AirTalk brings you the latest in political news, including reports that Trump invited Putin to the White House during a March phone call. We also dive into the independent autopsy results of Stephon Clark and what they tell us about officers’ actions; have you kept up with your water conservation efforts?; and more.
Week in politics: The tense state of U.S.-Russia relations, what’s next after Trump says DACA deal is off and more
AirTalk’s weekly political roundtable recaps the headlines from the weekend in politics and looks ahead to the week to come.
This week, our political analysts will discuss:
Russia
DACA future after Trump’s weekend Twitter rant
Follow on furor over Census citizenship question
Response from CA cities, counties to Trump’s sanctuary city lawsuit against CA
Trump administration's response to Sacramento police-involved shooting
Gov. Schwarzenegger’s surgery, and his “new way” comments that Kasich should run
Trump calls Roseanne Barr to congratulate her on reboot
China hits U.S. with tariffs on 128 products
Trump’s Twitter
Blasts USPS for getting fleeced by Amazon
Continuing VA fallout (former Secretary Shulkin says he was fired via Twitter)
With Hope Hicks gone, who can soothe Trump? Plus, Gen. Kelly’s role reportedly shrinking. Plus, POTUS is being told he doesn’t need a communications director
CA special elections tomorrow
Guests:
Sean T. Walsh, Republican political analyst and partner at Wilson Walsh Consulting in San Francisco; he is a former adviser to California Governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger and a former White House staffer for Presidents Reagan and H.W. Bush
Matt Rodriguez, Democratic strategist and founder and chief executive officer of Rodriguez Strategies. He is also a former senior Obama advisor in 2008; he tweets
With a newly required cancer warning label, we discuss if coffee is safe to drink
A judge in California decided last week that coffee roasters, retailers and distributors should put a cancer warning label on coffee.
Proposition 65 requires businesses to warn customers about significant amounts of chemicals in the products that they purchase. But many public health experts don’t see the court’s decision necessary. Arguing that coffee, if anything, is an antioxidant that is protective against many kinds of cancers.
We explore the benefits and harms of coffee, particularly, acrylamide, a byproduct of the coffee roasting process.
Guest:
Mariana Carla Stern, USC professor of research preventive medicine and urology; she is the Director for the Molecular Epidemiology Program at USC; her overall research interest focuses on diet and cancer
What do the results of independent Stephon Clark autopsy tell us about officers’ actions?
According to an autopsy, conducted by an independent forensic pathologist hired by Stephon Clark’s family, Clark was shot in the back six times.
The shooting of Clark by police officers is being investigated by local and state officials as well, but the results of the independent autopsy raise questions about the police officers’ conduct.
Police had released footage of the incident. The officers said they thought Clark had a gun in his hand, which turned out to be a cell phone.
There’s more information to be learned about the case, but what do these new results of the autopsy tell us? Are the shots in Clark’s back proof of law enforcement malfeasance? Or were the officers justified in reacting the way they did in this situation?
Guests:
Sid Heal, a retired Commander from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department (1975 - 2008); president of the California Association of Tactical Officers, a non-profit organization that provides training for in-state special weapons teams
Tim Gipson, retired LAPD detective supervisor (1981-2012); he currently runs a PI firm, Secure Dynamix
Water Day: Have you kept up with your water conservation efforts?
Since Gov. Jerry Brown called off California's drought emergency a year ago, we Californians seem to have gotten a little lazy when it comes to water conservation.
We've started watering our lawns more often. We're not putting buckets in our showers as much. (In fact, we're taking longer showers.) And we don’t let yellow mellow — meaning, we flush our pee instead of just letting it sit in the toilet bowl, according to Southern California residents KPCC queried for this story.
AirTalk checks in our environment reporter Emily Guerin on her story about Southern Californians and her water saving habits.
Guest:
Emily Guerin, environment reporter at KPCC who’s been following the story
To frown or not to frown: The debate over adding emotions to the beloved poop emoji
Have you ever wondered how emoji get approved to be an official part of the universal language of icons that many of us use on a daily basis in texts, emails, social media posts, and various other forms of digital communication?
You might be surprised to learn that there’s an official group of people whose job it is to play gatekeeper for emoji, and right now they’re embroiled in a debate with typographers and others who contribute to the digital language over the evolution of one of the most popular emojis around: the smiling pile of poop.
Members of the Unicode Consortium, which sets worldwide standards for emoji, are at odds with two prominent typographers over whether to include a new poop emoji with a sad face as part of the 2018 class of emojis set to be unveiled in June. Unicode approved the sad face poop emoji for consideration in 2018, but the typographers argue that including such an emoji would open the gates to a wide range of what they see as unnecessary emotional expressions for the poop emoji and dilute the larger body of language for which Unicode is responsible. While they have taken on oversight of emojis as a digital language as they have grown in popularity, Unicode is also responsible for encoding ancient and/or obscure alphabets and languages for use on the internet. The typographers add that this is just one example of a larger issue with the overall emoji proposal and approval process being commercialized, frivolous, and opaque.
The debate points to larger issues of Unicode’s role in approving emojis and a larger discussion between language encoders and long-time linguists about the role and importance emojis should have in our daily communications. Today on AirTalk, Larry talks with a sociolinguist and emoji expert about the emoji approval process and why this debate over a pile of poop has larger implications.
Guest:
Tyler Schnoebelen, sociolinguist and principal product manager at Integrate.ai, a startup that helps big companies understand their customers better; known as the “father of smiley linguistics”