What Works and What Doesn't (w/ Sonali Kolhatkar)

Thank you This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J. Eskow, produced by the WEAC Radio Network and broadcasting from the banks of the Anacostia directly into the halls of power. And now your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the program. If you are in a health plan with a deductible, as most people with employer or similar coverage are, most people under the Affordable Care Act are, the average deductible has now reached for a single individual, $1,886. In other words, you have to pay that much. out of pocket before the plan fully kicks in. That goes along with all our health care costs, even for people who are supposedly insured, rising much more quickly than inflation. Now, more than half of people who work at small companies have a deductible of at least $2,000, and more than a third have an average deductible for a single person that is $3,000. And one in five have a deductible of $6,000. And yet our system still describes people like that as having health insurance. They don't have health insurance because people don't have that kind of money. So we need to fix this and we need to fix it now with Medicare for all.

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J.S. Gal. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash the Zero Hour. And we are back on the zero hour. I, as always, am your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. And as always, I look forward to speaking with zero hour senior correspondent. And so much more, Sunali Cole Hotcar. So first of all, Sunali, welcome back. Thanks so much for having me, Richard. It's always great to have you. You have a new piece. I saw it. It's syndicated by the Independent Media Institute. But the version of it I saw, the headline was, if you want to solve homelessness, fix the economy. Now, some of us might say that's... self-evident, but to some people, a lot of people, it isn't. And you particularly point to the Cicero Institute. And so tell us about the Cicero Institute and their proposal for, their modest proposal for homelessness. Yeah, you know, folks have heard of like the Heritage Foundation that came up with Project 2025. I had not really heard of the Cistro Institute very much, but when I spoke with Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center, he told me that this is an organization, an institute, it's a think tank that's based in Texas, that has been one of the leading proponents of enacting both... state and federal level policies on the unhoused. That is basically exactly the opposite kind of thing that you want to do. And very, very, very dangerous policies that involve building detention camps. Well, they don't call them detention camps, encampments on city outskirts, you know, disappearing the homeless, involuntary commitment of mentally ill people to mental health facilities. you know, sweeping them away, criminalizing being unhoused. And they have become remarkably successful at pushing their model in state after state. Because of course, like so many right-wing think tanks, they have endless amounts of money. And indeed, this particular think tank was co-founded by or founded by the co-founder of Palantir, the notorious company that is... basically doing business with the United States government that has such a dystopian view of the world. Joe Lawnsdale, he's a tech billionaire, and tech billionaires hate homelessness because it mars their quality of life. They don't like to see the natural outcome of the inequality that they fuel, which is what their business is. So I start up.

a piece of quoting from a 2024 United States Treasury Department report that very clearly lays out for the past two decades, rents and house prices have been rising faster than incomes across most regions of the United States. And that is why that is the leading cause of homelessness. It's kind of a no-brainer. When it gets too expensive to live in homes or apartments, people end up on the streets, right? But to the people... who populate this think tank, the way to deal with homelessness is to disappear those people who are homeless. And the logic, which was so shocking, if you go to, I really encourage your viewers to go to the Cistro Institute's website. They lay it all out. They just wear their politics on their sleeve. And what they basically said is that if we provide subsidized housing to homeless people, that's going to create a demand. for subsidized housing. It's going to fuel homelessness. It's that standard logic of if we people, you'll make them dependent on you. Which I just want to interrupt to say for a second that that sounds logical to some people who don't think about it too much, but it's kind of like saying, if we build more hospitals, there will be more sick people. People don't want to be sick. They don't want to be on house. They don't want to go through the whole. And forgive me, Sonali, but I do want to take a slot one moment to talk about that word unhoused, too. Because, and in Great Britain, sometimes they use the term sleeping rough, which I kind of like, too. But. You know, some people say, well, you know, liberal, woke, you know, why can't you just say they're homeless people? Well, I love your thoughts. To me, it's because to call somebody a homeless person is to characterize them, but they may not have been without a home yesterday, and they may not be without a home tomorrow. So by calling them a homeless person, you're sort of already putting them in a little encampment in your mind and shutting them away. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, I tend to use the word homeless and unhoused interchangeably right now because a lot of folks who do work with unhoused people. still use the word homeless because it is so much in the mainstream lexicon. But I'm so glad you brought that up because it is, it is an important mind shift to think about somebody. It's not that they don't have a home. Everybody has a home. They can't afford a house. They can't afford to be housed. And so, yeah, it puts the onus on society to have that have, you know, and the failures of our economic system. for basically forcing people to live on the streets or live in their cars or on people's, you know, on their friends' couches, you know, etc. So it is an important thing. And also to your point that you were saying earlier, this right wing logic of if you help people, it will create dependence. I've actually seen that being applied to things like healthcare. If you listen to the opponents of, say, Medicare for all, there are people who have...

In writing, put things like if we make health care free for everybody, it's just going to create more demand for more health care. Wow, as if people are going to say, oh, now I can afford to get cancer. Whoopi. Literally, it's so bizarre. And they don't apply that. to the wealthy who gets subsidies for all sorts of things. Right. The tax credits, the tax write-offs, the, you know, the the the lowered corporate tax rates and the lower taxes on the wealthy, they never. imply that, oh, if you just subsidize and if you make these rich people dependent on the government, then you're just going to end up having too many people being dependent on handouts. They never apply that to themselves, right? But it's always for the rest of us. Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I noticed, because on the advice of your piece, I did click on the link and go to the Cicero Institute. The other thing that struck me about it, was this is why I love that you offered some very clear statistics about the relationship between housing costs and homelessness. I went there and it seemed to almost treat homeless populations as a kind of fact of nature, as if it's just a weather phenomenon that happened, as opposed to, well, why do we have people without housing in the first place? Not every society does, not every... country does. This country didn't always have the level of unhoused people. They never look at causality, do they? Exactly. If you look at the Cisteros Institute's website on their section on homelessness and the unhoused, they point out that more and more people are becoming homeless. They point out that this is an increase in crisis. And then they don't actually turn around and say, I wonder why. Let's look at the causes. They don't want to address why more people are becoming homeless. They only want to bring up the fact that homelessness is increasing to give a sense of urgency of, oh, we have to deal with it. Okay, you know, when you want to solve a problem, there are upstream solutions and downstream solutions. And I always like to look at... solutions journalism in this way. The downstream solutions are how to get, you know, how to deal with the problem after it's occurred. For example, police are a downstream solution to crime and they don't work very well. And so disappearing the homeless.

or, you know, pushing them to encampments, et cetera, is a downstream solution to homelessness. It doesn't actually work, and it isn't as effective, and it doesn't prevent homelessness. An upstream solution is something that is preventative. It's like saying if you want to improve your health, look for upstream solutions to health is like exercise, good sleep, etc. A downstream solution to ill health is, you know, making sure that you're taking your meds or addressing it after the problem has occurred. So an upstream solution to homelessness, is fix the damn economy. And as advocates for the unhoused always remind us, the rent is too damn high. Right. You have a statistic in there, Sunali, that every $100 increase in monthly rent correlates with a 9% rise in homelessness. So for all the complicated rhetoric that a Cicero Institute uses, those types of people, uh if you could cut a hundred dollars off rent in some of our urban areas boom you've gotten rid of roughly 10% of the whole problem just like that haven't you absolutely and you know another really important aspect of this is that i think it's important and i didn't have too much space to get into this in this piece, but I think that you would be interested in this too, is that most of our democratic and liberal mayors and governors have also failed to address homelessness from an upstream perspective. They have enacted The first steps toward dealing with homelessness, which is to provide subsidized housing, but never, never do they go far enough? Well, I shouldn't say never. There are places and Jesse Rubin and what's pointed a few where, you know, you see that when you start enacting the solutions to homelessness, the incidents goes down. But they always fall short. And so when they fall short, Right-wing think tanks like Cistro can point to it and say, look at all this money that Karen Bass of Los Angeles and the government of California have wasted and you still have this problem. And so I point out that there was this experiment that was conducted by U.S. University of Southern California along with a nonprofit in San Francisco that gave, it's like a universal basic income program for people who are unhoused. They gave people $750 in cash per month for two years. there wasn't too much significant permanent change to that situation of these people. The majority of that money was spent on basic necessities like food. Right. But ultimately it didn't help because $750 is nothing in today's economy. It's not nearly enough to even cover one month's rent, maybe a quarter of a month's rent or month's rent. So the solution was more money, not less. And that's the conclusion that that organization came to.

after they ran that experiment. And that's important. Yeah, after, you know, as someone who lived in Los Angeles for 15 years, I read that paragraph of your article, Sonali, and thought, really, $750? That's nothing in a place like Los Angeles. So I was paying $750 a month in rent in December 1998 for a 600 square foot home. Yes. In December 1998. Right, right. It's unbelievable. And we should point out, too, that as you write in your article, if you want to solve homelessness, fix the economy, Cicerole Institute is not a fringe organization on the right, that in fact, you write that 22 states are considering or have passed legislation based on this, basically this concentration camp model. Is that correct? Yes, and so they have, right, well-paid commentators that go on NPR shows and, you know, CBS news talk shows and have the ear of right-wing and Republican governors and mayors across the country to bring their model, you know, and so there are a lot of, so they have the, and this was, I'm thinking of, and you probably remember them too. I can't remember the exact thing that the acronym for, but it was Alec, the American Legislative Exchange Council, right? Another right-wing think tank. And what they do is they hire a bunch of policy experts who can write, you know, official sounding jargon, and they create cookie cutter legislation. And they take it to legislative bodies and legislators. and get them to adopt their solutions that look so fancy on paper, right? And they push them. And if there isn't opposition, these things can get enacted with very little. opposition and often they use the right buzzwords. Well, we have to deal with the crisis of homelessness and people should be spared the terrible scourge of homelessness. And so, you know, Ron DeSantis of Florida who talks about, and this was so important, I just thought that it was so interesting to see, you know, Ron DeSantis talked about the rights of people. You should not be accosted by a homeless by a homeless like we see. You should be able to walk down the street and live your life. life. Okay, if we're talking about what should happen, how about you should not have to pay 150% of your income on rent? Let's talk about the should. You should not have to live on the edge of an economy where the cost of living keeps going up and your income doesn't go up. You know, we're going to have clean sidewalks. We're going to have clean parks. We're going to have safe streets. How about we're going to have affordable housing? You know, and so the logic is so upside down. And I get that it makes people uncomfortable to be asked for money or approach, but you should not have to ask for money in order to have enough food to eat. And I wanted to talk about something you mentioned earlier. Well, two things. You mentioned they're very good at the buzzwords. And one of the buzzwords I caught.

right away looking at the Cicero Institute study was they talk about the continuum of care, which is, you know, a great, very compassionate, can be used in a very compassionate way, that phrase of ensuring the continuum of care for people who have mental health or addiction problems. And that sounds pretty good. And then if you look into it, you find it's the most. horrifying dystopian. I mean, as someone who's had some personal familiarity with addiction and mental health treatment, you cannot force it on people. It gets like if people remember the ludovico technique from a clockwork origin, where Malcolm McDowell had his eyes pinned up. It's the metaphorical version of that. You cannot terrorize or police or punish people into good mental health or into recovery. from addiction. There too, you have to look at the root causes of the mental illness, whether it's untreated of the addiction. So much addiction comes from, begins with attempting to relieve chronic pain or emotional pain. Yeah, which is also correlated to poverty. Absolutely. So many things, right? Trauma comes from. Trauma is often a response to inequality. There's a strong correlation because inequality fuels things like domestic violence or abuse. And so, you know, Utah is where you've seen the Cicero Institute's dystopian vision be the furthest in and being enacted. The state of Utah is building a 1,300 bed encampment on the outskirts of Salt Lake City that is basically putting Cicero Institute's ideas into, you know, into action. And it's terrifying. They have mental health facilities that they're essentially going to force. homeless people into against their will. And this is what they want to see everywhere. I'm in L.A. in two years, we're going to have the Olympics and people are warning against this sort of thing because in previous years, 1984 Olympics, that's the kind of thing that happened in L.A. sweep the homeless away from view. That is... a solution to homelessness, making them invisible to the rest of us is not a solution to homelessness because many of us are one paycheck or one medical emergency away from joining the ranks of the unhoused. And if our solution is to disappear them, that is a society that is deeply rotten to its core. And we have to resist it. To hear the rest of my conversation with Sonali call Hotcar about unhoused people, please go to zero hour report.com. We'll be right back after this with a different conversation with Sonali. So please stick around. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow and you're listening to The Zero Hour.

You are listening to the We Act Radio Network produced in Washington, D.C. Visit us online at weactradio.com or at YouTube.com slash weactradio, DC. And we are back on the Zero Hour. As I, as always, am your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. And as always, I look forward to speaking with Zero Hour Senior Correspondent and so much more Sonali call Hotcar. Sonali is the host of Rising Up with Sonali. And she is a great journalist and commentator. You can find a lot of her work at Rising Up with Sonali. Sonali.com. And her latest piece published in other words, that's other words.org, is headlined progressive economic populism is a winning issue. So first of all, Sonali, welcome back. Thank you so much for having me, Richard. Always a pleasure. Now, I have to tell you, Sonali, I read this headline, Progressive Economic Populism is a winning issue, and I had an overwhelming sense of deja vu. Right? I mean, it seems that... I've been saying it for a long time. Right. Since, you know, since at least the entire 21st century, and probably longer. But it's constantly... being reinvigorated because there is constant pushback from the centrist, that is to say, dominant wing of the Democratic Party. So what was your trigger for, I guess we should have a trigger warning if we have a trigger, what was your trigger for writing this piece and revisiting this hallowed ground? We see candidate after candidate proving to the establishment that progressive economic populism works and is a winning issue, especially when presented properly and with the right person. And so I was inspired by Anna Lillia Mejia. She is somebody that I've interviewed on my show a couple of times over the years. I know her through her work with the Center for Popular Democracy. She also, and so she won a special election in late April in New Jersey, where she filled a seat that had been vacated by Mikie Sherrill, who won the one New Jersey's gubernatorial election. And so Mikie Sherrill, you know, left her seat in Congress representing New Jersey, and they had to have a special election to fill that seat. And Anna Lillia Mejia ran alongside a... pretty large group of Democrats and Republicans.

and came out to be the winning candidate. She won that seat. She will now have to run once more because it was a special election just to fill the seat between now and November. She'll have to run again for her seat in November to sort of keep it for her term. But what's really remarkable about it is who Annalalia Mejia is. If people have never heard of her, it's not surprising because she's one of these activists who has been in the trenches for me. many, many years. She's not a flashy, you know, person who is an influencer or who has vied for political office over and over again. And finally, one, she's somebody who has kept her nose down and done the work. So not only has she been active with Center for Popular Democracy, but also with the New Jersey Working Families Alliance. and has worked as the campaign political director for Senator Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign. And so she has, you know, been the stalwart progressive, and she ran on her politics, on her overtly progressive politics, articulating clearly that we need progressive economic policies that help working families and working people. And she won handily. And so this is... really exciting for me because this is a way for us to show over and over again how Americans are hungry for this kind of political platform. And, you know, someone like Mejia was able to show it very easily. There's a whole bunch of, you know, she's a daughter of immigrants. She did not shy away from her racial identity or her racial and ethnic background and how it has informed her. She leaned into that. And she leaned into the economic populism aspect of it. Those two pieces of the puzzle are very important. We've seen it in someone like Zohran Mamdani, who ran for mayor and won in New York City. That's, to me, a winning combination. Now, before we get into, on a little of Mejia, a little bit more, there was this story around, and one of our guests talked about it a few weeks ago, that, well, she won the primary because. APEC meddled and the leading establishment candidate was pro-Israel, but not pro-Israel enough. So they were going to punish him and that split the centrist vote and she got in. I mean, if you get in, you get in. It's still good news. But do you know anything about that? Yeah, I mean, it's very possible that that might have played a role. I mean, even people who have strong progressive economic politics don't always, you know, aren't always a shoe in. The point I think is that her.

progressive platform did not work against her enough, right? She was very unequivocal on her denunciation of Israel's genocide in Gaza. So that was not a deal breaker. Right. That is really, really important to bring up. And also, you know, just to clarify, so she won the special election. It was an actual election where she ran against her? Right. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. So she will actually serve in Congress till November, I mean, till she wins re-election, if she wins re-election. And so she had to be inaugurated in the House of Representatives at Speaker Mike Johnson, and in front of him gave this fiery inaugural address. where she just really called on an economic system that helps working families. I encourage people to go and check out her speech in Congress. I think this was really important because she was able to not only speak to Republicans, but members of her own party. You know, Mikie Sherrill, who she replaced, whose seat she took over is one of these moderate... so-called centrist Democrats, which you can really argue whether the center is really the center anymore. It's gone to go far to the right, but I guess relative center. And she launched a political action committee earlier this year whose goal was to help elect fellow Democrats amid, and Fox News said, cast it as the battle between progressives and moderates within the Democratic Party. So the person that Mikie Sherrill, who took Mikie Sherrill's seat, is somebody who is squarely on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the person she replaced as someone who's squarely in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. So she, you know, she replaced. a moderate Democrat with a, uh, Central's Democrat with a with a progressive Democrat, which is a win for Americans, I think. So, you know, this is important. Yeah. And she would say, I would say about Anna Lila Mejia that she had three characteristics that the establishment Democrats would say make you unelectable, which is she had extremely progressive politics. She, uh, is, uh, a woman of color. And she is, as you say, the daughter of immigrants at a time when the establishment Democrats have pandered to a large extent. I think to anti-immigrant sentiment, they've sometimes stood up on the issue, but I don't feel they've been particularly courageous about it. So the... She is, in a sense, living proof, as you say that these things are far from deal breakers, Zohran Mamdani, as you point out, these are the things that got him elected, right? These are not only not.

obstacles, but he got elected on an openly democratic socialist platform. But I'm glad you mentioned Mikie Sherrill, because I wanted to talk with you a little bit about Mikie Sherrill, okay? Because Mikie Sherrill, to me, she's a good example of what the establishment Democrats do to neutralize the Annala Mejia's of this world in politics, which is... So Mikie Sherrill is a centrist establishment Democrat. She's a former naval aviator because the establishment Democrats love to put up military veterans. There's a kind of military fetishism there. The And similarly, Abigail Spanberger, who got elected governor of California. I think she's ex-CIA, right? She's... Yeah, not California. Virginia. Virginia. Yeah, yeah. But she's ex-something. And also, she has been very vocal criticizing progressives, even though now her policies are tilting more progressive, and she probably doesn't want to admit that she's been influenced by the progressives in her party. Yeah, they'd like to, yeah. But... What I was going to say was they, I think the establishment Democrats tell us that only the Mikey Sheryls and Abigail Spanberger can get elected. Then they flood the primaries and the general elections with money that they deny to anyone who they deem too progressive. which is putting their thumb on the scale, and then they say, C, centrist win. Well, yeah, you can buy an election from time to time, but to me, that's not proof of their agenda, because as you point out in your article, when you poll on the individual issues that constitute the left's agenda, they're much more popular, right? Absolutely. They're so much more popular. And it's not just Democrats in the party, but the so-called political pundits like Ezra Klein of the New York Times. And also, yeah, I'm trying to think of the person who's so... excited about Kamala Harris and then, you know, tried to explain away another New York Times writer. And I can't remember what his name is. But there is this sense that, you know, from the centrist Democrats, that your racial and ethnic identity is only an asset if you kind of downplay it. And if you... you know, seem like your politics are in line with the centrists. Otherwise, they would rather have a white male Christian candidate. And in fact, that's what's happening. Axios did this expose. It was a few weeks ago. It didn't make many waves, but basically what they are suggesting is that there's all these internal discussions among the top-tier Democrats who feel the only...

way for the Democratic Party to win the 2028 presidential election is to nominate a white male because look, Kamala Harris lost because they think the reason she lost was her identity rather than her politics. And this to me is such an important lesson, right? So going back to Anna Liliya Mejia, going back to Zohran Mamdani, it's not that their identity was central to the work they did or that it was completely irrelevant. It is central and it's It only, it only, it's only an asset if it's accompanied by progressive economic politics. So people like Mejia, like Zohran Mamdani, have leaned into their identity. I'm an immigrant, a child of immigrants, you know, in Zohran Mamdani case. I'm a Muslim. Be very unequivocal about that. That is who I am, that it informs my politics. And what I believe in is, you know, Medicare for all, universal health care, et cetera. Right. And higher minimum wages. And so that, to me, is the most important winning combination. And you had somebody like Kamala Harris was all like, look, I'm a black and I am pro-Israel, pro-Wall Street. And then the takeaway for political pundits is that, oh, it was because she leaned into her identity and that she was a woman of color. That's why she lost. So we can't have people of color. We should not try to run women. We should just have white men. I mean, you know, wrong lesson from it. I'm going to jump in and get myself in trouble now because I think that a lot of the people. who reproduced that narrative were in fact women themselves. And it wasn't, I mean, Donna Brazell pushed that narrative. Rebecca Solnit pushed that narrative. And I get that a lot of it was pain and disappointment and hurt. And, you know, I want to be compassionate. But whether male or female, whatever, to me, when people said this proves that a woman or a black woman can't get elected president, You know, my reaction is, wait, she only had 100 days to run. She ran a terrible campaign. And yet she got 75 million vote, 49% of the vote. And you're saying that 1% means it can never happen ever and let's only run. white men. To me, that's a way of avoiding the real issue. Yeah. And over and over again, people told her and her campaign, if you take a progressive position on the genocide in Gaza, which was unfolding and it's horror in that moment, we will vote for you. She lost so narrowly that she just stepped in the right direction. She probably would have won. I did the demographics myself. She would have won.

And the fact is that, you know, what I was going to say was all these people, and they're mostly men, I should be clear, but, and they're mostly white men. I should be clear about that, too. But, but occasionally there's this phenomenon of internalizing the oppressor consciousness, you know, but, but. All these people who said she lost because she was a woman, that either internally or externally, it may be both, that's a deflection. No, she lost because she listened to you. That's why she lost. And that's what they don't want to admit. So, I mean, Annala Mejia doesn't listen to them, right? Zofaramandani. doesn't listen to them so yes a muslim can win in in new york with a huge jewish population and and a little of mehia can win in new jersey taking over for a centrist because they're not part of that corporate you know feckless culture. Yeah, and I think that is so important to remind ourselves. There was one analyst who really did get it, and that was Tressy in the mainstream media. There's many others, of course, who also got it. But when Kamala Harris lost, Tressie McMillan caught him. I quoted her in the story I wrote that she'd lost because basically a vote for Harris was a promise that... Nothing much would change about the country, but the race and gender of the one in charge. Right. And I think that's really, really important. So it wasn't that Donald Trump won. It was that Kamala Harris lost and lost by just a tiny image. He literally shot herself on the foot by not. leaning more into the economic progressive policies that Americans are desperate for. Oh, we're seeing this play out, you know, in California, where I am Richard, both at the governor's race level and at the mayor's race level in Los Angeles. There are no clear front runners in either race because there's not a single candidate who can just unabashedly say, you know, the basic things that most Americans are looking for. I want Medicare for all. I want a fair, you know, just dignified immigrant rights. I want, you know, lower cost of living. I want to hold Israel accountable. So you have people who are like really good on some of these issues, but not on, for example, Israel still continues to be a weird linchpin. You know, and we can probably, we probably should eventually talk about the governor's race in California maybe in the coming weeks because that's another really interesting ways to talk about. But it's, you know, Mejia's win to me is, is that winning formula. It's so obvious. It's so overt. It's so.

easy that we should be able to find wonderful candidates who can do this work. Now, Zohran Mamdani. He's very charismatic. He's done the work, but not for many many years, right? He hasn't been an activist for that long. Right. He hasn't been anything for that long. Right. Yeah. But he had, you know, he had enough work. He was on hunger strike for the taxi drivers in New York. He had enough grassroots activists who trusted him because he had done the work when the cameras weren't around that they... Back term. Mejia is the same way. I don't know how charismatic or not. It's kind of irrelevant because, again, she's done the work. She has been in the trenches for years. And so the movements she's worked for know her. They know she will be accountable to them. And that is key. We need movement people to run for office who lean into their identity, whatever that may be, unabashedly. and combine it with their thirst for economic progressive policies that will benefit all people, not just certain sectors, but all people, right? And that's key. And people will vote for that. White men will vote for that if they see it as being something beneficial to them. To hear the rest of this conversation with Sonali Cole Hotcar, please go to the zero hour report.com. We'll be right back after this. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow, and this is The Zero Hour.

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J.S. Gal. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash the Zero Hour. And we're back on The Zero Hour. I'm your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. It's been a while since we've talked about an interesting science story. So here's one for you. The headline in the New York Times that describes it reads as follows. A mutation gave humans the gift of speech. These mice have it. too. And they're talking about the mouse known as Alston's singing mouse. They wanted to know why these mice, when they chitter, chatter, sounds so much like humans in conversation. In other words, what happens is that they'll talk. One will come out with a song that could last as long as 16 seconds. But the others just are quiet, politely quiet, till they stop. And then the other one answers. They never interrupt. They wait. In fact, it sounds like this is an idealized version of our humans communicates as we interrupt each other all the time. So scientists have always wondered what it was that was different about these mice. He seemed to be having very... complex conversations without going into too many details. They've got a mutation that we also have. Now, this doesn't mean that they can have sophisticated conversations like the mice and ratatouille or Tom and Jerry or whatever. But it's an interesting insight into two things. One is they're going to experiment to see if they could make their communications more sophisticated, number one. And number two, it shows us that we're really not as unique in the scheme of natural things as we like to think they are. So maybe we should treat nature with more respect. We'll be right back.