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USA Today
5 days ago
- Science
- USA Today
Rare earth minerals are mostly sourced from China. Can we get them here?
Rare earth minerals are mostly sourced from China. Can we get them here? | The Excerpt On a special episode (first released on May 28, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: We need rare earth minerals for use in items we rely on for modern life. New tech holds possibilities for mining at home for them. Scott McWhorter, a distinguished fellow in the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology, joins The Excerpt to dive into the details. Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, May 28th, 2025. And this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Most electronic devices you use, your phone, laptop, earbuds to name a few, require certain materials called rare earth minerals to function. These minerals also power a wide range of other things critical to our lives like cars, aircraft engines, medical equipment. The US imports most of its supply of rare earth elements from China, which given the current climate of global trade, has led experts to wonder, any way we get more of these minerals here at home? We're diving into the question today with Scott McWhorter, a distinguished fellow in the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology. Thanks for joining me on The Excerpt, Scott. Scott McWhorter: Thank you, Dana. Glad to be here. Dana Taylor: Can we start by explaining to those of us who aren't familiar, what are rare earth minerals and why are they so important in modern life? Scott McWhorter: Rare earth minerals are just a group of minerals that are naturally found, but they have certain properties, typically magnetic properties or strength to performance properties, that really enhance what we do in certain products. That's really the importance of these minerals that we find every day. Rare earth minerals are mostly sourced from China. Can we get them in the US? We need rare earth minerals for use in items we rely on for modern life. New tech holds possibilities for mining at home for them. Dana Taylor: They're called rare earth minerals. Are they in fact rare? Scott McWhorter: That's a misnomer. They're found just about in most soils that we have. They're not found in places that we can go dig up and extract and so that's why they're typically rare. Dana Taylor: Scott, where in the country have we started mining rare earth minerals? And generally, can you tell us more about the process being utilized? Scott McWhorter: Yeah. So in the US for rare earths in particular, there's two places. There's Mountain Pass in California and that's the main source of rare earths in the US. Now, the rare earths that are extracted there are light rare earths, but all of those are taken out, they're extracted. Some are pre-processed there in California and then they're shipped to Asia for further processing in other countries. Because we typically don't have that middle processing, the acid leaching and means of extracting and purifying those rare earth metals in this country because of some of the environmental regulations due to the old processing techniques. The other place that we find rare earth or we're mining rare earths today is in Georgia and in my backyard. So where we find a lot of sand mining that occurs and they're looking for zinc and titanium and things of that nature. But they have rare earths that are byproducts of that process and those aren't processed here in the US. Dana Taylor: Are there approaches that minimize financial and environmental costs or harm? How is that being explored? Scott McWhorter: There are several companies that have come up with ways to use what I would call more elegant processing that we don't typically associate with mining. And we should think of mining as elegant separations. It's a very complex problem with several metals that are very much alike chemically, so they're hard or difficult to separate. So what we've learned over time is that we can use technologies that really were developed that came out of things like genomics or proteomics. When we think of those technologies, we think, wow, that's really elegant, clean separations. But we can use proteins actually to bind to those metals very specifically and separate those out based on precipitation or other methodologies. And then we've learned how to really control the precipitation of these minerals in aqueous solutions. So we don't have to use acid or strong acids to really drive the dissolution of these metals from these crystals any longer. So there are technologies, they're in the research phase, some are in the piloting stage, but we should see those come online in the next one to two years. Dana Taylor: What are some of the biggest barriers to expanding these efforts across the country? Scott McWhorter: The largest barrier is funding, attracting funding to this industry when you don't have stable markets. The pricing markets are typically controlled by China. China has invested in that middle processing for the last 40, 50 years and that's where it's mostly done in China. And so it is government-backed, they can control and they can manipulate the pricing to really control that market. So I think from a policy standpoint, we can stabilize that market, create a stable base price for these minerals so that the investment community understands what they're investing into and the profit that they could potentially make, and that it will not go below that point. That will really spawn tremendous investment in that market domain when we can control those prices or we have some barrier or floor on those prices. Dana Taylor: As we mentioned, China supplies a lot of what's mined globally, with the US importing 70% of its annual needs. With trade talks between our two nations uncertain and global supply side issues always at risk, is this perhaps an opportunity to invest in domestic mining and processing? Scott McWhorter: I truly believe it is. The US is really set in the technology domain to have a renaissance in mining. And when I say a renaissance, it is that middle processing that we need. As I mentioned, all the resources that are out there from in my backyard, in Georgia, there's kaolin mining. We mine millions of tons of kaolin and there's tons and tons of kaolin mine tailings that are on the ground. So we're set to process that, we can get that going at the drop of a hat, permits are already there, we don't need to re-permit these. The technologies need to be scaled and tested, we need government investment, we need private investment. But those are the ways we stabilize our economy because we are a mineral-based economy now, we have shifted to that from solely a fossil-based economy. So we're really going to have to think differently and invest in mining. Dana Taylor: Scott, I understand there are vast stores of these minerals under the ocean floor. What's the potential for us there? Scott McWhorter: It's rich in minerals. The infrastructure required and the access is going to take a lot of investment. And the permitting and regulatory aspects of that are going to be difficult. I would say there's going to be lots of disturbances. So I would say that's a long-term solution, but it could be a viable option. Dana Taylor: I'm going to circle back to this. What's on the horizon in terms of new technology for finding, mining or processing these materials? Scott McWhorter: We can use AI and machine learning to really expedite that process and pinpoint where we need to go. So it lowers the burden on drilling and getting into certain areas. That could be where in the past we might've harmed more of the environment, now we can pinpoint and go in and mine in certain areas. In terms of understanding where we are in drilling, there are sensors and AI and machine learning that go into that as well as you're drilling that tell you, are you drilling in the right location? Are you moving throughout there? So data, AI, machine learning will lower that cost and speed up the process for those aspects. Dana Taylor: What's next for you and your team? What are you most excited about? Scott McWhorter: We've pulled together a large group in Georgia and there's a lot of excitement from the mining community to the end-use community because we have to have all parties to create that supply chain. So we're very interested in demonstrating how we in Georgia could create this model for the US of how to use those waste resources to stabilize the innovation market. So how we can supply these materials, these minerals for magnets, for EVs to support all of those different energy markets today that are going to be required for the next generation of markets that we see from data centers and such that are coming online. So we're going to need all of these different materials to do that. But first it starts with a supply chain, identifying the feedstock components, the mining and all the distribution and processing in between. But then connected, you've got to have those end-use agreements. Who's going to buy those materials? And who's going to use those materials? So you really have to do that to create that market demand. And that's what we're really interested in is creating that middle processing and demonstrating those technologies, but then creating that whole end-to-end supply chain. Dana Taylor: Thank you, Scott. It was good to have you on The Excerpt. Scott McWhorter: Thank you, Dana. Dana Taylor: Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
USA Today
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Dave Barry is the eternal class clown
Dave Barry is the eternal class clown | The Excerpt On a special episode (first released on May 25, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: Nationally-syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry memoir chronicles his life mostly spent joking around. Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, May 25th, 2025, and this is special episode of The Excerpt. Think back, do you remember the person voted class clown at your high school? Is that person still doing funny antics in adulthood? One person who can nab that claim to fame is Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Dave Barry. Barry has made a career out of being a jokester, writing a nationally syndicated humor column for two decades. He's also a best-selling author. His latest book is Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass. Class Clown is on bookshelves now. Thanks for joining me on The Excerpt, Dave. Dave Barry: Thanks for having me, Dana. Dana Taylor: You've written a lot of books. Why this memoir and why now? Dave Barry: Well, I was a little nervous about writing a memoir. Why now is like, I'm 77 years old. If I don't write it now, I don't know when I'm going to write it. And my editor at Simon & Schuster, Priscilla Paton, and I agreed that maybe this would be a good time to write a memoir. I hope she was right. I was a little nervous about talking about myself, which I don't usually. Well, I do talk about myself, but I'm usually kidding. In this case, I'm sometimes telling the truth. Dana Taylor: How have your experiences in childhood shaped your career as a humorist? Dave Barry: My parents were really funny people. It's weird because both of them had sort of tragic elements to their lives. My dad dealt... fought with alcoholism much of his life. He recovered. My mom committed suicide after my dad died, which was brutal for everybody. But this is going to be weird to say, my mom was the funniest person I've ever known. She had a very dark sense of humor, but it was a real, edgy, strong sense of humor. And despite what I just said, I had a remarkably happy childhood, and both my parents encouraged humor in our family, and so that's kind of where I got started trying to make my family laugh. Dana Taylor: I was going to say you didn't shy away from serious matters including intense and vulnerable moments with, as you've said, both your mom and dad. Can you tell us more about one of them and how did these moments change you? Dave Barry: Well, I'll take my mom. She dealt with depression all her life, and ultimately it's what she lost to. She had a tough childhood. She grew up in the depression, and she literally lived in a sod house in Nebraska when she was a kid. But she had this ability to always see humor in things and never... it was the one rule in our lives and our family. You don't take anything, especially yourself too seriously. That was our environment as we were kids. Although she had her demons, she didn't let them affect us. What we saw from her was a very funny person who loved us very much, took good care of us. She couldn't beat them in the end, but she passed along that that sense of humor, that edginess, that willingness to not take yourself seriously. That's really what made me. Dana Taylor: Dave, I know you were a news reporter before you pivoted to writing humor columns at the Miami Herald. What lessons from your early journalism career have stayed with you? Dave Barry: Well, I love journalism. I love to be in a newspaper reporter. I learned everything I knew about journalism at this little newspaper in Pennsylvania, but I also learned the quirks and foibles of the newspaper world, the way newspapers tend to present themselves as authorities on everything. And the fact is, it was really people like me writing the newspapers. So when I switched over to the humor side, I could make fun of newspapers and the news business, but from a position of A, love and B, deep knowledge, I've been there. I've written those stories, and I think that really helped me kind of connect with the newspaper reading audience like they were used to reading newspapers that took themselves pretty seriously, and I was a person who came along and said, "You don't have to take us that seriously. Some of us are clowns. I'm one of them." Dana Taylor: You spend a good deal of your book talking about reader feedback, some nice, some not so nice. Why were these important to you? I know you wrote about how you even enjoyed the hate mail. Dave Barry: Yeah, my reader... I loved my readers. My readers did not all love me. One of the things you learn if you write in any kind of column, but especially a humor column, is no matter what you write, somebody's going to be really angry at you and want you fired. And so there was a certain percentage of my readers, I called them the humor impaired, who never figured out that I was kidding. Like if I would say, [inaudible 00:04:43] we all know Abraham Lincoln invented the light bulb and then go on and they would write letters to the editor, "Abraham Lincoln did not invent the..." and then usually they would get it wrong. They say, Benjamin Franklin invented the light bulb. But anyway, I love those people. They enabled me to write whole columns about the reaction I got to my columns. Then of course, the vast majority of my readers did get the joke, and that's why I was able to stay in the news. That's why they didn't fire me when they were told to by the humor impaired readers. So my readers made my column work. I got so much from them. I got so many ideas from them, and they would send me clippings about weird things happening. I wrote a million columns based on that stuff. So I put a lot of my readers into this book. I mean, they're a big reason why I made it, I was successful as a columnist. Dana Taylor: What's your take on humorous power to change the national conversation, which has become so partisan with last November's election? Dave Barry: I don't think that humorists have that much power to change anything, to be honest, if I'm being brutally honest. I mean, I think some of us would like to think we do, but we don't really. I kind of don't like where we've gone with humor, political humor in this country. I talk about this in the book, how I kind of grew up in the era of Johnny Carson and Art Buchwald, people like that who were very funny, but you didn't really know their politics or it didn't matter what their politics were because they laughed at whoever was in charge, whoever was running the country, and everybody got that that if you laughed at the leader, didn't mean you hated your country, would mean you were an evil person or whatever. And a lot of the humor, I think now, a lot of political humor is basically tactical. It's like it's aimed at one side or the other side so the people who agree with you can laugh at it, but the people who don't agree with you hate you for it. There's just a lot of anger in the humor now, and I think that's unfortunate. I was happier with the way it worked when people kind of agreed, "Well, we're all on the same side. We may disagree politically, but we are on the same side." We sort of lost that I think. Dana Taylor: I'm sure some of our listeners and viewers are very inspired by your unique career path. What's your advice for writers who'd like to become humorous? Dave Barry: Oh man. Well have a day job for sure. It's tough. I used to hear all the time from people who wanted to be newspaper columnists. There's not that many anymore because there's just not that many newspapers anymore. So people who want to do humor have to sort of go more toward the internet, some stack and places like that, or stand-up comedy or writing for television, whatever. And my advice is always the same thing. If you're funny, eventually people will discover you. They will recognize that you're funny, but it's going to take a while usually for that to happen, and while you're waiting for it to happen, you kind of have to be able to support yourself somehow. So that's the most important thing. Don't give up, but don't be too optimistic that it's just going to suddenly happen for you. Dana Taylor: When people sit down to write their memoirs, it often makes a person introspective about their lives. Looking back, is there anything you'd do differently, a moment that gives you pause or an inflection point for you? Dave Barry: More inflection point than regret. I've really been very, very lucky. I mean, I did not ever think until I was in my mid-30s it didn't occur to me I would be able to make a living writing humor. I was doing other things. I was working as a newspaper reporter. I was teaching effective writing seminars to business people, but I was writing humor whenever I could, but I didn't think that would ever become a real job. I got several big lucky breaks along the way. I wrote a couple of stories that just caught the attention of a bunch of editors to the topics I happened to be on and got launched that way. I still feel just like that. I've been very, very lucky more than anything else. I had this incredible career where I never had to do anything from my mid-30s on. I never had to work. I just had fun basically. Dana Taylor: What's next for you Dave? Dave Barry: After this memoir? I guess continued immaturity, followed by death. Not in any hurry, but I mean, that's what I see coming. Dana Taylor: That's the most unique ending I've had to an interview. Dave, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt. Dave Barry: It's my pleasure, Dana. Thanks for having me. Dana Taylor: Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
USA Today
22-05-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Uncharted territory: US accepts 'gift' of $400 million Qatari plane
Uncharted territory: US accepts 'gift' of $400 million Qatari plane | The Excerpt On a special episode (first released on May 22, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: In 2018, the U.S. Air Force awarded a $3.9 billion contract to Boeing for two new Air Force One planes. For a variety of reasons, including delays tied to the need for workers with proper security clearances, Boeing may or may not be able to complete the order before the end of President Donald Trump's second term. Meanwhile, the Qatari Prime Minister offered to gift the president a luxury 747 jet valued at $400 million. And the Department of Defense has just accepted it. There are questions about whether the Qatari plane can even be brought up to Air Force One's safety and security standards before Trump leaves office. But the bigger question may be whether it was lawful for the president to accept it. Richard Briffault, Professor of Legislation at Columbia Law School, joins us on The Excerpt to share his insights. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello, and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, May 22nd, 2025, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. In 2018, the U.S. Air Force awarded a $3.9 billion contract to Boeing for two new Air Force One planes for a variety of reasons, including delays tied to the need for workers with proper security clearances. Boeing may or may not be able to complete the order before the end of President Donald Trump's second term. Meanwhile, the Qatari Prime Minister has offered to gift the President a luxury 747 jet valued at $400 million, and the Department of Defense has just accepted it. There are questions about whether the Qatari plane can even be brought up to Air Force One's safety and security standards before Trump leaves office, but the bigger question may be whether it's lawful for the president to accept it. Here to share his insights on that, I'm now joined by Richard Briffault, Professor of Legislation at Columbia Law School. Thanks for joining me, Richard. Richard Briffault: My pleasure. Happy to be here. Dana Taylor: There are two emoluments clauses, the Foreign Emoluments Clause and the Domestic Emoluments Clause. Let's start with the Foreign Clause. What is its purpose and who does it apply to? Richard Briffault: The Foreign Emoluments Clause is basically designed to prevent federal officials from receiving gifts from foreign governments, from foreign heads of state. Many people think it relates to a specific incident during the period and time of the revolution of the time of the writing of the Constitution when Benjamin Franklin, who was then the ambassador to France, received an ornate jeweled box as a gift from the King of France. And people in America were suspicious that somehow this would've made him too pro-French, and so that at least is the story behind the Emoluments Clause. It applies to anybody, and this is the phrase in the Constitution, "Who holds an office of profit or trust under the United States." That clearly picks up all federal appointees, all federal officials. There is some debate as to whether it actually applies to the president technically, but the Office of Legal Counsel, which is the office in the Justice Department that advises presidents, has for a very long time assumed that it does. Uncharted territory: US accepts 'gift' of $400 million Qatari plane The Constitution's emoluments clause is clear, accepting the plane as a gift is illegal. We're way past that. Dana Taylor: And what about the Domestic Emoluments Clause? What is its purpose? Richard Briffault: Again, it applies to gifts from the states, and it's designed to prevent the president from being, or any federal official I should say, from being biased in favor of one of the states. If a state were to give a fancy gift to the president or to a federal official, they might be prejudiced or biased. There was an interpretation of that one involving when President Reagan became president, he had been Governor of California. Was there a problem in his receiving his pension from California? Because that was a gift from the... And then the office said, "No, there isn't, because he had of course earned that while he was governor." But that showed that that was seen as clearly applying to the president. Dana Taylor: The question many, including some of the president's supporters, have been asking is can a sitting president accept gifts from a foreign government and does the size of the gift matter? Richard Briffault: The size shouldn't matter. Of course the bigger the gift, the bigger the problem. I think the legal problem would begin even with a small gift. I mean, I think the key problem here is that whether it's a gift to the president as opposed to a gift to the United States. I mean, presidents have been receiving ceremonial gifts for years, an elephant here, a panda there, a jeweled sword somewhere else, and that usually just goes into the National Archives, or I guess the animals go to the zoo. But it's always been a long tradition of honorary gifts. But something like this, the scale of it is enormous, and of course it would be for the personal use of the president. Prior presidents were not using those jeweled swords or snuffboxes. Another thing that's most troubling is the idea that at the end of his term it wouldn't remain with the United States, but it would go to Trump's foundation. I think it might be a different story if this was literally a gift to the United States and the plane remained part of the United States government. Dana Taylor: Where are we legally and ethically with regards to the DOD accepting this gift on behalf of the president? Richard Briffault: Much will turn on the exact terms of the arrangement, but if, as I understand it from news accounts, the United States is accepting it during Trump's term but then it goes to Trump when he leaves office or it goes to the Trump Foundation, then basically the problem is it's essentially a gift to him. That triggers the Emoluments Clause and it would violate the Constitution unless Congress votes to accept it. That's the problem is that the United States may be taking possession so that of course the Defense Department can go through the plane and make sure that it's secure for national security purposes. But if at the end of Trump's term it goes with Trump rather than staying with the United States, then it's essentially a gift to him, and that means that we have all of the problems with the Emoluments Clause that we've all been talking about ever since this issue arose when Qatar made the offer. Dana Taylor: Are there other recent examples of a sitting president accepting a large gift from a foreign government? Richard Briffault: Not in a personal capacity. And I'm sure there have been gifts, and again, there are all sorts of ceremonial gifts that come, and these usually just go into the National Archives. I'm sure there have been gifts, but nothing like this. Dana Taylor: Whether or not the acceptance of the 747 jet is a good idea is a separate issue altogether. The bigger issue I want to get to here is that this is just the latest in a cavalcade of questionable actions by the president, the $1 million per plate fundraiser in April, his $1.5 million per person fundraiser for an unknown purpose earlier this month, a Middle East trip which included private dealmaking by both the president and those in his entourage, his and Melania's meme coins. The list goes on. Are all of these ethical violations? And if so, who will rein the president in? Richard Briffault: Yeah, so that's a great question, and you're right to put this in perspective. In some ways, the plane is relatively minor compared to the president's meme coin, the president's crypto business or the president's family's crypto business, the $TRUMP and the $MELANIA coins. The amounts of money there are potentially huge, and of course they go directly to the president or to the president's family. So you're absolutely right, the plane is very dramatic, but in some sense it's smaller, or as you suggest, it's part of a bigger picture of this president not having any kind of inner guardrails of any reluctance at all. Quite the opposite to use his office, public office for his own personal or private benefit. And in some ways, the essence of ethics, of government ethics is public office is a public trust, you should be using the public office only for public purposes and not for private gain. It's whether this technically violates any laws is a trickier question because relatively few laws apply to the president. Many of them, these were being done by members of the cabinet or members of the regular federal government, yes, be all sorts of legal violations, but the presidency is a unique position. Certainly you wouldn't expect his own Justice Department to enforce them against him, and there's really nobody else who can. So I think we've traditionally relied on presidents' own sense of what's the right thing to do with laws in the background, getting legal advice, and this is a president who doesn't really seem to care about that. As he says, "With respect to the plane, it would be foolish to turn down the gift." But the point is the whole reason we have rules like this is to prevent use of public office for private gain, and also to eliminate the danger that a president or anybody in public office would be biased or influenced to give favors to those people who've been giving favors to him. Not outright bribes, not outright deals, those I'm going to guess don't happen that much, and even in this case, I'm not sure that there's anyone could show that there was a outright bribe or an outright deal. But all these things are designed to make, when people are buying the meme coin or Qatari government giving the jet, they will all, whether it's intended or not, they're likely to have the effect of the president being more favorably disposed to the giver and the buyer, the person who's supporting him financially than otherwise, and that can affect decisions. On crypto, he's in the position to approve laws and to influence the development of laws and the enforcement of laws that deal with the whole industry. So there he's got direct stake. The Qatari jet, he makes foreign policy. He's going to decide what positions we take on things in the Middle East, and obviously they have a huge stake in that. Dana Taylor: As you said, the president's office is part of the public trust. The list of President Trump's business ventures runs the gambit from selling cologne and crypto to building lavish resorts and golf courses across the globe. Is the public trust eroded when a president profits from his privileged position, and what's the impact to America's standing in the world globally? Richard Briffault: I think it hurts us globally. I think until this president, United States really did stand as a symbol or a pillar of democracy, of rule of law, of checks and balances, and even of public integrity. I think Americans helped other countries, particularly emerging democracies, set up their anti-corruption rules and how to deal with that, and basically making the argument that elected officials that are there to serve the public and not themselves, which is not always the case in many countries around the world, and I think United States played an important role in promoting that vision of public officials as serving their people, not themselves. I think this totally undermines our credibility for that. Regardless of whether it's affecting any individual policy decisions of his, he's acting like any other person, any other leader of another country who is using office to enrich himself. Dana Taylor: Richard, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt. Richard Briffault: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Dana Taylor: Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
USA Today
22-05-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Did Johnson & Johnson put profit over safety?
Did Johnson & Johnson put profit over safety? | The Excerpt On a special episode (first released on May 21, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: For generations of Americans, the Johnson & Johnson brand has been a beloved one, as quintessentially American as baseball and apple pie. Its baby shampoo 'no more tears' has been a fixture in bathrooms for decades, as has its iconic band aids and talcum power. But it's this last item, the talcum powder, that may prove to be a tipping point in destroying its hard-won 139-year-old reputation with consumers. Author and freelance investigative journalist Gardiner Harris joins us on The Excerpt to discuss his new book 'no more tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson,' which is on bookshelves now. Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, May 21st, 2025, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. For generations of Americans the Johnson & Johnson brand has been a beloved one, as quintessentially American as baseball and apple pie. Its baby shampoo No More Tears has been a fixture in bathrooms, as has its iconic Band-Aids and talcum powder. But it's that last item, the talcum powder that may prove to be a tipping point in destroying its hard-won 139 year-old reputation with consumers. To find out why, we're now joined by author and freelance investigative journalist, Gardiner Harris, his new book, No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson is on bookshelves now. Gardiner, thanks for joining me. Gardiner Harris: Thanks for having me, Dana. Dana Taylor: There are two products that immediately come to mind when I think of Johnson & Johnson. One inspired the title of your book, Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo, No More Tears. The other, the topic of your investigation, is J&J's Baby Powder. What are the risks associated with talcum powder, and can you share some of the evidence you uncovered that the company knew about those risks? Gardiner Harris: About talcum powder, the risks are clearly about its chronic contamination with asbestos. But I also want to make clear, Dana, that my book is not just about baby powder. It is about nine separate products. The products that I go through include Tylenol, that is the most widely used drug on the planet, and is far more dangerous than most people know. I also talk about Epo or Procrit, that most people know because Lance Armstrong used it to win seven tours to France, but actually ended up killing more than 500,000 Americans in the worst cancer drug disaster in American history. Also, Risperdal, an antipsychotic that is part of a disaster that's killed more than a million Americans. So through these various products, I point out that Johnson & Johnson has been responsible for contributing or causing more than 2 million American deaths over the last 50 odd years, and that's more deaths than have died in all of America's wars combined. It's an extraordinary toll from what has long been one of the most admired corporations in the world. And it is that contrast between what we think of Johnson & Johnson and how Johnson & Johnson has actually behaved. That is the focus of my book. And that I hope people can come away and find ways to protect themselves, not only against Johnson & Johnson, but against corruption writ large in American healthcare. Dana Taylor: So can you give us some of the evidence that you uncovered specifically as relates to baby powder? Gardiner Harris: Sure. So talc and asbestos are chemically identical. They have the same exact constituencies. And the only difference between the two, is a little bit of pressure and time as to whether those chemicals form into talc deposits or they form in asbestos deposits. And basically, what geologists will tell you is that you cannot have a talc deposit without a little bit of asbestos ribboned in the middle of it, and you can't have an asbestos deposit without some talc ribboned in there. And basically, Johnson & Johnson began to understand this problem in the 1950s and the 1960s. Now, in the fifties and sixties, these small contaminations, and these tests showed that up to three to 5% of baby powder was asbestos in the early years, but there was asbestos everywhere in American society during those years. There wasn't a boat, plane, house, car that didn't have asbestos in it and often pure asbestos. So it didn't seem like a big deal. But science began to discover in the 1960s and the 1970s that even microscopic quantities of asbestos could cause cancer, particularly a cancer of the lining of the lung, which is known as mesothelioma. The industry then rallied, came up with an asbestos testing standard that it sold to the FDA as safe. In fact, this testing standard would bless talcum powders as being asbestos free, even when they had up to 3% asbestos. And then FDA basically washed its hands of the issue. It didn't have the money to police cosmetics at the time or even now, and it didn't. And so Johnson & Johnson then tested its own products for decades repeatedly finding asbestos in Johnson's Baby Powder, but not telling anyone. And this started to get very, very dark, Dana, beginning in the 1980s as researchers around the world, the first one at Harvard, began doing epidemiological studies comparing the cancer rates of women who used talcum-based powders like Johnson's Baby Powder with women who didn't. And those studies began to show that women who used talcum-based baby powders suffered somewhere around 80% more cancers, usually ovarian cancer, than women who didn't. And Johnson & Johnson saw this research. Nearly all other companies that were using talcum powders got away from talcum powders and substituted in cornstarch. Johnson & Johnson stubbornly clung to this iconic product, and it is now paying the price. It has been sued over the last several years by 93,000 people, mostly women suffering ovarian cancer, who are blaming their illnesses, and in some cases the death of their loved ones, on their use of Johnson's Baby Powder. Dana Taylor: As you say, there are literally tens of thousands OF pending lawsuits against J&J. and while this J&J subsidiary is still in bankruptcy because of all the lawsuits, the company's been unable to reach a settlement that's acceptable to the courts. What's the big sticking point here? Gardiner Harris: So Johnson & Johnson wants to use the bankruptcy system to solve all of its baby powder liability, not only now, but ever in the future. The problem with ovarian cancer and asbestos is that it can take 30 years for asbestos to cause the changes that lead to cancer. So it's possible that Johnson & Johnson will be sued by tens of thousands of women annually every year for 30 years. And it's that that Johnson & Johnson wants to get out from under, and so try to use the bankruptcy system to do that. Three judges have now thrown out all three of Johnson & Johnson's bankruptcy claims. And so Johnson & Johnson is now being forced to fight each one of these claims individually in the usual court system. Dana Taylor: Gardiner, did you find that the people you approached for your book, doctors, former employees, were willing to speak to you on the record? What kind of risks did they face in coming forward? Gardiner Harris: Johnson & Johnson is the most litigious company arguably in American history. It has spent more than $35 billion on lawyers and litigation since 2011. It sues anyone at the drop of a hat. And so it also has this huge cavalcade of consultants in just about every major American medical center in the country. So it first tries to sweet talk you, and then if you are not amenable, it often sues. So the people I talked to universally were really afraid. I ended up getting grand jury records, which as you may know, Dana, are the last truly secret institutions in American society. So in those documents, I got access to hundreds and hundreds of Johnson & Johnson employees cell numbers. I called hundreds of them. I got many of them to talk to me, but only because I promised them again and again that I would keep their name secret. Dana Taylor: Tylenol, another Johnson & Johnson product became a target of product tampering in the 1980s. People died when someone successfully slipped cyanide into Tylenol bottles. The tampering crisis led to their creation of tamper-proof bottles still in use today. They're an important part of the Johnson & Johnson legacy. But your book takes aim at their response. Why? Gardiner Harris: There is a lot of evidence that Johnson & Johnson knew that the poisoning probably happened somewhere in their own distribution system, and that they kept that knowledge from not only the public, but investigators themselves. To this day, Dana, the Johnson & Johnson response in 1982 is considered the gold standard of corporate response to crises. And it's taught as among the first things that students at the Harvard Business School, Wharton School, all of them, learn. And the lessons that are taught to these students is if you're open, if you're honest, if you do the right thing, the public will reward you and you will be profitable. Those lessons are all wrong. It's fairly clear that Johnson & Johnson kept a lot of what it knew from the public and from investigators. So the real lessons that students at HBS, at Harvard and Wharton should be taught, is if you lie to the public, you might really get away with this, which is what Johnson & Johnson did, and what it has been doing for decades. Dana Taylor: Yours is a story about a beloved American brand. At its core, it's a story about the people behind the brand and the people affected by the brand. What compelled you to tell this story? Gardiner Harris: Dana, you and I are both reporters. I was a reporter at the highest levels of media, becoming a White House correspondent for the New York Times, but we fail the American public all too often. And I think the story of Johnson & Johnson is one of our greatest failures. It is essentially, a killer in our midst that we fail to warn the public about. Now, I tried a couple of times, but this is a very difficult story to tell. It's a complicated story. It needed a book to show its sweep. And I felt like it was partly my responsibility that this company had been allowed to behave so badly for so long without anyone knowing about it. Because I was one of the top drug reporters in the country, and so I left daily journalism to write this book, and it took me basically six years to get it done. Dana Taylor: And finally, your book was released last month. How has J&J responded? Gardiner Harris: So far, crickets. Haven't heard from them, which is not at all unusual. I covered the company at the Wall Street Journal, at the New York Times. For tough stories, Johnson & Johnson has historically refused to participate in any of these stories. And I actually tell story after story in the book about Johnson & Johnson managing to kill some very critical stories over the course of its history, by calling up headquarters of these big media conglomerates. And because Johnson & Johnson was one of the largest advertisers in the world, was able to threaten these organizations, "If you run this piece, we will pull all of our ads." And again and again, that succeeded in having critical stories about the company killed. So the company has been very successful by these backdoor mechanisms of keeping its brand pristine. That has not happened in this case. They have not responded, and I don't really expect them ever to. Dana Taylor: We reached out to Johnson & Johnson for comment on Harris's investigation, and they issued a statement saying, "We stand by the safety of our products and are focused on what we do best, delivering medical innovation for patients around the world." Investigative journalist, Gardiner Harris's new book is called No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson, and it's on bookshelves now. Gardiner, thanks for being on The Excerpt. Gardiner Harris: I'm thrilled to be here, and thanks for inviting me. Dana Taylor: Thanks to our Senior Producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our Executive Producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcast@ Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
USA Today
18-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Has the pronatalism movement gone mainstream?
Has the pronatalism movement gone mainstream? | The Excerpt On a special episode (first released on May 18, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: It's well known that childcare has become extraordinarily expensive, costing many families nearly a quarter of their income. The fertility rate, as we've covered previously on The Excerpt, remains at a historic low. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is floating a range of ideas to encourage people to have more children while encouraging women to stay home to care for them. Have these trends paved the way for the pronatalism movement to gain traction? Karen Guzzo, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, joins The Excerpt to share her expertise on the movement. Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Sunday, May 18th, 2025. It's well known that child care has become extraordinarily expensive, costing many families nearly a quarter of their income. Recent study out from Lending Tree estimated that it costs $300,000 to raise a child over the course of 18 years. Fertility rate, as we've covered on The Excerpt, remains at an historic low. The Trump administration is also floating ideas to encourage people to have more children, such as a baby bonus. Have these trends paved the way for the pronatalism movement, which is having a moment. Karen Guzzo, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill is here to parse this out with us. Thanks for joining me, Karen. Karen Guzzo: Yes, happy to be here. Dana Taylor: First, can you describe what the Pronatalism movement is and the views that the people who support it espouse? Karen Guzzo: So pronatalism is really about raising birth rates at the country level, at the macro level. It's interested in and worried about are birth rates too low? Do they need to be higher? And there's a lot of debate over what it means for fertility rates to be too low and what might be the best ways to address it. But it's really focused on getting the whole country to have more births. Dana Taylor: It's costly to choose to have a child, let alone several. Is that just one of the reasons why people are having fewer kids today? What has your research shown on family trends? Karen Guzzo: Well, one of the things that's actually driving low fertility rates in the United States is something that's a good news story, which is that there are fewer teen and unintended births. And so births to people who are in their teens and early 20s typically are births to people that are unintended, so that people themselves would say, "This is not really the right time for me." And so we spent a lot of time and a lot of money in the United States trying to discourage people from having births when they were not really ready. So when they were "too young", and too young in quotes, or they weren't stably employed or didn't have a good income or stable relationship. And so we've made a lot of progress in that realm. But then the flip side of it is people are supposed to wait until they have these things. They're supposed to have enough money and a stable relationship and a good house. And you're right that it's really hard to be able to afford those things. The number one concern over people as to whether they should have kids and how many to have and when to have them, is can I afford it? Dana Taylor: On a societal level, what kinds of challenges do a low birth rate percent? Karen Guzzo: There are different potential concerns. The biggest one really is that the population starts to age, on the aggregate when you have fewer young people born. And then it ends up being skewed towards older adults. And older adults need more care, both physical care but also they take financial resources. And so in many countries, and not just in the United States, the question is how do we care for the older adults when the population is aging? And so in the United States, we have a social security system that's built on current workers paying into support people who are currently drawing from social security. And so that's a big concern, is how do we actually care for the elderly? Then there are also labor market concerns. So who's going to be working to pay into Social Security, but also to fuel the economy? And we need workers because we also need people to have incomes to become consumers. And so we do worry about the potential ramifications of low birth rates, although there's other solutions besides potentially low birth rates to fix some of these problems. Dana Taylor: And what might those be? Karen Guzzo: Well, one of the biggest ones would actually be a change in how we structure Social Security. So the way Social Security works is that there's a cap on income. And so you pay up until, I think it's roughly around $175,000 for single people on your payroll taxes. So up until that, you pay social security. Any money you earn above that for a single earner is not taxed for social security. And we could raise that cap or we could eliminate entirely, and that would be a way to increase the monies available. We have to fund social security. That seems to me more plausible than trying to have this massive behavioral change that would require people to have more births. We could also change the income, who's able to draw from Social Security, so we could limit it to people who have lower incomes. We could change the social security age at retirement. There are things we could do that would adjust our need for social security. In terms of the labor market, one of the biggest and most obvious solutions, and to be frank, one we've relied on in the United States for a long time is immigration. Immigrants play a large role in our labor market. They work in a lot of different fields. They are major contributors. In fact, even undocumented immigrants often pay Social Security taxes. So they're not even drawing out in the system, but they're contributing to it. Dana Taylor: What about the trend of tradwives? For listeners who aren't familiar, can you explain what being a tradwife means and does it dovetail with pronatalism? Karen Guzzo: Yes. So tradwives are really having a moment over the past few years. It's really taken off due to social media where young, conventionally attractive women, often white, thin and attractive and middle-class are making a life for themselves or presenting a life in which they are staying home with their children. They are sort of in charge solely of home. They are working perhaps to have home farms. They are feeding their kids organic food, they are sewing clothes. They are really sort of embracing domesticity. And that's really what the tradwife moment is about, having clear gender roles where women are in charge of the home and men are in charge of the money and they're the provider and they go out into the world. And so it does dovetail a lot with this pronatalist movement because most tradwives sort of espouse or align with what we might consider as more conservative ideals. And so, one of the things that's interesting about the pronatalist movement is there's a lot of critique about feminists and working mothers and working women. And that women are spending too much time getting educational, increasing their educational attainment, spending too much time in the labor force, that they're becoming too picky about the potential partners for whom they would marry and have children with. And so part of the tradwife moment seems to be pushing very specific gender roles in that once women are home, of course, then they would want to have more children and that would increase the birth rate. There's some current concerns about this though, is that when women are embracing this lifestyle, and there's nothing wrong with this lifestyle per se, but it does increase their dependency on their partners, their economic dependency. And so if relationships don't work out, this really leaves women financially in trouble. It's especially the case, and sometimes we see this notion of stay at home girlfriends where there isn't even sort of a legal tie between partners. And that makes it especially precarious for women to engage in. Dana Taylor: You've shared that there are three segments of the pronatalism movement, can you detail those? And how does that break down with the way people reproduce, including the use of in vitro fertilization? Karen Guzzo: So there's the Elon Musk tech bro sort of approach to pronatalism. So Elon Musk has said that low fertility is sort of the biggest single threat human civilization is facing, and he seems to be on a personal mission to populate the earth. And this is about using technology to potentially have the best and brightest children. So this is using IVF or other forms of assisted reproductive technologies to try to maximize not only having children, but the success of those children. So trying to find children who would be tall and athletic and intelligent. And there's a lot of concern or how far over into eugenics that gets to be. If we're selecting people based on these more nebulous characteristics, what does that mean for people who might be viewed less favorably or have conditions or characteristics that are less favorable? And the United States has a really long history of eugenicism in terms of who should be reproducing. And then you have the more religious conservatives who are definitely against IVF and other forms of assisted reproductive technologies. And they're really focused on not only increasing birth rates, but increasing marriage so that most births should happen within marriage. They would prefer people get married young and spend more time in this traditional family type, particularly one in which the father or husband is the main breadwinner and the wife is in charge of the domestic sphere. And they would marry young and have many children and start doing so pretty early. And then you have the third group of folks who are much more concerned about the racial makeup of the United States. So we've had a long history in the United States of wanting the right people to reproduce. So this does tie in with those tech group people. But this is much more explicit about not wanting immigrants to reproduce or people from what this group might consider inferior races or inferior religions. And so this states back decades in the United States, but it's really been a part of our informal lexicon for a while. So we see strains of this in what is the great replacement theory, which is that the wrong people are coming into the United States to quote-unquote, sort of "outbreed" true Americans. So there's some overlap in all these groups, but it's an uncomfortable alliance, I think. Dana Taylor: You mentioned Elon Musk, he is of course the head of the Department of Government efficiency. And reportedly a father of 14 by multiple women who said that low birth rates are a, quote, "Much bigger risk to civilization than global warming." What sort of influence does he have over this movement? Karen Guzzo: He has unfortunately, quite a bit of influence. He has a huge microphone in terms of his Twitter presence and social media presence. He's in the White House, he has the ear of very important people. So he is bringing this conversation to the forefront. He is a smart man, but he's not a demographer. And so sometimes he gets some of the basic demography or demographic principles and theories wrong. And one of the things that in particular is concerning is that people who are aligning themselves with Elon Musk will project out 100 years, 200 years, 300 years. And that is not typically something demographers will do because we know that things change really quickly. And there could be great technological advances or other changes that would impact our ability to make population projections far out. But he has this huge microphone, and he clearly is very interested in increasing birth rates. But some of the things that he believes are a little off kilter, I would say. So for instance, he has said that births should happen through C sections rather than sort of a natural delivery, under the impression that a natural delivery somehow squeezes the brain so that babies born via C-section have bigger brains and are therefore smarter. That's not actually remotely medically accurate, but he has this loud microphone and people are listening to him. Dana Taylor: The Trump administration is looking at a $5,000 baby bonus to incentivize parents. Obviously that's a drop in the bucket in comparison to the real cost of health care, child care, food and more. Could it really make a difference in incentivizing people to have more kids? Karen Guzzo: It probably won't make a big difference. I will say that I am all for giving families money. Families could always use extra money. That first year is really tough, in particular after a baby is born, because women often have to step back a little bit from work. And there are all these new expenses, including hospital bills and diapers and all those things. So that money would be great, it would really help a lot of people. Is it likely to budge things in an appreciable huge? Probably not. It might help some people on the margins who are like, all right, I was thinking about having another kid. Maybe now's a good time since I'm going to get this bonus. But it's not going to nudge people who were like, I'm not having kids and now I'm going to get this $5,000. So it really might help people who are just not sure about the timing, and they wanted to wait a little longer until they had maybe paid off the last set of hospital bills, but it's not going to make a huge difference. What I find a little concerning or perhaps even disingenuous, is that we had a really great program through the American Rescue Plan that gave families extra money every month, and it reduced child poverty. It didn't reduce employment very much, and it really helped people a lot. And we got rid of that plan, and it was widely available to people. And so the idea that we would not help people that we knew to be effective, but instead have this sort of scheme for this $5,000 one-time baby bonus, unfortunately to me is a little disingenuous. Dana Taylor: And finally, what are the concerns that opponents of pronatalism raise? Karen Guzzo: Well, one of the biggest concerns is that it really does privilege a certain type of family. So the $5,000 baby bonus, for instance, some of the policy specifics I've seen are about we should only give these to married couples, or we should only give these to people who make a certain amount of income and we don't want to incentivize poor women to have children. And so this idea that not everyone should be eligible, that only certain families are the right kind of families, that's really concerning. A lot of this concern too also lies in gender roles. Many people find women's independence threatening. And so any movement that is about pushing women out of the labor force, the idea that they should stay home and raise their children and that they should default to these very old-fashioned roles, a lot of people are going to find that really uncomfortable. Most women do want to have kids, but they want to have them with a good partner. They want to have the option to have a safe delivery, safe pregnancy. In some cases, that's under threat. And so that's really some of the concern. And then again, there's this idea that there's sort of this racial and class-based tinge to who should get to reproduce. So that is really concerning as well. Fundamentally, I think the pronatalist movement is not addressing what people really say they need, which is they need good childcare and they want affordable leave programs. Dana Taylor: Karen, thank you so much for being on The Excerpt. Karen Guzzo: Thank you for having me. This was great. Dana Taylor: Thanks for our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance, our executive producers Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
