What "Serial" really taught us

The final episode of the first season of “Serial”—the podcast to end all podcasts—came out this morning. The series has given us a lot to think about. Like other devotees, I’ve listened to many episodes more than once, felt sympathy for Adnan Syed and the loved ones of Hae Min Lee, confusion about Jay, and even more confusion about the cell-phone evidence. I’ve felt a listener’s kinship with the host, Sarah Koenig, and made jokes about MailChimp and the shrimp sale at the Crab Crib. “Serial” lured us in with the promise of a good story—a murder mystery given the “This American Life” treatment, but over an entire season, like an HBO drama. I got up at six this morning to listen to the conclusion. Long anticipated and much discussed, it was a major cultural event—even though by now we expected something closer to the mood of the “Sopranos” finale than to Sherlock Holmes.

Every episode began with the show’s contemplative theme and a prerecorded prison-call greeting, and we reflected, sadly, about the fate of a thirty-two-year-old man serving a life sentence, who may have been wrongfully convicted. The show presented us with the very best of what radio and podcasts can do. It provided listeners with the voices of the many people involved with the case, detailing accounts, ideas, memories. It made good-faith efforts to solve the dozens of small mysteries that were part of the big mystery—where people were on January 13, 1999, and what they were doing; whether there was a pay phone at a certain Best Buy; the implications of events at high-school dances. We felt like we were listening to a story, an entertainment, but in truth what we were listening to was much bigger than that.

In the beginning, Koenig, a “This American Life” producer, had wanted to do a spinoff podcast involving a story told over time. After a woman named Rabia Chaudry contacted her about her friend Adnan Syed’s case, which involved a defense attorney whom Koenig had written about in the past, Koenig investigated for a year and made it the basis of the first season. When the show began broadcasting, Koenig and the other producers were still gathering information. They knew they had enough for a great show, but they didn’t know how it would end. From the start, intentionally or not, the show was about doubt.

Ira Glass, in his introduction to “Serial” on “This American Life,” told us that “what really happened was actually much more complicated than what the jury heard,” and that “each week, we will go with Sarah on her hunt to figure out what really happened. And we will learn the answers as she does.” This implied that there was a thriller in the works, but he also said that the producers of “Serial”—Koenig, Dana Chivvis, and Julie Snyder—have “flipped back and forth” in their thinking about Adnan’s guilt, and so would we. When I talked to the producers in the “This American Life” office the week before “Serial” débuted, in early October, there was much discussion about the nature of truth and how, in a criminal investigation, you can uncover many facts that seem to point toward a suspect’s guilt or innocence, and then learn other facts that confuse it again. We cited examples: Snyder told me about the documentary “The Staircase,” which the producers of “Serial” had watched; I mentioned the 1994 William Finnegan piece “Doubt.” I also thought, both at the time and as I listened to “Serial” in the following weeks, about a jury I’d served as an alternate for, in a case involving a violent incident in which details and motives—like those in Syed’s case—were unclear. All of these cases involved considerable reasonable doubt about the suspect’s guilt. And all resulted in convictions.

In the course of “Serial,” we learned a huge amount of relevant information that proved inconclusive. Koenig managed to track down a woman named Asia McLean, who could have provided an alibi for Adnan, but the discovery was legally useless. Koenig and Chivvis learned that Mr. S., the person who found Hae’s body in Leakin Park, was a suspicious character with tenuous connections to both Hae and Adnan, who, it seemed, for a minute, might have known that the body was there to discover. But in the end it appeared that Mr. S. was, in fact, just a boozy streaker who happened upon the body, possibly while running naked though the woods.

Every episode was like that. Each character, central or fringe, was at worst odd, human, and even endearing; most of them were a little flawed, but no one was sinister. Jay, the chief witness for the prosecution, who testified that he had helped Adnan bury Hae’s body and who led the police to her car, also sold drugs, liked punk rock, and worked at a porn video store. He had provided conflicting stories about the details of the murder and his involvement several times. But he came across as a sympathetic outsider, not a thug, and as someone who was deeply uncomfortable with murder. He seemed genuinely traumatized by his involvement. And if he was involved, wasn’t Adnan? Who else could it have been? Many of us found ourselves feeling, or “believing,” an impossible logical tangle: that Jay helped bury Hae’s body, that Jay did not kill Hae, and that Adnan did not kill her either. We liked them both too much to believe otherwise. Just about everyone interviewed on “Serial” likes Adnan—even those who think he’s guilty. Even, we learned today, Don, Hae’s boyfriend and LensCrafters co-worker, thought Adnan was a good guy.

This morning, the twelfth and final episode, “What We Know” (spoilers follow), revealed that, in the end, the “answers” in “Serial” were much like those in “Doubt” and “The Staircase.” The episode had several amazing revelations. Koenig was finally able to interview Don. (He didn’t want to be on the show, so she read his comments to us.) Don seemed like another good egg. He loved Hae and admired her confidence. His seemingly airtight alibi was undermined a bit when we learned that his manager at LensCrafters that day had been his mom. He and Adnan had chatted amiably after coming to advise Hae after she got in a minor car accident the month before her murder—no hotheads, no jealousy, nothing untoward. And, rather stunningly, Don had not tried to contact Hae after her disappearance—a behavior that in Adnan’s case had seemed deeply suspicious, implying that he knew she was dead. This seemed to make Adnan less guilty. Koenig also talked to Josh, Jay’s porn-video-store co-worker, who provided details about Jay’s fear and anxiety the week of the murder, seeming to implicate Adnan—or, at least, the “Middle Eastern” guy whose name he didn’t quite know, but who had gone to prison. Snyder and Chivvis did more research into cell-phone practices of 1998 and learned that the incriminating “Nisha call” could indeed have been a butt dial. More reasonable doubt. Deirdre Enright, of the Innocence Project, called with exciting news about a serial killer who had been in prison in Baltimore and who had a “tiny window of being out and about” in January of 1999, when the murder took place. She and her students were filing a motion to have DNA from the scene tested, and Adnan wanted it tested too. “There’s nothing about my case that I’m afraid of,” he said.

Episode twelve conclusively proved that what we’ve been listening to is not a murder mystery: it’s a deep exploration of the concept of reasonable doubt, and therefore an exposé, if unwittingly so, of the terrible flaws in our justice system. Those among us who deign to be jurors, and don’t try to wriggle out of jury duty, too often don’t understand reasonable doubt, or can’t convince fellow-jurors about what it truly means. We convict people who haven’t been proved guilty because we feel that they are guilty. We feel that they’re guilty in part because they’re sitting in a courtroom having been accused of a terrible crime. In cases like this, the burden often ends up on proving the accused’s innocence—not innocent until proven guilty. And Adnan Syed is just the tip of the iceberg.

Many dozens of defendants are convicted or take pleas in the face of similarly inconclusive evidence. Adnan Syed, unlike many people who are convicted, was well-off; he was popular and beloved, with an incredible amount of support from his family, his mosque, his school. He had a passionate and respected attorney whom he still respects and appreciates, long after her disbarment and her death. Thousands of others do not have such support. Innocent or not, they are even easier to convict.

Koenig’s conclusion? In the end, she said, the only real piece of evidence against Adnan was that Jay was able to lead the police to Hae’s car—and that wasn’t enough to send a seventeen-year-old kid to prison for life. “As a juror, I vote to acquit Adnan Syed,” she said. As a person, she has doubts. That’s an essential distinction. “I feel like shaking everyone by the shoulders like an aggravated cop,” she says. “ ‘Just tell me the facts, ma’am.’ Because we didn’t have them fifteen years ago, and we still don’t have them now.”

Facts can only tell you so much; laws are meant to protect us all from the misapplication of facts, power, and force. “Serial” gave millions of people what felt like a personal connection to the realities of criminal prosecution, and it happened to come at a moment of heightened cultural awareness of the many injustices of that system, in part because of the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Akai Gurley, in part because of growing awareness of the need for prison reform, even in part because of shows like “The Wire” and “Orange Is the New Black.” As a public-defender friend of mine put it, “Terrible things have been happening for a long time with all of us not being aware of it. People go to jail whether they’re innocent or not. You can’t divorce ‘Serial’ from that.” The thing that’s important about “Serial,” he went on, is “not that that dude’s story is unique—it’s that it’s prosaic.”

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Why Serial is the greatest podcast ever made

For the past two months, quite a lot of us have been trying to solve a murder case. On crowded tube carriages, in the gym, while drifting off at night, we have pored over the evidence and attempted to make sense of a mystery to rival anything in the Agatha Christie canon.

Serial is a new podcast from the makers of the brilliant This American Life. Hosted by Sarah Koenig, the TAL veteran is looking at a murder case from 1999 in which a young high-school student, Hae Min Lee, was found dead in a Baltimore park having been strangled. Her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was charged with the crime and sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years. He has protested his innocence ever since.

This is The Wire of podcasts. Like the acclaimed television drama, it takes a novelistic approach. Just as one would not open a book in the middle and hope to understand what was going on, Serial needs to be listened to from episode one and in order. It cannot be dipped in and out of but, fortunately, one wouldn’t want to as it’s utterly addictive. Like The Wire, the series is predominantly concerned with crime and racial tension in Baltimore, it has redefined people’s expectations of the medium and, while David Simon’s masterpiece is considered by many to be the greatest TV show ever made, Serial might just be the best podcast.

Listening to the show is like watching one of cinema’s great documentaries but knowing there’ll be another instalment in a week’s time. The listener, like Koenig, cannot be sure whether the interviewees are telling the truth, lying outright or have had their memories distorted over the years. 15 years is a long time and high school seems a lifetime ago for most of the major players.

The most astonishing thing about the series is that Koenig is still working on the case. The host has no idea how long Serial might run or whether the conclusion will be satisfying. Her opinion on who was responsible, like ours, changes on a weekly basis. One week she’s chatting to Adnan over the prison phone and can’t believe this charming, handsome young man could possibly be capable of murder and the next she’s confronted with cell phone records that are problematic to say the least. Episodes are cut right up until the moment they’re broadcast, pretty remarkable when you consider it is now the most popular podcast in the world.

Serial is the fastest podcast to reach 5 million downloads and streams in iTunes history. Despite having become a global phenomenon (Juno director Jason Reitman has taught himself the show’s haunting theme tune on the piano as a way of biding time between episodes), something about the medium makes the whole thing seem somewhat intimate. Podcasting is a relatively recent trend and the appeal is obvious. Like radio, the listener feels as though they’re being addressed directly but, crucially, with a podcast one can fit it in as and when there is time. Also, unlike with television or film, listening to a podcast tends to be a solitary experience.

In many ways, Serial calls to mind the publishing format it shares its name with. In the Victorian era, books would be serialised in weekly instalments in magazines or newspapers. Charles Dickens would often be uncertain where a novel was heading at the time he started writing it. Koenig is in a similar boat but the stakes are a lot higher. Listening to Serial might feel like reading a classic novel but let’s just hope it gets an ending to match.

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Hating on fat people makes them fatter

Don't try to pretend your gibes and judgments of the overweight people in your life are for their own good. Florida researchers have evidence that discriminating against fat people only makes them fatter.

"People often rationalize that it's OK to discriminate based on weight because it will motivate the victim to lose pounds," Angelina Sutin, a psychologist at the Florida State College of Medicine in Tallahassee, tells Shots. "But our findings suggest the opposite."

Sutin and a colleague checked survey data from more than 6,000 American men and women age 50 and older who were asked how often in their daily lives they experienced different types of discrimination. Examples ranged from discourtesy or refusal of restaurant service to not getting a job or promotion.

The survey then asked the respondents why they thought the discrimination happened. Was it was because of their race or age, for example, or their sex, age or weight? Researchers also measured the participants' weight and height.

Four years later, a follow-up survey asked the same questions and checked for changes in weight.

Overweight people who said they'd experienced discrimination based on weight were more than twice as likely to be obese four years later than people who didn't mention such discrimination. And those who started out obese were three times more likely to remain so if they'd been harshly targeted because of their weight. Other types of discrimination showed no effect on weight.

Sutin's study, published in the latest issue of the online journal PLOS One, wasn't designed to get at why weight discrimination led many fat people to pack on even more pounds. But other research suggests that increased rates of depression, emotional eating and low-self esteem likely play a role. So does increased stress (and the associated hormonal surges that can trigger even more hunger and eating), as well as the avoidance of exercise.

"If someone's mean to you at the gym because of your weight or acts like you don't belong there," Sutin says, "you're less likely to go back."

The roots of obesity are complex and include genetics and other factors that go well beyond individual choice. "Trying to promote healthy behaviors is a good thing," she says, but shaming someone has no place in the solution.

Unfortunately, weight-related prejudice and discrimination persists in many spheres and is only increasing among employers, teachers — and doctors.

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Romney goes on the offense, pays for it in the first round of fact checks

In their first of three debates, President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney "traded barbs" and stretched some facts, say the nonpartisan watchdogs at PolitiFact.com.

Similarly, the researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org found examples of truth-stretching by both men.

Overall, it was a debate packed with facts, a wonk's delight. From the very first remarks, with President Obama saying 5 million jobs have been created in the private sector over the last 30 months, the debate was very number focused. So there were some things to check. And because Romney made more factual assertions, he's getting dinged more — at least in the early hours after the debate — by the fact checkers.

Here is a sample of what's being reported about the truthiness of what Obama and Romney had to say Wednesday night on stage at the University of Denver:

— One of the biggest disputes was over tax cuts. Obama argued that Romney's plan to stimulate the economy includes a tax cut totaling $5 trillion that, Obama said, isn't possible because the Republican nominee is also promising to spend money in other places.

Romney flatly disputed that number. "First of all, I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut," he said.

Who's right? The Washington Post's Fact Checker says the facts on this one are on Obama's side. The New York Times notes that Romney "has proposed cutting all marginal tax rates by 20 percent — which would in and of itself cut tax revenue by $5 trillion."

FactCheck.org has weighed in too, tweeting during the debate that "Romney says he will pay for $5T tax cut without raising deficit or raising taxes on middle class. Experts say that's not possible."

PolitiFact has given a "mostly true" rating to the charge that "Romney is proposing a tax plan "that would give millionaires another tax break and raise taxes on middle class families by up to $2,000 a year."

— Has the president put in place a plan that would cut Medicare benefits by $716 billion? Romney says yes. The president says no. According to PolitiFact, Romney's charge is "half true."

"That amount — $716 billion — refers to Obamacare's reductions in Medicare spending over 10 years, primarily paid to insurers and hospitals," says PolitiFact. So there is a basis for the number. But, it adds, "the statement gives the impression that the law takes money already allocated to Medicare away from current recipients," which is why it gets only a "half true" rating.

The New York Times writes that Obama "did not cut benefits by $716 billion over 10 years as part of his 2010 health care law; rather, he reduced Medicare reimbursements to health care providers, chiefly insurance companies and drug manufacturers. And the law gave Medicare recipients more generous benefits for prescription drugs and free preventive care like mammograms."

Still, as NPR's Julie Rovner has reported, "some of the money does indeed reduce future Medical spending, and the fact is, you can't reduce health care spending and preserve Medicare for 78 million baby boomers without slowing its growth."

— In listing his objections to the Affordable Care Act, Romney said it "puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people, ultimately, what kind of treatments they can have. I don't like that idea."

But the Times and National Journal have reported that the board in question wouldn't make treatment decisions, a point Obama made during the debate. National Journal called Romney's characterization of what this board would do "one of the biggest whoppers of the night." PolitiFact gave Romney's claim a "mostly false" rating.

Under the law, the board's job would be to keep Medicare spending within a particular target (not a dollar figure, but as a factor of GDP) but the board is prohibited from choosing the benefits to be restricted to achieve savings, so it cannot make treatment decisions.

FactCheck.org, which has likened the charge about this panel to the earlier claim from Republicans that Obama would create "death panels," writes that "the board, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, cannot, by law, 'ration' care or determine which treatments Medicare covers. In fact, the IPAB is limited in what it can do to curb the growth of Medicare spending."

— On cutting the federal deficit, PolitiFact writes, "Romney claimed that Obama had said he would 'cut the deficit in half.' That's the case. ... Obama said he put forward 'a specific $4 trillion deficit reduction plan.' That's true if you combine the 10-year impact of his budget with the 10-year impact of cuts already approved. (For that reason, we've previously found his claim that his budget plan would 'cut our deficits by $4 trillion' Half True.)"

— As for Obama's claim that under his watch the economy has created 5 million jobs in the past 30 months, NPR's John Ydstie says that's true. But it also ignores an inconvenient truth (for the president), that about the same number of jobs were lost during Obama's first year in office.

— And on a lighter note, the debate opened with a tender moment and a fact that soon was disputed on Twitter. In acknowledging his wedding anniversary, Obama said that "20 years ago I became the luckiest man on Earth because Michelle Obama agreed to marry me." An astute tweeter noted that 20 years ago, the first lady's last name was Robinson.

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5 funny books with substance

It's great to laugh, but so much of what is labeled "entertainment" is, well, toothless. I'm a carnivore where my humor is concerned — I want it to have meat and bite. The following books will give you plenty to chew on if you like a bit of nourishment along with your kicks. They all offer light but not weightless takes on mostly modern dilemmas: the pitfalls of class snobbery, what to do with those expensive higher degrees, the challenges of keeping a long marriage fresh, how to live in the shadow of unfathomable evil — and why otherwise rational women willingly subject themselves to the tortures of high heels and Brazilian waxes. Their authors share the conviction that sometimes the best way to defang our troubles is by laughing at them.

The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones

Bury all preconceptions. That's the takeaway from Sadie Jones' delectable, dark twist on the Edwardian drawing room comedy. The Uninvited Guests is about a weekend house party celebrating the eldest daughter's 20th birthday in a down-at-heels English country manor. When dozens of traumatized, ghoulish third-class passengers seek refuge after a local train wreck, what was supposed to be an elegant dinner party turns into a phantasmagorical mashup evoking Noel Coward, Agatha Christie, The Twilight Zone, Downton Abbey and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The lone upper-class passenger, a not-so-gentle gentleman who has a troubling history with the ever-wilting, twice-married lady of the house, causes the most difficulty. The ensuing, brilliantly plotted mayhem — much of which turns on class consciousness and includes a sinister parlor game and several budding romances — makes the episode with the dead Turkish diplomat in Downton Abbey seem tame by comparison.

The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac by Kris D'Agostino

Calvin Moretti, the Gen Y narrator of Kris D'Agostino's oddly endearing first novel, has boomeranged back home after nearly six years racking up education-loan debts. While trying to figure out what to do with his life, he's working at a preschool for autistic kids. His memorable first line — "I work with retards" — really isn't about the kids, who turn out to win his heart. And home isn't exactly a sanctuary: Calvin's father, an airline pilot, has been grounded by cancer and depression, and the family house is threatened with foreclosure. Plus, his teenage sister is pregnant. Believe it or not, D'Agostino plays all this for laughs — many of which he delivers — channeling a sort of wacky Royal Tenenbaums sensibility. The Sleepy Hollow Family Almanac takes on the grim financial realities affecting 20-somethings today with both cutting humor and warmth.

Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon

Melanie Gideon hits the refresh button on midlife crises with this comedy of manners about an Oakland couple increasingly estranged by electronic media as they approach their 20th anniversary. Bored and vaguely discontented with her life, Gideon's appealing narrator takes part in an online survey about the state of marriage in the 21st century, for which she's dubbed Wife 22. She finds the anonymity liberating — and her assigned researcher alarmingly attractive. Before you know it, she's up against the wall — the Facebook wall, that is, where she and Researcher 101 have set up special accounts to facilitate their flirtatious communication. Wife 22 is Gideon's follow-up to The Slippery Year, her sparkling book of personal essays, also about middle-age ennui. It channels the playful but incisive vibe of Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail while exploring questions about how to keep long relationships as compelling as status updates.

How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran

"These days, sexism is a bit like Meryl Streep in a new film: Sometimes you don't recognize it straightaway," hyper-articulate London Times columnist Caitlin Moran quips in her hilarious neo-feminist manifesto, How to Be a Woman. Moran reinvigorates women's lib with her personal and political polemic, which has been called a British version of Tina Fey's Bossypants. Her tales of growing up with seven siblings in a tiny three-bedroom council house where towels, money for fresh panties and privacy were in equally short supply, are a hoot. But it's her energetic outrage at such ridiculous trappings of womanhood as "investment" handbags, circulation-cutting skimpy underwear and torturous stilettos that had me trying to tone down my guffaws in the subway. My advice is to read the section on bikini waxes in private: "They're making us pay for maintenance and upkeep of our lulus, like they're a communal garden," she rants. "It's a stealth tax." The self-proclaimed upbeat feminist assures us that she's "neither 'pro-women' nor 'anti-men.' I'm just 'thumbs up for the 6 billion.' "

Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander

Shalom Auslander's novel, Hope: A Tragedy, is as outrageously funny and wildly transgressive as his memoir, Foreskin's Lament. His subject is nothing less than the audacity — and insanity — of hope in a world where atrocities like the Holocaust occur. His hero, Solomon Kugel, is caught in a "miserable suffer sandwich" between his woe-is-me mother and a decrepit old lady living in his upstate New York attic who claims she's Anne Frank. With a blend of philosophical agonizing ("Life: examine at your own risk") and schtick (Sealy SwanSongs and Tempur-Pedic UltraPlotz deathbeds), Auslander has the chutzpah to mine the most sacrosanct, unlikely subjects for comedy, including concentration camps. His message, which applies to all of the books on this list: It's a sometimes grim world we live in. How do you find your way through the darkness? With humor, which beams like a flashlight.


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Gay television characters can change people's perceptions

In one of the most talked-about moments from the hit TV show Glee, Blaine declared his love for Kurt and then — they kissed.

Glee is just one of many popular shows on television right now that feature gay characters. Those characters aren't just entertaining us, they're changing Americans' attitudes toward homosexuality.

In five separate studies, professor Edward Schiappa and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota have found that the presence of gay characters on television programs decreases prejudices among viewers.

"These attitude changes are not huge," he says. "They don't change bigots into saints. But they can snowball."

Schiappa tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that indeed, as Vice President Joe Biden said last Sunday, the hit TV show Will and Grace really did help America get to know gay people.

"With the emergence of the extraordinary Will and Grace show, more and more Americans, sort of from the safety of their armchair, could learn a bit about gay people who they might not otherwise have learned from in real life," Schiappa says.

That was a turning point, he says, even though there were gay characters on TV before Will and Grace premiered in 1998.

"I think that was a turning point simply because of two factors: One is it was enormously popular, so the popularity of that show and the fact that there were two major gay male characters who were very different, allowed the show to do what I call important 'category work' " Schiappa says.

"What I mean by that is there were some critics who said, 'Well, Will isn't gay enough, and Jack's too gay.' Well, actually that's great, because you learn that there's diversity within that category that you had in your head before of gay men," he says.

Viewers met straight-laced Will, an attorney, and his friend, the flamboyant Jack — characters who were likable and could even be identified with in some way, no matter if viewers weren't gay or didn't know gay people. Schiappa says his research found two key ingredients can lead to attitude change.

"Are they likeable? Or are they trustworthy? Are they attractive — there's research that says if they're attractive it can influence your attitudes," he says.

"The other part of the mix is are you learning things through their behaviors and observing them that you didn't know about that category beforehand?" he says. "If so, then the more complicated your category of whatever it is — lesbians, gay men — the less likely you are to reduce them down to a stereotype."

Modern Family is now the most popular TV show in the U.S. There's not only a gay couple, but this couple is in the process of adopting a second child. Schiappa says the idea of a gay couple with children is much more mainstream now.

It must be: Modern Family has won awards from Catholic organizations and even Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said he likes the show.

"There's no question that that the show is doing what I just described before as category work," Schiappa says. "It's changing our understanding of what gay men are like, particularly as parents."

More and more gay married couples are showing up on TV these days — like Grey's Anatomy, for example — making something of a trend. NBC plans to roll out more programs with gay married couples next season. Whether these shows continue to build a positive image of gay people depends on how they'll be portrayed, Schiappa says.

"If they continue to be sympathetic, [it] will only contribute to that larger sea change that we see — across society, really — in terms of the attitudes toward gay marriage," he says.

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What's inside a school lunch hamburger?

Thiamine mononitrate, disodium inosinate, pyridoxine hydrochloride.

Why are these hard-to-pronounce ingredients added to everything from a burger served in schools to veggie burgers in the frozen food aisle of the grocery store? We try to answer that on this edition of Tiny Desk Kitchen.

It turns out the answers are as varied as the ingredients. But as we yearn to know what's in our food and how it's made, these kinds of ingredients with unfamiliar names make people suspicious.

"For me, it's just a huge red flag," says Ryan Lonnett, a parent of children in Fairfax County, Va., schools. He's an advocate with the group Real Food For Kids.

When he looks at the ingredient list of the burger served in his kids' cafeteria, he says things like disodium inosinate stand out. "Since I don't know what it is, I'd rather not put it in my body," Lonnett says.

RFFK wants Fairfax County schools to phase out or reformulate processed foods such as a grilled cheese served in a bag, a jumbo turkey frank and a cheese quesadilla. The group also wants the county to purchase new kitchen equipment and begin preparing some foods from scratch.

"We now have 36 school [parent teacher associations] that have signed a resolution that encourages the county to make changes," says JoAnne Hammermaster, head of RFFK.

Making the transition is not as simple as it may sound. Listen to my story on Morning Edition to learn why.

Fairfax County Public Schools has decided to phase out the 26-ingredient burger. Penny McConnell, who directs the county's Office of Food and Nutrition Services, says she will replace it with an alternative frozen patty made of 100 percent beef. The change could come as soon as mid-April.

But McConnell says she doesn't have the kitchen equipment, the space or the labor force to return to scratch cooking in schools.

She says the pre-prepared foods made by manufacturers are healthful and help limit the risks of food-borne illness, since they prevent the chance of cross-contamination that comes with handling raw meat. "That product that comes from a manufacturer, it's gone through lab analysis and safety checks," McConnell says. "I know it's safe."

The debate about school food is a reflection of a wider cultural rethink about the way we eat.

"What I believe is that we're going back," says Ann Cooper, director of nutrition services for the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado. "If we want to be healthy and want our kids to be healthy, we've got to find our kitchens again."

She has actually brought scratch cooking back to her schools. And a lot of cities are inviting chefs into cafeterias and classrooms through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Chefs Move to Schools program, which encourages students to learn more about food and cooking. More than 3,300 schools and 3,400 chefs have joined the program, according to the USDA's Hans Bilger.

The Culinary Trust, one of the partners in the project, is offering grants to support the initiative.

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NPR's Christmas Jazz Concert

On Saturday, December 10th, I had the pleasure of attending NPR's Jazz Piano Christmas concert. I don't listen to a lot of jazz but I had a great time listening to the four pianists play their version of classic Christmas songs. At the end, the four men came together to do a jingle bell medley and hilarity ensued as the older gentlemen started dancing.

Here is NPR's article about the show:
Every December, a select group of the most celebrated pianists in jazz converge on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The holiday classics which come out of their fingers are captured by NPR Music for our annual holiday celebration, A Jazz Piano Christmas.

For this, the 22nd edition, there was holiday music with swing and sabor. A bebop master rubbed shoulders with a Latin jazz icon. And an up-and-coming pianist preceded a musician whose time in the spotlight has very much come.

Four musicians played this year's special, recorded during two live sets at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater. The program is hosted by NPR's Felix Contreras.

Alfredo Rodriguez is a product of Cuba's rigorous music education program, where students learn both classical and Afro-Cuban music traditions. He was barely in his twenties when he met legendary producer Quincy Jones at a jazz festival. His new mentor gushed, "[Rodriguez] is very special and I do not say that easily because I have been surrounded by the best musicians in the world my entire life ... and he is the best!" Rodriguez suggested classic melodies within a uniquely spacious approach.

Barry Harris, now 82, has lived much of the jazz history that younger musicians turn to for inspiration. Coleman Hawkins, Dexter Gordon, Cannonball Adderley — some of the most celebrated names in jazz had one thing in common: his piano. He's also part of the continuum of jazz as a frequent lecturer and workshop leader, schooling many generations of disciples in swing. With good humor and great time, he made his second appearance on A Jazz Piano Christmas.

Eddie Palmieri has dedicated himself to learning the traditions of Afro-Caribbean music, and to moving it forward. As a bandleader and composer, he has been an important part of the history of this music. And after nine Grammys and over 50 years in the music business, his importance has been recognized widely. He gave the Kennedy Center Crowd a very rare and very intense solo performance.

Jason Moran was booked for his musical vision and his commitment to using tradition to expand the boundaries of jazz. Then, he became a colleague. Moran was recently selected to be the Kennedy Center's Artistic Advisor for Jazz, meaning that he'll be working with the folks who book this show and the entire Kennedy Center jazz season. With this performance, he succeeds Dr. Billy Taylor as only the second such curator since the post was inaugurated in 1994.

Audio of performances which did not make the final hour-long program can be found in the inset column to the left. Of special note: The second of two sets, per A Jazz Piano Christmas tradition, ended with a round robin performance of "Jingle Bells." This year's version quickly grew both playful and abstract — and ended with a cake being wheeled on stage, to celebrate the upcoming birthdays of Barry Harris and Eddie Palmieri.

You can listen to the entire concert here.

Setlist:

• Alfredo Rodriguez, "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town"
• Barry Harris, "Christmas Time Is Here"
• Barry Harris, "I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas"
• Eddie Palmieri, "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"
• Eddie Palmieri, "We Three Kings"
• Jason Moran, "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing"
• Jason Moran, "Go Tell It On The Mountain"

The Black Keys on NPR

It wasn't the fast lane to success for The Black Keys. In fact, the cover of the band's new album El Camino is a convenient reminder of that. The old, beat-up van featured on the front of the Akron duo's latest record is the actual vehicle the group used to tour in its early days. From then until now, The Black Keys' members have earned countless fans through rigorous touring and a strong body of work in the studio. In 2010, the duo enjoyed a substantial breakthrough with Brothers, which spawned Grammy nominations and the hit single "Tighten Up," which was produced by Brian Burton (a.k.a. Danger Mouse).

The group is the product of two guys, Dan Auerbach on guitars and vocals and Patrick Carney on drums. It'd be easy to complicate the formula, but as El Camino demonstrates, it's not necessary: Its sound is charged, loud, catchy and rife with riffs. Danger Mouse returned to produce the album, and he's the perfect fit.

Here, Auerbach and Carney play live, including "Lonely Boy" and two other tracks from their new release, and discuss their new-found success, the recording process and the huge influence of radio on their careers.

Brad Pitt says "Inglourious Basterds 2" could happen

Brad Pitt spoke with NPR this week and he let it slip that the smash hit Inglourious Basterds could be getting a sequel from director Quentin Tarantino.

When talking about the scar on his characters face during the movie Pitt revealed:

“[Tarantino] said it would never be explained in [Inglourious Basterds] and if he ever does what he called a prequel-slash-sequel, then we’ll reveal it then,” he told Fresh Air. “He talks about [a sequel], but he’s got several things percolating at once.”

The idea that a prequel or sequel of some sort would arrive at some point in the future shouldn’t shock fans of the first movie, especially when considering it was Tarantino’s biggest blockbuster to date having earned more than $320 million worldwide.

Tarantino for his part revealed plans for a sequel in 2009 when he told Vulture that he was already 40 pages into the next chapter.

In the meantime Quentin is working on Django Unchained with Jamie Fox.

Would you be willing to head back into the theater to see a sequel or perhaps even a prequel for Inglourious Basterds? I personally felt that Tarantino didn’t wrap up enough at the end of the movie or provide enough back story when it began so either way I would be happy to see another installment from the past or moving forward with other characters.

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