September 7, 1998 All Things Considered (entire program) Requires the RealAudio Player

An index of the day's stories:

MCGWIRE TIES MARIS -- St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire homered in the bottom of the first inning of a game today between the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals to tie Roger Maris's regular-season home run record of 61. Both McGwire and the Chicago Cubs' Sammy Sosa are trying to break Maris's record this year. Noah talks with NPR's Tom Goldman, who was at Busch Memorial Stadium, the site of today's game ... which the Cardinals won by a score of 3 to 2. (2:37)

ST. LOUIS FAN -- Noah talks Jean Porter, a lifelong Cardinals fan, who was watching today's baseball game between the Cardinals and the Cubs at the Pasta House restaurant in Clayton, Missouri. He says that he jumped out of his seat and started screaming when Mark McGwire tied Roger Maris's home-run record today. He says he's always been a devoted St. Louis fan, even when he lived in Chicago. (2:25)

BASEBALL -- Noah talks with Robert Lipsyte, sports and city columnist for The New York Times, about McGwire's accomplishments this year, as well as the effect the chase for Maris's record has had on Major League Baseball's popularity. Lipsyte interviewed Roger Maris shortly before his death. (5:17)

OTHER STORIES -- Other stories we're following today include: Nova Scotia Memorial Service. (:50)

CHERNOMYRDIN REJECTED -- NPR's Michele Kelemen reports from Moscow on Russia's worsening economic and political crises. The lower house of parliament, or Duma, has once again rejected President Yeltsin's nominee for prime minister. In today's balloting, Viktor Chernomyrdin did pick up a few more votes than he received last week. But with opposition lawmakers insisting they will never endorse Chernomyrdin, there are indications Yeltsin may submit another name to the Duma instead. As the politicians squabble, the ruble sinks even lower and goods are disappearing from store shelves. (4:41)

MANCHESTER UNITED -- NPR's Michael Goldfarb reports that media tycoon Rupert Murdoch continues his international sport franchise shopping spree. Today, his company offered close to one billion dollars to purchase the Manchester United soccer team. (2:59)

FOLK I & II -- Nanci Griffith talks with Noah Adams about her new album, Other Voices Too, which is a follow up to her critically-acclaimed Other Voices, Other Rooms CD from 1992. Griffith discusses some of the music on the album as well as the process of putting the project together -- one which included nearly 60 artists. (Other Voices, Other Rooms is available on Elektra Records, catalogue number 61464-2. Other Voices, Too (A Trip Back to Bountiful) is also on Elektra, catalogue number 62235-2. The book discussed in this segment, Nanci Griffith's Other Voices: A Personal History of Folk Music by Nanci Griffith and Joe Jackson is available from the Three Rivers Press, ISBN 0-609-80307-7). (10:41)
**Due to Internet rights issues, this segment has been modified from its original broadcast form.

NOVA SCOTIA MEMORIAL SERVICE -- NPR's Steve Inskeep talks with Noah about today's memorial service at Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, where Swissair flight 111 crashed into the sea last week, killing all 229 people on board. Investigators today are releasing preliminary findings from the flight data recorder, which has been recovered. And, the Canadian Navy says it believes it's detected a signal from the cockpit voice recorder, which could tell investigators what was happening in the cockpit in the moments before the crash. (3:55)

WATER LANDING -- Noah talks with Gil Wittlin, the president of Dynamic Response, Incorporated. Wittlin has conducted several studies for the Navy and other organizations that examined crash-landings on water, soil, and other surfaces. He explains why a water landing can be more difficult than landing on a concrete runway or even on soil. (3:38)

MILLION YOUTH MARCH -- Leading chants, cheers, songs and prayers, speakers in Atlanta exhorted black young people to assume leadership for the new millennium. Dubbed the Million Youth Movement by its organizers, today's gathering capped off a weekend of seminars and workshops that examined the many problems affecting African American youth. Traditional civil rights groups like the NAACP shared the podium with members of the Nation of Islam, black youth organizations, and human rights and religious activists of all ages. The message of a 'new revolution' in Atlanta was cast in spiritual terms and contrasted sharply with the inflammatory rhetoric and controversial police action that marked a Million Youth March held Saturday in New York. NPR's Kathy Lohr reports. (4:30)

TRAVEL -- Noah talks with Dean MacCannell, chairman of the langscape architecture program in the Department of Environmental Design at the University of California at Davis. He's also the author of The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. They discuss why there are so many more people travelling now than there were thirty years ago, and the effect that is having on out culture. (7:26)

UNIONIZING DAY CARE -- More and more, organized labor is catching on to the needs of a service-based economy. A union in Philadelphia has started an innovative training center for child care workers. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports that analysts are wondering if this particular effort could be a sign for the future of labor. (7:10)

CANNERY WORKERS -- Scott Horsley of member station KPBS reports on a labor day reunion of workers whose services are no longer needed. People who used to work on San Diego's Cannery Row, canning tuna fish, are reminiscing about the hard work and the good pay of the past. Most tuna canneries are now located overseas, where labor costs are cheaper. (5:00)

FALL FLIX -- Movie reviewer Bob Mondello talks about some of the 130 movies that are scheduled for release before the end of the year. They range from the controversial ... like The Siege, starring Denzel Washington, which posits a world in which Arab terrorists are confined in a concentration camp ... to the extremely lightweight, like the new animated film featuring television's popular Rugrats characters. He also discusses Italian comic actor and director Roberto Benigni's film Life Is Beautiful, which has come under fire for its comedic use of the Holocaust. (7:04)