PBS News Hour - Full Show - August 9, 2025 – PBS News Weekend full episode

Episode Date: August 9, 2025

Saturday on PBS News Weekend, a new study highlights the growing health dangers of plastic pollution. As megafires become more common, an anthropologist gives a firsthand account of a historic season with the elite Los Padres Hotshots. History is made as a woman umpires a regular-season MLB game for the first time. Plus, scientists in South Africa make rhino horns radioactive to fight poaching. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Tonight on PBS News Weekend, Ukrainian President Volota Mer Zelenskyy says he won't give up any territory to Russia after President Trump suggests a land swap to end the war. Then history is made as a woman umpires a regular season game for the first time in Major League Baseball's nearly 150-year history. And scientists in South Africa are making endangered rights. horns radioactive to save them from poaching. You can't take that horn anywhere. It is radioactive. You can't take it through any airport, any harbor, any customs office. I'm telling you this could be the Holy Grail to save the species.

Good evening. I'm John Yang. We begin tonight in Ukraine where President Volodemar Zelensky has flatly rejected President Trump's suggestion that a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia might include the two nations swapping territory. In advance of Mr. Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska next week, Zelensky said he wouldn't agree to anything

that comes out of any meeting that leaves his nation on the sidelines. He accused Russia of stalling. Russia started it and his dragging it out, ignoring all deadlines, and that is the problem, not something else. The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question already is in the Constitution of Ukraine. No one will deviate from this and no one will be able to. Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier. Mr. Trump had set a Friday deadline for Russia to end the war or face additional sanctions, but that deadline came and went without any new penalties. In the war in Gaza, growing outrage over Israel's plan to take control

of Gaza City, including among Israelis. Thousands rallied outside the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv. Family members of hostages, as well as anti-government protesters, demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu make a deal with Hamas to release all of the hostages still in Gaza. This, as attempts to provide aid in Gaza, are increasingly troubled. A pallet of aid airdropped into central Gaza today struck and killed a 15-year-old. The United Nations says that more than 1,000 people have been taken.

killed trying to reach aid. 80 years after the United States detonated an atomic bomb over Nagasaki, Japan, representatives were more than 90 nations gathered there to honor the tens of thousands of lives lost. Entire sections of the city were leveled on August 9th, 1945, when the United States dropped the bomb nicknamed Fat Man, instantly killing an estimated 27,000 people. Five days later, Japan surrendered, ending World War II. The Nagasaki attack followed the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. That killed 140,000 people. The crew that relieved two U.S. astronauts stranded on the International Space Station has returned home.

NASA astronauts Anne McLean and Nicole Ayers, along with counterparts from Japan and Russia, splashed down today off the coast of Southern California. The four-person crew headed to the space station in March to replace astronauts. Bucch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, whose planned week-long stay at the space station, ended up lasting nine months. In Geneva, negotiators from 175 nations are trying to hammer out the first ever

legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. The key sticking point is whether it should mandate cuts in plastic production. Oil-producing nations, including the United States, oppose that as fossil fuels are a key ingredient in plastics. The urgency of the top of the top of, was underscored this week by a new study published in the medical journal The Lancet. It calls plastics a grave growing and under-recognized danger to human and planetary health.

Tracy Woodruff is a professor at the UC San Francisco Medical School and one of the authors of the Lancet study. Tracy, a grave growing and under-recognized danger. What is that danger? Explain the danger to us. Plastic contains thousands of toxic chemicals. Some of them we know something about, and some of them. of them we don't know anything about. But the ones that we do know about, we know that they can lead to increased risk of multiple different types of chronic health effects. For example, one chemical that's used commonly in plastics to which we are all exposed or phallates. These

are chemicals that are used in everything from vinyl flooring, curtains, plastic couches, even in your car, cosmetics, fragrances. These chemicals are ubiquitous. They're measured in everybody, and we know they increase the risk of multiple adverse health conditions like obesity and diabetes, and they can increase the risk of preterm birth. There's also an increase production of plastics currently planned. Plastic production will triple in the next 30 years. That means more plastic products and more plastic chemicals to which we will be exposed. Talk about the production picking up the pace.

Why is it accelerating? Plastics are made from fossil fuels, oil and gas, and the fossil fuel industry is turning to plastics to stay profitable. Making plastic and the petrochemicals used in plastic is more profitable than using it for fuel and energy and electricity. So as the world uses less oil, in some cases to address climate change concerns, the fossil fuel industry is shifting its focus to producing more plastic and plastic-related chemicals to maintain and increase their profits. You know, we see recycling bins everywhere now on the street and offices. What impact or what effect does recycling have?

Well, recycling is pretty much a myth that's been sold to us by the fossil fuel industry. And in fact, a report just came out this week talking about how those that the fossil fuel industry knew that you can't actually really recycle plastic. The fact is that less than 10% of plastic is recycled and only 1% is recycled twice. And what that means is that a lot of this plastic we're being told is being recycled to make us feel better, but it's really going into the waste stream. It's degrading in the environment. It's degrading into all of these very, in the oceans, in fish, and then it's getting into us. So the reality is recycling is not the solution.

There's been a lot of talk about microplastics, about microplastics being so pervasive. Help us understand what that is, and do we know what the effects are of having microplastics in our bodies? Yeah, microplastics, they're essentially little plastics. and they're very small, usually smaller than the human eye can see. And they're basic, they come from the degradation of all these many plastics that are being produced by these fossil fuel companies. And we know that people carry little bits of microplastics in their body because they've been measured in every part of the body that they've been looked at.

So everything from breast milk to blood to feces, even in your brain. These talks in Geneva, they had hoped to conclude this by the end of 2024. Obviously, they have it. What's at stake in these talks? Well, the health of everybody on this planet is at stake in these talks. The goal of the countries that want to see something done about plastic pollution is to identify the hazardous chemicals in the plastics and reduce or eliminate them. The goal of the fossil fuel-producing countries is to basically increase plastic production, and they are deviating the plastic negotiation treaties by focusing on recycling,

which I have said is not really the solution to plastic production. And so because these countries are the projected estimates are to triple by 26 plastic production, it really is an important inflection point in how we, we as a, well, really, really is part of the global, community decide how we want to address a plastics and the plastic-related chemicals, which we already know are already resulting in adverse human health effects around the globe. Tracy Woodruff of UC San Francisco Medical School. Thank you very much. Well, thank you. Still to come on PBS News Weekend. The first woman umpire in nearly a century and a half of

big league baseball. And how scientists are making rhino horns radioactive to save the endangered species from poachers. This is PBS News Weekend from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, home of the PBS News Hour. Weeknights on PBS. California fire officials say a massive wildfire in Southern California has reached megafire status, fueled by near 100 degree heat and bone dry conditions. the Gifford Fire north of Santa Barbara

has already burned more than 104,000 acres. That's an area bigger than Atlanta. Mega fires, which burn more than 100,000 acres, have become increasingly common in recent years, testing the men and women who fight them. A new book, When It All Burns, Fighting Fire in a Transform World,

is the first-hand account of a season with a team of elite firefighters, the Los Padres Hot Shots. The author is Jordan Thomas, who's also an anthropologist. Jordan Thomas, help us understand what is it like to be on the front lines of a wildfire? These are some of the largest wildfires

that humans have ever encountered in our recorded history. So science is having a hard time to understand what these wildfires are going to do. So what it's actually like to fight wildfires is you're living on some of the most extreme edges of the climate crisis in triple-digit heat, basically mountaineering with chainsaws

to remove fuel from the edges of fire. and so it takes an extreme amount of tactical athleticism and a really intense level of knowledge of landscapes and fire behavior as well. Talk about the knowledge of landscapes. You've got to be constantly assessing the landscape as you're fighting the fire, right? Yeah, exactly.

So you have to be paying attention to the vegetation to the slope of the landscape and changes in all these different weather patterns including the temperature, the humidity, and the wind, because all of these things change what fire does. And when you're working on the edges of fires day after day, day after day, hour after hour, week after week, any of these changes can put you in extremely dangerous situations.

The point you made at the beginning about how these wildfires are different, or seem to be different, you write in the book that the recent wildfires have transformed fundamental assumptions about how fire works. Explain that. So people I've worked with when they started their career, they may have encountered one megafire in their entire career, but there's multiple megafires burning across the American West now.

We fought four during the time I was writing the book. They're becoming common. 18 of the 20 largest wildfires in California's recorded history of burn in just the past two decades. So what does that mean? In a fundamental sense, it means that we often don't know what these fires are going to do day by day. We don't know what their ecological impacts are going to be. We don't know how they're going to behave. And that sounds dangerous in an abstract sense, but it's also incredibly dangerous for wildland firefighters on the ground.

For example, fires usually, their behavior usually really calms down at night. That's what we'd come to expect. In 2020, a wildfire that I was on, it doubled in size overnight after we almost had it contained. It overtook 15 firefighters, and a lot of them were injured. So things with the climate crisis that seem abstract are often matters of life and death for wildland firefighters. And talk about that effect, the climate crisis.

How is the climate crisis affecting this? So you have multiple layers. On a broad layer, you have broad changes and temperature across entire landscapes. It takes more water out of the vegetation, out of the trees, dries them out, makes them more flammable. You have other changes that intersect with that, like there's less precipitation falling in snow. That means that there's less water running throughout the landscapes and snowmelt throughout the year, which means that the lands dry out quicker, layer drought on top of that, layer insect infestations on top of that. You get really sick landscapes, and then you're also way more likely to have intense heat waves.

And that just sucks the rest of the moisture out of the landscape as well. and you get really explosive fire behavior. Then when you get these unprecedented heat waves, you know, like 120 degrees, that also makes them way more difficult to suppress, which endangerous communities and the area as well. So there's multiple layers, but they all intersect with climate change

in a really dangerous explosive situation. In terms of history in your book, you talk about how centuries ago the indigenous people in California coexisted with fire, lived with fire, but then the white European settlers came in and the focus became on fire suppression. What effect did that have?

So it's important to keep in mind when we're talking about this that California is one of the most fire-evolved regions on Earth. Many of the ecosystems and many of the plant species actually rely on fire to reproduce. Now, indigenous people knew this and lived in California for at least 10,000 years before Europeans arrived and plants for the basis of indigenous economies. So indigenous people knew to use fire

to shape sorts of plants that they needed. And this really transformed California's ecosystem. So most of the fire California encountered was actually lit by indigenous people before Europeans arrived. So one of the first acts that Europeans did when they took over, the Spanish, it criminalized the use of fire as a way to criminalize indigenous economies. Now, this was a start of a long history of fire suppression that went from that first criminalization up until the modern day where we treat fire as an enemy, where we try to put fire out. When you take fire away from landscapes that need it, you make those landscapes sit.

You get fuels accumulation in forests. You get insect infestations that you wouldn't otherwise if you were burning. And the culmination of this is you sort of lay the kindling. The climate change is really, it's like dropping a match on top of the kindling. Jordan Thomas, author of When It All Burns. Thank you very much. Thank you. History was made in Atlanta this afternoon when Jen Powell took the field as the first woman to umpire a regular season game in Major League Baseball's nearly 150-year history.

She was on the basis for both games of a double-header between the Miami Marlins and the Atlanta Braves. In tomorrow's game, she's going to be behind the plate calling balls and strikes. Earlier, I spoke with Chelsea Jains, the Washington Post National Baseball writer. asked her how Powell found out she'd be working today's games. She said she was in her hotel room in Nashville and got called to a conference call with two MLB officials who were in charge of umpiring. And they told her, you know, this is your moment. And she called her crew chief, so the guy who's in charge this weekend. And they started yelling over the phone, you know, a grown man who generally has to kind of maintain decorum on a baseball

field, just kind of screaming into the phone with her, which is just really kind of special to hear about. Tell me a little bit about her background. How did you become interested in umpiring? Jen played college softball. She wanted to umpire from the day she first tried it even in high school, like as a throwaway side job. And when she got done playing, she kind of looked into it, umpired high school baseball in upstate New York, even umpired college softball in New England and New York. So she was pretty much at the highest level she could get to for that and wanted more, wanted it to be a career instead of something she got paid a couple hundred bucks a weekend to do. So she, you know, ended up hearing about a clinic. And at a clinic, she met a major league

umpire named Ted Barrett. And he said, hey, you're pretty good at this. I also host a clinic down in Atlanta. She attended it and was funneled into the, the Meyer League system from there. Talk about how that works, how umpires worked their way through the minor league system. It used to be the kind of thing you had to sort of buy your way into these schools and prove yourself. And Major League Baseball said that's eliminating too many people. So they started hosting more open clinics that you could sign up for and learn. And they would evaluate you there. That's what Jen did. And she kept passing the test level by level. And a few years ago, she got promoted to AAA, which is the highest minor league level. She not only got promoted there,

but she was given the championship game because she did so well. And, you know, after that, sort of got on the short list to make it to Major League Spring training. And this year, finally got in this pool of umpires where if they need someone to fill in like they did this weekend, they could choose her, and they did. So she's not full-time in the big leagues yet. Those jobs do not come open very often. People cling to them as you would think they would. But when one opens, she's close.

You mentioned Ted Barrett. You mentioned her crew chief today. Has she gotten a lot of support from both former and current umpires? She really has. And I think it's fair to wonder if that was going to be the case. You know, this is something that it's very different. And it's a role where you're not used to seeing women. And, you know, even I, when I first heard about this, I was like,

well, will the players yell at her more? Will they yell at her less? Will they take her seriously? But, you know, I think once you see her handle this, you kind of understand, oh, she handles herself in a way where you really don't notice until you think about it. And I think that's what those umpires saw to. You know, you pointed out in your story in the post that Major League Baseball almost had a robot calling balls and strikes before they had a woman calling balls and strikes.

How does baseball compare with the other professional sports in this sense? they're a little behind. The NBA had female referees in the late 90s. The NFL had them about a decade ago, I believe. The NHL still hasn't had one. I think the general consensus is part of that is the breaking up fights part is a little bit tricky. Baseball was behind. She's been in the pipeline for a long time and now there are more women there. But yeah, they've tested automatic balls and strikes and they're going to introduce them on a limited basis. But yeah, they got farther with that more quickly than they did with women. And, you know, I, I don't think that's too surprising. Talk about that pipeline. Are there more women coming up? There are. There are, I believe, six umpires in the minor leagues right now. I believe that's counting Jen Powell.

They're being vetted the same way that Jen was and that the male umpires are. You probably won't see them at these levels for quite some time. It just takes a while. But, yeah, there's more women falling in her footsteps. And I think, you know, there's reason to believe that we'll see more of them in the big league soon. In the past, a woman had come close to making the majors, Is that right? Pam Postima came really close in the late 80s and, you know, just didn't find a league that was receptive to her.

She's been in touch with Jen Powell throughout this process. And Jen said that when she got promoted to AAA, a little over a year ago, she went to dinner with Pam. And the last thing Pam said to her was get it done, you know, get it done. And so when she got the call this week, you know, Jen said she texted her, you know, I'm getting it done. You talked about how the umpires saw what she does and have supported her. Any sense of the minor leagues of what the players have reacted? She shared a story about one third baseman who heard the news this week and said, hey, we've done this at every level and I'll see you in the big leagues, you know?

And I think they respect it. I've only seen people be really polite and go over and fist bumper like they do everyone else. But I think people also a little bit even have their eye on her. Like, hey, you know, go do this. And so I think it's been kind of a really pleasant surprise. to see the support she's gotten. Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post. Thank you very much.

Thanks for having me. Finally tonight, the black market trade in rhino horns is driving these species to near extinction. Now, scientists at a rhino orphanage in the Bushveld of South Africa are trying to protect them from poaching in a rather surprising way. The first step is to carefully sedate beasts that can weigh up to two and a half tons. Then the scientists get to work with a drill.

They insert radioactive isotopes into the rhino's horns and amounts too small to affect their health. It's called the rhizotope project. James Larkin of the University of Witts Watersrand set it up in 2021. By making the horns radioactive, we are making those horns. devaluing those horns in the eyes of the poacher and the end users. No one wants a radioactive horn. South Africa has the world's largest population of rhinos, and hundreds of them are poached every year.

It's a major threat to the critically endangered rhinos, driven by the lucrative black market for their horns, which are popular in some Asian countries, in traditional medicine and as status symbols. The goal of the rhizotope project is to make horns virtually impossible, virtually impossible to traffic. All these rhinos are here because they were often because their mothers were shot. They were poached because of the value of the rhino horn.

Now with the riser toe project, you can't take that horn anywhere. It is radioactive. You can't take it through any airport, any harbor, any customs office, sirens go off. It is wonderful. I'm telling you this could be the Holy Grail to save the species. The effort is supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency. A pilot study involving 20 rhinos proved that it's safe and effective. Now scientists are working to expand to a broader scale and see if the idea can be applied

to other species prized by poachers. And that is PBS News Weekend for this Saturday. I'm John Yang for all of my colleagues. for joining us. See you tomorrow.