Fresh Air - The Surprisingly Lax Regulation Of Our Railroads

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

Award-winning ProPublica reporter Topher Sanders has spent the last two years investigating America's aging freight train system. He says the Federal Railroad Administration monitors "less than 1% of what's happening on the rails." Sanders talks about the toxic East Palestine, OH derailment, the prevalence of blocked railroad crossings, and why railway safety legislation is yet to be passed. Also, rock critic Ken Tucker shares three new songs. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. This time last year, East Palestine, Ohio, became a household name after 38 freight cars derailed there, igniting a massive chemical fire, releasing vinyl chloride, which is considered a toxin, into the air and water. Norfolk Southern, a rail system that owns those freight cars, is still cleaning up the environmental damage. And many who live in East Palestine say they've been displaced or are now plagued with health problems. That derailment has revealed some of the long-standing challenges of America's aging freight railway systems. It's the subject of a ProPublica series called Train Country, Investigating Railroad Safety in

America. Reporter Topher Sanders has spent the last two years with his colleagues reviewing court and regulatory records of thousands of incidents involving trains. They've conducted 200 interviews, including conversations with rail workers who describe how in some instances, railway companies have sidestepped best practices. In addition to reporting on railroad safety, Topher Sanders was part of a team that covered the Trump administration's family separation policy,

for which they won a Peabody Award and were finalists for a Pulitzer Prize. Topher Sanders, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you for having me. The Federal Railroad Administration says that last year there were about three train derailments a day in the United States. And most of them are not as catastrophic as the one we saw in Ohio.

But your reporting took up several issues that should make us concerned. The growing length of trains, the number of employees managing these long freight trains, and the use of sensors to notify employees of problems. Before we get to all of that, I'm just curious, how common is it for a train carrying potentially toxic chemicals to actually move through communities like we saw in Ohio? It's very common. The freights are incredibly vital to our economic health in this country. And part of that healthy economy is the transport of goods. And chemicals are part of that manifest. They are one of the goods that trains have shown that they can transport in a safe mode. And so chemicals are traveling through our communities on a daily basis via the rails. Can you explain what agency regulates and monitors our nation's railways? And is that monitoring the same as, say, the Federal Aviation Administration or the Federal Highway Administration? The agency that monitors safety on the rails is called the

Federal Railroad Administration. And they are tasked with ensuring that railroad workers are safe and that the communities the trains travel through are safe. By the agency's own admission, when you look at some of the GAO reports about this agency, they have admitted that based on their size and their staffing, they have the capability to regulate or monitor less than 1% of what's happening on the rails in any given time period. And so that can be alarming when you hear that. It probably just speaks to the type of resources and funding an agency like that receives. But yet and still, it is the case that somewhere under 1% of the railway activity that occurs in this country is able to be monitored by the Federal Railway Administration. And they're just a handful of railway companies, though, that own all of the rail systems, correct?

The big companies are called the class ones. And there are six of them. There used to be seven. There was a merger. So now there are six. And they are the biggest show in town and represent an extremely large percentage of all the freight traffic in our country. Okay, so you were working on this series for ProPublica for, I think, about a year before this derailment in East Palestine. What did that accident mean when you put it into the larger context of how this industry

operates? I think it was a real eye-opener for citizens that just going to work, taking kids to school, and they see trains going to and fro all the time and don't think about what the trains are carrying or the safety of the trains. And when the rest of the country was able to watch on television, this fire, this explosion, and then the aftermath, the evacuation and the concerns about health, I think it really jarred a lot of people who looked into their own backyard and saw train tracks and wondered, could this happen here? One of the issues you actually found while investigating accidents involving freight trains is the information that the Federal Railroad

Administration requires as part of their investigations. For instance, the agency didn't require a company to report the length of a train that's been in an accident. That actually seems like a pretty important piece of information. I can't begin to tell you how many important pieces of information like that are not part of the information flow from the industry to the regulator. So everything from the length of trains, a big focus of the East Palestine accident was this machine called a wayside detector and its ability to tell crews and tell companies if something's wrong with a train. Those are completely unregulated. There's no government, you know, specifications for how those are to be maintained, how far apart they need to be. All of that is completely unregulated, completely up to the companies. And all of that came to light when people saw this accident happen in Ohio. And can you explain what wayside detectors are? So wayside detectors are pieces of machinery, almost like boxes,

that sit alongside the tracks. And they it collects and reads information off of the train how hot the wheels are how hot the bearings are um you know are there are there any uh drags along there's another piece of equipment is called a drag's called a drag detector that can detect whether or not something's dragging or hanging off of the train as it's going along. And these pieces of equipment are set alongside the tracks, and they read this information as the trains travel past them. You reported on this incident that happened a few months before the East Palestine accident in October of 2022, a derailment in Sandusky, Ohio. These trains were also owned by Norfolk Southern. Your reporting showed that the company at the time essentially allowed monitoring crews to ignore safety alerts. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah, it was a policy.

I don't know if that policy has since changed, but it was a policy that remained even as we were reporting real time that allowed for central office to essentially, based on data it was seeing inside computer systems and algorithms that we don't have purview to, it's a private company, they could receive an alert from one of these wayside detectors. And based on additional information that they had, they could tell the crew, don't worry about that, go on to the next stopping location or to the next you know wayside detector keep traveling where otherwise the crew left to its own devices might stop because it got this alert but the central office had the ability to tell the crew to continue through an alert if it had the information that felt that it was otherwise still safe to continue on. And we were told that was in contrast to how some of the other

large companies behaved when it came to those alerts coming from the wayside detectors. So we reported about that. And there was an incident where the train was carrying, I believe it was paraffin wax, and it had an alert. It stopped. The crew got out. They looked at the physical nature of the train. They had some concerns. They wanted to stop. I think they wanted to set aside a car, one of the cars that they thought was a problem. And the company overrode the crew and said, no, continue on. And then a mile or so down the road, that train derailed and then spilled paraffin wax all over the town of Sandusky. You mentioned how you contacted the other large freight railroad companies to see whether they had similar policies. They all said they don't. What did Norfolk Southern say about this?

Said that they stood by their policy and that they felt that their policies were safe and that, well, there was an accident that otherwise was an anomaly. But safety experts you actually spoke with say that this practice is probably emblematic of a controversial but more profitable practice called precision scheduled railroading. Can you explain what that is? Yeah, precision scheduled railroading is a way of doing business that took fire within the railroading industry. Essentially is a way of identifying where you feel there's fat, making cuts, but then emphasizing keeping cargo moving, finding ways to limit the amount of times that cargo stops along a journey you make trains longer so that trains and the cargo can all be headed in the same direction with as few stops as possible and with as few starts as possible

and what that means is eliminating the amount of trains that have to to start up. If you turn what was a three train trip in a certain direction to a one train trip. Now you've taken away the need for additional crews to run those additional trains. And so you're getting goods where they need to go, you're getting the goods to customers, and you're limiting the amount of money that you have to put out as a railroad to get it there. And so all the railroads adopted some version of this, and they started seeing the profits come in heavy. So this is a fairly recent, recent in the history meaning of railroads and trains, this precision scheduled railroading. Yeah, within like the last six, seven, eight years. You put a call out to readers asking them to describe how trains impact their

day-to-day lives. And what did people share with you about how these practices actually impact their communities? Well, the biggest impact to, you know, communities as it or you're trying to get to the pharmacy, where you're most likely to see precision scheduled railroading in your face is if you're sitting there and watching a train go by that is longer than it used to be and maybe going at a crawl and you're wondering when are you going to be able to continue on with your day. And so blocked railroad crossings is probably the place where everyday folks encounter the idea of precision scheduled railroading. You reported on a situation in Hammond, Indiana. The pictures are astounding. Kids are literally having to go under or stepping through trains that sit idle for hours to get to school. Can you tell us more about that situation you

found as part of your reporting that really speaks to what you're saying here? Yeah. So railroad communities have had to deal with trains being in the way for, you know, forever. It's not it's not a new dynamic that they would encounter a train that's in the way. But what did become new was how big the trains were and how long they had to wait. And so we saw communities that had to deal with this issue with trains trying to get to hospitals. We learned about stories where people, the families, blame the trains for their loved one dying because the ambulance couldn't get to them, or the fire rescue couldn't get to them. In one instance, a gentleman, a police officer, asked the train to move, and the police officer wrote in his report, the conductor rolled the window up on him and wouldn't speak to him.

And so that was happening throughout the country. And we were making calls and trying to to learn more about that. And we what we hadn't really seen were this issue with children just trying to get to public school. And so we learned about that from some lawmakers in Indiana. And they said, you got to come down and you got to see it. And so we did. We went to Hammond and we saw with our own eyes the first day we arrived there, children, parents pulling up to a train in the way, the child would hop out of the car and the parent would say, love you, have a good day, drive away.

And the kid would hop over the train to walk to school. These trains are, as you said, blocked. So they're still they're not moving. And so they're making a calculated choice to their children to hop over or to go under, knowing that this train could move at any time because they don't have a schedule to know that. That's correct. And that was just parents trying to make drop-off. We also watched the kids that lived closer to the school

who were just walking to the school. It was like a parade of children hopping over the train. And we'd talk to them and say, hey, is this something you do routinely? And they're like, yeah, man, two, three times a week. This is what we do. I think what is so surprising about this, aside from just visually seeing it, is that there aren't rules or laws on how long a train can sit idle. Because I'm thinking about all the things that you mentioned, an ambulance that needs a clear path or a fire truck that needs to move through to put out a fire. I think that many of us, at least me, assumed that there were laws in place that would move a train along for that purpose.

It's the same assumptions that I walked into this reporting with, honestly, and same with our reporting team. We were shocked at many of the elements of train movement that are not regulated, from the wayside detectors that we spoke about earlier to how long a train can even be. There's no regulation. They can build a train as long as they want to. They can block these crossings as long as they want to. Some states try to motivate the companies to move along by writing tickets or citations for blocking these crossings. But in nearly every case, rail companies would sue. It'd make its way to a state Supreme Court, and they would ultimately side with the railroad, saying that only the federal government can regulate these railroads.

You, state of Indiana, you, state of Michigan, you, state of Pennsylvania, you cannot tell the railroads to move. All you can do is sit there and wait. Well, Norfolk Southern also owns this train, so they are not regulated to move the train on a regular basis. They could move at any time, putting these kids at danger. What reason did they give you as to why they would sit in an intersection like this for an extended period of time? Ultimately, there are some geographic challenges with where Hammond's located. Chicago, busiest train yard, train community, train hub in our country. You know, hundreds of trains trying to get into Chicago at any given time. And Hammond sits right outside of Chicago area and those trains are trying to get in and it can get backed up.

And there's there's lots of different train intersections where trains are moving this way, that way. And everybody's got to wait their turn. And ultimately, what Norfolk Southern said is that we decided that this little nestled of an area that is next to these schools, these three public schools, was the best place to sit these trains and the least disruptive place to sit the trains for the rest of Hammond. Because while it's interrupting the children trying to walk to and fro, there are major intersections in this community that are to the north of where these trains are stopping, that if it were to stop there, it would completely, you know, shut the community down. Well, after your reporting, some big movement happened to stop the kids from having to cross over to school this way.

What is the latest on that effort? After we published, Norfolk Southern did make some operational changes in the area to where they found a different place to park the train by and large and made some commitments that they would make alerts and communicate with the school system and communicate with the city if they knew a train was going to be in that section or block that intersection for, you know, a long period of time. And as it's been reported to us, by and large, I think we went the first three months of the school year and there were no reports of children having to intersect you know interact with the train in the ways that we watched but then in the fall I received the communication from one of the sources that I developed in Hammond a mom who has multiple children in the schools right there by this by the train track she me a video. And on the video, you can see young people. It's

a stop train. It's unknown how long the train was there, but it's a stop train. And you can see the young people scaling the train, going over the train. And the mom had her camera out and she was watching this happen. And at some point, as one of the young people standing on the train, attempting to get over the train, the train starts to move just like that. Because they have no warning. No warning. short break. If you're just joining us, my guest today is ProPublica reporter Topher Sanders. He and members of the ProPublica team produced a series, Train Country, investigating railroad safety in America. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. Hi, this is Molly. And I'm Seth. We're two of the producers at Fresh Air. If you like listening to Fresh Air, we think you'll also like reading our newsletter. You'll find the interviews and reviews from the show all in one place.

Plus, staff recommendations you won't hear on the show, behind-the-scenes Q&As, bonus audio. It's also the only place to find out what interviews are coming up. We keep it fun, and it comes straight to your inbox once a week. Subscribe for yourself at whyy.org slash fresh air. Today we're talking to Topher Sanders about the safety and production practices of our aging railway systems. Sanders covers railroad safety for ProPublica. In 2019, he was part of a team that reported on the Trump administration family separation policy, which garnered a Peabody and George Polk awards.

In 2016, Sanders co-founded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit working to increase the number of investigative reporters and editors of color. You actually reported on this other astounding incident that happened in Pennsylvania in 2017, in which a train went right into the living room of a couple. Can you share that story? So this train is a CSX train. It's coming through Hyman and it's long excess of two miles and all a large portion of the weight is in the back of the train and it's got to descend

down a steep grade and to go down the grade this particular company had had a habit of locking the brakes on the train to kind of assist with controlling the speed as it goes down the grade. And what the NTSB looked at was that combination of locking the brakes and where they put the weight of the train, which was in the rear. It led to what everyone can guess is a catastrophic derailment

as it's descending the cars start to buckle on each other and then they flip off of the tracks and one of them explodes because it's filled with explosive material and this is years before East Palestine. They had to evacuate that town for three days. Nearly everyone in that town had to get up and go to hotels and take all their belongings in the middle of the night and morning to respond to this. They had a spire, a fire shooting through the sky. And was sleeping in his living room. He normally would have been in his bedroom. His wife, of course, would have been in his bedroom, but it was just waking up time. He has an early morning job. His wife had gotten up to kind of say, hey, I'm getting up. I'm going to go just stretch outside for a second and all that. And the next moment he knew a train was in his living room. And had he and his wife been in their bed, they wouldn't be with us.

So that's what the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee actually took note of that derailment and asked the Government Accountability Office to study the safety and impacts of these long trains. And what came of that study? So GAO report and what came of that study was essentially say we need more information. We can't tell you anything about long trains because there's no information for us to go research. They don't keep the data. They don't have the data. So we've talked to some folks in the industry and we've learned, and this is a GAO's report, we've learned that there are these concerns about train makeup and there are concerns potentially about train length, but we can't tell you more than that there are some concerns because the data is not there for us to get deeper. And so it was one

of the first reports that kind of highlighted the gap in data and that there needed to be more data so that everyone can learn what the safety is or isn't of a long train. It feels like this push for regulation of long trains has really almost exclusively happened on the state level. Why is that? Why there are all of these studies that seem to happen or it's taken up on the federal level, but there are no federal pushes to maybe push for nationalization of standards and regulations? To answer it, I offer up what happened after East Palestine. You had in the rarest of events in our country, in our politics today, you had a piece of bipartisan legislation come forth to say, hey, we need to do something about these wayside detectors. We need to do something about telling law enforcement and first responders ahead of time what's on these trains so they can possibly be prepared if something were to happen. And it was a solid bill of legislation that went to committee. It came out of a committee in the Senate. Doesn't happen a whole lot nowadays, right? And it came out of committee and we haven't

heard about it since. It stalled. It's still sitting there. No one's taking it up. It isn't moving. And that's after everyone sat for a month and watched this town have to deal with the aftermath of this explosion and toxic release. Based on your reporting, why is that happening? I mean, one of the things that you found is that the railroad, like this whole industry, has a pretty powerful lobby. They're very powerful. They're also one of the most historic industries in our country. And that history means it means a great deal to our country, to to the economic strength of our country. And they have a huge voice in D.C.

So when the industry speaks and says this is not good for us, we don't want this, there's enough lawmakers in D.C. that listen to them versus a community like Heinemann or a community like East Palestine. Our guest today is Topher Sanders, who covers railway safety for the nonprofit news organization ProPublica. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. Topher, I want to get into staffing and the managing of these trains. Something happened in 2015 where these railway companies started laying off people. What was the cause of those massive layoffs? I think it's the same in any industry. It's the effort to maximize profits and make sure that shareholders are happy with what's happening with your company. And so you saw layoffs. You also saw it was a quick turn from 15 getting close to 16, 17, where you start to see people really turn the dial up on precision scheduled railroading, which we spoke about earlier. And there was also a conversation about how many people should man these trains. and you have the labor unions strongly opposed to additional cuts to reduce the amount of people

that man the trains at present two people on the trains an engineer and a conductor engineer drives a train conductor helps to make sure the train continues to operate in good order and will go out on the outside of the train and make sure everything is working properly. And those are the two folks on the train. And there was even a CEO who mentioned that if the government would be open to it, we'd want one person to man the trains. Well, like you did with people who live near train tracks or who interact with them, you put a call out to workers and asked them to help you report on worker safety. And your team examined 15 years worth of federal lawsuits against rail companies and interviewed hundreds of workers. And one thing you heard often

was how those who speak up about safety concerns are often penalized. Yes. We heard it nearly every call that we were on with folks, we heard that, that if you were willing to speak up about something related to safety on the yard, that you were taking your career into your hands potentially and that you could face retaliation. You could face a management or a manager turning on you in a way that made life difficult for you as you tried to work. And we did also hear from people to say, hey, I can raise safety concerns in the rail yard that I'm at and I don't get that treatment. But that wasn't what we heard most often. What we heard most often was that I'll keep my mouth shut about a safety issue or I'll tell my union rep about let my union rep be the person that delivers the message about the safety concern. Regarding injuries, freight companies are quick to tell you that they have great safety numbers and they have the data to prove it. But your reporting found something else in talking with folks who work in the industry that maybe workers aren't actually sharing all of their injuries. They're not even telling their union reps or OSHA or the company. thing to hear over and over again. The amount of times people said, you know, I did twist my ankle and it was significant for me. It was painful. They may have even gone and gotten some medical

attention that they just dealt with on their own, you know, through their insurance, as opposed to tell the railroad company or to tell their management about it, because doing so would, would put them, put them within the crosshairs of, of retaliation. And that's how they felt about, um, working where they were working. And so, uh, yeah, I don't think that there is a real idea of the level of injuries, Significant injuries, I think we have a sense of that because significant injuries are hard for anyone to ignore when they occur, right? But it's the other injuries that could turn into something significant that are more, you know, your tweaked backs, your spring, this, your rotator cuffs, those injuries that are not in ones that are plainly visible.

Those are the ones that I think railroaders told us, uh, with some frequency, you know, I, I've decided just to, to sit on this one, really remember this one, uh, railroader who had become a manager actually. And it was maybe his, uh, first week of management. He slammed his finger in a door or something going into a train car and he broke it. And he decided instead of telling anyone that he broke his finger, he's just going to snap it back in place and keep it moving because he didn't want, as a new manager, to now have to turn in this injury report to his own management. And that's the culture that can exist on the rail yard. I want to talk just a little bit more about industry regulation. What kinds of things do we not know that you think we should know about these trains that are going through our towns carrying these hazardous materials?

No one knows what's on a given train. Law enforcement and firefighters in your community, they don't know anything about what's on those trains as they're traveling through. And that was one of the pieces of the Legislation of Railway Safety Act that universally was kind of applauded and people were eager to see happen because if the train does flip off the tracks and there's an unfortunate accident, the key thing to being able to, you know, make the community safe and get everybody where they need to be to be safe is knowing what you're dealing with. Right. What is this material? Because in East Palestine, they did not know at all what was on that train. Right. And it's the same thing in Hindman. That it was once they, you know, they knew they had something explosive on their hands because they saw the fire.

But knowing exactly what it is helps everyone make real time decisions that's in the best interest of safety. And so, you know, however that bill was going to design the sharing of that manifest and the sharing of that information with law enforcement, first responders, I think everyone agreed that that was a step in the right direction. What are you focused on next in your reporting involving this issue? And maybe what are some things that you feel like the public should know about this issue that you're still working to dig up? Well, when it comes to what's out there that people should know about, I'll just give you this note about one of the most surprising things that the team learned about as we were doing this as far as a gap in regulation. Is that a hallmark of the Hollywood movie is a runaway train. We've seen it a million times.

It's something that is in the imagination of the American people. And in this country today, there is no requirement for a company to tell the government if they lose a train, if the train runs away. They don't have to tell anybody. What do you mean? They don't have to report if it's not something that's catastrophic that we know about. They don't have to report it. Exactly. So if it doesn't make the news or no one's injured, then they can just go about their business. Absolutely. And we found one of these trains in Mississippi. They lost one of these trains. It went through two crossings. It only went three miles, not very far at all, material coasting down the track unattended. And nobody has to tell anyone because it doesn't explode and it doesn't fall off the tracks. How and why could something like that happen?

There are a whole host of ways that could happen a crew could just not tie a train down meaning like put on all the appropriate brakes that are needed and if you don't do that then train can start moving um there have been some instances where there's been some power on it and that has pushed the train there was a a train that reached like 118 miles an hour in California last year. It did derail. It did like in a, you know, a puff of smoke. It wasn't carrying anything that was going to that, you know, was going to explode. So that was, you know, the blessing in that incident. But it still was going 118 miles an hour down the tracks.

But it could be a number of factors that are behind why a train starts to move without a crew. And then again, if it doesn't collide with something, doesn't fall to tracks, today our regulatory space is written such that it doesn't have to be reported to anybody. Topher Sanders, thank you so much for your reporting. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a great conversation. Topher Sanders covers railroad safety for ProPublica. His series is called Train Country, Investigating Railroad Safety in America. Coming up, rock critic Ken Tucker reviews new songs by former Alabama Shakes lead singer Brittany Howard,

folk singer Jim Queskin, and country music singer Colby T. Helms. This is Fresh Air. Rock critic Ken Tucker has been listening to a lot of new music and has selected songs by three very different artists. Music from former Alabama Shakes lead singer Brittany Howard, veteran folk singer Jim Queskin, who has an album of duets, and young country music singer Colby T. Helms out with a new debut album. Ken says what they each have in common is a crackling creative energy that transcends age or genre. The best time that I ever had. That's when the worst time started. I followed you and didn't look back.

I didn't know love could feel like that. I ran right through them red flags. I ran right through them. Brittany Howard made an impact a decade ago as the lead singer of the Alabama Shakes, using her rumbling voice in a Southern rock and soul context. Then her solo career took off in 2019 with the Grammy-winning album Jamie. Now she's back with a new solo effort called What Now? What she's up to now is a collection filled with thick slabs of reverberation and

clustered instrumentation. Her voice is one among many competing sounds. One of the album's most successful experiments is the stirring funk of Another Day. And be who we want And see who we like And love each other through this wild ride And love each other through this wild ride We were born in a time That changed every now and then Do you see the prize of a time now? Yes, I know we can do it Cause we must do it

I know we can do it Let's get to it I know we can do it. I know we can do it. I am in love and they tell me to hide, to fear my neighbor, to close my mind. I am having the time of my life. I am having the time of my life. A voice every bit as distinctive as Brittany Howard's is the nasal croon of Jim Queskin, the 83-year-old folk and blues singer whose new album is called Never Too Late, Duets With My Friends. Among his duet pals is Maria Muldar, once a member of the Jim Queskin Jug Band in the 1960s.

Muldar's voice, both here and on her own recent albums, is still sure and strong, and she and Queskin offer a wonderfully jaunty version of a song from the 1930s called Let's Get about stormy weather Well you lost your baby and I lost mine I got a nickel and you gotta dime Oh we'll drown our troubles in wine And we'll be happy together Why should we worry Just because they turned us down

Come on baby let's show What'll we show We're gonna show them that we're no clown. Now you can dance and I can sing. I've got the finger and you've got the ring. We'll get the parts in to fix this thing. And we'll be happy together. At the opposite end of the age scale is Colby T. Helms, a 21-year-old singer-guitarist

whose debut album is called Tales of Misfortune. Helms emphasizes his roots in rural Virginia, singing in a horse croak, surrounded by fiddles and mandolins that fill in the sort of country music that's at least two generations older than Helms. Here he is getting his heart broken by a girl named Leanne. I tried going through the window last night But the door was locked when I tried to get in Lying on my back, I felt like a kid again When I looked in those big brown eyes

I knew what you were gonna say Should've stayed in the county anyway Think of all the times I listened to those white lies Something about another town, something about another guy Maybe I don't understand I've always been a loser but now I finally got my own band What I like most about Leanne is that when he gets to the line, I've always been a loser, but now I finally got my own band. That's the moment in any other song when things would turn, when the girl finally falls for him.

But nope, he proceeds to sing, that's not good enough for Leigh-Anne. And you know what I say? Good for Leigh-Anne. She's holding out for a guy who satisfies her own desires, and in the meantime, Colby T. Helms gets a very nice song out of having his heart broken. Smart kids, both of them. Ken Tucker reviewed new music from Brittany Howard, Jim Queskin, and Colby T. Helms. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. If you'd like to catch up on interviews you missed, like our conversation with Michelle Norris on how Americans really talk and think about race,

or Mark Daly, who talks about the joy and pain of being a foster parent, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of Fresh Air interviews. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Sallet, Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Teresa Madden, Seth Kelly, and Susan Nakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. For Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.