but a back to the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour mad cow disease is back in america and all government officials say it's an isolated incident others aren't so sure could this be the beginning of outbreak of the disease and a government agencies like the u.s.d.a. really doing enough to keep americans safe also running is great for dealing with stress and for staying in shape so what this new research suggests about it's a link to your brain working better i'll tell you in tonight's science and internet it's a daily take much to f.d.r.'s disappointment america has turned into a nation paralyzed by fear and this fear is bringing us to the edge of

a national form of insanity so how do we stand up and restore america as the land of the brave. the best of the rest of the news a quick update on what's going on in congress we've been covering the ongoing struggle for american students drowning in debt and now democrats in the senate and republicans in the house have both proposed plans to prevent the interest rate on student loans from doubling come july first preventing the hike in interest rates will cost between four and six billion dollars and democrats in the senate proposed to pay for it by closing what they call the john edwards loophole which allows high price consultants to avoid pain to payroll taxes republicans in the house. proposed

paying for it by slashing preventive health care programs that are contained in obamacare so these are the two choices one closing a fat cat tax loophole or two cutting off funding so working class americans can get the health care they need in any other session of congress this would be an obvious choice but with today's republicans who even the catholic bishops say have lost their moral compass anything is possible stay tuned this will be a fight all the way to the election in november. now on to the safety of our food supply after a several year absence of mad cow disease is back it's a disease that causes cows brains to deteriorate until a cow goes mad and then dies it has the same effect on humans who get infected by eating diseased the beef earlier this week a random test discovered the disease in a cow in california luckily this time inspection program worked and the cow was never close to entering our food chain as

a result many food agencies around the world are applauding the u.s. food inspection system one is the oh i eat the french intergovernmental animal health group which said in a statement this detection demonstrates that the u.s. national surveillance system is efficient this case should not have implications for the current u.s. risk categorisation also the chief veterinary officer of the united nations food and agriculture organization said the fact that the u.s. picked it up before it entered the food chain and the fact that they were transparent about it should give confidence to the trading partners it shows that the surveillance systems in place have done their job but others are a bit more skeptical about our inspection system and believe this latest discovery of mad cow disease in the united states warrants a full overhaul of how that disease is detected and snuffed out by our government so what should we take away from this latest brush with mad cow disease joining me now is dr michael hansen senior staff scientist with the consumers union dr hansen

welcome glad to be with you tom thank you for joining us from our offices in new york i believe your officials are saying that this latest case of mad cow is just a quote isolated incident and quote do you both believe this is an isolated incident or do you think that it's the start of an outbreak of mad cow disease. well i don't think this is an isolated incident because as you said they were randomly checking cattle and the reason some people say this is good because it didn't get into the food supply well the fact of the matter is they were only testing dead so this was a dead cow that was taken to a rendering plant it was an exhibit any symptoms that it was simply a dead cow and i understand there was twenty or thirty other cows that came in that were dead from this facility and the random testing caught it so if they buy they test forty thousand cows

a year we slaughter. thirty four to thirty five million this represents point one two percent of all the cows out there and if we found this one case what's the odds if there's only this one case in the u.s. what's the odds of sampling point one two percent of the cattle and finding that one case that's vanishingly small this suggests that there are other cases out there these don't typically just spontaneously appear or do they are the you know this notion well no this notion that this is a quote spontaneous case what they're really talking about this is an atypical strain of b.s.e. it's not like the classico it's slightly different but this often happens with diseases that disease and sheep is called scraping and there's actually over a dozen strains of scrape be and when people get various illnesses there's often different strains of the disease haven't they all flu in humans or here same way.

pardon i said it happens it with in humans with flu every year and so it's always it's constantly mutating these things right exactly so the way it looks is a different but this notion that it can't be transmitted by feed there's no evidence that that is the case and in fact what they have done the word is that the type of a typical case this cow is what's called the l. type and the reason that's important is they've done studies with mice that are genetically engineered so that they express the human preying on protein ok so that means they act like humans and if you infect them with classical b.s.e. you tend to get variant c.j.d. when you infect them with. b.s.e. the mice get sick and they come down with the disease but they come down far more quickly than they do if it's classical b.s.e. verger more they've gone further with this b.s.e.

and they've inoculated it into monkeys into packs and again with a much smaller dose thing classico b.s.e. it causes illness in the animals in a dramatically shorter time this suggests that it is actually more virulent than classical b.s.e. and one more example there was another study with this type b.s.e. where they were feeding it to lemurs which is a type of primate they could transmit the disease that is these non-human primates lemurs came down and got sick simply by eating material from this b.s.e. case you can't do that with class called b.s.e. so that suggests that this is a more hazardous form of b.s.e. more hazardous to humans and so what that tells you is when you find it you need to take stronger actions to make sure that that is not spreading and causing problems in the human population and just a defined term. b.o.c.

is bowed bovine spongiform encephalopathy is that on your form and stuff a lot but they yes otherwise known as an out is so dizzy right ok so what should we be doing given the apparently there's a more variable and more dangerous potentially wildly more contagious form of mad cow disease that has been identified in a cow here in the united states what should the u.s.d.a. be doing what should we as consumers be doing what do we do well there is actually u.s.d.a. and f.d.a. need to be in volved in this what u.s.d.a. has to do is they need to dramatically expand the surveillance program as i said we test point one two percent of the cattle that go to slaughter if we look at japan japan cast to every college that goes to slaughter above the age of twenty months in europe many of the countries test all the cars that go to slaughter above the age of thirty months and in some company some countries it's above the age of

twenty four months so at the very least what we need to be doing is testing all animals above a given age say thirty months or twenty four months all those animals that go into the feed supply should be tested for b.s.e. second or for mad cow disease the second thing that needs to be done is this test that the government is using they should allow private companies to test their cattle at slaughter if they want and they should be able to label the meat that comes from those animals as b.s.e. tested that that way people can have some choice in the marketplace and then since we know that how mad cow disease spreads is it comes from infected feed we need to really dramatically stop some of these dangerous animal feeding practices which are still taking place in the u.s. we've put some controls in place but not enough dr michael hansen thank you so much for being with us this. your welcome.

is thursday so let's get geek of promising new research suggests exercise may do more than just lose a few pounds it might make you smarter too last year researchers at the university of illinois gathered four groups of mice and put them in four different living arrangements some that contain stimulating things like running wheels and toys and some just had the bare boring basics all the mice completed a series of cognitive tests at the start of the study and were injected with a chemical that allowed the researchers to track changes in their brains through the course of the study for several months the mice ran played or just lounged around in their living spaces at the conclusion of the study the researchers found that the mice who had exercised and ran had healthier brains and perform significantly better on cognitive tests than the other mice so how does exercise

build brain power well like other muscles in organs in your body the brain is made of living tissue and its function deteriorates with lack of use and age in fact beginning your late twenty's and likely lose about one percent annually of the volume of your hippocampus that portion of your brain related to memory and certain types of learning however. exercise seems to slow or even reverse the physical decay of the brain like it does with muscles in the body the researchers who studied the mice found that those who exercised and ran on the wheels had about twice as many new neurons in their hippocampus is as the mice who had stayed immobile is finding shows that exercise seems to spur something called neurogenesis the creation of new neurons in the brain but how scientists still aren't sure but some research suggests that exercise increases levels of a substance called b.d.n.f. nose job i didn't come up with it it's called brain derived neurotrophic factor

b.d.n.f. is responsible for strengthening neurons fortifying connections between neurons and promoting neurogenesis researchers have found that after workouts most humans also have greater levels of beating b.d.n.f. in their bloodstreams a big b.d.f. another question scientists still haven't answered is whether all types of exercise can produce the same effect on the brain is running does it some studies have shown that non-insurance exercises like lifting weights may also have positive effects of the brain so next time you go for a jog remember your brain is getting stronger too. coming up years of fear mongering have crippled the american people bringing our nation to the brink of insanity so what lesson can we learn from norway to help us overcome our national fear.

you just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old so if you tell the truth. i have a confession i am a total get a friend that i love grabbing hip hop music and freaking. out he was kind of a bit yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without you see its place. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so four lengthly is think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charging welcome to the big picture.

there's a new report out by the royal society from the united kingdom that should give us all concern for the future of our planet it's titled people and the planet it was chaired by dobell prize winning biologists or john sulston the report warns that world population must be stabilized and consumption and wealthy nations must be reduced or our entire planet is in big trouble as the report reads the number of people living on the planet has never been higher their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment we can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future this is basically the same warning the president jimmy carter gave americans back in the one nine hundred seventy s. but it was both ridiculed and then ignored when ronald reagan came to power with

a more positive message basically telling americans we can do whatever we want and then after nine eleven bush told us all we should go shopping and consume even more now with corporations calling the shots in washington long term health of the planet has taken a huge backseat to short term profits if we don't change our ways and embrace clean alternative energy and empower and educate women around the planet to regulate population control then we all could be headed for a rough century. crazy alert facial hair isn't very well at least according to one russian man i've hugo believes he owns the trademark to the popular goatee style of facial hair and he wants any man who wears one to pay up to god his demanding that non russians pay him six hundred dollars for go t.

writes and if you're famous the cost is higher celebrities like snoop dog robert downey jr and leo di caprio at the pay thirty thousand dollars a few guy gets his way even once television stations of pam a whopping four million dollars that they plan to put someone on the air with a goatee phil olsen director of beard team usa an american bearded group says that even if manages to prove he has a trademark to the goatee quote that i won't be a struggle in the beard world there won't be many people sending him four million dollars besides the goatee is not the rage it once was full beards are really taken all off but just in case if you're like andrew over here and you're sporting a goatee you might want to start saving up for a very hairy legal situation. just. the. it's the good the bad of the very very event trip bode tench asli ugly the good keystone progress

the advocacy group in pennsylvania progressive advocacy group started a grassroots campaign to encourage pennsylvania legislators to reject membership in alec since the beginning of the campaign for state legislators of left alec including the former alec pennsylvania state chair john heavy across the country state legislators are wising up to the shadowy workings of alec and leaving that organization let's hope other groups like keystone progress and it's more legislators jumped the alex ship the bad donald trump trump was in scotland yesterday testifying before the scottish parliament arguing the plans to construct wind turbines would make scotland go broke however he's really more concerned about the wind turbines constructing views of his billion dollar golf resort than he is about scotland's economy trump said the wind turbines are quote the most serious

problem scotland will have or has added. by the way everybody laughed when he said it i think the donald is really just worried about the wind turbines blowing his hair the wrong way and the very very ugly spirit airlines spirit airlines is refusing to fund the taking of seventy six year old vietnam veteran jury meekins even after he was told he can fly because he's dying if answer is to meakins offer the airline all of the confirmation needed from his oncologist and from hospice but they wouldn't budge it's clear spirit airlines doesn't care at all about its customers and as mr meekin said just want to keep the money and that is very very.

a lot has changed since the one nine hundred thirty three when franklin roosevelt told us that we have nothing to fear but fear itself and that we get out of the republican great depression through the power of compassion and cooperation we now have politicians who use fear and hatred as political tools first after flying around the country in air force one after nine eleven george bush finally decided to really scare the hell out of all of us in his state of the union address a few months later time and distance from the events of september the eleventh will not make a safe unless we act on its lessons america is no longer protected by advanced oceans. we are protected from attack only by vigorous action of brawn and increased vigilance at home our president basically told us that only going to war and a massive security state would keep us safe and the way to be afraid constantly what followed was a decade of shock and awe bunker busting bombs depleted uranium drone strikes and

kill squads or follower military occupations middle east instability torture war crimes this is where bush and cheney hyping up fear of terrorism drove us into endless war and carnage that is still claiming the lives of the u.s. troops and civilians across the middle east even today here at home we responded to fear by giving up our civil liberties the patriot act and actual defense authorization act it says that the president can arrest and hold you forever without charges because he decided to. we responded to bush's fear mongering by declaring that you and me are terrorist suspects if we want to board a plane forcing us to be x. rayed to have our nude bodies put on display or groped by t.s.a. agents because of bush's fear we now have little children getting groped by strangers at the airport like seven year old dina frank who suffers from cerebral

palsy and was traumatized by t.s.a. agents and forced to miss your flight because the bush cheney fear mongering tells us we should worry that our own children are trying to blow up our planes or this young boy bound to a wheelchair who also had to be felt up by t.s.a. agents to ensure that he wasn't a terrorist threat as well think about this we're subjecting our children to abuse because bush and cheney decided to use fear to get political capital even in israel where they actually are surrounded by countries have declared war on them they don't grope kids or x.-ray people in their airports all our fear has driven us to the pause of national insanity. but in norway where christian and terrorists anders breivik murdered seventy seven innocent civilians most of them children who he says by the way he killed because they looked like liberals his words the people there refused to succumb to fear

even though breivik isn't alone there are plenty of hate filled racists in norway just like there are pretty much every other country in the world but rather than screaming about terror and fear and calling for brother head on a stake rather than installing michael chertoff x. ray pour on scanners in their government buildings rather than classifying their children and their elderly as potential gun loving maniacs or terrorists who are going to blow up their planes in our region people had a quite different answer. instead of cowering in fear the way george bush and dick cheney would have us do in our waging people decided to sing a song. today is the brother trial unfolds in there by courthouse over forty thousand norwegians huddled together in the streets to sing a folk so. it was

a folk song that breivik himself condemned claiming that it was some sort of marxist indoctrination song for kids why because it talked about brother shit brotherhood and living together in peace. but people aren't singing it despite brevik that's singing in anger that they're not doing it because he didn't like it they're singing it in hope because of the important message of the song. the song is called children of the rainbow and the words that the norwegian people saying today are this a sky full of stars blues sea as far as you can see and earth where flowers grow can you wish for a more together shall we live every sister. every brother young children of the rainbow a fertile land. as that was the song very simple very straightforward it's

like a we society rather than give in to the fear that we americans gave into after nine eleven when george bush dick cheney told us to cower in fear and go go shopping instead of going to the place of death with a bullhorn all full of bluster and bravado and was tossed around the norwegian people sang a song to remind themselves of who they are of their nation's values they remind of themselves that they belong to a we society one which is the song says together shall we live every sister every brother regardless of race or religion. that song reminds them that they're not a vengeful society and they're not afraid and their communities are much stronger than the damage the terrorists and the haters like brother could inflict upon them one can only wonder where the united states would be today if we had chose balance

instead of bombs songs instead of surveillance osama bin laden and anders breivik had similar goals they both hope that their actions would drive the united states and norway respectively into fear driven frenzy that once confronted with terror that our governments and people would react with desperation and actually become as angry and evil and murderous as were bin laden and brother they hoped that their acts of terrorism against the united states of norway we give them exactly what they needed a violent war alike reaction that they could point to as justification to wage more violence against americans and our regions but so far only one of those two men actually succeeded and while bin laden may be dead and at the bottom of the sea he died knowing that george bush did exactly what bin laden water on the other hand are waging terrorist brother is today here in the songs of

a triumphant population knowing he failed in his mission to bring fear the people of norway it's time for us to do a lot more singing and a lot less bombing. that's it for the big picture tonight for more information on the stories we covered visit our website to tom arbonne dot com free speech oregon r t dot com you can also check out our two you tube channels or links at thom hartmann dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on i tunes and you can visit tom hartman dot com to download the audio podcast of our daily three to six pm eastern time radio show and we are free to mark and i phone an i pad app at the app store he said his faith feedback on twitter and tom underscore arbonne on facebook and tom underscore hartman are blogs message boards and telephone comment client tom hartman dot com and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active tag your it see the mark .

we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old until she told the truth. i confess and i am a total get of friends that i was grabbing hip hop music and. he was kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of the world without you see it's a place. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize

everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harvey welcome to the big picture.