The Oceans Are Suffocating

Coming up on today’s show:

• For the first time in two years, the two governments that occupy the Korean peninsula will hold high-level talks in advance of February’s Olympic games in the South. Sung-Yoon Lee is a Korean Studies professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and David Sanger, National Security Correspondent for The New York Times, explain what you should expect. 

• On Sunday, the Israeli government released a list of 20 international organizations whose members it intends to ban from entering the country due to their support for boycotting Israel. Sunday’s list follows a law passed by Israel’s Parliament in March 2017, which denies entry visas to foreign nationals who call for boycotts against Israel or its West Bank settlements. Ruth Eglash, reporter for The Washington Post, joins The Takeaway from Jerusalem to weigh in. 

•  Americans’ support for the death penalty has dipped to its lowest point in decades, with just 55 percent supporting capital punishment. But the president’s support for it could undermine efforts to phase it out entirely. Maurice Chammah of The Marshall Project looks for four places to watch out the death penalty plays out in 2018. 

• As of August 2017, records obtained by ProPublica show that 102 defendants in Mississippi — accused, but not yet convicted of various crimes — were waiting in county jails for forensic mental health evaluations. One had waited as long as 1,249 days. Former ProPublica reporting fellow Sarah Smith says it’s a “statewide scandal.”

• A new analysis by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, published in the journal Science, has discovered that ocean dead zones with zero oxygen have quadrupled in size since 1950. Denise Breitburg, senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and one of the researchers of the analysis, explains. 

• For the first time in a century, humpback whales have returned to the waters of New York City. The first sightings began around 2010, and one tour group has been taking passengers out to see them. In addition to whale-watching tours, Gotham Whale, led by president and founder Paul Sieswerda, and his crew of researchers and citizen scientists have made it their mission to document all the whales that come into New York Harbor. Takeaway Producer Oliver Lazarus went on Gotham Whale’s last outing of the 2017 season, and shares his findings today. 

This episode is hosted by Todd Zwillich