Monti’s son Jared was killed in Afghanistan in 2006 and a couple of years ago he told Ashlock that he still drives Jared’s truck, as a way to remember and feel connected to him.

A songwriter heard that conversation and wrote the song “I Drive Your Truck.”

The story was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered this week.

• Hear & read the original interview with Paul Monti
• Read Alex Ashlock’s blog post about the song and the interview

Guests:

• Paul Monti, father of Jared Monti, who was killed in Afghanistan.
• Alex Ashlock, producer and reporter for Here & Now who also directs the show.

Or why some people smile at you, while others stare straight down at the floor?

Robert Krulwich, co-host of WNYC’s Radiolab, wonders that, too, and blogs about it at Krulwich Wonders.

While producing this story, Here & Now host Robin Young nearly lost an arm trying to keep the doors open! Take a listen:

• Have you noticed patterns in where people stand in elevators? Join the conversation on Facebook or tell us in the comments.

Guest:

• Robert Krulwich, co-host of WNYC’s RadioLab. He tweets @rkrulwich.

One nonprofit hopes the light continues to shine bright, and that it widens to include the disproportionately large number of missing African Americans.

African Americans make up around 12 percent of the U.S. population, but according to the nonprofit Black and Missing Foundation, they make up about a third of all missing people in the U.S.

Derrica Wilson, a former police officer and co-founder of the group, says we don’t hear as much about missing black children and adults because of what she calls “missing white women syndrome.”

“The media really focuses on those young, pretty white females that are missing — blond hair blue eyes,” Wilson told Here & Now’s Robin Young. “We always say ‘less is more’ — less of one particular race and more of everyone who’s missing, and greater the chances of a reunion.”

Wilson says one thing she would like to see is more diversity in newsrooms, to change the misperceptions about missing African Americans.

“When it comes to children under the age of 18 who are minorities, they are classified as runaways, so our runaways are not getting the amber alert,” Wilson said. “When it comes to missing adults, a lot of times people like to associate them with some sort of criminal activity, whether it’s gangs, whether it’s prostitution.”

• 5K Walk/Run fundraiser for Black and Missing on May 25 in Maryland

Do you think TV news has a fixation with blonds? Tell us on Facebook or in the comments.

Guest:

• Derrica Wilson, a former police officer who founded the Black and Missing Foundation with her sister-in-law Natalie Wilson.
• Rita Mims, aunt of Evelyn Shelton, who has been missing since May 2011.

The discovery not only solves some ancient mysteries about the first pandemic, but could also provide answers in the event of a bio-terrorism threat.

Their results were just published in PLOS Pathogens, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Laurel Morales has our report that comes to us from Fronteras: The Changing America Desk, a public radio collaboration that focuses on the border and changing demographics in the Southwest.

• Fronteras: Arizona Scientists Pinpoint Birthplace Of Plague

Dara O’Rourke, associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is co-founder of the Good Guide, a website and smartphone app that provides consumers with consumer product evaluations based on health, environmental and social impacts.

“The scale and continuous nature of these tragedies, I think, is having more and more consumers, and more and more people in the U.S. and Europe are stopping and wondering, are there really some hidden costs behind these low, low prices that they’ve been benefiting from in the store,” O’Rourke told Here & Now’s Robin Young.

Boycotts Not The Answer

At $38 per month, Bangladesh has the lowest wages in the world for apparel, O’Rourke said. Disney has announced it will end clothing production in Bangladesh, and some people have said they are boycotting clothing made in Bangladesh.

But is that the answer?

“The advocacy community, the labor unions and the labor NGOs and the student movement have not been calling for a boycott of Bangladesh, have not been calling for companies to cut and run, if you will, but rather for them to commit to investing and actually improving conditions,” O’Rourke said.

Safety Pledge For Retailers

Virtually all of the major European retailers and brands have signed onto a binding safety pledge to underwrite the costs of improving conditions in Bangladesh, O’Rourke said.

But U.S. retailers, including the Gap, J.C. Penney, Children’s Place, Walmart are notably absent.

“I think it is a smoke screen for industry to say, ‘This is too complicated. It’s too unwieldy. It’s not flexible enough. We want to just go on our own and solve the problems.’ That’s what the Gap said, that’s what Walmart said this week. Them going it alone, them hiring their own private consulting firms to audit these factories and then keeping that information confidential has proven not to work,” O’Rourke said.

You Can’t Trust The Label 

Adding another level of complexity is something called “trans-shipping.”

The U.S. gives each country in the world a set amount of product they can import to the U.S., O’Rourke said. So if a China has met its quota, a factory there might ship the product to another country and put the label on there.

“Some of the things we see that are sewn, that say ‘Made in Italy,’ may not actually be made in Italy, but they’re trans-shipped. The label is literally sewn on in Italy,” he said.

• Gap Inc. statement on Bangladesh
• Walmart statement on Bangladesh

A Role For Consumers

To get U.S. retailers and brands on board with the Bangladesh accord, shoppers can’t be passive anymore, O’Rourke said.

“You should be tweeting a question to your favorite brand: ‘Hey, @Gap, why won’t you sign the Bangladesh accord. Hey @jcpenney, hey @childrensplace,’” he said. “You should be asking publicly, what are they doing to improve conditions in Bangladesh.”

Guest:

• Dara O’Rourke, associate professor at The University of California, Berkeley, co-founder of the Good Guide. He tweets @DaraORourke.

Ranking Democrat Sander Levin said he “totally, totally disagreed” with Camp’s statement.

And the outgoing Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller apologized and denied that partisanship had anything to do with it.

Miller said the scrutiny was the result of “foolish mistakes” made by people “trying too hard” to reduce their workload in the face of a growing number of applications for tax-exempt status.

• Washington Post live blog on IRS hearing

Guest:

• Jodi Schneider, Congress editor for Bloomberg News.

Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, told Here & Now’s Robin Young, “I came out very impressed, very happy. I’ve got to say, this really holds up more so to the original Star Trek and The Next Generation and the philosophies that were incorporated into that.”

Roddenberry is executive producer of a new podcast called Mission Log, which delves into every aspect of the television series. Ken Ray hosts the podcast with John Champion.

“We’ve come across so many episodes where we’re not arguing about ‘OK, well could they actually go Warp 8, or would they have to stick at Warp 6?’” Ray said. “We’re actually talking about the nature of happiness.”

Roddenberry says he didn’t pay much attention to Star Trek until after his father died.

“I wanted to learn more about it, and the way to do that was to really go back and look at these shows and try to take them apart,” Roddenberry said. “Listening to [Mission Log hosts] John and Ken, they don’t go too geeky or too nerdy, but they really kind of look at the ethics and what it means in the bigger picture when a captain or someone in Star Trek does something.”

One episode that both Rod Roddenberry and Ken Ray like is “The Corbomite Maneuver” from season one of the original series. Captain Kirk, addressing his crew after receiving a distress signal from a ship that was just trying to destroy them, says “There are lives at stake. By our standards, alien life. But lives, nevertheless.”

“That is Star Trek at its best,” Roddenberry said. “That is the vision of the future that my father really had in mind — that kind of humanity.”

Guests:

• Rod Roddenberry, son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and executive producer of the “Mission Log” podcast.
• Ken Ray, co-host of “Mission Log.”

President Obama’s visit was overshadowed by controversy when another commencement speaker, Rev. Kevin Johnson — a Morehouse alumnus – was reassigned to a lesser role after writing an op-ed criticizing Mr. Obama. But Johnson and the school have worked out their differences and he’ll be delivering the address he was originally scheduled to give.

Morehouse College president Dr. John Silvanus Wilson, Jr. spoke with Here & Now’s Robin Young about the controversy, as well as other challenges facing the school, including its 50-percent four-year graduation rate.

“A lot of students have trouble with finances. Many of our students are taking longer because they cannot come up with all the money they need in four straight years, even with help from federal grants and family help and churches and other sources. It is very difficult,” Wilson said.

It’s also partly due to stiff competition from other schools for high-achieving students. Nine out of 10 African Americans in higher education are currently being educated outside of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Wilson said.

“I was in college in the late 70s and some seven out of 10 of the African Americans in higher ed were being educated inside HBCUs,” Wilson said. “The script has completely flipped and the competition for bright African American students in general is a lot stiffer across the board.”

Separately, the college is reeling over the arrests of four of its students on charges of sexual assault in two separate incidents with women at its sister school Spelman College.

“Sometimes at Morehouse, as with any college or university, things happen that are a contradiction to what we are about,” Wilson said. “It was a tough thing to go through, but what we did in that case, followed all procedures and certainly reasserted our values as being against all kinds of violence.”

Guest:

• Dr. John Silvanus Wilson, Jr., president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga.