There is a lot of country in there but we mix it with all sorts, punk, poetry, jangle. I perform with my backing band (we prefer the term Orchestra). The running joke is that we’re a country band, which is a fun reputation to work to and means we get to wear cool clothes. I’m Frank Lloyd Wleft, age 22, raised on red milk in North London. For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make? Discover the secret behind his "post-Americana" style and how he’s shaking up the scene with his Orchestra. In this Q&A session, we dig deep into Frank Lloyd Wleft's musical journey, from his debut single 'Caroline' to his daring collaborations with London's finest. Hailing from North London, this multi-talented artist infuses country, punk, poetry, and jangle into a concoction that's truly one-of-a-kind. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.Step right into the electrifying world of Frank Lloyd Wleft. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. KELLY: Journalist Lewis Simons is author of "To Tell the Truth: My Life As A Foreign Correspondent." Thank you very much. So that's still less than the 45% in Laos, but it's not terribly encouraging. On the other hand, there are others in the military - qualified people who say it could be as high as 15%. military is now claiming that the dud rate - the failure rate of today's cluster bombs, may be as low as 2 1/2 to 1%. The one point that needs to be made statistically is that the U.S. And I think the possibility is very real. And I would hate to see it repeated in Kyiv or in another city or village in Ukraine. SIMONS: Well, the first thing that went through my mind was, oh, my God, not again, because I remember that incident with those little boys in that little village in Laos as if it happened yesterday. I'm just curious, as someone with your long, long view on this, what went through your mind. I mean, having said what I did, you're right to want me to come down on one side or the other. SIMONS: You know, it's all too easy to criticize. should send a cluster munitions to Ukraine. wars and military action overseas, as you've tracked the controversy over whether the U.S. So I wonder if there's been an image or a thought foremost in your mind, as a longtime chronicler of U.S. In some areas, it's already helping with that because Russia is using cluster bombs in Ukraine. And in the case of Ukraine, the Biden administration is promising to support the cleanup of cluster bombs. KELLY: This gets to what happens after the guns are silenced, after the fighting stops. And this is still the irony - or the horrible thing, really, is that this is going on to this day. And it blew up in his hand, and it took his left arm and his left eye. And he had one that he was using his hands - his fingers to scrape out from the dirt. And he said that he, like these other boys and like everyone in the village, both children and adults, made a living, so to speak, by digging up unexploded bomblets or cluster bombs. And this little boy, Nai - he was missing one arm from above the elbow, and one eye was completely gone. And as I was walking with my interpreter along the dirt road through the center of the village, a little group of boys - five of them, young, all - and I began questioning them. You're in this tiny village, and you've written you ran into five boys, including one who told you he was 7 years old. I wonder if we can take it down to the level of just one person. KELLY: The numbers are just so hard to wrap your head around. And they died because - and mostly, they died because they were attracted to these glittery, brightly painted toys, which is pretty much what the cluster bombs look like. Of the civilians, half were children - young children. About 200,000 people - Laotian people died. SIMONS: Ten percent of the population, which, at the time, was only 3 million.
What was the human toll? How many people in Laos died as a result of cluster munitions? KELLY: We've been talking about the number of bombs that the U.S. Simons is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who reported from Asia and the Middle East for decades. Lewis Simons is here in the studio to talk about the legacy of cluster bombs in Laos and what we might learn from it today. Well, we raise this because cluster bombs are back in the news, given President Biden's controversial move to send them to Ukraine. dropped more than 270 million cluster bombs on Laos. The most heavily bombed country in the history of the world - more than Japan, more than Germany, more than Britain - is Laos.
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