>> tonight on pbs news weekend, by now, pay later. what you need to know about the interest-free payment plans that are exploding in popularity. then, research into the connection between air pollution and degenerative brain diseases. and, my conversation with martin luther king iii on his father's legacy and the meaning of martin luther king jr. day. >> every year i'm asked the question, have we achieved the dream that your dad envisioned? and my answer, unfortunately, every year is we didn't achieve it last year. but every january, we have an opportunity to start anew. ♪

>> major funding for pbs news weekend has been provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular's goal has been able to make people connect. our customer service team can find a plan that fits you. visit consumer cellular.tv. >> with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. and friends of the newshour.

this program was made possible for the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. john: good evening. i'm john yang. california is bracing for another wave of heavy precipitation tonight. for nearly three weeks, incessant storms have overflowed river banks, and swamped entire neighborhos. millions of people still face the threat of floods and thousands remain under evacuation orders and warnings. president biden has approved a disaster declaration for the state, freeing up federal funds for the recovery, as residents used a brief lull in the storms today to clean up. forecasters say an end is in sight, calling for warmer, drier weather later this week. in the ukrainian city of dnipro the death toll from yesterday's russian missile strike on an apartment building has risen to 30. one of those killed s a child. today, search and rescue teams continued to comb through debris for survivors. dozens are still missing.

yesterday's barrage of russian strikes across ukraine was the heaviest in weeks. tens of thousands of israelis took to the streets of tel aviv last night to protest their new hard-right government's push to overhaul the justice system. demonstrators railed against proposals that include allowing a simple majority of lawmakers to strike down supreme court decisions. prime minister benjamin netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption remained defiant today, saying his government will move ahead with its proposals. in nepal, 68 people are dead, and four others are missing, after a twin-engine propeller commerical airliner on a domestic flight crashed while trying to land. an eyewitness's video captured part of the plane's sudd, final moments, when it veered to its left and lost altitude, as it neared the airport. it's the country's deadliest plane crash in decades. those aboard included children and infants, and citizens from 8 countries. the flight's destination is

popular with trekkers. the weather had been clear and the cause of the crash is unknown. and, on this martin luther king jr. day weekend, president biden took to the pulpit of atlanta's ebenezer baptist church, where dr. king was co-pastor in the 1960's and where democratic senator rafael warnock is now senior pastor. biden said that dr. king's words revealed a nation at a crossroads, both then and now. >> he said: 'where do we go from here?' that's a quote. where do we go from here? well, my message to the nation on this day is we go forward. we go together. [applause] john: today would have been dr. king's 94th birthday. still to come on "pbs news weekend", my conversation with martin luther king iii on his father's legacy and a brief but spectacular take on suicide prevention.

>> this is pbs news weekend from w eta studios in washington, home of the pbs newshour, weeknights on pbs. john: as inflation remains high, many consumers are looking at new ways to pay for the things they want. one that's gaining popularity is buy now, pay later. companies like affirm, afterpay and klarna allow customers to take an item home right away and pay for it later in interest free installments. but it's only free if you follow the rules. roben farzad is host of public radio's full disclosure. robin, how do these things work and how are they different from using a credit card? roben: these are just splitting up payments to a down payment. effectively, you imagine a $200 handbag, so you pay $50 upfront

and you ha maybe two months to pay the rest. sands interests another thing. so you're asking yourself what's in it for the merchant? well, e merchant is being promised by these vendors that you're going to get a much bigger size of the shopping cart. and we can also track data and the merchant will pay fees in lieu of interest. so this is to the industry, at least it's innovation and not usury, but the consumer financial protection bureau and others have kind of caught on because the seor has exploded, especially during the pandemic, and saying, well, maybe there are some usurious aspects, especially if you're layering this onto your credit card and it's buyer beware and, you know, debtor beware. john: do we know what kind of consumer, what type of consumer this is popular with? roben: this has been huge with millennials and gen z. and if you just take millennials alone, right, considering the

post-traumatic stress of the financial crisis and not being able to get bs and seeing their parents with subprime and everything else, i mean, time was that the collateralized debt obligations or nbs, was also a financial innovation. so they might look askance at these credit card teaser rates and other things that, you know, 20-somethings might otherwise see their mailboxes stuffed with. so if you can avoid i mean, it's a panacea if you can avoid credit and all of its overhang what with reporting to credit bureaus and and collection agencies and everything, and just take something and divide up into four, why wouldn't you do that? the thing is, you really have to read intense fine print. it's different among all of the different buy now, pay later, later players and can you indeed get caught up in a vicious credit cycle? and i think a lot of these gen z and millennials and the consumer financial protection bureau are kind of finding this out belatedly. it's always like this game of cat and mouse as it was in subprime. john: well, explain how that happens. how are they getting into trouble? roben: suppose it's linked to

your credit card, i mean, so. okay, you agree to pay $50 on that handbag, on that $200 handbag, and we're going to take the money from your credit card over, say, two months. but if you're not paying the credit card and you have simultaneously many buy now pay later engagements going on, what you're doing is effectively stacking onto credit. it will recourse back to you if you get ported to a collection agency, a collection agency has to report that to the credit bureau. so you may have bought this initial premise that this is not a credit card, but in the end it ends up hitting you and docking you much like a credit card would, because it's linked to your credit card and you're not making payments, especially now if you're going away from kind of vanity purchases into everyday purchases, groceries, things that are costing a lot and credit card interest rates are going up because the fed has been taking up rates and we're in a higher interest rate environment. it seems like a recipe for a death spiral. -- debt spiral. john: and you talked about warnings. is this regulated at all? roben: the argument is that it's not as regulated as it should be, because, again, it's in the purview of the province of nancial innovation, and it's

supposed to be consumer friendly. a lot of these players are saying we don't want to be like credit card companies. we don't want to be looked at that way. we want to usher in the new era of fintech and a new banking that's kind of consumeracing and friendlier but there is an underbelly. there is an underbelly when people accumulate rolling credit or whatever you want to call it, rolling balances and they don't pan. these are non-performing and they have to be written off. these arnot charitable companies. they're not there to just ad infinitum make zero interest rate credit extensions to people -- they're going to collect. they're going to write off things that end up in the hands of the collection bureaus. and the credit card companies are going to have to deal with the second order effects. and so, yes, belatedly, you're seeing regulators come to this. you saw a report from the coumer financial protection bureau that says also we're monitoring how much information is sold because you're tracking everybody real time, their movements. how hesitant were they to consummate the transaction? that's all very profitable information and customers, especially younger people, might not know that they are maybe the product and not the customer.

john: roben farzad is host of public radio's full disclosure. thank you very much, robin. roben: my pleasure, john. thank you. ♪ john: new research is raising important quesons about the effect of air pollution, not only on our lungs, but on our brains. what one study called "an urgent public health concern." the issue, how much and to what extent are airborn contaminants linked to neurological diseas such as alzheimer's? jeffrey brown has more. >> research in this area has been building for years with many links now seen, but much still uncertain. dr. deborah corey-slechta focuses her studies on environmental health and the brain at the university of rochester medical center, and she joins now. thanks for being with us. you know, you and others see a

growing public health issue here. explain the concern. i mean, how does air pollution impact the brain and possibly lead to neurological disease? deborah: well, we've known that air pollution has effects on the heart and the lung for a very long time, but it's really only been iabout the past ten years that attention has been directed to its effects on the brain. and over that period of time, there's been a growing body of scientific evidence showing associations between exposures to air pollution and a real wide variety of neurological diseases and disorders. it has included neurodevelopmental disorders like autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as neurodegenerative diseases like alzheimer's disease, parkinson's disease, etc. how that's happening, we still don't fully understand.

but the fact that it seems to have such an impact on such a variety of neurological diseases and disorders suggests that instead of acting on what are the real unique characteristics of each of those diseases and disorders, air pollution is acting on the atures that ar shared across these neurological diseases and disorders. jeffrey: well, so to be clear at this stage, it's a question of association of pollution to neurological problems, but not yet clear causation. is that fair? deborah: i think the is a growing body of experimental data linking or directly showing causal relationships. air pollution is a very complicated exposure. it's really a mixture of gases and particles, and those particles carry other toxins on them, metals and organics that get into the brain.

and so what we really don't understand, one of the things we don't understand is what are the contaminants that are getting into the brain via those air pollution particles that are responsible for these neurological diseases and disorders? jeff: now, as you're as you're studying this, who do you consider most at risk, whether it's by age or by living conditions or geography? who are you most worried about? deborah: well, i think we don't fully have the answers to that so one of the things we don't yet understand with respect to, for example, neurodevelopmental disorders is what is the period of greatest vulnerability? is it preconception or is it in utero, first, second, third trimester, early brain development? we don't know the answers. and with respect to neurodegenerative diseases, one has to remember that this is actually a lifetime exposure. are neurodegenerativdiseases

being caused by a cumulative exposure over the lifetime, or is it exposures that are occurring later as maybe the blood-brain barrier begins to break down, gets a little bit leaky? we don't have answers to those questions as of yet. we really need to understand what the contaminants are that are in air pollution that are causing these, because then we could go and basically set regulatory policies that might assist in preventing those exposures. jeff: are there things you do advise to individuals to, in terms of behavior or care in this regard? deborah: well, i don't know that there's much an indidual can do. this is really going to be at a national level. we do regulate right now levels of air pollution with specifically what we call pm 2.5 and pm10. those are particle sizes but we know that it's actually the smallest particle size, the ultrafine particles, the nanoparticles that are the most

problematic. they are the what carry those toxints into the body and we don't regulate those right now. weon't have a system in place to fully assess the data of those kinds of exposures. and so a lot more effort is going to be needed to address this ultrafine particle component. jeff: deborah cory-slechta, thank you very much. deborah: thank you. ♪ john: today's the 94th birthday of the reverend martin luther king jr.. since the 1990's, the day has been a day of civic, community and service projects. rtin luther king iii is his son and a global human rights

advocate. this april, it will be 55 years since your father's assassination. the world lost a leader that day. you lost a father. what are your personal remembrances and thoughts looking back, you and your family, over these past 55 years? >> number one, every year i am asked, have we achieved the dream your dad envisioned? my answer unfortunately every year is we didn't achieve it last year but every january we have an opportunity to start anew. if you ask me about what i am often thinking about, i have to remember the wonderful experiences. i only had a short time wi my dad. 10 years. i did travel with him, to see him in the context of his work. i did march with him. i did visit him at his office.

we did go on some vacations from time to time. all those kind of experiences, we rode bicycles together. i think about, particularly in january when we observe his birth. john: what do you think his legacy is today? >> he was a human being who was able to bring people together. groups that didn't necessarily always agree. he was a coalition builder. we need more coalition leadership today. we are the most divided time probably we have ever been in the history of our nation, particularly our political leadership. dad used to say we have to inject nonviolence. he wanted to eradicate the triple evils of poverty, racism and violence from our society. clearly, there is a lot of work we have to do for those this to be eradicated. i hope people are renewed and get engaged in a way maybe they

have not been engaged in the past. john: what do you think he would be focused on today in these divided times? what would be animating his work today? >> every campaign he was involved in, he talked about voting rights and expansion of that franchise. he used to say a voteless people is a powerless people. one of the most sure steps we can take is our step to the ballot box. our rights are being restricted in 2023 in a number of states, including my home state, georgia, instead of being expanded. we shouldn't evehave to go to the polls unless we choose to. i know he would be focused to their. he would be focused on the violence a poverty that exists in our society. we talk about 60 or so million but there are far more thanhat living in poverty. that is unacceptable in a nation that has such a vast amount of wealth. then of course, our violence is

busting out at the seams. that has to change. dad used to say we must learn nonviolence or we may face nonexistence. we do not want to face nonexistence. ultimately we have to learn nonviolence someday. john: i'm curious what you think of the fact of the day honoring your father has become a day of service. >> that was certainly something my mother intended when she and others helped establish the holiday. she went to visit every u.s. senator and many members of the u.s. house of representatives. it was not supposed to be a day, our traditional holidays are kicked back, relax, go back and have a sale of some kind -- this was always directed toward working to achieve and realize the dream he had of freedom, justice and equality for all humankind. john: you and your family have me up with a reading list of materials by your father but

about your father. why did you do that and what is it you want people to know or especially younger people to know about your father? >> the best way to understand about martin luther ki jr.'s to read his own words and work. one specifically, i will mention, while there are several we recommended through an app that encourages people to read, one of those is called "where do we go from here, chaos or community?" that was my dad's last book in 1967. what he is talking about is the world house and how we work together to achieve components of the dream he envisioned. we have seen chaos. we must emace and build community. secondly, a book called strength to love. it is a book of sermons in each one of those, he talks about what has taken place through the

modern civil rights movement and it gives us instructions on what we could and should and can be doing to make our nation better. again, the main goal is to encourage people to read. if you want to know about martin luther king, why not read his own words he actually wrote that give us examples of who he was and what we all can become? john: martin luther king iii, thank you very much. >> thank you. ♪ john: amelia describes yourself many ways. muslim woman. educator. activist. and a suicide survivor. through her advocacy work, she is using science and research to tell others who are experiencing suidal thoughts. she shares her brief but spectacular take on

cross-cultural suicide prevention research. >> being a survivor of suicide attempts is not just like this final occasion where from then on you are no longer suicidal. it is for me, definitely, this active decision every single day to wake up and choose life. ♪ my experience was sort of just a really deep sense of hopelessness. i was actively suicidal during grad school for three years. one of my first out of multiple suicide attempts was postpartum when i had my first daughter in 2015. i had subsequent attempts which got me hospitalized. two impromptu hospitalizations. i became so hopeless about my own survival, it made more sense to end the suffering and not continue.

from my perspective as someone who straddled both american identity and muslim identity and of course my ethnic background being south asian, it was confusing to conceptualize suicide. it almost seemed like a foreign concept as if muslims aren't impacted by suicide so why discuss it? i didn't necessarily speak up about my mental health of my mom. it is as if you would be offending the culture almost. it would be considered a direct attack to how much effort she has put into taking care of me. i knew i couldn't be the only one. i knew this was a more universal experience. and we are realizing. i knew i would have to try and bring my own lived experience as a survivor and eventually come out as a survivor in order to move the needle scientifically andolitically and socially. i chose to be a scholar activist, someone who does research. because i believe if we get

scientific representation about the issues we are facing, if we can get data, numbers, and numbers don't lie, if we can get epidemiological evidence of how much we are suffering in the muslim community, we can get political representation. in my mind, scientific representation equals political representation. i have two kids, a seven-year-old and an almost two-year-old. i truly believe if we are to be effective as parents and if we want to heal and not pass on this intergenerational trauma that we have come from, that our parents have come from, that our ancestors have held in their bodies, then we have to do the work. my name is amelia. this is my brief but spectacular take on cross-cultural suicide prevention research. ♪

john: now online, our guide to the restrictive immigration program known as title 42 and what president biden's controversial expansion means for migrants crossing the southern border. all that and more is on our web site pbs.org/newshour. that's pbs news weekend for this sunday. i'm john yang. for all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. have a good week. >> major funding has been provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering contract plans to help people get more of what they like. our team can help find a plan that fits you. ♪ >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions.

this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

-this program is brought to you in part by a passion for better understanding our world. -at their best, travel and public television accomplish the same thing. they both allow us to venture into our wod and experience great art, music, history, food, and people. -hi. i'm rick steves, back with the fascinating story of europe's art, from pre-history to the present. in this hour, we enter the middle ages, the era of soaring cathedrals, imposing castles, splendid stained glass, and even a unicorn or two. this is the art of europe. thanks for joining us. ♪♪ ♪♪