Remembering Noah Adams

Today on the show, we honor the late Noah Adams, longtime NPR All Things Considered host. We bring you three of his stories about the complicated and messy parts of being human in an ever-changing world. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Rund Abdelfatah?

  You're listening to Throughline from NPR. I'm Randa Abdelfattah.

• 0:27Rund Abdelfatah?

  Today, we're doing something a little different on the show. We're honoring longtime NPR All Things Considered host Noah Adams. Noah and a lot of the other NPR hosts who came before me helped create the sound and soul of NPR, nuanced storytelling that centers the complicated, often messy, sometimes beautiful parts of being human. Noah passed away last month, so we wanted to bring you three of his stories that showcase the range of perspectives he brought to the airwaves. The first story is from 1993. Noah was in Serbia for several weeks, talking to people about the war in Bosnia, during which atrocities were committed

• 1:10Rund Abdelfatah?

  that would later be classified as genocide. Before he left Serbia, he produced this short essay that ran on All Things Considered. I think it captures the spirit of all the stories we tell on Throughline, stories that look back into the past to better understand the world we live in now. Here's Noah.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  I'm sitting on a park bench at the edge of history. This is Cala Magdun Park. It's actually a fortress on a bluff. And far below, two rivers come together, the Sava and the Danube. Looking northwest across the water, the land is flat, extending to Hungary and Central Europe. And behind me, the hills of Serbia, the mountains of Montenegro. If you wanted to conquer the Balkan Peninsula, you had to fight here. The Romans built a fort. The Ottoman Turks had control for a long time. In 1915, the Austro-Hungarian troops were over on the other side of the river, firing shells into Belgrade. In 1941, a Nazi air attack killed 17,000 in the city.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  The fortifications standing now are from the 18th century, crumbling red brick and limestone, ramparts and bastions, and sentry boxes and moats. The British author Rebecca West wrote about this park in 1937. She thought Belgrade a mournful city, even then, even in spring. The history of Belgrade, she writes, makes one wonder what the human race has lost by its habit of bleeding itself like a mad medieval surgeon. And if you are depressed by that thought, you'd best not visit the Yugoslav Military Museum here in the park. It's two hours at least of weapons from all the various Balkan uprisings, rebellions, wars. Arrows and spears from the 9th century, axes and armor,

• 3:01Speaker 02

  a chainmail shirt, 15th century swords, and maces with iron spikes. Then the steel sabers, the first gunpowder bomb, the pistols, muskets, and cannons. Move through the centuries, and the weapons begin to gleam and shimmer with terrifying edges. And the uniforms are more regal, resplendent reds and blues with polished leather and brass. It would have been a proud thing to wear a uniform and fight in the first Serbian uprising or the Serbian-Turkish war.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  And then you're finished and out into the sunlight. On the grass nearby, there's an array of artillery weapons and tanks, Yugoslav, Hungarian, Polish, a German torpedo. The young boys who come to the park like to climb up on the anti-aircraft guns. The Military Museum and the Daily News from Bosnia can almost make you think that war is what usually happens. Young men and women and children die. Politicians talk. Relief agencies try to help. And you do notice the museum has no pictures of victims, only heroes.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  In Cala Magdun Park, the old men gather to play chess. They are handsome men with neckties and pressed suits. They are gentle and so fond of one another.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Surely, some of these men, 50 years ago, took some part in the Second World War. And I wonder what they really think about today's conflict. After all, it was their struggle that was called the people's liberation war.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  I have been in Serbia for two weeks now. I'm not able to understand very much about the war in Bosnia. But then I think about our civil war and wonder how hard it could have been for a Serb visiting America to explain why 40,000 soldiers had to die at Gettysburg, 24,000 at Antietam. I have seen in Serbia the dark, rich earth planted with sunflowers. I've seen a policeman in a small town sleeping in the sun, a farmer's wife talking joyfully of her children in the city. I've seen gun emplacements at a bridge across the Drina, aiming west. I've seen three young Serbs in a Belgrade café, wearing lots of gold.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  "They are killers," someone says. And I've noticed that even some Serbs who speak out against the war in Bosnia can get a strange look in their eyes when you ask about the Albanians, down in Serbia's province of Kosovo.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  This is Noah Adams in Dumbarton.

• 5:57Rund Abdelfatah?

  Coming up, two more stories from the late Noah Adams. First, we'll go to Nebraska, circa 1998, where we learn what it was like to be a farmer dealing with drought. Then, how the first allergen-free cat was developed and what that meant for the cat.

• 6:26Speaker 03

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• 8:15Rund Abdelfatah?

  It was 1998, and parts of the southern US were facing one of the worst droughts in 100 years. Noah Adams took millions of listeners to the doorstep of a few farmers in Nebraska.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  If you have wondered about farming, about why people try to stay with it so stubbornly at times, come to the far southwestern corner of Nebraska. Stand on one of the low ridges by an abandoned farmhouse. Sunrise by the almanac is just past 5:30. And on a morning like this, a farmer would have been out early, maybe on the porch with coffee, watching the wispy patches of silver and blue open in the sky and perhaps feeling the worry slip away just a bit. In the 10-mile view from this farm into town, there is a shimmer of moisture. It rained last night. Even the sandy roads got a little slippery. It is weather the farmers have been waiting every morning for.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  Well, I snap on the Weather Channel, and then I usually go down to my office and I look at the markets and the weather to see what them weather forecasters are predicting.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Eddie Nichols is a farmer and rancher in Dundee County, Nebraska, where it's been desperately dry for most of this growing season. Droughts do not come in cycles. They're more like spotlights, moving around and shining down on the land. And this year, this corner of Nebraska has been parched in the glare. Look at the satellite maps showing patterns of green. Dundee County is yellow. Up until a week ago, of the 15 inches of rain the county usually gets, only seven had fallen, and it's been fiercely hot. The wheat crop was harvested OK, but there's concern about the corn and the cattle. Michael Downey, a veterinarian, sees the everyday effect on the animals, especially in the large feedlots.

• 10:11Speaker 05

  Drought situations with high humidity and high heat can be very critical for the fat cattle on the feed. And we do see problems. We've seen some problems this year with some dropping in feed consumption. And it can be a very critical stress and even to the point of death.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Dr. Michael Downey of the Twin Forks Clinic. Dundee County's main town is Benkelman, started more than a century ago by immigrant families wanting to farm. The earliest lived in houses built of blocks of sod laid up like bricks. They might have had one geranium sitting in the brightest window, and they'd carry the flower pot to church and to funerals. It was said of the settlers, "They came to a land as full of notions as a monkey with fleas, a land destitute of timber and parsimonious of moisture."

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Glenn Osborne was born here in 1919. This reed organ was here before then, it belonged to his mother. Mr. Osborne became a farmer as a teenager, in the Dust Bowl years.

• 11:25Speaker 06

  Thirty-four was probably the worst, you know. Gee, that was terrible.

• 11:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, gee, we've had dark days. Chickens go to roost, yeah, middle of the afternoon.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  So much dust in the air that the chickens...

• 11:41Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, just dark, you know, it'd get dark.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 11:44Speaker 06

  You bet.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Do you know much about where your parents came to this land from? Were they... or their parents?

• 11:55Speaker 06

  No, you know, my mother died when I was five. My dad got killed when I was 10, so, you know, I... It hasn't been too easy, you know.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Was your father killed on the farm?

• 12:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, he was a runaway, a team of horses, and I was with him. Yeah, he was.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  When you were 10 years old?

• 12:18Speaker 06

  10 years old.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Goodness, do you recall it very well?

• 12:21Speaker 06

  Oh, just like it was yesterday morning.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Can you tell me about it?

• 12:25Speaker 06

  Well, we was in a wagon and we had a, you know, they had bangboards when we used to pick corn. And so we went up to my uncle's that morning, and he had a corn, a man picking corn for him. And he'd got a new whip it for a car, and it had a tarp on it, and the wind was blowing, and that tarp scared our horses, and they ran off. And my dad went with the horses, and I went with the box, and, yeah, drug him to death.

• 12:59Speaker 06

  Sure did.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Sixty years later, ride along one of the farm roads out by the Osborne property. The man driving the pickup is Jim Osborne, Glenn's son. He's about to show us the big difference between farming in the 30s and farming in the 90s.

• 13:35Speaker 06

  This is an electric system, and it'll move on its own here a little bit.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  This is a pivot point sprinkler, a spindly aluminum erector set arm, reaching out for a quarter of a mile. It moves on wheels around a circle. At the center is the motor and a well. Inside the circle, irrigated by the pivot, 120 acres of good-looking corn with round tasses. Outside the circle, the dry land corn, they call it, may be lost this year.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  And the grass for the cattle is stubbly and seared. We stand at a pasture fence with Jim Osborne and his wife Lynn, who works at the Agriculture Extension Office.

• 14:20Speaker 06

  This is a, this is a quarter of grass, 160 acres here, and I normally run my yearling heifers here, the ones that are gonna cab for the next first time in January. And we've usually run 28 head in here. We came back here June 15th, and we left 11. We picked everything else up and took them elsewhere.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Why?

• 14:40Speaker 06

  No grass.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  They weren't, they weren't doing well?

• 14:43Speaker 06

  No, and, you know, and we're, we were just running our pasture.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  I don't know what the right word is. Is it a tense time, is the farming season a tense time when it's dry like it's been?

• 14:57Speaker 02

  I mean, do you get irritated? Do you get frustrated? Do you, do people get mad at each other? What goes on?

• 15:03Speaker 06

  Sure, I think all of the above. You know, yeah, it gets, you know, it just wears on you.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  I do know that the Farm Crisis Hotlines that were in effect in the 80s, when the banks were closing, are, are working again now. So, there are a lot of farmers who are experiencing stress and, and crisis in their family. USDA has, to read this right, has a telephone counseling number you can call? Because some farmers have been thinking about suicide? Yes, that's what I was referring to, yes. Yeah, yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Is it, is it in the nature of most farmers to, to make a phone call like that?

• 15:52Speaker 02

  The wife probably would.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  I think that they're maybe more likely to do that than to talk face to face to someone. Right, right.

• 16:03Speaker 06

  I know it had a major effect on that county fair. If we'd have been sitting here in that 100-degree heat and no moisture, I just don't think we would've had many people there. I, I'm just sure we wouldn't have. And now, got a little free time, you know, at least they can get to town, visit with the neighbors. Compare, and that's good. That's good therapy, you know? As beats sitting out here by yourself, you know, banging your head against the wall, what are we gonna do next? It's, it's good to be able to do that.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:39Speaker 02

  This was county fair week in Benkelman. Little bit of a carnival, cotton candy, the 4-H displays, a concert, and on Tuesday night, a rodeo.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  It is a sport and an art, roping and tying a calf in seven seconds, but it evolves from work that still needs to be done. Teenagers of Dundee County come to watch the rodeo. We talked with Kylie Roundtree and Nick Bruntwick. When you get through school, what, you wanna come back to the farm?

• 17:11Speaker 05

  Oh, that's quite a ways away. I haven't really thought about it that much yet, so, I don't know. I guess I'll think about it when it gets closer.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. How old are you now?

• 17:23Speaker 05

  I'm 13. I'll be 14 in September.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  How about you all? And you all made up your mind about what you wanna do?

• 17:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, I wanna be a farmer.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  You do?

• 17:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  How come?

• 17:33Speaker 05

  I just, my dad does it, and I got, I like it a lot, so...

• 17:39Speaker 02

  What do you like about it?

• 17:40Speaker 05

  Just the wide-open spaces and all that. I thought about, like, going to the city and all that stuff, but I don't think I'd like it as much as being out in the country.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  The Burlington Northern tracks run past the old grain elevators and on to the west, connecting Denver with Kansas City and Chicago. And the town of Benkelman climbs a hill up from the railroad. Benkelman is 1,193 people, trying to hold things together. They've built a golf course, a new heated swimming pool, they've expanded the hospital, brought in some doctors, and found another pharmacist for downtown. But Benkelman is an agricultural factory, which would close its doors if the farm economy fails. Irma Johnson runs the oldest hardware store. I probably got 100 charge accounts over there, and I'll bet you 99 of them are farmers.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Now, can you tell from this store that if, if you didn't ever check on the weather or know what was going on, just from the business you do in this store, that there's been a drought? Yes, definitely. How? Nobody comes through the door. It's dry. I mean, they wasn't buying anything two weeks ago. Pat Rotherman is the president of State Bank in Benkelman. In his office, he apologized for the way he might smell. He spent the early morning on horseback, helping a friend round up a sick calf. Mr. Rotherman says it's going to be a tight year for many of the small farmers in the county.

• 19:10Speaker 04

  Uh, there's probably, you know, at least 10 or 15% that probably aren't gonna survive. They're gonna have to sell out.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  How would that compare to, to a good year? That 10 or 15?

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Good year, you wouldn't have any. I mean, we're here to keep 'em in business, so, last thing we wanna do is see 'em sell out.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  On the third night of the Dundee County Fair, the wind picked up, and the huge new flag that the American Legion bought strained at the pole. There was definitely rain threatening at 5:30, but people were lining up because this was free barbecue night. The J.C.'s of Benkelman dig a pit and cook beef and onions and carrots and potatoes, and people talk about it all year long. And a thousand of them came to stand in line and visit and eat.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  And they are just as happy to hear the thunder. The clouds darken and pile high in the sky, to the north, the west, south.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  And the rain starts in, just about when everybody's finished eating. No one seems in a hurry to leave.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  The county fair has to shut down for the evening. They move the music concert up to the high school. The rain keeps on hard at times, the water sluicing down the culverts in town.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  In the morning, the farmers gather at breakfast, telling rain stories. A quarter inch here, two inches there. Everybody seems to have two rain gauges that they check. The morning stays misty. At 2 o'clock, there's a town parade. People sit on lawn chairs on the sidewalk, and their kids and grandkids run out into the street to pick up candy, and the homemade floats go by. Their cheerleaders riding on a tailgate. There is news on this day, but it's in the Denver Post and Omaha World-Herald, and stays behind the glass windows of the newspaper boxes by the drugstore. Rain is the story in Benkelman, Nebraska.

• 21:22Rund Abdelfatah?

  And for our last story, we travel to the year 2001 and meet a very special cat who Noah was very concerned about.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Dr. David Avner of Syracuse, New York, is the president of a company called Transgenic Pets, "transgenic" as in gene technology, which would be used by the company, in theory, to create a cat that would not trigger an allergic reaction in humans. The idea is to turn off the gene that produces allergen proteins. If you're allergic to cats, your problems would be over. Dr. Avner, what's in it for the cat?

• 22:00Speaker 04

  Well, allergic sensitivity has been attributed to one major cat allergen. And what the company's doing is we're using gene-targeting techniques to turn off that gene that codes for the protein. And all this work is done at the microscopic level. So when we implant the cell into a foster cat, it develops into a kitten, and all those kittens are then allergen-free kittens. So that particular trait is passed on to all its offspring.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  So that would start a new line of cats?

• 22:30Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Yes, but to go back to the question, what's in it for the cat?

• 22:34Speaker 04

  Really, there's no-- all we're doing is we're turning off a protein that does not perform any significant biological function in the animal.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  I'm suggesting there's no benefit to the cat, obviously to people, but none for the cat. But are you sure there would be no damage? Are you sure, in the course of evolution, that the cats don't need this particular allergen gene for some reason?

• 23:00Speaker 04

  Right. This particular protein is considered a redundant protein, and it's a protein that's secreted by the cat's sebaceous glands. And when the protein is secreted, it covers the fur, it covers the skin. And then when people come into contact with this allergen, that's when they exhibit the traditional allergic symptoms that we're used to seeing, such as red eyes, itchy, scratchy throats, difficulty breathing.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  You know, the reason I ask you that question is that Dr. Jerry Yang at the University of Connecticut, where the research would be done for your company--

• 23:31Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  --was asked, will knocking out the gene hurt the animal? And he replied, we hope not. It doesn't sound like he's very sure about it.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  Right. Well, you would never know for sure until you actually do it. This particular protein is very well-characterized. It's been well-studied over the past 10 to 15 years.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  I know that you are an emergency room physician there in Syracuse.

• 23:51Speaker 04

  Right, I'm a resident physician here.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  And have had a long interest, though, in allergen problems.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Why do you want to develop this allergen-free cat?

• 24:03Speaker 04

  Really, it's going to improve the quality of life for millions of Americans who suffer from allergic symptoms. And it's going to allow people who are never able to enjoy the love and companionship of a pet, it's going to give them an opportunity to bring a companion into their house that they can really make part of their family. All of our efforts really have been focused on a new way of addressing allergic symptoms because, for the most part, traditional treatments are focused on the individual's immune response. And in this case, we're looking at it from a different perspective. Rather than traditional treatments such as antihistamines and those-- and weekly allergy shots, what we're doing is going to-- we're going to remove the trigger altogether. We hope to have the first allergen-free cats in 2003.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  And would they be really expensive, do you think?

• 24:50Speaker 04

  The goal is to make the cats affordable to everyone. Hopefully, within the first couple of years of production, we can bring the price down to $750 to $1,000 an animal.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Dr. Avner, thank you for explaining this.

• 25:02Speaker 04

  It's my pleasure.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  David Avner is the president of Transgenic Pets. We reached him at his home in Syracuse, New York.

• 25:13Rund Abdelfatah?

  Noah Adams passed away on October 16th. He was 84.

• 25:21Rund Abdelfatah?

  That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdel Fattah. Throughline was created by me and Ramtin Arablouei. This episode was produced by me and-- Amy Padula. Lou Olkowski. Julia Redpath.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  Sarah Wyman. Molly Marcello. Leanna Simstrom. Irene Noguchi.

• 25:41Rund Abdelfatah?

  Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric. And finally, if you have an idea or liked something you heard on the show, please write us at [email protected]. Also, make sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, or the NPR app. That way, you'll never miss an episode. Thanks for listening.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. One subscription that does it all. Personalized AI and premium business versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, and more. Try it free for 14 days at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. This message comes from Live Right, publisher of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. "Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book," writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims it's destined to be a classic.

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