william: good evening. i'm william brangham. geoff bennett and amna nawaz are away. on the newshour tonight. congressional leaders meet with president biden but make little progress on a deal to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a catastrophic default then. the head of the company behind chat-gpt tells lawmakers regulation is needed to keep rapidly developing artificial intelligence in check. and a new biography of martin luther king jr finds the civil rights icon was misquoted when asked what he thought of malcolm x. >> we've been telling the story of the relationship between martin luther king and malcolm x for generations, based in part on that quote, the sense that martin luther king had this antagonism, and it just wasn't

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broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station viewers like you. thank you. william: welcome to the newshour. president biden is cutting short his upcoming trip to asia to continue negotiations to avoid a historic default for the country. pressure is mounting because the government could run out of money to pay its bills by june 1st if an agreement isn't struck by then. biden announced the change to his schedule, hours after meeting with congressional leaders on raising the debt limit. >> i'm confident we're going to continue to make progress toward avoiding default and fulfilling america's responsibility as a leader on the world stage. however, i'm cutting my trip short and postponing the australia portion of the trip and shifting my stop and papa new guinea in order to be back for the final negotiations with congressional leaders. >> house republicans passed a bill that raised the debt ceiling, limited our future

spending, saved taxpayers money by being able to pull back unspent money and waste and actually grow our economy by making our economy stronger and helping lifting people out of poverty into work. and so those are the parameters we'll talk about. william: that was house speaker kevin mccarthy speaking after the meeting with the president. following this all closely are our congressional reporter lisa desjardins and white house reporter laura barron lopez. laura, the president cut short his upcoming trip abroad, clearly he seems to be feeling the pressure that he has to deliver on these negotiations. laura: that's right. the president exited the meeting saying it was productive but the treasury department has stressed the date is june 1 and it is right around the corner. the president does not take the cutting short of this trip lately. the white house stressed that the president wants to

reinvigorate the quad, a partnership meeting that was supposed to be taking place in australia. he will be missing that. that is australia, the u.s., japan and india. he will be missing what would have been the first ever trip by a president to papa new guinea. the president wanted to focus because of trying to pay more attention to the pacific region. william: so he's not going to make that part of the trip. what is it from your reporting that you understand is the white house's current position? what is on the table? laura: the white house, be it the president or senior staff, have said over and over that the debt ceiling talks and the budget talks are unparalleled -- are on parallel tracks but they are separate. we can report we know details about what is on the negotiating table when it comes to the budget. this is based on what the president and speaker mccarthy have hinted as well as what sources have told me and lisa. what is on the table our budget

caps for at least two years, ease in energy permitting processes, work requirements for certain government aid programs, as well as a return of some $30 billion in unused covid money. in addition to that, one change today, a white house official confirmed to me that there will be three new white house officials. the counselor to the president, the head of the office of management and budget, as well as lisa terrel, the head of legislative affairs for the white house. they are going to be the three new leaders designated by the president to negotiate directly with speaker mccarthy's team. william: what is your understanding now, lisa, about where republicans are? lisa: republicans walked away happy tonight because one thing they wanted, they got, which was direct talks with the biden white house. no more negotiating with everyone including senate leader mcconnell, hakim jeffries from

the house side, democrats. this will be between the major sources of power in this city, house republicans on the white house. there is something significant about who house republicans will be having negotiated on behalf. one of their negotiators is garrett graves. he is someone who was a longtime hill staffer, importantly on the energy and commerce committee. he is from baton rouge. that is significant because one of the top issues for garrett graves, one of the things he is an expert at, is permitting reform that laura talked about. we look at what issues are going to be more important going down the home stretch here, permitting reform, that could affect energy, drilling, the environment. all of that to me is rising very quickly now. house republicans say they are unified and they see this as debt ceiling and budget talks together. we are still going to face a stare down but they are happy today that now from their point of view the real negotiations are starting. william: one of the things laura

mentioned that republicans seem to want is they want to add more work requirements to people who are receiving federal aid or assistance. can you remind us the details of what they want? lisa: there are several programs that could be affected. house republicans would like to take -- they would like to apply all of this to able-bodied adults who have no dependents. first let's talk with the program, snap used to be called food stamps. republicans would like to extend work requirements to the older group, 50 to 55-year-olds, to receive food stamps. tanis is a program for families, the poorest of the poor. they want to tighten enforcement of that by the states. tighten the workforce requirements. and then medicaid. this is the most significant. medicaid right now does not have any work requirements. that is the health care program largely for the poor in america.

republicans would like 80 hours of work a month and they would like that to apply to 18 to 55-year-olds. that is something progressives have outcry on. republicans say they think this would save money and they like the idea of getting more people to work. william: lisa says the progressives and the democratic party do not like those changes. what is your understanding of what the white house thinks about adding these requirements to aid? william: that's right. progressives have been squeezing the president on this front in particular on work requirements. after the president felt pressure from those within his party, he publicly made clear that when it comes to work requirements, he is only open to those that cover cash assistance programs. he is open to work requirements for snap and he's not open to work requirements for medicaid. so this is something that the president has felt pressure on from his left flank. but when it comes to moderate

democrats, they are relatively onboard with this as part of the larger piece of negotiations. william: lisa, there is this looming calendar issue. do they have time to get this done? lisa: let's look at little time there is left. today is may 16. the deadline is june 1. that is the earliest we could hit the debt ceiling but it might be right around then. here's why the two weeks is less than people think. the next week is when the senate is supposed to be gone. the senate needs a week to pass any major legislation. i have to get going now. i do think there is reason to believe the senate will stick around next week. the man i mentioned earlier, garrett graves, he told me he think's a deal could get done in three days time if the talks are actually productive and evenhanded. we will watch because that is basically as much time as they have to get a real bill moving. william: that is a very big if looming on the calendar.

lisa, laura, so good to see you both. thank you very much. stephanie: i'm stephanie sy with newshour west, here are the latest headlines. russia fired a new missile barrage at ukraine's capital overnight. the ukrainians said they shot down all 18 missiles -- including six that were hypersonic. the russians denied that claim. mid-air explosions lit up the night sky over kyiv. ukraine said its western-supplied air defenses blunted russia's assault. >> it is clear that the capital has always been and is such a priority target for the enemy because there are essential state objects and important infrastructure objects, and there is a certain symbolism in this. it is clear that the enemy wants to strike at the very heart of the country and thus keep the entire ukrainian nation in tension.

stephanie: to the east, ukraine claimed its troops every taken territory where a battle has raged for months. a spokeswoman conceded the russians have made gains inside the city. in sudan, airstrikes and explosions escalated across khartoum. the army defended key bases from a paramilitary group. the fighting has intensified since peace talks began earlier this month. the worst of it is focused in khartoum but combat has also flared in the war-ravaged region of darfur in western sudan. amnesty international is reporting a surge in official executions to the highest level in five years. the organization recorded 883 executions in 20 countries in 2022, up 53% from the year before. iran led the list carrying out 576 death sentences. saudi arabia had 196.

amnesty says it believes china executed thousands of people. government secrecy makes an accurate count impossible. the european union today formally adopted rules to regulate products that fuel deforestation. they include cattle, coffee, chocolate, and palm oil. companies trading with the 27 nation bloc will be asked to prove their products have not led to a decrease in forested areas. most abortions in north carolina will be banned after 12 weeks. the republican-controlled general assembly overrode the democratic governor's veto of the ban. the new law goes into effect july 1. abortions in cases of rape and incest will be capped at 20 weeks. u.s. bank executives were called to account over salaries and bonuses they earned in the run-up to their own institutions collapsing. at a hearing, senators pressed the former heads of silicon valley bank and signature bank.

maryland democrat chris van hollen challenged silicon valley's former ceo greg becker. >> do you really think getting a bonus of $1.5 million given the showing in 2022 a short time before the total collapse of the bank, do you believe you deserve that? >> i believe the board did the best job they could evaluating the performance. that we had in 2022. >> well, this is why i think people watching this hearing are just going to be scratching their heads and get angrier and angrier. because this is clearly an example where bonus was not tied to performance. stephanie: four senators on the committee have proposed legislation to claw back executive pay within five years of a bank's failure. the secret service is investigating how a person entered the home of national security adviser jake sullivan undetected. the intruder entered the home

about two weeks ago around 3:00 a.m. and appeared to be intoxicated. there is no evidence the person knew sullivan or meant to harm him. the secret service has employed additional security precautions around sullivan's home while the investigation is completed. kentucky's candidates for governor are now set. attorney general daniel cameron won the state's republican primary this evening. he will face democratic inumbent andy beshear. cameron is backed by former president donald trump. he is kentucky's first black major-party nominee for governor. the election will take place november 7th. missouri abruptly terminated today a rule that would have limited transgender care for minors and some adults. the republican attorney general's rule would have required people to undergo over a year of therapy before they could get gender-affirming treatments. no explanation was given for the decision. critically endangered california condors will soon receive emergency vaccinations for bird flu.

an outbreak of the deadliest strain in u.s. history has killed at least 13 condors since march. it's estimated that there are fewer than 350 of the birds in the wild. still to come, apprenticeship programs aim to alleviate teacher shortages. how fatherhood has changed talk-show host andy cohen. the science behind why the northern lights are venturing farther south this year. and much more. >> this is the pbs newshour from the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. william: aside from debt ceiling negotiations, capitol hill was also focused today on what to do about artificial, the fast evolving, remarkably powerful computer technologies that many believe could revolutionize - and perhaps upend - many aspects

of our lives. the metaphors used to describe ai at a senate hearing today reflected this spectrum: some said this could be as momentous as the industrial revolution, others warned it's akin to developing the atomic bomb. >> we could be looking at one of the most significant technological innovations in human history . quest today, senators and experts weighed in on the gravity and growing risks of rapidly developing ai. >> we have unprecedented opportunities here but we are also facing a perfect storm . >> sam altman is the ceo and founder of open ai, which is at the forefront of this new technology. >> as this technology advances, we understand people are anxious about how it could change the way we live. we are too. >> artificial intelligence gained prominence when his company's product, chat gpt was launched in november. it can answer complex questions with human-like responses at startling speeds, but also makes big mistakes.

ai technology can also generate remarkably realistic images or auo known as deep fakes in an instant, like this one of pope sporting a coat he never wore. ai can also imitate people's speech, as senator richard blumenthal demonstrated today. >> now for some introductory remarks. too often, we have seen what happens when technology outpaces regulation. you might have thought that voice was mine and the words from me. but in fact, that voice was not mine. >> in the hearing today, senators raised a series of concerns over this technology. among them, how this example of voice mimicry could be used to spread disinformation. >> what if it had provided an endorsement of ukraine surrendering, or vladimir putin's leadership? >> others raised concerns about everything from privacy, to copyright protections, to the potential elimination of people's jobs.

>> so law -- so loss of jobs, invasion of privacy on a scale we've never seen before, manipulation of personal behavior, manipulation of personal opinions, and potentially the degradation of free elections in america. did i miss anything? >> so the question of the day, can ai be successfully regulated? many agreed there should be some governmental body to establish global rules and norms, even issuing or revoking licenses to ai systems. >> i would form a new agency that licenses any effort above a certain scale of capabilities, and could take that license away and ensure compliance with safety standards. >> but some lawmakers doubt they have the knowledge to handle it. >> the magnitude of the challenge you're giving us is substantial. i'm not sure that we respond quickly and with enough expertise to deal with it. >> gary marcus, a leading voice in ai, emphasized the need for an international body, like those that regulate nuclear research. >> ultimately, we may need something like cern, global, international, and neutral, but focused on ai safety, rather

than high energy physics. >> while he supports regulation, altman warned that it should not stunt the benefits of the new >> i think it's important that any new approach, any new law does not stop the innovation from happening. with smaller companies, open source models, researchers doing work at a smaller scale. that is a wonderful part of this ecosystem and we do not want to slow that down. >> joining me now is one of those who testified. gary marcus is the author of rebooting ai. before we get into the danger of ai that you laid out before the senate, i know you have said that you have loved ai since you were a little kid. and you see remarkable potential for this technology for humanity. make that case for ai first. >> i love it as a cognitive

scientist. i have studied how children learn language for a lot of my career. it's just a fascinating intellectual question to solve it. but also, there's a potential i think, to revolutionize science, and medicine to help us solve things that we can't solve on our own. for example, molecular biology . it has tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of molecules in the body. no one human can understand that . ai might really revolutionize medicine. it might also help us with climate change. we might be able to build eldercare robots to help us with the upcoming demographic conversion where we have more elderly people than young people. so there are lots of practical implications. that's also just cool. it's just interesting for anybody who's grown up on science fiction books and written computer programs, and i have always been interested and i would like to see it succeed. >> you mentioned that science fiction has pointed to downsides of that. you were warning about some of those today before the senate. what are the major concerns you have about this technology?

>> i mean, it's actually a long list and i keep thinking of donald rumsfeld quote about unknown unknowns. we don't really know the scope of it. but just to start with, we know that democracy is threatened because we're likely to enter a regime where bad actors can use these tools to make essentially infinite amounts of misinformation at zero cost. that is incredibly plausible. and so, we're going to enter an era where nobody trusts anything . that is not good. we're going to enter an era where everybody denies any evidence presented them in court and says, well, that's just made up even when it isn't. we're going to have chat bots that encourage people perhaps to commit suicide or do other terrible things, giving bad medical advicemedical and psychiatric advice. we also have the potential for a lot of cybercrime. so these new tools can be used to manipulate people to do so again at a scale we haven't seen before. and in the long term, we don't really know what would happen if machines got out of control and did things we don't want them to do. we are not really prepared for any of this.

>> are there current examples of ai doing these things that are the seeds for these future fears you have? >> news guard has released a study saying 40 or 50 different websites are generating their news automatically. we've already had things like cnet generate automatic news that turned out to be flawed. those are the major first initial signs. we already seen somebody and we already seen at least one case of a suicide that seems to be associated with a chatbot where the chat bot -- i don't even want to say on air but gave that -- gave bad advice. so those are just some examples we've already seen a lot more. >> there is not a great track record when it comes to government regulating technologies but you were part of the group arguing we have to do something to marshal the government powers to get around this technology. what would you like to see done?

>> i argued in my ted talk and a few weeks ago in a column for the economist, that we need an international ai agency that brings together scientists, government, and companies to try to figure out what's best here to try to align that global policy. it was pretty strong agreement in the room that that might be a good idea. at least we need to do that at national level. i don't think existing agencies are really up to the task. of keeping up with the speed at which ai is evolving and coordinating with each other. i think we need some kind of the central regulation around this. there's lots of complicated political problems, but there was a strong bipartisan sense in the room that we need to do something along these lines. one of the specifics that i called for in the room was that we have something like an fda procedure for large models that that are deployed en masse. so if you had something that was used by 1000 people, that's a research project, that's fine. but if you want to release something to one million people,

you should do a safety analysis. and there should be someone outside of your company that evaluates that and make sure it's okay. and then after the fact that should be an additional monitoring as new new issues come up. >> because we have not seen that thus far. we have seen the development of these tools and they are relatively quick to release to broad use to the public. >> that's right, the chat gpt i don't think anybody was really prepared that it would go out to more than 100 million people who subscribed. i think that took everybody in the field by surprise. technology's not that different from what we saw a couple years ago. and so none of us in the field realized how much the public would resonate. and there isn't really a culture now or standard now about when is it okay to release it to everybody? >> isn't the horse already out out of the barn in this regard? let's say you come up with some global government strategy. google and microsoft and the americans and chinese developers and indian developers get on board. won't there always still be

rogue actors who can use smaller versions of this technology to do all the things you are most worried about? >> some of the horses are out of the barn and some are not. so we already for example, have publicly available models that can be used to generate misinformation. i believe that we can build new technologies, but it's going to be hard to try to mitigate some of those risks. there are other technologies that haven't even been built yet, like self improving machines or self aware machines that maybe we don't want to build at all. and so i think is kind of a dress rehearsal for even more sophisticated technologies than the ones that we have now, which are flawed and unreliable. and it's an opportunity to learn how to close these some barn doors before all the horses have escaped. >> you and others have been raising warnings. do you think as a society we are going to hear these warnings in time? >> i was really heartened by

what i heard today in the senate. i saw a lot of bipartisan alignment, and a lot of recognition that we hadn't really handled the internet right. i saw a lot of people with i think intellectual honesty and humility, who were very much wanting to do the right thing here. so there's a long way to go from here, but i couldn't have been more satisfied with the meeting. >> gary marcus, host of the podcast humans versus machines, thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me. william: the first major biography of dr. martin luther king jr in roughly forty years is out, and it has important new revelations about the civil rights leader, and what he dealt with as an public activist and a private citizen. geoff bennett spoke with the author recently for our newshour bookshelf.

>> in hinew biography, king, a life, author jonathan eig sets out to present dr martin luther king jr as more than a civil rights icon. but as a radical thinker with a rebellious side and at the same time paint a more human portrait. jonathan knight joins us now to discuss his research. and what else we can expect in his new comprehensive biography of dr. king. thank you for being with us. jonathan: thank you. >> you have written about some of the most consequential figures in american life. in some ways it makes sense you would write a biography about dr. martin luther king jr.. how did you know there would be anything new to say, anything new to add to the public's understanding of his life? >> i began really simply. i knew that there were lots of people around who knew dr. king, people who are still alive. i was interviewing some of them from my muhammad ali book. and i just figured my time would be really well spent traveling the country the next few years, interviewing people who knew martin luther king jr because the time was running short. and once i started doing that, i realized that there were also a

lot of new archival documents that had come online. since the last batch of books were written. it had been a good 30 to 40 years since the last big king biographies were written, so i really hit the sweet spot. i had people who knew king still around, and i had a ton of new archival material. so i was off to the races. >> how did dr king's upbringing affect his later activism? jonathan: you know, martin king jr was, of course, he was born mike king. he was raised in the church. but not just in the church, where religion was concerned, but a church where religion was seen as a tool to try to change society that america needed to live up to the words in the bible and the words in the constitution and preachers were leading that charge at a time when a lot of black people were afraid to speak out because they might lose their jobs. black preachers had a level of independence. so king learned the bible before he could read and he learned the courage of black preachers before he ever went to school. >> there's also the monumental revelation based on your research in the book that king's

famous criticism of malcolm x was just not true. that the interview that he gave alex haley that alex haley miss -- misquoted his comments. and that forever changed the historical view of the relationship between martin luther king and malcolm x. tell us about that and how you discovered it. jonathan: this is one of the most shocking discoveries that i made, you know, as a routine when i'm writing a book, if someone does a good interview with my subject, i'll look for the original tapes of that interview. i look for the transcripts of the tapes, the notes just to see if they left anything out. and i went to look for the alex haley interview, the longest interview ever published with martin luther king jr. and the tapes were not available. but the transcripts were and they were at duke university's rubenstein library. and when i read through the transcripts, i was shocked because the most famous criticism that martin luther king had of malcolm x came from that interview in playboy when he said that martin luther king said that malcolm's fiery demagogic oratory would bring

nothing but grief. that his violence was doing nothing about harm to black people in america. king never said that. and the quotes have been changed dramatically. some of them have been entirely invented. and we've been telling the story of the relationship between martin luther king and malcolm x for generations, based in part on that quote, the sense that martin luther king had this antagonism, and it just wasn't true. what king said in that interview was that i don't know that i have all the answers. i don't want to be so arrogant as to think that everything i say and do is right. i'm interested in what malcolm has to say. i don't like his calls for violence, but they seem to agree on the call for black dignity on the on the call for black equal rights. they agreed. on much more than they disagreed on. >> do you have a sense of why alex haley would fabricate those comments? >> well, it's complicated. i think there was a sense of, you know, maybe he wanted to stir controversy.

maybe it was his editors pushing him. we don't know. but unfortunately, he played into the hands of those, including the fbi, who were trying to stoke controversy and dissension between black leaders in america. there was a sense that if we could divide the important black leaders in america, we could keep them from really moving the masses towards the kind of society that they saw with equality and the people who were destined, who are intent on preserving the white power structure wanted to see malcolm and martin luther king not getting along. >> you mentioned the fbi surveillance operation against dr king. there's some new information that you uncovered that you include in the book. how did that affect his relationship with president johnson at the time, which was a critical moment in the civil rights movement? jonathan: this is one of the other really stunning revelations for me and my research for this book. i found the part of the private papers that j edgar hoover the private memos that he was sending directly to president johnson. these were not contained in president johnson's regular archives. he asked his secretary to store them in a safe so that i could

-- so i found them in his secretary's papers. and what they showed was that hoover was writing directly to the president. sometimes 3, 4 times a week with specific details, really sometimes very petty details about martin luther king jr. relationship. -- and it really seems to have done great damage to the relationship. i think the relationship between martin and the king jr and president johnson was the greatest single relationship between an activist and president in our country's history, but that relationship was slowly undermined and really destroyed by j. edgar hoover's leaks, and i should say by lbj's complicity in that he was -- johnson was encouraging hoover to keep it up. >> how do you approach navigating the challenges of presenting a balance and balanced and comprehensive portrayal of dr king's life, considering both his remarkable achievements and his personal flaws? jonathan: i think it's very important to be honest about our heroes. king was deeply flawed. he knew it. he talked about it in his

sermons. he was not perfect, and i want to balance that. so that readers of this book understand that our heroes don't have to be perfect. if we expect perfection we have a very boring story on her hands. but also we can't really hope to ever emulate the great men and women in our history because none of us are perfect. so i think readers are smart enough to seek out his flaws and -- to see king, except his flaws, wrestle with them as he did, but still appreciate his greatness and all of the accomplishments and how he continues to inspire us. >> i think we have so few heroes that there are so many people who are invested in the mythology. >> part of our problem is that people are afraid to step into roles of leadership today because they might be criticized for something in their background that might not be quite so honorable and that discourages people from taking chances. you know, you have to take a chance to be a leader. martin luther king didn't look to be a leader. he wasn't asked. he wasn't asking to become the leader of the civil rights movement. he was thrust into it. and he had doubts about himself. you know, one of the things

that's really painful. we have these fbi transcripts of his conversations. his phones were being tapped, his home phone, his office, his friends. phones were being tapped. and we can hear him in these phone calls, basically pleading for understanding. why is everybody treating me so badly? why are the newspapers criticizing me? even his friends when they say to him, you know you should just stick to the voting rights in the south. you're making too many enemies. you're costing us support by speaking out on northern racism , by speaking out in the vietnam war, king is begging them. don't you understand that this comes from my religious beliefs? i'm not a politician. i'm not trying to do what's best for my approval ratings. i'm trying to do what god commands us to do and you feel his pain. so i think it's important that we accept -- and i think we can appreciate him more and respect him more when we accept his flaws. >> the book presents a vivid portrait of dr king and it is exceptional.

jonathan eig, the book is king, a life. thanks so much for being with us. jonathan: thank you. william: apprenticeships are common in fields like welding, plumbing, and carpentry. but until recently, the federal government didn't recognize teaching apprenticeships. the biden administration changed that, and educators are now hoping that new federal funding, combined with experience from college programs will open the floodgates to a new class of qualified, diverse teachers for america's schools stephanie sy reports from dallas for our series rethinking college. stephanie: 22-year old pricila cano padron says she's always dreamed of becoming a teacher. >> i've always wanted to help people. i've always wanted to help someone in need. just seeing the relationship i had with my teachers in

elementary school and how they have helped me. stephanie: she's a first generation mexican-american, just like many of the students in this classroom at audelia creek elementary in dallas, texas. >> i see students that remind me of myself when i was in their third grade classroom. now, thanks to a teaching apprenticeship, cano padron is on her way to realizing her dream. teacher apprenticeships, at least those registered with the department of labor are new started last year by the biden administration in response to the pandemic. 17 states now have registered apprenticeship programs, with interest spreading. >> after covid and losing so many teachers in our classrooms, we really had to come back to the table to figure out what new teaching models would look like. and we knew we had to do something different. stephanie: shareefah nadir-mason administers the program at dallas college, which offers a low-cost bachelor's degree combined with paid on-the-job training.

that's what pricilia cano padron was doing at audelia creek elementary. >> we don't simply want our students to be first generation graduates. we want them to be first generation un-impoverished. so we want them to walk into the field without the burden of student loan debt. stephanie: in nearly all 50 states, certified teachers are required to have at least a bachelor's degree, which comes with an average cost of over 35 ,000 dollars a year. the student teaching in the last year is typically unpaid. it's a barrier for many would-be teachers. the labor department's approval of registered teacher apprenticeships unlocks federal funding to cover tuition, books, and fees. kueng -- >> that is a game changer and allows us to have a different conversation about who gets to become a teacher and how they get to become a teacher. stephanie: david donaldson is

founder of the national center for grow your own, a nonprofit working to expand the teaching workforce. >> we help states and school districts across the country launch these, grow your own and or registered apprenticeship programs with the ultimate goal of creating pathways for folks to become a teacher for free and get paid to do so. stephanie: donaldson challenges the notion that teaching is no longer a desirable profession. he says there are teachers all around us. >> whether parents, guardians, tutors, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, paraprofessionals, folks who have a heart for teaching, who if simply given the opportunity. and usually what this means is removing the financial barrier , what make an excellent teacher if given the chance. stephanie: ramia dawes drove a school bus in dallas for more than a decade. >> i loved driving the school bus. i drove a big old bus with about 50 kids in the back. stephanie: getting a b.a. while feeding and clothing her two kids seemed impossible not so long ago. >> i was working with kids for 11 years, driving the school bus. stephanie: and that whole time

you were thinking, i wouldn't mind being a teacher. >> yeah, i just didn't have the resources to do so. stephanie: the dallas college apprenticeship program allowed her to continue her higher education. she made roughly 30,000 dollars as a teacher apprentice in the richardson independent school district last year. >> i'm getting a paycheck every, you know, two weeks and i'm going to school. i've always wanted just, to be able to, you know, be able to still provide for my family, but also do something that i really had a passion for. stephanie: high minority, high poverty regions like richardson isd have been hit harder by the national teacher shortage. tabitha branum is the district's superintendent. >> if you would have told me ten years ago that we would be a place in education where we start a year with anywhere between 50 and 100 vacancies, i would not have believed you. but our surrounding districts, we are all faced with having to

look at how we staff differently because the shortage is real. stephanie: the shortage is a key reason why branum decided to partner with dallas college-the apprentices help support the full-time teachers, and also fill vital roles as substitutes. >> it's an extra set of hands in the classroom. and then add to it and we we've talked about the teacher shortage. let's talk about the substitute shortage. we have worked really hard to message to our educators, take care of yourself. if you're sick, stay home. so the fact that these apprentices are now substitutes for us one day a week, it's the relief of those teachers in that building who know that i might be off this week, but that apprentice is going to be in my classroom. they can really take the day off and not worry. stephanie: through the dallas college program, apprentices spend significantly more time working in classrooms than they would in a traditional program, far better preparation for an aspiring educator, says shareefah nadir-mason.

>> we have a lot of smart people who graduate in education but have not had the opportnity to practice enough. we built a program strictly around practice. stephanie: the teacher apprentices are assigned to experienced mentors in the classroom, building their skills and confidence. >> when i first came, i was like, i don't really know how to teach math. and i'm really scared. i'm learning from people that are doing it in the classroom. they know how to handle class classroom management. they know how to teach. i am able to look at it and model it. >> you have 42 eyes, little eyes looking at you. with the help of my team members , they helped me overcome the shyness, that fear that i had of teaching up there. stephanie: grow your own's david donaldson says the apprenticeships are the first step toward his ultimate vision, a free quality education for every teacher in america. >> imagine a world with no teacher vacancies.

every kid having not only the teacher they need but deserve. stephanie: a teacher, one might say, like pricila cano padron she graduated this month, and has already accepted an offer to teach 4th grade reading at a local elementary school. for the pbs newshour, i'm stephanie sy, in dallas. william: best known as a talk show host and the bright, shining face of bravo tv, andy cohen is opening up in a new book about his latest adventure, life as the father of two kids. amna nawaz has that conversation. >> before he oversaw a reality tv empire, andy cohen grew up in st louis, and worked as a producer at cbs news. later landing as a programming executive at bravo tv where he

helped launch the popular real housewives franchise. >> i don't have an issue with you. i never had an issue with you. >> in its 17 years on the air, the brand stretched to more than 10 cities, reaching millions of fans. cohen first stepped in front of the camera in 2009, hosting the late night talk show "watch what happens live". >> known for its celebrity guests, boozy moments and spilling secrets. his profile has only grown. >> that just seems like an odd thing to say. >> hosting the network's reunion specials, launching his own radio channel on sirius xm and writing a series of best-selling books. his latest, the daddy diaries, the year i grew up, chronicles chronicles his day-to-day life, and celebrity run-ins, in the year he welcomed daughter lucy to his family, joining his son ben. we recently sat down to talk about family, work, and what made him want to write another book.

>> i love writing. it's my fifth book. it's my third installment of the andy cohen diaries series, which was inspired by andy warhol's diaries, which i absolutely loved, which are very name-droppy. they're very celebrity heavy and they're very much new york stories. and this is all that with the overlay of having two kids as a single dad. >> anyone who follows you online has seen your beautiful family. but tell us tell us about your kids. >> my kids are great. they are four and one. the four year old loves being an older brother. i was writing the book during, everyone says terrible twos, but it's really terrible threes. >> three is worse than two. >> terrible. >> three's like a professional two year old. >> exactly. so, you know, we have some knock down drag outs during the summer months of the daddy diaries. collect vacation's over. ok? i know my way around a group of

real housewives which can be infuriating and exhausting. you can't get off the couch. is that a deal? so, you know what i jumped right into toddler fits. >> not that disimilar. >> exactly. you just let it play out. >> you write about the decision to have kids in the first place. you refer to this is the year that you grew up. how are you different now than you were before? >> starting in the happy way, i mean, i'm just a more grounded of a person. when you publish your diaries, you really look at what you do every day and say, okay, this is my life or this is my life that i'm putting out there for consumption. and i got to the point where i thought, is this all there is? everything's really fun. but i wanted to be grounded. >> you've also said your book is a bit of a statement on sort of pop culture in 2022.

there's one line in the book where you say housewives are, often are offensive on some level, but the line has moved over 16 years. how has it moved? >> producing a show about a group of politically incorrect outspoken women. >> that's my opinion! >> in 2023, in the age of, you know, cancel culture and people be being offended by things you didn't know you could be offended by is a challenge. and so it's it's changed a lot. >> just the brand itself, which is now very much an empire. it's changed so much since the first season. they were living in townhouses. they weren't their own celebrity brands. now they're full glam. you have a huge convention with thousands of people. they are their own celebrities. >> yes. >> because of the show. why do you think we have this fascination with this kind of television? >> it is the modern soap opera. it is the soap opera of our time. >> never go near my husband. >> i know that people who don't watch it, it's very easy to look

at the clips and say and have a judgment. but i think that the reason it's still on the air is that it's about friendship and motherhood and being a wife and a sister and family and a whole lot more. and there are things that ground it in relatability. it's also sometimes very aspirational. if it was just a drink toss or an offensive comment, it would not still be on the air, i promise. there's no way. >> would you let your kids watch the show one day? >> eventually. >> would you ever let them star in their own reality show? >> i would prefer that they not. and by the way, the people always say to me, would you ever star on a reality show? this is as close as i would get. this is a year in in my life, but i am in control of the edit. >> did you edit yourself a lot in this? >> i edited myself, but i also pushed myself. this is my fifth book and i know and i learned in my first book you have to push yourself.

this is the most vulnerable i've ever been in a book. >> i got to ask this, too, because you, in the reunions you host with these housewives and your own show on watch what happens live, you are a very skilled interviewer. >> thank you. >> because you know how to get people to share things that they probably wouldn't share otherwise. >> yes. >> what makes a good interview for you? how do you do that? >> i was a producer at cbs news. so i not only learned how to produce an interview, but i learned how much time, four and a half minutes of tv time is, when they're telling me in my ear. that's actually a lot of time to get something out of someone. so that was important training for me. but also, i think a genuine curiosity is important. >> it does give you a platform to talk about the things that you really care about. you talk about lgbtq rights. you talk about politics. >> this is one big dog whistle. >> do you feel that's just something you want to do or do you feel like that's a responsibility right now?

>> as a gay american and as a jewish american, two groups really under fire right now, i feel like if there are issues facing my community, i speak up about it. never did i think that people would be fighting drag queens. >> why do you think we're seeing that right now? >> well, i think it's a distraction from what's really going on, and it's a way to fire up your base. let's hate on the trans community and drag queens, two marginalized groups of people. and i'm sorry, but the biggest issue facing the world is not whether drag queens are performing. it's not an issue. >> you've talked about the heaviness too, that comes with being a single father. what do you mean by that? >> i think that's why i called it the year i grew up. i'm a happy go lucky guy. >> yeah, that's clear. >> my resting mood when i wake up is happiness. the weight of being a single father really hit me this year. i had been for three years before lucy came. now suddenly there are two. i just want to be everything to them.

>> you did say i always felt light as a feather. this year, my feet feel firmly planted. i like how that feels. it sounds like you're in a good place. >> yes. >> so you're ready for a third kid? >> no. oh, my god. you're going to scare me out of pbs newshour. are you kidding me? you are joking, right? >> we can talk about it later. >> i'm dancing as fast as i can. >> andy cohen, author of the daddy diaries the year i grew up. absolute pleasure. >> thank you so much. how fun. william: you can hear more from andy cohen online with amna's lightning round of questions, from his dream guest to his favorite president. that's on our instagram. parts of the united states have recently been getting glimpses of the northern lights. john yang spoke with our science correspondent miles o'brien for a brief explaination of why this spectacle in the skies is now being seen further south.

every year there is the northern lights. but it is usually restricted to the northernmost areas of the earth. now it is as far south as the united states. why is that happening? >> the son has a cycle of about 11 years. it goes from solar minimum to solar maximum. we are approaching the maximum. the activity on the sun greatly increases. it blows particles from the sun in our direction that interact with the magnetic field in our atmosphere. and in so doing excite them and make them colorful. in some cases green and red colors. because we are at this point where there is more activity headed our way, we are seeing wonderful northern lights and it is extending to lower latitudes so it is a great opportunity if you have never had the chance to

see them. make an effort to do it. you do not have to go to the arctic or iceland anymore because of the solar maximum. what is great is when you go to see them, every time you see them it is different. it is a different a serial -- different ethereal thing. it is kind of romantic. >> give some advice to people who want to see it. you have to get away from the cities, you want someplace that is really dark. >> tried to get as far north as you can. it is coming down into the northern parts of europe and in places where you would not normally see it in the u.s. as well. the thing is to just get up in the middle of the night and wait . enjoy the spectacle. >> how long is this activity going to go on? >> the solar maximum is going to peek in 2025. then it will start scaling back.

this will continue to be quite a light show. it also has the potential to cause difficulty for communication satellites and the power grid so we should be on guard for that. the sun is a big player in our solar system to be sure and when the solar maximum occurs it is not just a spectacle, it is a potential harm to systems so we have to watch out for that. >> there is plenty more online including a look at why more than a half million americans are on waitlists for disability services and what some states are doing to clear those backlogs. and that's the newshour for tonight. i'm william brangham. join us here tomorrow evening when judy woodruff reports from her birthplace of tulsa, oklahoma, about the reckoning that city is having about its fraught history with race. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you and see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by.

>> actually you don't need vision to do most things in life. yes i am legally blind and yes i am responsible for the user interface. data visualization. if i can see it and understand it quickly, anyone can. it is exciting to be part of a team driving the technology forward. that is the most rewarding thing. >> people who know no bdo. >> consumer cellular has been offering no contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you. visit consumer cellular.tv. carnegie corporation of new york, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement , and the advancement of

international peace and security at carnegie.org. and with the ongoing support of these institutions. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. this is pbs newshour west, from weta studios in washington and from our bureau at the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.]

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>> funding for this series has been provided in part by the following... >> up norway curates norwegian travel experiences in the footsteps of "new scandinavian cooking." >> ♪ no, take me home ♪ ♪ take me home where i belong ♪ >> vgan, the full taste of chocolate. ♪♪ ♪♪ >> [ singing indistinctly ] ♪♪ >> this is a story of adventure,