybe there is no causal connection. But they do do a lot of business with the same cars there. And so, since they do a lot of business with the same kinds of cars there, they have to be prepared to defend against this kind of suit. So what’s unfair about it?

What’s unfair, Marotta replied, is Ford cannot expect to be sued wherever its products end up. 

After all, just three years ago the majority justices by a vote of 8-1 decided a drug manufacturer isn’t subject to lawsuits anywhere and everywhere simply because their drugs wind up anywhere and everywhere.  

But the lawyer for the people hurt argued that when Ford Motor Company cultivates a market through dealerships to sell its cars in those states? That’s enough of a connection to establish a court’s jurisdiction over the company. 

Lots of back and forth about the kind and number of connections a company must have in a state before its courts can adjudicate allegations against it.

The circuits are split on this matter, so clarity is needed.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

MARY REICHARD: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER: Time now to say good morning to financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen!

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Hey, good morning, Nick.

EICHER: Glad to hear our economics correspondent out in the field and we can hear the sounds of commerce this morning!

BAHNSEN: Yes. You got the coffee shops and the restaurants and hotels and so forth slowly starting to reopen here. I’m in Midtown Manhattan, one block from Central Park, and it definitely feels like a more energized morning than it had felt a couple months ago.

EICHER: Let me jump in on this story about the closing of the federal government fiscal year ending September 30th with an eye-popping budget deficit of $3.1 trillion. The Wall Street Journal quotes an economist at the Brookings Institution—a former Congressional Budget Office economist—saying there’s zero interest-rate pressure, zero pressure on inflation expectations, basically nothing to see here. Seems nobody’s concerned about this.

BAHNSEN: Well, I think you’re talking about two different things, Nick. I think that nobody is concerned about it and that is because the politicians and to a large degree the people that elect them prefer the spending, including the debt that goes with the spending to the alternative. And yet I think the issue is about interest rates and about inflation expectations as the supposed arbiter of whether or not the debt levels are a good thing is the entire problem. 

The problem with excessive government spending has never been that it’s going to push interest rates higher. The problem with government spending being too high is government spending being too high. It’s that you don’t want a larger government role in the economy because it’s not the most productive use of our resources. It’s a bad allocation if you care about growth and productivity. So I’ve been arguing for several years that the need of the hour is for conservatives to argue for the right reasons for diminished size of the government, because we end up looking at the boy who cried wolf about inflation and interest rates. 

Now, if the fellows at Brookings were being honest, they’d admit one of the reasons interest rates stayed contained is because there is a Fed buying trillions of dollars of bonds to keep interest rates low. So, it’s highly Japanified. It’s highly manipulated. That doesn’t make it a good thing. It just makes it a different kind of bad thing.

EICHER: You said this a few months ago and I’d like for you to repeat what you mean when you say about the debts of the American government, that it makes us less like Venezuela and more like Japan in the sense of overspending. Explain what you mean when you say “Japanified.”

BAHNSEN: Yeah, it means that you get a negative feedback loop, where you’re stuck in a debt spiral and so you solve the debt with additional monetary stimulus, which then leaves interest rates lower, which then disincentivizes growth further and so forth and so on. And that’s where Japan has been for some time. As I am fond of saying, Japan hasn’t fallen into the ocean. It has not been in a depression for 25 years. It just simply hasn’t grown. It’s been a stagnant economy, an aging economy, a reasonably nonproductive one. None of that sounds very good to me, but it hasn’t been catastrophic. It’s just not been what we want out of the American economy. We want vibrancy.

And, unfortunately, when you’re running these types of deficits, you can’t get it.

EICHER: Okay, let’s talk about another of your favorite topics, which is U.S. retail spending. We did get that report for September and it showed that retail spending picked up strongly in September. And that’s supposed to be a sign of good news. But you really see it that way.

BAHNSEN: Well, yeah, but I should be clear. I don’t think that’s bad news either. It’s just not news. That Americans are spenders is not news. It’s baked in, very well known. 

My argument has been for some time that the gauge of a healthy economy is in your production capacity, that you have to be able to produce so that you can then consume. And you have to produce so that others can then consume. OK? That’s the necessary chicken or egg in the economy. And I think that what we have to be able to gauge in a better way is the supply side of the economy, not just merely the fact that Americans are still willing to go buy toys.

EICHER: You mentioned production and I saw the Federal Reserve report that output at factories, fines, and utilities—defined as industrial production —that in September it dropped six tenths of a percent. How do you interpret that news? And I know that’s news.

BAHNSEN: Oh, it is news. There was both some good and some bad, but definitely the overall manufacturing production of the American economy has only recovered about 65% from where we were pre-COVID. I don’t think anyone was expecting it’d be back a hundred percent already, so the jury’s still out, but I remain extremely curious to see what the business investment side, which is where you’ll get a lot of industrial production measurement, will go. The bullish thing that is lingering out there is that there is a lot of cash on the balance sheets of American businesses. The question is, will they invest that into growth and productive activities, or will it sit? Will it only be used to pay back debt or it only be used to kind of cover up cashflow deficits from, you know, declining business. We really don’t know yet. I think it’s going to be a mixed bag, but in a few months, the industrial production number is most certainly going to be far more important than the consumer spending number.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, speaking to us from a bustling coffee shop in midtown Manhattan. David, as always, grateful for your time.

BAHNSEN: Well, thanks very much.

NICK EICHER: Today is Monday, October 19th. This is WORLD Radio. Thanks for listening! Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the WORLD History Book. Today, a literary triumph, political gymnastics, and…

EICHER: I’m feelin’ the need…

REICHARD: …the need for speed.

EICHER: Bringing us this week’s History Book segment once again is WORLD senior correspondent Katie Gaultney.

AUDIO: [BELL TOLLING]

KATIE GAULTNEY, REPORTER: That bell means we begin with a literary anniversary: the publication of Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. It debuted 80 years ago this week. 

The novel was inspired by Hemingway’s own experiences in the Spanish Civil War. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, an unflappable tragic hero, the classic Hemingway protagonist. He’s a young American teacher whose sympathy for the Spanish people prompts him to volunteer on the part of the Loyalists in Spain. His mission: blow up a bridge in Segovia. 

RADIO DRAMA CLIP: Are you ready? Yes. There’s someone on the bridge! Run and get the horses. Yes sir. [GUN FIRE]

The book was a smash hit, and Paramount adapted it for a 1943 movie starring Gary Cooper as Robert, and Ingrid Bergman as Maria, his love interest. The two reprised their film roles for a Lux Radio Theater broadcast in 1945. 

RADIO DRAMA MOVIE CLIP: I can take care of myself; I’m thinking of the bridge./ I’m thinking about you, Roberto./ Why Maria? I… don’t know… / 

Jordan’s bravery and honor have made Hemingway’s main character a favorite of many; both Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and former Senator John McCain listed For Whom the Bell Tolls as their favorite book. 

For the title of the book, Hemingway referenced a sermon by Anglican poet and priest John Donne. He echoes the title in the book’s epigraph, read here for Grand Audiobooks:

AUDIOBOOK: Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind/ And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. (bell tolling)

Turning now from war within Spain to the Cold War between the United States and Cuba. 

In September 1960, Fidel Castro visited Harlem, arriving to great fanfare from the American people.

AUDIO: [CASTRO VISITS HARLEM]

But the New York crowds’ jubilant mood didn’t reflect the growing tension between Washington and Havana. In fact, 60 years ago today, President Eisenhower’s State Department placed an embargo on exports to Cuba, with the exception of food and medicine. The move came as retaliation for Cuba making American-owned oil refineries in the country property of the Cuban state—without paying for them. 

The 1960 embargo marked a crescendo that followed a steady drumbeat of diplomatic fallout after Castro seized power nearly two years earlier. Before Castro nationalized American-owned oil refineries, the United States had canceled the import of Cuban sugar. Dr. Emily Morris of University College London is an expert on Cuba, and spoke to The Economist about another complicating factor: the USSR. 

MORRIS: Once the U.S. had canceled its sugar quota, Cuba had to find another customer and turned to the Soviet Union which, of course, further contributed to the deterioration of relations.

Two years later, President John F. Kennedy extended the embargo to include almost all exports in response to Cuba’s Soviet-supported arms build-up.

KENNEDY: But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing… 

Cuba’s economy is still state-run today, and the Cuban government continues to forbid any popular movement toward democracy. The embargo remains in place in protest of Cuba’s human rights violations—and the $6 billion worth of financial claims Washington still holds against the Cuban government. It’s the longest embargo in U.S. history.

From the simmering of political tensions to a Blue Flame…

AUDIO: 10… 9… 8… 7… 6…

The Blue Flame, a natural gas-powered automobile that set the land speed record 50 years ago this Friday. 

AUDIO: 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… [engine roars] Thirty-eight feet of streamlined power, a land rocket poised on a time-swept stage.

Gary Gabelich tore through the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah behind the wheel of the Blue Flame on October 23, 1970, setting the world land speed record. The vehicle topped out at just over 622 miles per hour. 

AUDIO: Ladies and gentlemen: The world’s land speed record has been broken! 

The Guinness World Book of Records 1994 CD highlighted the massive feat, describing the Blue Flame.

AUDIO: … a vehicle that had more in common with a missile than a car. Its fuel of liquid natural gas and hydrogen peroxide combined in its rocket engine to produce 22,000 pounds of thrust – enough power to approach the speed of sound.

Gabelich hung on to that record for 13 years. Today, the Technik Museum in Sinsheim, Germany has the Blue Flame on permanent display.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Katie Gaultney.

NICK EICHER: Today is Monday, October 19th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up, WORLD commentator Kim Henderson on what a photo can really capture.

KIM HENDERSON, COMMENTATOR: So I’m on the line with reservations when the rep throws it out there, plain and clear.

The phone is squeezed between my neck and my ear, and I’m trying to write down the confirmation number—hoping I don’t hit the “end” button—when I hear her say it again.

Getaway weekend.

I almost laugh at the thought, as if you can ever really get away from cars that need new front-end struts and laundry hampers that keep filling up and kids who forget to turn off the oven.

Getaway.

Weekend.

I decide I rather like the idea of it. The sound of it. Getaway weekend. I latch onto it—like a Titanic survivor to a life raft.

A month and three reservation changes later, we have gotten away to New Orleans at last, and the Mississippi is lit up and we’re taking it in over snow crab and steak. There’s a band playing outside and they’re wearing toboggans—not to be cool, but because it is cold.  I find it’s rather easy to forget about front-end struts in such a setting. The kids, not so much.

That’s because even while I’m pulling the precious white stuff from a crab leg I get a text from one. My husband does, too. Getting away, it seems, may be elusive. As elusive as fame will be for those toboggan-wearing musicians trying to pull off calypso in 40 degree-weather.

But my husband eventually decides there is a more positive use for his phone. He snaps a photo of us smiling over our entrees, which leads to an important discussion: What exactly do you call a selfie when it includes your better half? An ussie? There should be a term for it, especially since “selfie” was named an Oxford Dictionaries’ “Word of the Year” a while back.

I swipe his phone screen for a closer look and am struck by the changes I see in both of us. Perhaps I will call that reservations clerk and let her know that it’s actually the days—the years—that take the real getaways. 

Looking over at my husband, I realize the important changes can’t be captured in megapixels. He’s wearing decades of picking up milk from the grocery and kids from piano and pieces of our lives from occasional eruptions. 

I like how it looks on him.

We decide after a few trolley rides that getaways are good. We’re smiling. Holding hands. Planning a next time. I can almost forget about the stack of ironing waiting back home.

But nothing puts an end to a getaway like hauling luggage through your front door. I’m trashing travel brochures when our youngest asks about the dinner photo on Dad’s phone. She’s more interested in that one than our sixth-floor view of Canal Street.

“Sweet,” I hear her say. 

So that’s what you call a couple shot. Sweet. Probably won’t be the next word of the year, but that’s okay. I’ll take the sweet shared over a selfie any time.

I’m Kim Henderson.

NICK EICHER: Tomorrow: immigration policies played a big role in the last presidential election. Not so much this time. We’ll tell you why.

And, we’ll crunch the numbers and find out whether it’s possible for this year’s vote to end in an Electoral College tie.

That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

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Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. 

Go now in grace and peace.

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