Michael Sullivan

The airstrikes that India has launched into Pakistan are the deepest into Pakistani territory since 1971. What also stands out about these recent strikes is the scale and intensity of them.

It's neither the person, in the sense of the individual qualities, nor is it the issues. Voting is not based on calculation. Our voting is based on openness to the Holy Spirit.

The church herself is the expression of God's love for us in history. We're not lost or not orphans. We are in God's hands and we believe that God will act among us and we will have the Holy Father he wants us to have.

We are in God's hands and we believe that God will act among us and we will have the Holy Father he wants us to have.

So you really start to see an uptick in people taking melatonin in the 1990s. And there's this funny way in which you both have a lot of marketing and interest in it and research sort of coming and saying it. And at the same time, you have this moment when supplements...

are being deregulated in the United States, meaning Congress has gotten together and said, we're going to put a lot fewer restrictions on supplements and make it easier to sell things and make claims. You know, you could find these articles where people are like, whoa, melatonin is the new hot thing. What do we make of it? And there's anxiety around that and there's excitement around that.

And it begins to be more widely used.

So a lot of the early news coverage or advertisements have something that says it's not for children. And then starting in the 2000s. the age floor begins to drop in this really interesting way. By the late 2000s, you start to see some news reports of parents using it. You start to see articles that are saying, well, maybe for kids older than 10, this makes sense, but not for really small kids.

And over time, that just kind of gets gradually lower and lower and lower. And even then, it's especially in the last few years that it seems to be that clinicians are reporting a real uptick in use.

I would say it's being marketed to parents in a very deliberate way. Yes. And it's the bottles. It's a lot of the language around saying melatonin is safe and drug free and non-habit forming. Right. These are all terms that you hear coming up again and again in this marketing.

So melatonin falls into this really weird in-between space, right, where I think it's regulated as a supplement. And a lot of people think about it as being harmless and natural. And it's also something that's a prescription drug in a lot of the world, right, and is very much a drug. a drug. Legally, it is classed as a supplement. And so it's legal to say that it's not a drug.

But I think that that can create this weird thing where people think about it as being maybe a little different than what how researchers and physicians describe it, which is they're like, it's a hormone. It's a hormone you take in order to change something in your sort of create a change in your body.

Sure. So as you just said, one thing they always say is, there's not enough, which people say in almost every field it feels like.

We'd love to know more. But I think that this really is an area where, and this is something I heard again and again in interviews, where there is a sense that there is very little research, especially on long-term effects of melatonin. There's kind of two ways to break down melatonin. what the science says, right? What does the science say about whether it works?

And then what does the science say about whether it's safe? And in both cases, there's some uncertainty. In terms of what the science says about whether it works, the evidence that exists definitely suggests that, yes, it can help kids fall asleep a little bit earlier. Maybe not dramatically earlier, but something kind of on the order of around 20 minutes, maybe a little bit more on average.

There's also a question of whether children are actually better rested the next day. Again, there's actually some limited evidence. There's not really that much evidence either way showing that children are actually better rested when they have taken melatonin versus they have not.

This is, again, like such a big question to unpack, right? But there are reasons to say, okay, it's fairly safe. I want to be careful not to generalize that. But one of the big questions is about short-term and long-term side effects. Okay. In terms of short-term side effects, they could definitely be there.

The ones that are typically recorded in the scientific research tend to be pretty mild, but some researchers feel like that research hasn't been that comprehensive or rigorous and that it's possible that there are kind of immediate or short-term side effects that people just haven't really done a good job of tracking. And then in terms of the long-term effects,

right, of children who are taking melatonin maybe four or five or six or seven times a week for years on end, that's a really big open question. And I think some scientists look at that evidence and say, we see that it's helpful for families. We don't see obvious signs of concern. And again, it can be really helpful for people and it's worth doing.

It's worth, you know, in many cases, it's still worthwhile, right? And then I think there are a lot of researchers who look at this and say, based on that unknown, we should be cautious. And the way that it's being used right now is many things, but it's not cautious. And that's a problem.

Yeah, so I think we should kind of divvy this up for children in different situations, right?

So I think for children with some neurodevelopmental differences that can significantly affect their ability to sleep, autism in particular, certain manifestations of ADHD, I think there has been more of a willingness to say, look, these are children who are having, in some cases, a tremendous difficulty falling asleep. Not sleeping or not sleeping well can be...

can have some really negative long-term effects. And it makes sense to perhaps use melatonin regularly in order to do that, in order to be helpful.

It might be beneficial. I think that the way that melatonin is used often right now, which is... used regularly, often for neurotypical children who are perhaps sometimes taking the hormone a few times a week or every night with very little sort of supervision or input from a medical professional is something that very few people intend.

And even the supplement makers themselves will often include language to that effect on their bottles. But there's a real disjunct between kind of where that consensus is and how I think a lot of people are actually using melatonin.

Yeah. And I want to be really clear that I am not telling families, like, don't use melatonin or this is definitely dangerous. And I really don't want to be in any way dangerous. sort of delivering that message. I think that parents have the right to know what debates among scientists look like and understand where there's uncertainty.

And I also think that as parents, we're always having to weigh trade-offs. This is just a huge part of parenting. And lack of sleep is itself something that can be really hard on families, and this makes sense. Like, I don't want to suggest that this is a clear-cut, like, Parents, stop using melatonin. I think a lot of sleep experts, you know, perhaps predictably would say, talk to a sleep expert.

And I think that one thing that they point out is that establishing good bedtime routines, doing things like avoiding screen time before bed, steps like that can be helpful. And I want to say, you know, I'm a parent who has implemented some of these behavioral interventions and still deals with totally chaotic bedtimes with one of my children.

And so I don't want, I recognize that this doesn't always work or it doesn't always feel like it's going to work or it doesn't always sound realistic.

Thanks so much for having me on here.

It's like so many parents dream, which is like, is this the answer? Is there this one gummy or this one thing that can help me get through this part of the day that can be really, really hard for parents and families?

It's part of the way that the body regulates its sleep cycles and gets you toward bedtime.

So when people take synthetic melatonin in the form of a pill or a gummy... It also can have that experience of helping people feel a little bit more tired, a little bit sleepy, in ways that a lot of people find helpful for getting to sleep.

I think it's really important to understand that when families are seeking to help their children get a better night's sleep, it's not just like an abstract health goal that they're trying to solve. They're often really speaking into very real challenges and very real problems that are affecting all parts of a family and are also really affecting their kids flourishing.

This community has experienced too many tragedies, fires, floods, and mass attacks. But each time I've seen this great community respond with strength, resilience, and support for one another. I trust and hope that that will happen again now.

It's a young couple about to be engaged. The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem. They were a beautiful couple who came to enjoy an evening in Washington's cultural center.

Build it stronger, build it safer, build it back fast. Welcome back to the Sunday Story and part two of our series on how badly we as a nation do at rebuilding after a big storm knocks us down. Laura Sullivan and the crew at Frontline have been following along as North Carolina struggles to bounce back after Helene. In Houston, they learned you can't always engineer your way out of danger.

For more of Laura Sullivan's reporting from North Carolina, check out the PBS Frontline documentary, Helene's Deadly Warning, streaming now on Frontline's website and YouTube. This Sunday Story series was produced by Graham Smith and Andrew Mambo. It was edited by Jenny Schmidt and Robert Little. Kwesi Lee mastered the episode.

This series was co-reported with our partners at Frontline, Jonathan Scheinberg, Kate McCormick, Dana Irvin, Lauren Izzell Kinlaw, and Raphael Kuberski. The Sunday Story team includes Justine Yan and Liana Simstrom. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.

Now they're looking for answers in another storm-prone area, New York and New Jersey's seacoast, to see how they've done in the years since Superstorm Sandy. The idea there? Get out of the way of the water.

When we come back, a look at the forces shaping North Carolina's recovery. Stay with us.

We're back with a Sunday story. Laura Sullivan picks up the story in North Carolina.

It is so shocking when somebody that's taken an oath to protect the country is doing something to harm it.

He's helping with the relief effort, but doesn't want to be named because he's afraid of the military.

Right now, firefighters, police, the Red Cross, and volunteers are taking bodies from the rubble, he says, but we don't have enough equipment, not enough machinery, and that's why the rescue work is very hard. He says he reckons about 80% of the town has been totally destroyed and says the death toll just in his town is at 200 and counting.

Now, that's in a town about 150 miles south of Mandalay, the city you mentioned, only 10 miles from the epicenter, a city of over a million people, and Images coming from there show pancake buildings everywhere, and rescue efforts hampered workers say by the same lack of equipment and enough people to help.

The hospitals are completely overflowing, and many people are preparing to spend their second consecutive night outside in the street, some because their homes are gone, others because they're afraid theirs might come down at any time.

Surprisingly, they have. Here's junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in a televised address last night. So here he's saying Myanmar will welcome foreign aid from anywhere, and some has already begun to arrive from neighboring India and China. President Trump says the U.S. has offered to help as well.

Though it's not clear how, especially with the gutting of USAID, disaster relief was part of what it did. Now, in past disasters, the military ignored offers of help or severely restricted it, most egregiously, Scott, in 2008 when Cyclone Nargis struck, and Western nations offered to use their navies and helicopters to ferry in relief supplies.

The military ignored them and slow walked visas for foreign aid workers, and more than 140,000 people ended up dying. I think the military asking for help this time is probably a sign they realize just how bad the situation is.

Well, I mean, it's impossible to say really, but modeling by the USGS estimates the death toll from a quake as powerful as this in an area like this is likely to surpass 10,000 with a strong possibility it could go much, much higher. And I have to stress how ill-prepared the country is for dealing with something this awful.

Four years of civil war since the coup has left the public health system in tatters and aid distribution is severely restricted by the conflict as well. In a country where nearly 20 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the UN, which says more than 15 million, or roughly a third of the population, are facing acute food insecurity.

And Scott, that was even before this quake.

Yeah, we felt it here in Chiang Rai, and it was felt in several other provinces as well, but the damage was pretty minimal. In Bangkok, farther south, it was far more dramatic, with shaking skyscrapers sending people scurrying into the streets. You might have seen this video, Scott, of the infinity pool on top of one of these high-rise buildings raining water down several stories onto the street.

And many buildings in Bangkok are being examined over the weekend before the work week starts again on Monday. And the 30-story building under construction that you mentioned in the intro, that completely collapsed. Several people were killed there. And rescue efforts are continuing to reach dozens of construction workers trapped under the debris. And many of them are migrant workers from Myanmar.

You're welcome, Scott.

Well, it's hard getting information from Myanmar because of the military government's severe restrictions on Internet access and other means of communication since the 2021 coup. But reports that are leaking out, Scott, are pretty grim. Here's a teacher from Pyemana on the outskirts of the capital, Nipida.

Good morning.

Well, the pictures we're seeing coming out of Mandalay are pretty awful. It's Myanmar's second largest city, about 10 miles from the epicenter. And those pictures show many parts of the city of 1.5 million in ruins. And efforts to free those trapped under the rubble have been hampered by a lack of heavy equipment and personnel.

And time is running short for finding more survivors, especially with the temperature hovering near 100 degrees and the smell of death rescue workers say is overpowering. Here's a retired teacher from Mandalay. She doesn't want to be identified. She's afraid of the military. My house was badly damaged, she says, so now we're sleeping out here in the road. A hot pot shop near my house.

just disappeared into the earth, she says, and many, many big buildings just collapsed. We cannot count how many have died. And this is just in Mandalay, Michelle. There's other area rescuers haven't been able to reach.

They have, and that's unusual and maybe a sign they realize how bad things are. It's something they've been loathe to do in past crises, especially in 2008, when Cyclone Nargis struck and left about 140,000 dead.

Emergency response teams from China, India, and Russia, and some other countries, have arrived in country, but the airport in Mandalay, it's still closed to large aircraft, and that means much of the foreign assistance is being flown into the former capital, Yangon, some 350 miles to the south. That's a long way from Mandalay. President Trump said on Friday the U.S.

will be helping, too, but we're still waiting to see just how USAID has played a large role in disaster relief in the past, but it's been gutted by the Trump administration in recent weeks.

That's right. I mean, this war has been raging since the 2021 coup, and it's crippled Myanmar's public health system. It's displaced millions and severely restricted the distribution of aid for those people and for others as well. The UN says nearly 20 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance, and roughly 15 million were facing acute food insecurity. That's before the quake.

No. In fact, just hours after the quake, the military launched airstrikes and drone attacks in Karen State, according to relief workers, and reportedly launched several more airstrikes on Sunday against another rebel-controlled area in neighboring Shan State. The war goes on, even as the death toll from the quake continues to rise.

You're welcome.

Good morning, Leila.

So the conflict is always the fact that wealthy countries are responsible for a lot of the climate pollution that's raising global temperatures. But it's poorer countries that are suffering some of the worst impacts, like more extreme heat waves and floods. So years ago, wealthy countries agreed to help developing countries pay for stuff like renewable energy and protecting themselves.

It's an acknowledgment that the poor countries didn't cause the problem, and they can't pay to deal with it on their own. So the goal this year was to come up with a new funding target. And on Sunday, they did that. They agreed to $300 billion a year, but people still left really unhappy.

It's really that the money that countries promised wasn't nearly enough. Researchers estimate that developing countries will need more than a trillion dollars a year for climate change. One of the people who spoke at the closing meeting was a delegate from Nigeria, Nkiruka Madweakwe, and you'll hear she got a big applause.

And it's not just the amount of money. You know, it's not due until 2035. And what developing countries had said they need is more grant funding, not loans, so they don't add to their already high debt burdens. They didn't get any commitment around that.

You know, they don't really have a lot of options. You know, they can't afford to protect themselves. And so they're kind of stuck taking what's offered. And rich countries say they can't afford to put the bill on their own. They say that they're working with private investors and groups like the World Bank to get more money flowing into developing countries.

So the work now is to try to actually do that. Simon Steele is the UN climate chief, and he said the deal that was agreed to in Azerbaijan is a step in the right direction.

The big question now is whether wealthy countries make good on their promise. They were slow to deliver money on their last commitment. So poor countries are in a position of relying on unreliable neighbors.

It is really uncertain, right? Trump is expected to pull the U.S. out of Paris again, which could really diminish the U.S. role in these kinds of talks. But I think it's really important to remember that other countries are working on this issue, and so are states and cities in the U.S., as well as companies.

So what the Trump administration does is really important, but they aren't the only player here.

Thanks, Laila.

I'm in this terrible position of I don't want to hype up a treatment that is still experimental, but I also don't want to hide it.

It will not be just a valedictory, although there will be an element of reflecting over the course of their long relationship. There is actual work to do in this critical moment between the U.S. and China to to ensure that we don't run into any problems in the next two months in this transition of power.

Transitions are uniquely consequential moments in geopolitics. There are times when competitors and adversaries can see possibly opportunity because you have this change in government here. And so part of what President Biden will communicate is that we need to maintain stability, clarity, predictability through this transition process.