Sir Edmund Hillary Dies at 88

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ALISON STEWART, host:

Hey, welcome back to THE BRYANT PARK PROJECT from NPR News. I'm Alison Stewart, along with my guest host today, Mr. Bill Wolff.

BILL WOLFF, host:

How do you do?

STEWART: I'm doing well. Pashman, get in here. Tricia, belly up to the microphone.

Unidentified Woman: That's a big belly.

STEWART: Matt Martinez, I can't see you, but I know you're ready and poised to go. Do I hear him? No. Oh, okay, maybe not. Let's see if he…

WOLFF: He's on his way.

STEWART: He's going come running down that hallway. He's going to come any minute now. This is the part of the show when we take a break, we take a look at the most viewed, most e-mailed, most blogged, most-most stories from the Web. Critical mass news as we bring it to you every day. It's The Most.

(Soundbite of music)

STEWART: Where's our soundtrack, please, for the music of The Most? I'm not starting until hear the music.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: I've got my arms crossed…

WOLFF: Oh, boy…

DAN PASHMAN: Men, it is raining cats and dogs…

WOLFF: Yeah.

PASHMAN: …out here, huh?

(Soundbite of laughter)

WOLFF: Yeah.

PASHMAN: I mean, it's just coming down…

STEWART: I wish I could sing it. It's not all that melodic.

PASHMAN: This isn't as exciting as The Most…

WOLFF: No. Actually, it's slow, yeah.

PASHMAN: …normally is.

STEWART: No, not quite The Ramble music.

PASHMAN: So, Ali, I went no bacon on my egg and cheese sandwich this morning. It was a compromise, you know, because the folks here - you guys are a bad influence on my health.

(Soundbite of laughter)

PASHMAN: Oh, boy.

STEWART: It's the entire sound board…

WOLFF: It's running through the catalog?

TRICIA McKINNEY: We're not having a mortgage meltdown. We're having a sound meltdown.

STEWART: Here comes Matt.

(Soundbite of music)

MATT MARTINEZ: Let's just play all the sound we have.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: That was it. That was The Most theme?

MARTINEZ: Let's just play all.

STEWART: That was The Most theme?

Senator JOHN KERRY (Democrat, Massachusetts): That the time is always right.

STEWART: That's John Kerry.

PASHMAN: My issue here, Alison, is that you guys ordered these sandwiches and they're full of bacon.

STEWART: Yes.

PASHMAN: And the whole office smells like bacon, and it makes me want to eat bacon.

STEWART: Oh.

WOLFF: This is live radio, folks.

STEWART: You could do it like me and have turkey bacon. Should we just continue and go forward?

WOLFF: Let's go for it. Let's go forward.

STEWART: All right. Dan, since you're - you're first.

PASHMAN: All right.

(Soundbite of music)

STEWART: With the music.

PASHMAN: Oh, yeah.

MARTINEZ: So you're taking…

WOLFF: All came back together right there at last sec.

PASHMAN: All come back together.

STEWART: Go, Dan.

PASHMAN: Mom, dad, thanks for having me.

WOLFF: From chaos to order.

PASHMAN: We got The Most e-mailed here from The Dallas Morning News. It's a story out of Gainesville, Wisconsin, a couple moved into a new apartment. They were poking around, unpacking. They opened up the fridge. They found $12,000 in cash.

WOLFF: In the fridge?

PASHMAN: In the fridge.

WOLFF: Had it been owned by Louisiana Representative William Jefferson?

(Soundbite of laughter)

PASHMAN: Yeah, you might think so, but the previous renters have been charged in a drug-trafficking case.

WOLFF: Oh.

PASHMAN: So - I guess the last time the police searched the apartment, they didn't do quite such a great job searching the fridge. Last thing that the cops searched - they see is crack cocaine and marijuana, other things. But they didn't find the money in the fridge. So the renters are kind of like, well, finders keepers?

(Soundbite of laughter)

PASHMAN: But I don't know if the cops are going to go for that.

STEWART: I'm with the renters.

PASHMAN: Yeah.

STEWART: Hey, Tricia. What do you have? You have a feel-good most.

McKINNEY: I do, although, you know, when I first started reading it, it really felt good, and then, it kind of - actually, when you read the whole story, it turns into a bittersweet story.

So this is actually one of the most-viewed stories from MSNBC.com. Got a little background noise here, I apologize for that. Okay. So it's called: "Satisfaction, then Anguish in Iraq." And it's about - it's a Washington Post story. They had one of their reporters embedded with a unit in Iraq, part of that push against al-Qaida in Iraq in the Diyala province. And they're - it's kind of like a blow-by-blow of all the action. And that, you know, this one particular day, there's not a lot going on there. They're going door to door. They're looking for insurgents. They're not really finding anybody. And all of a sudden, this call comes through the radio and it's an Iraqi woman in labor.

And so, like, 18 people are dispatched to go help this woman. And they don't actually deliver her baby because it turns out she's got some complicated medical issues. So then they kind of all get involved in getting her to the closest hospital. And that turned out to be this kind of major operation and…

STEWART: Wow.

McKINNEY: …they have to get her across a river and through, you know, units of other soldiers. And we actually never find out the ending of the story. We never find out if she had the baby, what the baby was.

STEWART: It's a cliffhanger.

McKINNEY: Because in the middle of all this, there's fighting going on. There's action and it turns out there's kind of a bad ending for some members of the squadron.

STEWART: Oh, I'm sorry.

McKINNEY: So I won't tell you what it is. But go check it out on MSNBC.com.

PASHMAN: Did you guys see that movie "Children of Men"?

STEWART: I didn't, but I wanted to.

PASHMAN: You really should see it. I mean, it's a pretty breathtaking film in general. But, real quick, the story basically is it takes place at about 20 years or so in the future. There's sort of post-apocalyptic situation and the human race has lost the ability to procreate. And there hasn't been a pregnant woman in like nine years. And there's a lot of warfare going on and it's very anarchic all over the place. And there's this one teenage girl who gets pregnant. And then, there's this - the story revolves around a sort of certain rebel group trying to shepherd her to safety.

And the grand finale scene - there's war going on all around and the woman is just giving birth to the baby. They're trying to get her out of the war zone, and the baby is crying. And there's people fighting all over the place, and the sound of the baby crying sort of like brings out the humanity in all of these people who had sort of forgotten, you know, the power of new life. And they all start putting down their guns, at least for an instance. And it's like this dead silence as the woman walks out with her baby. And this whole final battle scene, which is like 15 minutes long, is all shot in one camera shot.

STEWART: Wow. What's the name of the movie again?

PASHMAN: "Children of Men."

WOLFF: Sort of the opposite of what happens on most airplane flights.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: There you go.

PASHMAN: That's correct.

STEWART: Matt Martinez, our senior supervising…

MARTINEZ: Hello.

STEWART: …producer.

MARTINEZ: I'm not stressed out at all.

STEWART: I know. That didn't bother you one bit...

MARTINEZ: Not one bit.

STEWART: ...what you happened on top of The Most?

MARTINEZ: No, not at all. This is the most e-mailed from the Los Angeles Times. You know, the Hollywood is already in a mess over the writers' strike. Now, one of the Hollywood payroll firm called Axium International imploded and went bankrupt, and lots of folks aren't getting paid this year, as an example.

What they do is they act as a clearing house for lots of these small movie companies and or producers. And so they send, you know, a $500,000 check over to Axium and they then process the payroll for that company. And they went under. And it is - it's not good. Lots of folks are not getting paid in Hollywood. That's one of the most e-mailed at Los Angeles Times.

And I think we actually do have time for one more.

STEWART: Okay.

MARTINEZ: The most e-mailed at the BBC News, which is Sir Edmund Hillary, dead at the age of 88. He was one of the first men to reach - I'm saying one of the first men…

STEWART: Because.

MARTINEZ: …and because Tenzing Norgay also summited with Sir Edmund Hillary. So there's, you know, there's - to say he was the first to reach the peak is…

STEWART: Of Mount Everest.

MARTINEZ: Yeah. Yeah, of Mount Everest. Not so accurate.

STEWART: I'm just going to squeeze mine in the last minute because I just find this fascinating. Time magazine - all of the things you can read in Time magazine, the most viewed and the most e-mailed in Time magazine is an article called, How Not to Look Old.

WOLFF: Hmm, old.

STEWART: By Charla Krupp. Now, ladies might know who Charla Krupp is. She was a fashion editor. And as you can see, she's in a saucy little pose right there.

WOLFF: Wow.

STEWART: Yes. She's a woman of…

WOLFF: She doesn't look old at all.

STEWART: No, yes. She's a woman of a certain age.

WOLFF: What age?

STEWART: Ageless, Bill. She's ageless.

WOLFF: I'll tell you what.

STEWART: And she says…

(Soundbite of laughter)

WOLFF: If she's 55, she looks unbelievable.

STEWART: If she's 25 maybe not so much. Her book is "How Not to Look Old: Fast and Effortless Ways to Look 10 Years Younger, 10 Pounds Lighter and 10 Times Better." That is what is the most viewed and most e-mailed headline at Time.

PASHMAN: Think how people are writing on this topic because you just cannot find material out there on how to look better. I mean, it is just not…

STEWART: Difficult.

PASHMAN: …available.

WOLFF: Very difficult.

STEWART: She said avoid plastic surgery…

PASHMAN: Okay.

WOLFF: Check.

STEWART: …because if you want to look 70, get a face lift. That's - so this is kind of interesting. She talked about your eyebrows and that you really -women, you do need to color your hair.

WOLFF: Huh.

STEWART: So I'm just saying…

WOLFF: So the banks are melting down, we have a bad situation with Iran…

STEWART: Yes.

WOLFF: …Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated.

STEWART: Yes.

WOLFF: But the number one story is how do you look younger.

STEWART: Thank you, Time magazine.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: And thank you Dan…

PASHMAN: Yeah.

STEWART: …Matt and Tricia for The Most.

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