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Keith: What is up, everyone? I am Keith Kocinski, and you will see Azia later in the show. It is Thursday, March 16, and we have got a jam-packed show for you today, so let's dive right in. The push to see President Trump's tax records started way back on the campaign trail. Now, after nearly a year, a small part of those records was leaked.

Portions of President Trump's 2005 tax return were mysteriously leaked to Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist David Cay Johnston.

David Cay Johnston: Came in the mail.

Keith: According to figures confirmed by the White House, President Trump paid

$38 million in federal taxes on more than $150 million in income, giving the president an effective tax rate of 25.3 percent. No big surprises, but why is it a big deal? 

Tax returns can tell you a lot about a person: how much he made, how much he paid in taxes, what went to charities. And in President Trump’s case, a lot of people want to know if he has any business ties or owed any money to foreign governments. But none of the documents that would tell you that information were part of the leak, which was only two pages long. 

In an MSNBC interview on “Rachel Maddow,” Johnston said he did not know the source but speculated it might even be Trump himself.

Johnston: Donald has a long history of leaking material about himself when he thinks it's in his interest.

Keith: Shortly after the tax return was made public, the president's son, Donald Jr., chimed in, tweeting: "Thank you Rachel Maddow for proving to your #trump hating followers how successful @realdonaldtrump is & that he paid $40 million in taxes!"

There is no law that a president has to release his taxes, but every president in the last 40 years has done it after President Nixon’s returns showed some problems that were later investigated.

President Richard Nixon: People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.

Keith: President Trump has said no one cares about his taxes, but polls show at least two-thirds of Americans want him to release them.

All right, coming up, it is like “America's Got Talent,” but for young scientists.

Keith: The best young minds gathered in Washington, D.C., for their own March Madness of science, and Azia, I hear the competition is for more than just bragging rights. 

Azia: Yeah, Keith, it is one of the nation's oldest and most respected science and math competitions, and get this — the winner took home $250,000! Check it out.

Indrani Das took home first place for her research on treating brain injuries.  

Indrani Das: Neurons are dying around these supporting cells, and at the same time, there is more of this glutamate in the environment.

Azia: Indrani was one of 40 high school seniors battling it out to take home top honors at the Regeneron Science Talent Search. The Society for Science and the Public has run this competition for over 70 years, and among scientists it is called the Junior Nobel Prize.

Student: I started looking at desalination.

Azia: The group of teens …

Jessika Baral: And so my goal is to kind of streamline this process, see if I could do it — maintain the accuracy.

Azia: … had to explain their projects in a pitch …

Aaron: This is, like, the 2,000 lines of code that I had to write to get the thing working.  

Azia: … and sell it to the judges. 

Blake Hord: I discovered evidence for a forming planet around a nearby star.

Azia: Blake Hord trained for this moment by inspiring even younger scientists. 

Blake: I’m going to move it over, you are going to see the tail alongside it, right?

Azia: While teaching younger kids about the stars and the planets, he is working on how to explain his own discoveries to an audience. 

Blake: To be able to condense knowledge into such small anecdotes really has helped me understand my own work better and communicate at the basic level so that I truly do understand what I'm doing.

Azia: George Yancopolous was a winner of the award back in 1976. Thirteen years later, he went on to be the founding scientist of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which now sponsors the competition. George hopes to inspire teens. 

George Yancopolous: It is so important, and they can get recognized, and they can actually be heroes. 

Azia: Now one of those heroes is Indrani, who is looking at ways to revive dead brain cells.

Indrani: I want brain injury to be tackled at a fundamental level, and I mean brain injury by Alzheimer's, neurodegeneration, traumatic brain injury. I want to see all the people who suffer from these conditions to improve their quality of life. 

Yancopolous: We need kids, the best and the brightest, to become scientists. We've got to be inspiring, we've got to be capturing their imagination, and we've got to convince them that they have got to come in here and help save our world.  

Azia: They are all so inspiring. And Blake didn't make it to the top 10, but he still took home $25,000 in prize money, so not too shabby.

Keith: Really cool. Thanks, Azia.

After the break, why the teen brain likes to live life on the edge.

Keith: It is not a shocker that teens do some pretty crazy stuff, from speeding in a car to jumping off cliffs. You guys are the definition of daredevils. In Part 2 of our series, Arielle Hixson takes a look at the risky business going on inside your brain.

Arielle: It is the rush. No strings attached, not a care in the world — until it all goes wrong.

Hannah Huntoon: I clinically died. When I hit the road, my skull shattered and punctured my brain.

Arielle: Hannah Huntoon seemed to have the perfect life. The 16-year-old girl from Florida was a dancer, straight-A student and popular in school.  

Huntoon: I felt like I was, like, this perfect human being who just could do whatever she wanted, say whatever she wanted, like, no one could get in my way.

Arielle: One day, Hannah and her friends decided to try a new fad that was making the rounds on YouTube: car surfing. She stood on top of a moving car and then fell off. 

Huntoon: And I just remember falling. I just hit the ground and then died on impact. The left side of my skull shattered; I had punctured parts of my brain, and I was just lying in the road. 

Arielle: It took paramedics several minutes to revive her, but she was still in a coma.

Huntoon: I woke up two and a half weeks later bald. I couldn't really move.

Arielle: Were you scared?

Huntoon: I was terrified. Every time I moved my head too fast, I could feel my brain roll. I could feel it; I could lean to the side and trace the lines of my brain — I had no skull.

Arielle: And Hannah had to start her life over. 

Huntoon: I had to relearn how to walk; things that you learn as a baby I was 16 years old, struggling to do. I couldn't speak. I was trapped in my body, having everyone — nurses — do everything for me because I couldn't do it myself. 

Arielle: The government reports that in an eight-year period, car surfing caused

99 serious injuries, and 58 of them were fatal. 

Believe it or not, there is a reason why teens are more likely to take risks. Scientists say that this part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision-making, is not fully developed — well, at least not until your mid-20s. That is why young people may have a tough time seeing the real risks behind their choices. 

Barbara Braams: Adolescence is a time in which they have to explore their environment, which can be a little bit, well …

Arielle: Tempting?

Braams: Yeah, tempting, or maybe a little bit dangerous. 

Arielle: Barbara Braams runs a lab at Harvard University that studies the influence of risk-taking on adolescence. 

Braams: We track how the brain develops and how that relates to what kind of risks people take, either on a laboratory task or in the real world.

Arielle: Here, a simulated gambling game could potentially chart just how much of a risk teens are willing to take in real life. Scientists say taking risks stimulates the striatum, a region that is related to getting rewards, and this part of the brain is more active during teenage years than at any other time. 

Braams: Rewards can be very basic, from eating a piece of chocolate to being accepted in a group. This drive towards receiving rewards may lead to risk-taking to receive those rewards.

Arielle: Not all risks are bad: like, applying for a tough college or asking someone out on a date could be considered good risks that help teens learn and adapt to their environment. But it can be tough to stay clear of the bad risks. 

Scientists say teens are more likely to engage in risky behavior because their brain isn’t fully developed. What do you think about that? 

Huntoon: The lack of development in our brains as a teenager is absolutely the biggest reason that these YouTube challenges and risk-taking behaviors happen for teenagers. There's a level of maturity that you need to reach to be able to weigh pros and cons of decisions. The majority of teenagers just lack that. 

Arielle: Six years later, Hannah takes me to the site of her accident, just around the corner from her house.

Now, coming back here to this spot, how are you feeling right now?

Huntoon: It's still hard — it’s never not going to be hard, but it gets easier, just little by little. I'm that 0.01 percent of fully recovering, able to dance again, ever able to go to school again — I graduated on time. I'm lucky; I'm very lucky.

Arielle: Arielle Hixson, Channel One News.

Keith: Wow, she is definitely lucky. Great to hear that she has made a full recovery. 

For more facts on the brain and how to find out just how powerful your brain is, check out our brainiac facts on or on our Insta and Snap.

All right, it is time to head out of here, but we will see you right back here tomorrow.

 

 

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