All Things Considered Sunday

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.

MITT ROMNEY: It's an honor to announce my running mate and the next vice president of the United States, Paul Ryan.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

Let's go now to Vin Weber, former Minnesota congressman and a senior adviser to Mitt Romney. Vin Weber, thanks for joining us.

VIN WEBER: Great to be with you today.

RAZ: You have known Paul Ryan for a long time, since before he was a member of Congress. How did you know him?

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

It's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.

And as we've been reporting, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan has joined Mitt Romney on the GOP presidential ticket. The two men launched a multiday, multistate bus tour this morning. They spent much of the day in Virginia where crowds came out to cheer them on, including in Ashland, where Paul Ryan spoke.

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GUY RAZ, HOST:

So what makes Paul Ryan such a bold pick and potentially such a risky one is the detailed budget plan he has now twice passed through the GOP-controlled House. That plan has not passed the Senate, and President Obama says if it reached his desk, he'd veto it. The heart of Ryan's plan calls for dramatic changes to the nation's largest government health programs, Medicare and Medicaid.

With us now to discuss what those changes could mean for the campaign and the country should Romney and Ryan win the race is NPR's Julie Rovner. Julie, hello.

Mitt Romney's newly announced running mate, Paul Ryan, has long subscribed to the objectivist philosophies of novelist Ayn Rand. Host Guy Raz speaks with James Fallows of The Atlantic about how that approach to public policy will play with voters.

Batman has many secrets — the best-known one, of course, being his millionaire alter ego, Bruce Wayne. But that may not be the Dark Knight's biggest secret.

Since the 1930s, only one man has been given credit for creating the caped crusader and his home city of Gotham. Bob Kane's name appears in the credits of all the movies, the campy TV show and the associated merchandise, from video games and action figures to sheets and underwear.

But what if Bob Kane didn't do it all by himself?

Saxophonist Branford Marsalis, oldest son of New Orleans pianist and educator Ellis Marsalis, released an album with his quartet this week. He spoke to weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz about the failings of modern jazz, his hopes for the next generation and leaving New York City to move back to the South.

You might imagine a war between lobster trappers to be something like this battle of the lobsters. OK, not really. Still, the price war heating up between the fishing folk in Maine and Canada this summer is bringing everybody down.

The London Summer Olympics are winding down, and by most accounts, the games have been a success. There were plenty of "thrill of victory, agony of defeat" moments; big, enthusiastic crowds — although there were too many blocks of empty seats; and for those who like a helping of scandal served up at their Olympics, there was that, too.

It wasn't the usual scourge of doping. Instead, the London Olympics had incidents of bending the rules and ethics of sport.

When writer David Rakoff died Thursday at the age 47, he was barely the age he said he was always "meant" to be. In his 2010 memoir, Half Empty, he wrote, "Everyone has an internal age, a time in life when one is, if not one's best, then at very least one's most authentic self. I always felt that my internal clock was calibrated somewhere between 47 and 53 years old."

Rakoff died in New York City after a long struggle with cancer — an ordeal that he wrote about with sobering honesty and biting wit.