TSA’s PreCheck program allows certain passengers to forego long lines, but are the security oversights worth the risk?; whether you celebrated at home, in the office or at a restaurant, we want to hear your holiday weekend horror stories; an overview of new laws coming to California in 2017; plus, an interview with Gothic fiction author Anne Rice.
Is TSA’s PreCheck program a security risk?
In a recent Op-Ed in the LA Times, former Transportation Security Administration Director Kip Hawley criticized the agency’s PreCheck program for its vulnerabilities, which he said include unreliable identity verification and security oversights.
In the midst of increased holiday traffic, TSA PreCheck is a popular program that allows travelers to skip long lines in exchange for a fee, a background check and interview.
But what are the trade-offs? Do improved wait times for passengers justify the security risks involved?
Guest:
Hugo Martin, travel reporter for the Los Angeles Times
NorCal man busted for driving under the influence of… caffeine?!
Last year, a man was pulled over in Solano County, Calif., by an agent with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control for driving erratically.
According to the Guardian, which first reported on the case, the man was given a breathalyzer test which showed a zero alcohol reading. And a subsequent toxicology report also came back negative for any illicit drugs.
A second toxicology report performed did come back positive … for caffeine.
AirTalk guest host Patt Morrison talks with a couple experts to get to the bottom of the case.
Guests:
Nina Hodjat, Esq., managing attorney at Shield Legal Services, a law firm in Beverly Hills; she tweets
Jeffery Zehnder, a forensic toxicologist and founder of Drug Detection Laboratories, Inc, a forensic toxicology lab in Sacramento, Calif.
AirTalk Asks: What are your holiday horror stories?
There’s a good chance you congregated with friends and family over the holiday weekend.
If you celebrated at home, at a restaurant --or even in an office cubicle and experienced a holiday mishap, we want to hear from you. Did your home-cooked meal set off the fire alarm? Did you miss Christmas altogether due to weather conditions or a canceled flight?
Call us at 866-893-5722 to share your holiday horror stories with us.
Guest:
Amy Alkon, manners expert and author of the book, “Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck”
New year, new laws: A roundup of California politics for 2017
It’s been a whirlwind of a year, especially in the world of politics.
And in California, the election came a slew of new bills and therefore, new laws. The landscape of the state’s highly debated issues such as minimum wage, assault weapons and even mascot names will begin to change in 2017, according to the Sacramento Bee.
John Myers of the Los Angeles Times and Melody Gutierrez of the San Francisco Chronicle speak with Patt Morrison today to give you a roundup of what’s to come.
Guests:
John Myers, Sacramento Bureau Chief for the LA Times, who’s written a piece on the topic; He tweets from
Melody Gutierrez, politics reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sacramento bureau
Should ‘milk’ labels be removed from products such as soy, almond milk?
Two U.S. Representatives are urging the Food and Drug Administration to require “fake milk” manufacturers to adopt an alternative phrase.
Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) penned the letter last week, stating that the term “milk” in products such as almond and soy milk is “misleading to consumers, harmful to the dairy industry and a violation of milk’s standard of identity.” The letter adds that milk prices have declined 40 percent since 2014. According to The Soyfoods Association of North America, they have used the term “soymilk” for more than a century and has asked the FDA to recognize “soymilk,” but it has failed to do so.
Are these plant-based “milks” misleading to consumers? How should the FDA react?
You can read the full letter below.
Guest:
Ernest Baskin, assistant professor of food marketing at Saint Joseph’s University in Pennsylvania
Interview with the author, Anne Rice
Author Anne Rice revamped the vampire, arguably putting the creature back on the pop culture map with her debut novel “Interview with the Vampire.”
Forty years later, Rice has published the 13th installment of her Vampire Chronicles, “Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis.”
“I think it’s kind of irresistible to many writers to want to do their version of what the lost kingdom might have been,” Rice told AirTalk’s guest host, Patt Morrison.
Patt Morrison talked to Rice about the genesis of her latest work, as well as her cosmology and readers.
Click on the blue play button above to hear the full discussion, or read highlights below.
Interview Highlights
On writing about Atlantis
Rice: I’ve always been fascinated with the legend surrounding Atlantis, ever since I read Plato’s version of it all. And I had been working on a novel called “Born for Atlantis” and gathering ideas about what my Atlantis might’ve been like … and it just didn’t work, this novel. I had put it aside, kind of given up on it. And then it kind of occurred to me to combine it with Lestat and the vampires, to weave it into their story. And everything came alive when I did that.
On worldbuilding
R: Early on, I was a reader of H.P. Lovecraft, and one of the things that distinguished Lovecraft’s wonderful stories was that he had this great cosmology … for all the supernatural elements that he used. I wanted to evolve something like that for myself. I wanted to dig into my subconscious and organically develop a cosmological world for my vampires… and this [new book] is the umpteenth chapter of that backstory.
On incorporating technology in her work
R: That’s the tradition, really. If you go back to “Dracula” … it’s set in a very specific moment in the end of the 19th century. I believe there are phonograph records referenced in “Dracula,” and letters back and forth to England. It’s a novel that’s trying to engage the present of its time, technologically. And the vampires are very corporeal … So, in a way, I inherited all that.
On writing complex novels in the age of the tweet
R: I think fantasy readers, science fiction readers, supernatural readers, have always been very sophisticated. They’ve always liked philosophy and deep meaning in the works that that they read … Very early on in my career, when I did a signing at a science fiction bookstore, the most wonderful readers showed up who wanted to talk about the deeper meaning of the books...The genre is not just entertainment to science fiction buffs… It’s their preferred literature and they ask everything of it that maybe a professor is asking of Dickens in a college classroom.
Guest:
Anne Rice, author of many novels, including her latest, “Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis” (Knopf, 2016)