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AirTalk

AirTalk for August 12, 2015

Bicyclists riding near Downtown Los Angeles as part of CicLAvia
Bicyclists riding near Downtown Los Angeles as part of CicLAvia
(
Photo by Joshua Livingston via Flickr Creative Commons
)
Listen 1:34:30
Yesterday Los Angeles County Supervisors and LA City Councilmembers made big bets on a dramatically different future for transportation and incarceration. Also, after months of refusal, Hillary Clinton agreed to turn over her personal email server to the Justice Department. Then, you’ve no doubt heard of women’s studies, but men’s studies?
Yesterday Los Angeles County Supervisors and LA City Councilmembers made big bets on a dramatically different future for transportation and incarceration. Also, after months of refusal, Hillary Clinton agreed to turn over her personal email server to the Justice Department. Then, you’ve no doubt heard of women’s studies, but men’s studies?

Yesterday Los Angeles County Supervisors and LA City Councilmembers made big bets on a dramatically different future for transportation and incarceration. Also, after months of refusal, Hillary Clinton agreed to turn over her personal email server to the Justice Department. Then, you’ve no doubt heard of women’s studies, but men’s studies?

City, county leaders’ moves on transportation, incarceration mark paradigm shift for region

Listen 35:44
City, county leaders’ moves on transportation, incarceration mark paradigm shift for region

Yesterday Los Angeles County Supervisors and LA City Councilmembers made big bets on a dramatically different future for transportation and incarceration.

The city council is betting that making it harder for you to drive 20 years from now will push you into bike riding or taking the bus. The Supervisors are betting community mental health services will keep people out of jail.

Both are gambles. Both mark big philosophical shifts regional thinking.

They were votes in complete contradiction to traditional responses to population growth. They were votes for theories -- that might work and be revolutionary.

But it's also possible the theories don't hold up amidst the size and complexity of Los Angeles. It's possible Angelenos’ quality of life suffers with worse traffic and that jails overcrowd and repeat offenders get out early due to a lack of jail space.

The Council voted to approve the Mobility 2035 Plan. It calls for sweeping changes to the way public streets are used for transportation in Los Angeles, eliminating car lanes on a number of the city's busiest streets. In their place, will be lanes for bikes or express buses.

The bet is that enough people will give up on driving to reduce traffic. If it works, a bright future. If it bombs, the Board of Supervisors could be debating spending money to correct it.

Mobility Plan 2035: An Element of the General Plan (May 28, 2015 Draft - as approved by City Planning Commission)

Guests:

Meghan McCarty, KPCC commuting and mobility reporter

Tamika Butler, executive director of the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition

Jay Beeber, executive director of Safer Streets L.A., and a research fellow with the Reason Foundation

Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and adjunct faculty at USC Annenberg School

Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State LA

China's ozone-forming pollutants drift over California, study shows

Listen 11:07
China's ozone-forming pollutants drift over California, study shows

From 2005 to 2010, the western US made huge leaps in cutting ozone-forming pollutants at a 21 percent decrease, but the ozone in the atmosphere did not drop because of a combination of pollutants drifting from China plus a natural uptick in ozone, according to a new study.

Scientists with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and from the Netherlands say Chinese emissions of ozone-forming pollutants increased 21 percent during those six years. Plus, due to natural cycles including the 2009-10 El Nino, an unusual amount of ozone drifted down from the stratosphere.

The fact that pollutants are migratory places greater pressure on achieving global agreements to reduce emissions. Ahead of climate talks in Paris this year, China has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 60-65 percent from 2005 levels. How will greenhouse gas emissions cuts contribute to reducing ozone? Practically speaking, how will China achieve those cuts?

Rapid increases in tropospheric ozone production and export from China

Guest:

Jessica Neu, Co-author of the research and research scientist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Paul Joffe, Senior Foreign Policy Counsel and Manager of ChinaFAQs project with the World Resources Institute - a nonprofit policy organization focused on global environmental issues - founded by a MacArthur Foundation grant in 1982

Cyber security expert, strategists weigh in on the endless debate about Clinton emails

Listen 24:45
Cyber security expert, strategists weigh in on the endless debate about Clinton emails

After months of refusal, Hillary Clinton has agreed to turn over her personal email server to the Justice Department.

Federal Investigators are examining whether or not any classified information was passed through the system during Clinton’s time as secretary of state.

Steve Bucci, of The Heritage Foundation and Democratic strategist Kate Maeder debate what the decision means for Clinton’s campaign and we talk with data recovery expert Andrew von Ramin Mapp about how tech specialists will go about extracting deleted emails from the server.

 What do you think the investigation means for Clinton’s campaign?

For more about the Clinton email debate, Read the story here

Guest:

Steve Bucci, Director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign and National Security Policy, The Heritage Foundation

Kate Maeder, Democratic political strategist who works on campaigns in California for Storefront Political Media consultancy based in San Francisco

Andrew von Ramin Mapp, CEO and Founder of Data Analyzers, a firm that specializes in data recovery and computer forensics based in Orlando, Florida

Why Stony Brook University decided to launch the country's first masculinity master's program

Listen 22:53
Why Stony Brook University decided to launch the country's first masculinity master's program

You’ve no doubt heard of women’s studies, but men’s studies? Sociology professor Michael Kimmel is starting the first master's program in Masculinity this fall at Stony Brook University in New York.

The program will seek to answer what the difference is between a “Real Man” and a “Good Man,” and why those labels conjure up such different images for many. Kimmel comes from a long career of boosting the study of men and boys. But is masculinity studies really necessary?

The point of women’s studies or African American studies is clear; they grew out of the 1970s and aimed to write women and minorities into a history they have largely been omitted from. The joke has been that men’s studies already existed.

But Kimmel argues there’s now more than ever a need to seriously consider an academic look at manhood.

What makes men men? And how are we teaching boys to grow into that? It would look at the effects of race and sexuality on masculine identity and the influence of the media and pop culture.

Guest:

Michael Kimmel, a professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University, which is part of the CUNY system. He directs the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities and is the author of more than a dozen books including “Angry White Men,” “Manhood in America: A Cultural History,” “Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men” and the “Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis,” which he co-edited