Embedded - 145: This Is Embedded

Episode Date: March 31, 2016

Kelly McEvers (@kellymcevers) joins us to talk about the definition of embedded.  Kelly McEvers is one of the hosts of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning afternoon news magazine. She is also the host of a new podcast called Embedded which takes a story from the news and goes much deeper into it.   Her Embedded podcast launches on March 31st.  Subscribe now on iTunes, listen onNPR.com or your favorite podcast app. Kelly's Diary of a Bad Year: A War Correspondent's Dilemma is an amazing listen. Kelly mentioned her interview of a drone pilot, Lt. Col. T. Mark McCurley, author of Hunter Killer. She also interviewed Sarah Pennypacker, author of Pax. Elecia does not squee on air. But it was a near thing.

Welcome to Embedded, a show about the many aspects of engineering. I'm Elysia White. My co-host is Christopher White. This week we have an unimaginably fantastic guest, Kelly McHevers. We're going to talk about the meaning of Embedded. Hi Kelly, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Usually this is the part of the show where I ask you about yourself, ask you to introduce yourself as though you were on a panel.

But a few people out there have already clued in and they are pleased with themselves. So let's skip the intro and go straight to lightning round where we ask you many questions with short answers, or we want short answers. Chris, you get started. Okay. Should we bring back the dinosaurs? Yes.

Do you listen to podcasts? Yes. What's your favorite? Cereal. All right. What will you favorite? Cereal. All right. What will you listen to in the car on your way home? I ride a bike. All right, then.

Do you listen to anything? Yeah, I will listen to the NPR Politics podcast. What kind of mobile phone do you usually carry? I carry a smartphone. I actually have two, which is crazy. One for work, one for personal. Day phone or night phone? I am strangely not supposed to say too many brand names,

just because we don't want to be, as journalists, we don't want to appear to be endorsing one thing or another. Let's say I use multiple platforms. Where are you currently recording from? I'm in a studio in Culver City, California, at NPR West. Yes. What is your favorite book that you've read in the last six months?

I read a children's book, actually for middle-aged readers. It's called Pax. Pax, okay. And I read it because I was interviewing the author, but then I also read it to my daughter. It's awesome. Cool. Favorite fictional robot? favorite fictional robot favorite fictional robot i mean r2d2 duh good answer good answer what did you want to be when you grew up what do i want to

be when i grow up well when you were little oh when i was little um I didn't have a plan. Fair enough. And this is the point where we often ask if you think your cell phone is an embedded system, because it's a very divisive question in this sort of engineering, really about the definition of embedded, but I don't think that's going to work for you. Yeah. So can you define what embedded means to you? So I first came across the word embedded when I was a reporter in Iraq. And as we all know, in 2003, the Pentagon instituted this program whereby reporters could get embedded with the media. Oh, sorry. Reporters could get embedded with the media. Oh, sorry. Reporters could get embedded with the military. It was the way to tell their story. Obviously, it was very fraught with problems because if you were embedded with the military, you were more likely to tell their

story, maybe tell it a little more favorably than you might otherwise if you weren't being protected by these people. But it was also a way for reporters to get out and see parts of the country, particularly Iraq, when it was too dangerous to do so alone. So the military became a way to, you would get embedded with the military and then you would go out and see other places. For me, by the time I got to Iraq in 2010, the U.S. military was still there, but they had pulled back to their bases. Their presence wasn't nearly as, they weren't, let's say this, they weren't all over the country. And it was, by and large, safe enough to travel around the country.

And so you didn't need to be embedded to do that. You could just drive to places, and that's what I did most of the time. Every once in a while, I would do a quote-unquote embed with the military. So that's the kind of way I understood it. After I left Iraq, I spent a lot of time covering the Arab Spring, the Arab uprisings that started in Tunisia, spread to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain. And when I would go to those places, I would find myself just getting in with a person or in a place or maybe a group of fighters, a group of

protesters, maybe a family. And I didn't come to think of this this way until much later. But in some ways, I was embedding with people. And it's a way that I always like to tell a story going back to Iraq, where I didn't really need to embed with the military. I preferred to embed with Iraqis. And so I just sort of took that term and kind of turned it around yeah and used it and employed it to fit my needs and desires um fast forward a

little bit of time I come back to the U.S. after many years reporting in the Middle East and many people said you know you ought to cover America the way you covered the Arab uprisings and the and the wars and the different things that you covered over there. And so I put that in my pocket and thought about it for a while. And then when the time came to start a podcast, I thought, that's the kind of reporting I'm doing. I'm going to go out and get deep in a place or with a person. So I'm going to call it Embedded. And here we are. Okay, can you say, this is Embedded with Kelly McEvers?

In that like really nice, lush NPR sound. This is Embedded with Kelly McEvers. That's so cool. All right, so we've sort of now skipped the intro. Maybe we should go back to that. How would you introduce yourself to a general group of people? My name is Kelly McEvers, and I am one of the hosts of NPR's All Things Considered. It's a daily news magazine that's heard on hundreds of stations around the U.S. by millions of people each week. And I'm also the host of a new podcast from NPR called Embedded, where we take a story from the news and we go deep. And so what are some of the stories you're looking at doing? So the idea of this is just a headline or something that's come across our newsfeed that's really struck us and made us think, wow, I want to know more about that.

And so the first story that really struck us in that way was a shooting last spring on Skid row was one of the early shootings of police sorry one of the early shootings by police of an unarmed black man that got a lot of national attention um and so we thought what if we just went and got embedded on skid row with you know the police and with the people who live there. Skid Row, of course, is this place here in Los Angeles where thousands of people are unhoused or live in subsidized public housing. It's kind of a notorious place for crime as well. And we thought to understand the relationship between people and police we maybe we should go and be embedded with the people and the police and so we did and the result is one of our episodes of the podcast do you go home at night i mean how embedded is this when you were in

when in when you're in the middle east you probably had to spend the night that distance there's times when i spend the night yeah, you probably had to spend the night. The distances were so great. There's times when I spend the night. Yeah, there's times when I spend the night. We spent the night out on Skid Row. We didn't sleep, but we were out all night. Oh, no, you know what? We did sleep.

And when I say we, I mean my colleague, producer Tom Dreisbach, who worked with me on several of these stories and who is incredible. We planned to be out all night that night. We brought coffee and extra socks and stuff. And, uh, I think we were working until about three or four. And then we went to our cars in a parking garage and took a nap because we wanted to be there for sunrise when the police come and drive around and kick people off the streets. And so we wanted to record that. But yeah, sometimes in the Middle East, if I was embedded, quote unquote, with a group of, let's say, rebel fighters, when I would sneak into Syria, yeah, I would just sleep wherever they slept. Usually it was like a safe house or

an abandoned apartment that they were using as a headquarters or something like that. But most of the time, especially on stories here in the Middle East, where there's a hotel nearby, I'll sleep in a hotel. You know, I don't want to get too, you know, you don't want to get too, you want to have some distance and you want to establish that this is a professional endeavor. You know, that I'm establish that this is a professional endeavor. You know, that I'm working, this is a job. I'm coming here in the morning and I'm starting my work and I'm starting to record. And this is, you know, who I am. This is who you are.

And this is the purpose of this reporting. You know, you don't want the lines to get too fuzzy. And so usually, yeah, that means a Hampton Inn somewhere on some frontage road. was a story and now you're following up in such a way to learn about the environment the people the culture what's going on to create maybe the conditions for that story rather than sort of trying to find an answer to any particular question you might actually be looking for the questions yeah i mean we usually go it's real that's really interesting way of putting it um we usually do go in with a set of questions but yeah yeah, I think almost every time the questions change, right? Once you get there, you're like, oh, that's not the question we need to answer.

What we really need to figure out is this. Another story that we worked on, which is pretty heavy stuff, but there was last year, about this time, some headlines started to appear about an HIV outbreak in southern Indiana. And I think a lot of people who read those headlines, at least I know I did, thought, wow, how does that happen in 2015? And so that's the first question, just like, well, how? You know, well, we just read a couple newspaper stories, and the answer was, there's a very small community of people who are addicted to a certain opioid. And many of those people report sharing needles. It's like, okay, that's how. But still, how?

You know, how does that happen? And what is this drug? And who are these people? You know, so you go with a kind of initial tell those questions to your listeners and they're, so they kind of come along for the ride. You know, your hope is that by sharing those questions that you had at that time, that they might have those same questions too, that you can sort of share in this curiosity and then um it's sort of like saying to the listener all right well take my hand let's let's go let's go figure this out and see where it leads you talked about that one in the preview episode that is already up on itunes and other podcast platforms um yeah and And it was very, come with me.

Come with me into this room. Come with me where I am, and we can be together to find out about this. It was not just the facts, ma'am. It was adding people. Okay, I'm being summoned back to the studio, which I can actually see through this window, so I'm going to go do that.

And do you want me to just call you guys back? Sure. So podcasting is kind of a new, new ish, maybe in the mainstream medium. And, but you've done reporting in various other things in the past. I'm curious what you think is the best medium for,

for going really deep into a story. Do you, is it print still, or do you find podcasting has given you more freedom to kind of spend more time on things? You know, I am a huge fan of both. Like, I love a good, juicy, long magazine story, you know, or a good book. Like, I like a good piece of nonfiction, whether it's, you know, about like, an early president or, you know, I mean, so if it's like a piece of history or a piece of nonfiction, whether it's, you know, about like an early president or, you know, I mean,

so if it's like a piece of history or a piece of journalism, I think print still can do wonders. But the thing about podcast is that I think at least, and any kind of audio, is that it's more intimate. I mean, I think actually text and audio have some stuff in common because they still leave things up to your imagination. I feel like watching a film or video or something, there's not much that's left up to your imagination. But with text and audio, you still have to fill in the blanks. It's still an active experience when you're reading or when you're listening to audio. I mean, I can describe things to you as I saw them, and I can play you all kinds of ambient sound, but you have to still make the picture in your head and that's great um but you know i think audio

gives you a few more of those pieces of the puzzle than text does um and those pieces are people's voices and now we have these earbuds going directly into our heads and there's something very intimate about that um and i you know i don't think any of us could have guessed this but in this world where we are spending less time with each other in person and more time commuting and working um you know it's pretty interesting that people still kind of crave this intimacy um it's It's not real contact exactly, but just to have someone's voice in your head telling you things, I guess is pretty satisfying because we're seeing lots of people download podcasts.

Since this is a technology show, I have a couple questions for you about that. Sure. How do you do the recording? Oh yeah. I use a very nice recorder that I've had for many years. It's used, it's like the industry standard for our engineers by and large at NPR when we want to record an event if we want to record musicians or a room full of people we have this really nice recorder I actually use it as a field recorder and it can be used as a field recorder some people prefer recorders that are really lightweight this is a little heavier it's a it's it's making two simultaneous recordings, one onto the hard drive and one onto a CF card,

which I love. I love this idea that I have like an instant backup. And I love that if I go to a checkpoint and the KGB is asking me where my tapes are and I can say, oh, here, you know, and they'll say they'll arrest me if I won't give them my tapes, and I can just take my CF card out and say, here you go. And I still have a copy of my recording. These are the kinds of things I have to think about with technology. And so and then I use a really nice microphone, I use a stereo microphone. Sometimes we use what's called a shotgun microphone, which is this microphone, the top of which can, you know, if you pointed at someone from across the room, it can really grab the sound from a distance. It's almost like using a telephoto lens. I actually like, I prefer a different kind

of microphone that's this really rich, warm, wonderful stereo mic. And I have to get it really close in to people to get the kind of awesome sound that I love but um I don't have a problem doing that it doesn't I feel like once you've established with the person you're interviewing or talking to what what what you're doing they don't seem to be all that um um bothered by or even interested in the equipment the equipment kind of disappears. That's funny. Some of our guests get a little nervous around microphones. Or they get... Yeah, they do in the beginning, but then they forget, you know, usually they forget.

And so you don't have to use hidden microphones? No, mainly because that's unethical. we uh there are several states where it's also illegal um in several states you have to have what's called dual consent you have to tell the person that you're recording and they have to agree to it there are a few states where you don't legally have to tell them but our ethics and journalism bind us to always tell someone if we are recording so the only time i would hide a microphone is not so that the person I'm recording doesn't know it's there, but so that maybe authorities don't know it's there. So the person I'm recording knows that I'm recording them, but the authorities who are watching us don't know. I've done that a

few times. I used to have this amazing microphone that I used in Saudi Arabia, actually, that was the shape of a pen. It was so cool. It looked like a Bic pen. And so I would like clip it onto my shirt and then run the cable like through a hole down into the inside of my shirt. And so it would pick up so I could like talk into it and then I could sort of lean over and talk to someone else. And we could do that in places where authorities just, you know, didn't like things and people being recorded. I had to do that a few times. And we also use lavalier mics. So you see these a lot with film people, but lately, especially with these embedded projects, it's not normal for a daily news reporter to use a lavalier, but for these kind of deeper projects, we're really going in and spending a lot of time with people. We will love them. If we sort of know, we've honed in on someone who we know is going to be like our,

you know, one of our main characters, somebody who's really going to guide us through a story, then we'll put a lavalier on them. And then we can listen as it's happening. I was just in South Sudan reporting with Doctors Without Borders. That was one of our upcoming embedded episodes. And the two main doctors who we knew that we were going to follow, we would just love them for an entire day as they did their rounds. And then they were great. They like, it's great because once they know that this lavalier is on, they'll start narrating like, okay, so now what I'm going to do is, you know, so it, so they become part of the project. How much of your raw recordings end up on air?

The going thinking is that you gather an hour for every minute that ends up on air. So you can imagine a 30-minute podcast, no joke, like we'll get 30 to 50 hours of tape like that's just how it goes it's a lot of tape um we now actually use a piece of software to log all that tape but that's like just happened like in the last few weeks where we will feed the tape to a piece of software and it will give us a satisfying log. You know, there've been all kinds of products like this in the world before, but none of them were any good. This one's kind of good. And so we're testing it out and we love it.

And it's, boy, is it saving us a lot of time. Because the other thing you have to do is go back and listen to all that tape. Now, I still like to go listen to the tape anyway, because there's just things that happen that no piece of software is going to pick up. You know, just a sigh or just a little break when somebody pauses that you forgot happened when you recorded it. And you realize, oh, that's a moment, you know, that I really want to have. So I like to listen to it when I can. So a large part of crafting the episode is actually editing.

Yeah. Oh, gosh. So a large part of crafting the episode is actually editing. Yeah. Oh, gosh. So much. I mean, you know, you choose the tape that you want, you start narrowing it down, really start putting it into an outline. I mean, luckily, right,

it's kind of chronological. You're like, how did this happen? Again, if you're doing this, if it's this idea of like, take my hand, come along, it's like, well like how did this happen you know again if you're doing this if it's this idea of like take my hand come along it's like well how did it happen in in real life you know so you don't have to rearrange things too much um and then you're picking the tape and then you kind of start writing i like to not totally write everything either because i don't want it to sound too canned so i So what we're trying to do with some of these episodes is not completely write them out. And then I'll go into a studio with

someone and I'll kind of tell it to them instead of reading off of a screen. We don't edit this podcast very much. It's usually one take in the occasional removal of a swear word or cough or me stuttering. Sometimes a guest wants to do over on an answer, but you have a pretty different sound on-site versus studio. Is that a filter or is that just an artifact of different recording and a really nice sound studio? Yeah, just different equipment for sure. These wonderful studios where everything's quiet.

It's really nice was really nice very nice setup um it just yeah it sounds different when you're going embedded uh in a difficult situation i know you have some of your embedded shows are not entirely uh difficult situations some of them sound more fun but if you're if fun. But if you're going to South Sudan, are there devices or technology you take that you really wouldn't want to go without other than your recording equipment? There's a couple things. Not in South Sudan, but when I would go to Syria, we would use a GPS tracker. And these are very important devices in dangerous situations that are fluid, and you're not exactly sure where you're going to be like, you can say to the bosses, you know, we're going to here's a map, we're going to go down this road, we're going to

take this route to this town, but of course, things don't always go as planned uh and so the bosses can watch us watch where we are watch our movements and then there's a panic button on the tracker so uh this happened with nbc's richard engel and his team um they were kidnapped in syria while they were reporting. And most of us travel with a security advisor. It's usually ex-military folks who now work. They're unarmed. They work as medics. They work as just security advisors to stay with us in these situations. And as I understand the story, his security advisor pushed the panic button and that was how his bosses were able to know where he was. And eventually a team came in and rescued them because they had their precise coordinates. That is like something we cannot live without,

live without in those kinds of situations. South Sudan, I feel like, yeah, it's just like extra batteries, a recorder, and a phone to take pictures, a couple extra sets of headsets, you know, like lots of mosquito repellent and like a good book. That's kind of it oh and like malaria medicine of course everyone needs that for podcasting malaria medicine of course and a good a good bed net so what do you miss from home when you're away away reporting away reporting yes oh um technology or otherwise i realized that i phrased that badly because if you weren't going to say your daughter and husband that was sort of sad but i didn't mean technology technology i was gonna say my daughter and husband um you know um that's funny i carry a phone like everyone a smartphone a smartphone, like everyone else,

and kind of has everything I need. I'm, we're not, we're a bit of a like tech-free home. We don't have a TV. We have laptops and I've always got my laptop with me. I don't even have a desktop. So there's nothing to miss there because it's in my bag, this very lightweight, very small little laptop and my phone and my chargers. There's no technology that exists in my house that doesn't come with me on the road. For me, it's all got to be able to fit in my carry-on. Okay, then how about the technology of the people you meet with? What devices truly make people's lives better outside the U.S.? Specifically war-torn or disadvantaged areas. Yeah.

I mean, one of the greatest things in the world that we saw in South Sudan was the hand crank radio. You know, it's like the cheapest, most incredible way to spread information. You know, people do not have smartphones. And if they do, they don't have access to the scratch card that's going to get you the credit on the cell phone network that you're going to need. In a place like South Sudan, something as simple as a radio just keeps the whole place connected I mean the place where we were was actually a refugee camp is more than a hundred thousand people the size of a city and that's you know some people use sat phones people who could get them had sat phones we also that's something I forgot to say we take with us we take a sat phone

if we need to call you know if we need to make a phone call if we have an emergency but then we also have um a satellite uplink a bgan so that we can if we need to um file our sound back to dc so we can if we you know if it's super necessary, just connect that up and then use that to send our sound files and whatever, check emails and stuff like that, if we're in a place that has really terrible internet. Well, then your tracker has to be satellite too. So you actually have three satellite links. Yeah, of course it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's in the really dangerous places.

We always have the tracker. We have the handheld sat phone and then we have the BGAN. But the BGAN is not turned on. I mean And at certain points in the Syrian conflict, it was thought that people were targeted because of satellite signals. So that was another really big concern about which satellite company we used. So you were there in South Sudan with Doctors Without Borders. And I know there's another organization, Engineers Without Borders. Nice. So I wanted to ask you, what technology could we make? A lot of hardware or software engineers listen to this show, and there are a lot of makers,

people who are willing to do stuff in their free time, build stuff. What should we build? What would make a difference to people wow I wish I was one of these entrepreneurs who could actually think that way and answer that question if I were I'd probably be in a different business I can tell you what I learned about there's one story maybe it'll spark my thinking to answer you um during the Syrian war, it was pretty early on in the conflict when it was clear that it wasn't just a protest movement anymore, that it was becoming a civil war. And you had neighborhoods where young activists would go out and protest and they would get shot

at and then they and their friends would pick up arms and fire back. That's kind of how the whole thing got started. And there was one neighborhood in the city of Homs that was under siege for several days, almost a month, back in 2012. And the activists had, you know, began satellite uplinks running off of generators to get their internet connection. And then they had live stream cameras that they would plop on the roof of whatever building they were in so that reporters like me, who couldn't get into Syria, could just tune in and watch the war. And they worked with a company. I wish I remembered the name of the

company because I would actually say that because it's not a product that I use, so I wouldn't be endorsing it. But it's a European company and they created, you know, space for them to, where they could live stream this content. And it was a game changer. I mean, it was an absolute game changer. All about like, I would come down, I mean, it was an absolute game changer. I would come down, I would have my coffee and my bathrobe and I would turn on the war in my office in Beirut, only an hour away. But I mean, it was impossible for us to get into Syria. The government wouldn't let us in. It was really dangerous to sneak in. Some journalists did. A couple died in the city of Homs during the siege. But that was just you know i mean it literally just

changed the whole thing all of a sudden you had citizen journalists who were able to document what was happening to them um around the clock you know we could see the mortars coming in we could count them we could you know if they were able to they would take those cameras and they would document what was happening all around them so you know cheap small generators um ways for people to communicate with each other and secure securely although of course whenever we make these the bad guys use it too um and uh yeah fast and easy ways to to connect to the internet and to get your information out there. lot of engineers who do work on sort of not, I don't want to say charity products, but, you know, socially conscious products. And oftentimes they work in kind of a little bit of a vacuum where they haven't been to the place that they're trying to address the problem. Have you seen in places like South Sudan,

people trying to implement things that are maybe good intentions, but turn out to not work well? I haven't. I haven't, just because it's just not something I necessarily report on. Fair enough. You did an amazing documentary. I don't even know if that's the right word, but it was called Diary of a Bad Year, a War Correspondence Dilemma. And it starts out, you get into a truck with AK-47s with a bunch of guys, I guess guys with AK-47s, not the other way. And you don't have a precise destination and you're in a war zone. And so what are you afraid of? In that moment? or after actually because here's the problem right in that moment I'm not you know I'm not all that afraid

herein lies the problem it's like as I like to say um it's not that I'm not afraid at all like I was definitely like okay where are we going like going? Like, what's going on? We're going kind of fast. This car is super lame. But it's also, it's what I, it's my job. Like, that's exactly what I came to do. You know, I was like, it took me so long to get there. It's like, finally, we're doing something, which sounds, I know, crazy to people who don't do this for a living. But yeah, I'm not, I am one of those people who it's only hours, weeks, maybe months or years later when I'm like, oh, wow, that was really scary. That was, or that was not smart. Like, I can point to two, like, looking back at all my time in the Middle East,

I think so far, I mean, I'm a couple years out now, I can point to two times where I'm like, nope, wasn't smart. You know, that was not a good move. Like, that was an unwise decision. Like, two trips that I made to places on roads that were just not cool. Like, bad idea. Don't do that. But other times, you know, the other times like we did our due diligence,

like we reported it out. We talked to as many people as we could. Like is this route safe? Is this driver safe? You know, do we trust this? What's, you know, what's the situation been like for the last few days? You know, just getting as much intelligence as we can and going with it. And I feel like the more information you have, the less scared you are. And the other thing too, is like, if you're scared, you shouldn't do it.

You know what I mean? Like in some ways, if you're like, yeah, I mean, once I started kind of feeling scared and weirded out, that's when I stopped doing it because I wasn't any good for it anymore. You know, I wasn't, I didn't want to, I shouldn't, you shouldn't be second guessing all the time. You should be, you should just be, you should be confident in your decision so you can do your job. That seems so difficult. I mean, it just sounds so frightening from the outside. And listening to the diary, you didn't exactly sound unafraid the whole time there either. No, no. When Jay Allison, the person who produced this documentary, when he started asking me to take, I mean, it's funny.

He asked me to start recording these diaries. And had I not done that, I would have been like, I'm the same. I'm not scared. But when I actually had to like stand aside and start recording into a thing and talking about what was going on, it was like, oh, I guess I sound a little scared. But again, I wouldn't think that I was like, you know what I mean? Like in the moment, I was like, this is what it is. But listening back, it's like, oh, wow. Yeah, I think I was freaked out. Adrenaline is what it is. But listening back, it's like, oh, wow, yeah, I think I was freaked out.

Adrenaline is a wonderful thing. It's a strange, yeah. Everything's a little brighter. Everything's a little clearer. You can smell things. Do you have big down periods afterward where you're just sitting with a book for two weeks? Our bodies are really amazing adrenaline isn't like synthetic drugs right it's a it's a it's something produced by our body like um yeah there's always a

little bit of a you know it's a little hard to go to sleep some of these nights it's actually really hard to go to sleep some nights um but you adjust pretty well. I mean, I think the problem, right, is a lot of people try to then, you know, medicate with other stuff, and that's not sustainable. You know, one of the great things I talk about in this documentary, which I always like to talk about, is that I talk to a therapist. You know, like, you can't just do this stuff and be like, I'm totally fine. You know, I mean, something's got to give. You've got to help yourself some way.

And you can either do it sort of the not so healthy ways or you can talk to a therapist and exercise and try to sleep. I did both. And I can say that, of course, one is better than the other. And do you think what you're doing now is safer safer um again I just don't think of the world that way like I literally don't know how to answer that question because it is not a metric that I apply to this life and again this I understand this is a problem um it's not like I'm like oh it's safer for me to be hanging around with biker gangs in Texas than it was in Syria yes objectively yes

it's safer for me to be hanging around with biker gangs in Texas than it was in Syria because Syria is like when I was going there like it was a you know it was a war there was like active you know uh mortar fire sometimes sometimes um but i mean getting in a car in los angeles not safe not safe i don't think about that either swim i ocean swim everyone's like that's are you kidding that's crazy it's like I know it's not you know it's just like it's alive no that one I totally agree with you on I I love ocean swimming I read online that you are very bad at surfing yeah yeah yeah I'm gonna get good at it this summer I said that though now for the last few summers I'm good at ocean swimming like I swam a mile I got up to a

mile last summer which I know isn't very much but but for like hardcore ocean swimmers, but for me, it was a lot. And my husband paddle boards and now he paddle surfs. And so I just think it would be crazy for us to not become a surfing family. We live in California. We should just spend every Saturday, like waking up early in the morning and driving to some amazing place on the coast and surf the morning and read the afternoon. I mean, that just, I feel like you'd just be insane if you didn't live that life if you live in California. So, I'm going to try again. It's good prep for embedding with the bank robber surfer gangs. There you go. There you go.

It's not a good movie. We just took our first surf lesson last week so um oh between that and both having hosting podcasts called embedded i just wanted to make sure we weren't the same person but since you don't really the whole una unafraid thing, I think we're good. I'm pretty sure. That's great. You've won awards. You've done daring deeds. What are you proudest of?

Oh, I don't know. It's hard to say. So much of my work is about things that are sad. And so it's hard to be proud of that. Um, it's good when that leads people to, to do something, to action. Um, but it's sadly that doesn't always happen. Um, gosh, two things that come to mind one uh i remember during the 2012 campaign i was in syria and i i had embedded with the rebels um some point and done this kind of week-long series for npr and my colleague ari shapiro was covering the Republican campaign and he was at a Mitt Romney rally and candidate Romney said this line like you know I mean we have to do something

to help the Syrians as one woman recently said we won't forget that you forgot about us and Ari tweeted me and was like wait a second isn't that a line from your story? It was just like, you know, that was something a woman told me in a very remote village, thousands of miles away. And so I'm not saying I'm proud of that, but like, that was just a moment where I realized that what we do can be powerful. And then more recently, I reported a story for the podcast. I'm not going to give too much away, sorry, because it's a story that I want people to hear in its original form. But we met somebody who was having a really hard time. And we recently found that person again.

And they're having a much less hard time and we recently found that person again and they're having a much less hard time and finding that person again and talking to this person and this person telling me like I can't believe you remember me and I thought are you kidding me I've been thinking about you for an entire year since I first met you and wanting to know how you've been. I wrote you letters, but they got sent back. And this person was just so couldn't just was kind of surprised that somebody would would give a crap. And, and, again, not proud of that. But just again, just feel in that moment, wow, what we do is powerful. And with that power comes great responsibility.

Yes, of course. Do you have any regrets? Those two stupid things I did, yeah. That if I can't, if my editor is, oh man, I can't talk about them. They're like, wait, that story's on our website no I mean it's like you know you can look you can look back and the danger is like and I say this in the documentary it's like every time you make it out okay that's that's just more evidence built up in your in our linear brains like oh I'm always gonna make it out okay right and that's not true like it doesn't work that way it's not a cumulative thing it's not like oh if you go do

10 crazy trips in Iraq to places you shouldn't go and 10 times you make it out all right that like then that increases your chances of making it out all right the next time so um anyway so those two stupid trips like they really they really i think about them all the time you know um because it's just luck that something didn't happen and they were just not and then on a whole bunch of other trips that i deemed that weren't stupid um the terrible things could have happened then too but yeah i really regret those trips they were down one was just to a place that that wasn't safe um that was known to harbor militants who hated americans um and people saw us come in and saw us leave they could have followed us they could have stopped us on the road both trips were actually like that and i regret doing that and i regret taking mostly

taking people with me you know it was my idea to go on these trips but there was somebody driving the car there was somebody there was other people in the car with me um and i could never in a million years live with myself if um you know something would happen to them so yeah two big ones, maybe an easier question. That's okay. What are your feelings on drone technology? Drone technology. Boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Don't get me started.

I reported in Yemen, a place where the United States, for a long time, had a drone program that very little was known about. There's very little that's been acknowledged by the U.S. government about our drone program in Yemen. To make a long story short, I was in a part of Yemen after its revolution, before its current war.

So in this kind of interim period in Yemen, where Al-Qaeda's affiliate in the southern part of Yemen had been pushed out of this part that it had controlled for about a year. So it had been pushed back up into the mountains. And so I happened to land in yemen and this the day this happened and so like the next day like al-qaeda had just left the building that's the way i like to say it and this this one strip of yemen so the next day i go there with the yemeni colleague and we dress in traditional dress so i'm head to toe um in a black abaya I've got my face covered I got my hair covered he's dressed as a traditional Yemeni we're pretending to be husband and wife as we go through the checkpoints which involves him yelling rude things at me just to just for effect and we basically drive down a road and as we go down this road we go from pile

of rubble to pile of rubble to pile of rubble. I mean, this was Al-Qaeda territory, and there were several drone strikes reported in the local press, not all acknowledged as United States drone strikes. They could have been Yemeni airstrikes, but Yemeni's witnesses would tell us the different types of aircraft, so we knew that some of them were drones. And just pile of rubble to pile were drones and just pile of rubble, the pile of rubble, the pile of rubble. And at one point I am standing there and, you know, we knew about the criteria. We knew a little bit, there had been some good reporting in the New York times and by us about the criteria that the white house used. And it was, it was, you know people of a certain age in a certain area, basically. And at one point, an aircraft flew overhead, and I was standing there, and I realized, oh, wait a second, I'm a legitimate target right now, just for standing here, because this is, quote, unquote, or could be

known to be, quote, unquote, you know, militant area. I could look like a militant right now because I'm standing with just Yemenis. And, you know, talk about a moment of realization when you think how easy a mistake can be made, could be made. And then of course, I spent many days interviewing people who talked about the civilians who were killed by these drones and um some drone strikes like i said some airstrikes i went a few days later to a house of a man who was killed with his eldest son by a drone strike uh he was the father of 26 children 13 of them were sitting lined up on in a row on this wall um there was an Al-Qaeda flag hanging in the house. Al-Qaeda had been to visit to say, you know, no one's going to take care of you now that your father's dead.

We will. And several of the sons had already joined. And there was this one little kid, I'll never forget his face. His name was Osama, of all things. He had a crumpled up picture of a drone in his pocket. And he told me, I'm going to get my revenge someday. So we got rid of one guy who may or may not have been a terrorist. Of course, the family says he wasn't. I think records show that he had gone to Afghanistan early on in the 90s. So I mean, he had some involvement with terrorists back in the day. But we got rid of one guy and you know this is the theory is you create a lot more so drone technology i you know

that's a bigger question but drones as they are used um in places like yemen where we don't have great human intelligence uh to tell us everything we should know ahead of time about these targets, I don't think they're the most effective way to prosecute this kind of campaign. You mentioned earbuds as a way of giving intimacy it seems to me like the drones are a way of removing it and and making it easier to kill people over there yeah that's what you know i thought that until i actually interviewed a a drone predator pilot he came in here in the studio. I read his book. It was a fascinating conversation because actually, unlike an F-16 bomber, you've got a camera trained on these people. So a really good camera. So you can actually see a lot.

And a lot of his work, he told me um would be just tracking the movements of suspected terrorists so look not all strikes are like the ones i described in yemen i mean the work he described to me was very detailed i mean it took it was very rare that they ever quote unquote took a shot a lot of times they were just monitoring people's movements maybe getting back up to other troops on the ground. This was mainly in Afghanistan. But, you know, he got to know, he followed this one guy for weeks. He knew his face. He knew when he talked to his wife. He knew when he talked on the phone.

He knew when he went for lunch. And it actually became very intimate. And therefore, I think drone pilots, you you know need to be taken seriously in a bunch of ways but you know need to be thought of as people who also have PTSD even though they're sitting in a trailer in Nevada yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense. And I worked a little bit with people who were making drones and their goals were always to make it as safe as it could be for everyone on the ground and people launching everybody. And so it's not cut and dried. Nope. Well, I think it's difficult in our profession as engineers. Oftentimes we, we're not quite clear on what we're doing or how, how what we're doing ends up somewhere else. Um, you know, an engineer might work on the flight controller software for a drone and just say, well, you know, I'm working on an autopilot without necessarily thinking, oh, this is going

on, you know, a weapon that's going to blow people up and maybe make mistakes doing it. It's something that I think a lot of engineers think about and some don't think about. And I wish more of us kind of took that attitude of what's the consequences of what I'm working on? Well, I think we are about out of time, and we should let you go. Chris, did you have a final question? Oh, no, he's shaking his head at me. Okay, well, Kelly, do you have any last thoughts you'd like to leave us with um i have this boss who always said this and uh and i think and it's something i've always thought of as a journalist but i'm starting to think it might be something that applies to every profession and it's super simple it's just like when in doubt go um you know for us journalists

that means like whatever the hour of the day whatever how difficult the situation is you're not going to be able to answer the question any of the questions that you have in your head just like sitting in your chair you know you got to get up and go. He himself, my old boss, was based in Beirut in the early 80s, and they started hearing rumors about killings at a place called Sabra and Shatila, these two camps. And he got up and went, and he was the first one there, and he won the Pulitzer Prize documenting probably one of the most significant massacres in the Middle East in our time, you know, and it's not a super happy story. But I mean, I think it's just, you know, don't, but you know, and I think a lot of reporters at the time were like, nah, that's not true. Don't believe that. Well, it's like,

how are you going to know whether it's true or not, unless you get up and go. So, if I could leave people with any thought, I think that's what it would be. That's a good one. Yes, perfect. Awesome. My guest has been Kelly McEvers, host of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning news magazine. She's also the host of a new podcast called Embedded, which takes a story from the news and goes much deeper into it.

It launches March 31st. Subscribe now on iTunes, listen on NPR.com, or on your favorite podcast app. Kelly, I believe that interviewing an NPR host will be on my highlight reel this year, possibly this decade. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much. Oh man, I really appreciated it. This was really fun. Thank you, guys. Thank you also to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to Chris Benderev and

Kasia Podbielski for organizing this interview with Kelly. And, of course, thank you for listening. Please check out our blog and newsletter. You can find it all on the Embedded.fm website, along with a contact link if you'd like to say hello. I think that's enough for this week. Here's a final thought to tide you over to next week.

It's actually from Kelly McEvers, in the letter she wrote to her family in case she didn't make it out. She gives them this advice. All of us must meet our end someday. Don't let knowledge of that inevitable death bring you fear. Rather, look it in the face. Walk toward it at times if you have to. Because to live without fear is the only way to truly live. Embedded FM is an independently produced radio show that focuses on the many

aspects of engineering. It is a production of Logical Elegance, an embedded software consulting company in California. If there are advertisements in the show, we did not put them there and do not receive any revenue from them. At this time, our sole sponsor remains Logical Elegance.