All Things Considered

Investigators in New York City are ripping up the basement of an apartment building in hopes of solving a decades-old mystery: What happened to 6-year-old Etan Patz? The first-grader was walking alone to his school bus stop when he disappeared. Melissa Block talks to journalist Lisa Cohen, author of After Etan: The Missing Child Case that Held America Captive.

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

The U.S. Forest Service has a cow problem: six dead cows. They were discovered inside a cabin, piled up and frozen solid in the Colorado backcountry. The cabin is at Conundrum Hot Springs at 11,200 feet, accessible only by a precipitous hike. And rangers are trying to figure out how to get rid of the carcasses before they decompose.

Scott Snelson is district ranger for the Aspen-Sopris District at the White River National Forest where the cows were found. And he joins me now.

Melissa Block speaks with our regular political commentators, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, and David Brooks of The New York Times.

Our story begins last month inside a busy Washington, D.C. subway station plastered with posters of giant dollar bills. One of them says: "Tell Congress to stop wasting time trying to eliminate the dollar bill." Another asks: "Do you heart the dollar?"

Political fights in the nation's capital normally involve billions or even trillions, not single dollars. What's going on here?