gef: good evening. i'm geoff bennett. tonight on “pbs news weekend,” out inside an iranian prisone saturday, we get the latest on the ongoing protests across that country. then, weekend briefing -- our focus on the midterms continues with a look at the closely contested ohio senate race. and, a cosmic conversation -- we talk with astrophysicist neil degrasse tyson about nasa's latest mission and his new book. neil: i don't want to be the laughingstock of the galaxy, being the only species with enough resources and intellect to have a space program and not actually invoke it to prevent us from going extinct. geoff: all that and the day's headlines on tonight's "pbs news weekend."

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this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. geoff: it is good to be with you. our top story tonight, the protest movement sweeping iran. iranian state media today says peace has been restored to a prison in tehran, known for holding political prisoners, after it was set ablaze last night. but the regime's claims of calm are at odds with the nationwide anti-government protests that have raged on for weeks. ali rogin has this report. ali: overnight, tehran's evin prison was engulfed in flames. by the wee hours of the morning, state tv was broadcasting the cleanup within. officials insisted the fire had nothing to do with the protests happening across the country. >> this fire was caused by a fight between some prisonersn a sewing workshop.

ali: but protesters gathered on the roads outside. they chanted "death to khameini," referring to iran's supreme leader, ayatollah ali khameini. as the head of the islamic republic, khamni has for weeks been among the protesters' targets, along with other regime symbols like qasim solmani, a military commander who was killed by the united states and is celebrated as a martyr. the protests were sparked, and are still being led, by women. these tehran college students chant "women, life, freedom," one of the uprising's most popular slogans. they stand in the formation of the farsi word for "blood." in the central city of isfahan, women shout, "death to the dictator." high school girls in the nortest chant, "iran has become a detention center." the protests ignited after the death of 22-year old mahsa amini.

she died in police custody after being arrested by iran's morality police who said she was wearing her hijab improperly. in solidarity, women around the world began shedding their headscarves and cutting their hair, protesting the regime's restrictions on women. khameini has dismissed the riots as the work of foreign enemies. >> some of these persons are elements of the enemy and if they are not, they are in direction of the enemy. they go to streets with the same goals as the enemy. ali: but he is arresting and killing his own people. thousands have been detained and more than 200 killed. among them, 23 children, according to amnesty international. two of those young women have joined mahsa amini as symbols of the revolution. nika shakarami and sarina esmaeilzadeh, both 16, are believed to have been killed by security forces during the protests. esmaeilzadeh was a youtuber, who

frequently posted about daily life in iran. speaking in california friday, president joe biden said he was "stunned" by amini's death and the response. >> it's awakened something i don't think will be quieted in a long, long time. ali: on sunday, iranian presidenibrahim raisi said america was behind the protests. >> it is our belief that america is behind the majority of destruction, terror,iots, and chaos in the region and the world. it affirms our belief, and the world's beliefs, that americans are angered and upset by every innovation, every happiness or good tt happens to iran. ali: but the women of iran would say it is the regime, propelling them to the streets to fight for their rights. for "pbs news weekend," i'm ali rogin. geoff: in today's other headlines, chinese president xi jinping is poised to remain as his country's leader for an unprecedented third term, after removing term limits four years ago.

xi first assumed the role in 2013. addressing the week-long session of the country's communist party congress, xi emphasized military growth, and warned against outside interference in places like taiwan. he also announced that the nation of 1.4 billion people would stick to its zero-covid policy. china boasts the world's second largest economy and military, behind the united states. in ukraine, shelling damaged the mayor's office in separatist-controlled donetsk. pro-russian officials blamed ukraine. no casualties have been reported. elsewhere, ukrainian officials said russian rockets struck a city near the zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, injuring six people. and in russia, officials launched a criminal investigation after two gunmen killed 11 military recruits yesterday at a training ground near the ukrainian border. russia is calling it an act of terror. and, police in stockton,

california believe they have taken a suspected serial killer off the streets. when the man was arrested early saturday morning, police say he was armed and ready to kill again. a man dressed in black can be seen on video at several of the murder scenes across stockton. police allege 43-year-old wesley brownlee killed six men since 2021. one female victim survived her injuries. brownlee is set to be arraigned on tuesday. still to come on "pbs news weekend," neil degrasse tyson explains what nasa's asteroid mission means for the future. and, a new book examines the effects of climate change on the wine and spirits industries. >> this is "pbs news weekend," from weta studios in washington, home of the "pbs newshour," weeknights on pbs. geoff: time now for our weekend briefing. with just over three weeks to go

until the midterm elections our focus this evening is on ohio, a state that has been shifting to the right over the past few election cycles. but the u.s senate race this year has been fiercely competitive, with republican senator rob portman retiring, democratic congressman tim ryan is locked in a dead heat against republican j.d. vance to fill the seat. karen casler of ohio public radio and television joins us now to share her insights. it's great to have you here. karen: it's great to be here, jeff, thanks. geoff: in speaking with democratic officials here in washington, they have said all along that they could not have asked for a beer candidate than tim ryan to run in ohio. he has this blue-collar image. he tends to be more of a moderate. he's raising a ton of money. j.d. vance, though, has really struggled to raise money, and he also seemed to take the summer off from campaigning. the difference, though, is that national republicans stepped into the race. they poured millions of dollars into that race to help j.d. vance. but national democrats aren't doing the same thing for tim ryan. what's going on? karen: i think some of that comes from that ohio went for

former president trump in 2016 and 2020 by eight points. i mean, trump won ohio by more than 475,000 votes in 2020. and so there were some democrats i think who kind of wrote off ohio as being a state that really wasn't going to embrace having potentially two democratic senators. ohio has one in sherrod brown who was re-elected in 2018. so the question then becomes, who could be the potential democratic candidate. tim ryan had talked about it for a while, he talked about running for governor. but as you said, this was kind of a year that looked tailor-made for him, because while he does have a very strong record in voting with democrs, he does have that populist dial that sherrod brown and others have seen as being more moderate. and so i think that that's made this race competitive, and certainly ryan has been going after the same voters that j.d. vance has been going after. j.d. vance came out of an

expensive republican campaign in the primary, had spent a lot of money to do a lot of campaigning there. and so that may have set him up in a different way than tim bryan, who had a less competitive primary that he had to survive. geoff: how does the trump-aligned republican base in ohio view j.d. vance? and i ask the question because, as you well know, when donald trump endorsed vance, it was a bit of a surprise because back in 2016 j.d. vance said that donald trump was reprehensible. he said that he was cultural heroin. there were a few other phrases that were even worse than that. but when vance decided to run for the senate, there was this full embrace of donald trump. does he haveredibility among the gop base there in ohio? karen: there was a lot of frustration, i think, among republicans when trump endorsed vance. itas a bit of a surprise because there have been kind of this as a political put it a hunger games competition among republican candidas to try to get that coveted trump endorsement. and so when trump did endorse

vance, he did have a rally not too long after that, and you saw republican candidates come out to that rally and show their support for trump's endorsement of vance. but there were still some far right conservatives in ohio who really didn't like those comments that vance made and really didn't feel that vance was the right candidate for trump to endorse. didn't matter. vance ended up winning. he actually beat the one candidate who had not sought donald trump's endorsement, state senator matt dolan, by only a small margin and then beat the rest of the very trump aligned field. but there are still i think some conservatives who are concerned but have certainly fully embraced the trump endorsement. one of my colleagues here at our statehouse news bureau went out on the road with j.d. vance and tim ryan as well and found that there were a lot of people who still view j.d. vance is kind of a celebrity. they bring his book "hillbilly elegy" and asked him to sign it. and so that really tracks along with the trump brand where he does tend to endorse people who have a lot of name recognition

or have some sensitive celebrity among the people he's trying to get to vote. geoff: well, tim ryan and j.d. vance faced off in a debate last week, which you covered, and there was this moment where ryan tried to tie vance to donald trump and cast them both as a threat to democracy. take a look. >> he's called into question the presidential election. that's a threat to our democracy and running around with people who want to ban books and get the government in our bedroom and our doctor's offices. but i tell you what i think politically is a huge threat to our democracy. and that's guys that don't have the guts to stand up to their own party. geoff: is that an argument that's resonating in this race? what do ohio voters care about? karen: well, i think j d. vance tried to tie tim ryan strongly to democrats by saying he votes with democrats and president biden 100% of the time. there's truth to that. but certainly ryan has been really pushing his record of running against nancy pelosi as speaker and really trying to

court trump voters. he doesn't use the word democrat in his ads. he talksbout how he has supported some of trump's policies. and so he's really been going after the same kind of voters that j.d. vance has been. and so it really sets up a very interesting competition because there are moderate voters in ohio who really want to have another option besides trump endorsed candidates. the democrats in oo certainly want to have a candidate that they can endorse, and it is set up how close this race has become. geoff: absolutely. karen casler of ohio public radio and television helping us break down the senate race. thanks so much. karen: great to be here. thanks. geoff: 65 million years after a giant asteroid crashed into earth and caused one of its greatest mass extinctions, nasa deployed a small spacecraft on a collision course with a much smaller asteroid, just 500 feet

across. the double asteroid redirection mission, known as "dart," was a success, altering the orbit of a plary object for the first time ever. for more on this, we're joined by renowned astrophysicist and author neil degrasse tyson. he's just written a new book entitled "starry messenger: cosmic perspectives on civilization." it's so great to have you here. neil: yeah, thanks for having me. geoff: and, you know, there was a hollywood blockbuster in the nineties called “armageddon” about altering an asteroid's trajectory and saving mankind. that's what a lot of people think about when they think about what nasa did with this with this dart mission. that, of course, was science fiction. this is real life. i mean, how much of a marvel is this? neil: well, first of all, we've known about the risks of asteroids and started creating catalogs of those that have us in their targets. we started doing that at least back in the seventies. so, i'm a little disappointed it's taken this long, but better late than never.

and the dart mission, they selected a little orbiting pair of asteroids. one of them, a moonlit they ll it, has a very well understood orbit. and so if you nudge that, you get to check to see how much you successfully nudged it later on. and that's exactly what has just happened. and it was a success. geoff: why was there a preference to nudge the asteroid instead of blowing it up? neil: deflecting an asteroid has always been the wiser, more sensible way to do this. while, yeah, in modern times, we're good at blowing stuffp, sure. but you're not always good at knowing where the pieces end up after you've done that. whereas if you nudge it out of the way, yeah, it's still there, yes. and it might harm you one day in the future. but if you're good at this, nothing will ever harm you because you just continue to deflect them. you can send it off to the left, to the right. you can even speed it up or slow it down. but, any of these will successfully, if you calculate

it rht, prevent yet another extinction which the dinosaurs suffered. and by the way, i'm pretty sure that if the dinosaurs had nasa, they'd still be here. and we would have never evolved to anything more ambitious than a rodent running under foot trying to avoid being hoeur d'oeuvres for t-rex. geoff: that's a good point. so, as i understand it, the small asteroid's orbit was shortened by 3minutes. help us understand the physics that go into a feat like that. neil: yeah. so you have the orbit and if you put it into a head-on collision, what you do is you sort of slow it down and it falls to a lower orbit, and in that lower orbit you change the orbital period. and that's what we were able to measure quite precisely. i'd like to think that in not too many years we'll get very good at this and be able to ensure some level of protection of our species, not just our species, other species of life on earth. i don't want to be the

laughingstock of the galaxy, being the only species with enough resources and intellect to have a space program and not actually invoke it to prevent us from going extinct. geoff: so, while we have you, i want to ask about your book, “starry messenger: cosmic perspectives on civilization.” what did you learn and what did you hope to impart with this book? neil: what the cosmic perspective does is have you reassess and rebalance all the things that you were fighting about, fighting other people about, thinking you/your opinion was an unassailable truth, when in fact maybe there are holes in it, or maybe there's another place to stand where you have a more enlightened perspective on what it is you're doing. and what a cosmic perspective does is, coupled with a dose of science, litacy and rational thinking, it changes every way you look at your decisions in life. and my hope is that people

acquire the book and read it before thanksgiving dinner, because that's when all the great arguments occur in the family. and this would totally equip you to see everything in a new way and bring peace and harmony perhaps into what's going on in front of you. geoff: is that what inspired you to write the book, the fraught times in which we live? neil: yes. yes. and in fact, the opening quote, it's a quote from edgar mitchell, apollo 14 astronaut, and it begins, "you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. from out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. you want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and take him a quarr million miles out and say, 'look at that, you son of a bitch.'” [laughter] that's what the book is about. i dunno what else to tell 'ya. geoff: all right. yeah.

i can't think of a better summary than that. neil degrasse tyson, it's a real privilege to speak with you. thanks so much. neil: thanks for having me. geoff: climate change is altering the very nature of wine and spirit production around the world, from the destructive fires that rip through california's wine country each year to the floods that threaten grape and grain harvests from bordeaux to napa valley. bryan friedman is a wine, spirits, food, and travel writer. his new book, "crushed," captures how growers and producers around the world are adapting to sudden and dramatic climate shifts. brian freedman joins us now. thanks for being here. brian: thank you for having me. geoff: in the wine and spirits industry, i was struck to learn, that's a $120 billion industry. so it's a huge part of the economy, a huge part of the culture. and in this book, you capture how climate change is affecting the industry, but you do it by

looking through the eyes of the people who grow the grapes and who produce the wine. what did you find? brian: you know, these are human stories at the end of the day. i thk a lot of times it's easy, especially when it comes to wine, to assume that everybody who's making this product is living in a grand ateau and taking three hour, you know, lunches that are soaked with winend duck. the truth is, that's not the case. and like you said, it's a huge industry. it's growing. there are countless jobs at stake here. so i wanted to look at eight regions around the world and tell the stories of the producers, of the growers who are really experiencing the impacts of climate change firsthand. geoff: so tell us about kutch wines. you profiled them in the book. it's a boutique producer in the sonoma coast, and you talk about how they deal with the persistent threat now of wildfires. brian: so it used to be that there was a "fire season." now it's kind of like that risk is, i don't want to say omnipresent, but it's out there sort of at all times in the

background, if not in the foreground. so, you know, producers around the world -- and california's a great example -- they're changing when they're harvesting, right? i mean, when it comes to bad fire seasons, so much of your success is, of course, prediced on not having your vines burned to the ground, but also, did you get your fruit in before smoke taint could affect it? right? so, it has to do with different vineyard management techniques. maybe there's different rootstock. to a certain extent, there are mitigation techniques. and i have found that the people who grow the grapes and greens, who make the wine and distill the spirits, i believe firmly are going to be the ones who lead us into a future where our agriculture, not just for our wonderful fermented and distilled beverages, but all agriculture, they're really helping us figure out how to live with this, how to pivot, and how not to get destroyed by it. geoff: let's talk more about the people who distill the spirits, because it was just a few years

ago in kentucky, massive flooding in the eastern part of kentucky. what has climate change meant for the american whiskey industry? brian: well, i mean, you know, we all see -- at least where i'm from in philadelphia, there was a time earlier this year where there was, you know, a two bottle maximum for many of the whiskeys that you wanted to buy, right? so supply chain is affecting everything. but if we even look at the big brands who are sourcing commodity grains, climate change is wreaking havoc with that. right? i mean, if there's floods at a commodity grain farm in saskatchewan, the big brands can maybabsorb that pricing a little bit. but when you're making millions and millions obottles, what does that do to the bottom line? these are still businesses, right? there's another bottling, the warehouse where it was being aged, this whiskey, was effectively knocked over by this rogue tornado. geoff: wow. brian: and actually, what they did, because this barrel had been exposed to the elements while they were rebuilding, it turned out it was a very interesting and unusual aging process, and they then ended up

selling that. but, you know, it's -- i think that we are also going to be seeing in the spirits world more pressure, not just with whiskey, right? but i s talking to one distiller, works for sazerac, who's in charge of three of their gins. and because there was an ill-timed flood that hit some of the countries in asia where he sources so many of his botanicals from, he had to scour the earth in order to fi the botanicals. so, you know, the smaller producers, the craft producers and the larger brands are all being affected, but they're all finding ways to, sort of, navigate their way forward. geoff: you also brought with you some wines from israel. brian: yes. geoff: how are they keeping pace with climate change? brian: so, israel is a fascinating place. you know, they' been making wine in israel for 5000-plus years. they are now really getting the respect that the industry so richly deserves. and what i found about israel, i visited there in the summer of 2021 to report for the book. this producer is very interesting. this is tabor.

their agronomist, a woman named karl ackerman, she had this sort of revelatory moment, where this was years ago, and her vineyards looked kind of like they used to on the postcards with the perfect rows, not much between them. and then somebody from the environmental organization said to her, do you love nature? simple question. she said, of course i love nature. i make my living in nature. and this person said, you're sure about that? because what i'm seeing here is not a full ecosystem. and a switch was flipped in her head. and that began a process that led abor becoming one of the leaders in the country's wine industry in terms of bringing back this ecosystem. and in fact, on the label, there's an owl. and the reason the owl is there is because once the owls came back, right, that meant that there was enoughnsect life in the soil and their predators and their predators. and as she helped bring back this beautiful natural ecosystem, the wines are world

class. so it's not just about dealing with the immediate and long-term impacts of climate change, b it's also about respecting the environment, because when we respect the environment, like you said, wine is an amazing lens through which to see a particular patch of planet earth. when we respect the environment and give those vines a healthy, full ecosystem to grow in, then the product itse is even better, as demonstrated by this wine, by the shiloh secret reserve. these are wines that are really expressive of their place. geoff: brian freedman, the new book is "crushed." thanks so much for being here with us. i appreciate it. brian: thanks for having me. geoff: and that's "pbs news weend" for tonight. i'm geoff bennett. for all of us here at "pbs news weekend," thanks for spending part of your sunday with us.

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