Will University of Missouri's Michael Sam be the NFL's first openly gay player? Then, writer P.J. O'Rourke on his latest book: "The Baby Boom," a look at the merits of mandatory flu shots and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's plan to 'lean in' to stock photography. Next, what can be done to decrease wrong-way driving accidents? Later, Larry talks with the Oscar-nominated production designer behind '12 Years a Slave.'
Will Michael Sam be the NFL’s first gay player?
Michael Sam, an All-American defensive lineman from the University of Missouri and a N.F.L. draft prospect, has come out as gay, paving the way to become possibly the first openly gay player in the pro-football league.
The 24-year-old Sam made his declaration to The New York Times on Sunday. At 6-foot-2 and 260 pounds, Sam was named the top defensive player in the Southeastern Conference, thought to be the country’s best college football league.
Sam is expected to be picked in the third of later rounds of the NFL draft in May. Does his disclosure positively or negatively impact his draft prospects? Is the NFL, with the league’s macho overtones, ready for an openly gay athlete? How are fans reacting?
Guests:
Michael Schottey, NFL National Lead Writer for the Bleacher Report
Andrew Zimbalist, Professor of Economics at Smith College and co-author of "The Sabermetric Revolution: Assessing the Growth of Analytics in Baseball" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
Writer, humorist PJ O’Rourke on 'The Baby Boom'
"We are the generation that changed everything. Of all the eras and epochs of Americans, ours is the one that made the biggest impression—on ourselves. That's an important accomplishment, because we're the generation that created the self, made the firmament of the self, divided the light of the self from the darkness of the self, and said, 'Let there be self.'"
That's how P.J. O'Rourke describes his generation - 75 million strong - in "The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way…And It Wasn't My Fault…And I'll Never Do It Again." While skewering boomers just a bit, O'Rourke also credits them with making the world a much better place.
Whether or not you're one of them, how do you see the batch born between 1946 and 1964? What did they get right and what could have been better?
Guest:
PJ O’Rourke, journalist and author of “The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2014)
Should flu shots be mandatory?
Flu season has been especially vicious this year, resulting in a prolonged campaign from health care providers for people to get a flu shot. In Rhode Island, a proposed policy from the Department of health would require mandatory flu shots for children aged 6 months to 5 years who wish to enter preschool or daycare.
The usual anti-vaccine lobby is speaking out against the mandatory flu vaccines, but in this case, there’s a twist: the ACLU has joined the ranks of groups fighting the potential law. The ACLU says that a mandatory flu shot would violate parents rights to personal choice. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC both recommend flu shots for people over 6 and especially for children under 5 -- an especially vulnerable subset of the population.
But the ACLU cites a 47% efficacy rate and the right to personal choice as crucial components in a campaign against mandatory flu shots. The 47% statistic is actually the efficacy for the general population -- children age 6 months to 17 years have a 67% efficacy rate. Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York City have similar mandatory flu vaccine policies.
What is the most moral and medically sound decision in this case? Are the two issues in conflict? Should California implement a mandatory flu shot?
Guests:
Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., NBC News contributor and Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and founding head of the Division of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center
Hillary Davis, Policy Associate at the ACLU of Rhode Island
Q&A: Can LeanIn.org and Getty Images change sexist depictions of women in media?
Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, announced today a new partnership with Getty Images, one of the largest stock photo libraries in the world. Together, Sandberg's nonprofit LeanIn.org and Getty have created a collection of stock images depicting diverse women in non-stereotypical scenarios.
There are images of women working as doctors, doing CrossFit, and in office scenarios that don't include literally climbing a ladder with high heels. In addition, the purpose of the collection is to also include diversity, whether it be in body shape, race or age. LeanIn.org will get 10 percent of the licensing revenue. This the first time Getty has partnered with a nonprofit to share licensing revenue.
Is there a need for these less stereotypical images? What kind of an impact might this new collection have on how we view women in the workplace? Why have stock photos been perpetuating sexist depictions of professional women?
Guest:
Jessica Bennett, contributing editor of LeanIn.org. She was part of the team who spearheaded the Getty deal.
Pam Grossman, director of visual trends for Getty Images
Interview Q&A
Is there a dearth of women in a variety of professions and women in non-stereotypical positions?
Jessica Bennett: "Getty has a beautiful collection already, but what we've done is curate 2,500 images that are specific to showing women in leadership positions and all of the families supporting them in one place that's easy to search. I think part of what our hope is, is that there will not be an excuse to not use these images anymore. When a photo editor or creative director is looking for something to portray a woman in power they can go right here and we've made it easy for them."
So will the result of that be that these images will be more prominent?
JB: "We hope so, this is the most direct way that we can envision to get these images into the hands of the people who are making decisions around advertising and marketing and media. We really believe that media has a huge impact on leadership aspirations and it may not be something that is measurable in the same way that you can measure the number of women at the top, but we are consumed by media every day, from billboards to the Internet to television."
From a business standpoint, how does this arrangement make sense?
Pam Grossman: "We have a really phenomenal collection of photographs and video that we have created and sourced from image partners, as well. We've been doing a lot of great work around the representation of women for the better part of a decade now. But what's exciting about our partnership with Lean In is we can really blend together the power of both of our platforms and hopefully inspire some change. Getty Images has 2.4 million customers in every industry that you can imagine. So we really think that we can help spread the Lean In message and get more powerful pictures of women and girls into the right hands."
What are some examples of how clients use these images?
PG: "As I said, we have 2.4 million customers around the world, and those are customers in advertising agencies, also creatives and head's of marketing in every kind of industry you can imagine. So if you think of any big bank, any big technology company, any big book publisher, these are all our clients, so we have a really powerful reach."
How important is the social component of your job?
PG: "We've seen a lot of conversations happening these days about representation of women in media, in the stock photography industry specifically. We thought to ourselves, we have powerful pictures in our collection already and we want to make even more powerful ones. So this really is our way of entering this dialogue and hopefully coming up with real world solutions instead of just criticisms."
How can you encourage clients to choose women with a range of body types:
PG: "I would say even as long as five years ago, we began to shift away from using modeling agencies and shifting more towards casting "real people" doing more street casting, and making sure that we have a very diverse representation of all different body shapes. This is not only coming from the top down, it's not coming from fashion and advertising, it's coming from real people who want to see themselves reflected in these images. I think social media has a huge impact on the kind of pictures that we're all used to seeing of one another, and it's only right that advertising and fashion and the photography industry at large catch up and make sure that we're taking responsibility for the images that we're putting out there."
Could this have an impact on women's products?
PG: "Absolutely, a lot of my role is meeting directly with our clients. On any given week I'm meeting with creative directors at advertising agencies, with the chief marketing officers of various corporations, and these are the conversations that I'm having with them time and time again. They're hungry for this kind of content, and we're really happy that we're in a position to be able to put those images in their hands."
How often to big companies use stock photos in their campaigns?
PG: "It happens a lot more frequently than you might realize. In this day and age, we're a real weapon in the back pocket of any agency you can imagine. The biggest ones you can imagine come to us to help them either to deliver the hero images of campaigns or to supplement some of the original content that they're creating. So this is happening kind of behind the curtain every second of the day. We're just talking about it much more publicly to have an impact with our issue."
What are some examples of depictions of women in stock photos?
JB: "I think, typically, for many years women hadn't been in the workforce as much as men, so there simply wasn't a ton of photography to choose from, but you also tend to notice that women aren't always in the leadership roles, they're not sitting at the table, they may not be leading the meeting. Even things like body language, we really paid attention to the body language of the characters in the photos and we wanted them to look powerful, we wanted them to be standing upright, we wanted them to be moving forward. We really paid a lot of attention to diversity, not just of industry, but of body type, or background, of age and we really want to be inspirational to young girls because I think these images do have a real impact on what they inspire to be."
Wrong-way driver kills 6 in Diamond Bar; could highway design prevent such deaths?
A devastating crash this weekend on the 60 near Diamond Bar killed six when an intoxicated driver went the wrong way down the freeway. The driver, 21-year-old Olivia Culbreath, was allegedly speeding at around 100 miles per hour and was arrested at the scene for drunk driving.
A similar incident occurred in Florida on Sunday and killed five people. There are already safety measures in place aimed at preventing wrong-way driving. Depending on the state, prevention tactics may include road signs, arrows and lettering on pavement, and lights signaling the flow of traffic.
Traffic safety engineers have proposed barriers and other signage to further take action against wrong-way driving, while the California Highway Patrol highlights behavioral changes -- awareness and sobriety. Most wrong-way drivers are intoxicated or elderly.
What are the best ways to draw attention to existing safety measures? Is it financially and logistically possible to install more preventative barriers and signs? Is this an engineering issue, or a behavioral issue?
Guest:
Hamid Bahadori, Transportation Policy and Advocacy Manager, Auto Club of California
From slasher movies to slavery: Creating the look of '12 Years a Slave'
With nine Oscar nominations, "12 Years a Slave" is looking to top a fruitful awards season with the much coveted Best Picture award next month. "12 Years a Slave" tells the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York who is abducted and forced into slavery. What follows is a fight for survival and dignity for more than a decade.
Set in pre-Civil War America, the story hinges not only on the acting, but the re-creation of a bygone era. This job fell to set designer, Adam Stockhausen, who is nominated in the Best Achievement in Production Design category.
Nothing in his career to date would suggest an interest in historical period drama. Past projects include several Wes Anderson films, the slasher horror "Scream 4" and romance flick, "The Switch."
Watch the trailer for '12 Years a Slave' to get a sense for Stockhausen's work:
Guest:
Adam Stockhausen, Oscar-nominated production designer of Steve McQueen’s ‘12 Years a Slave.’ Stockhausen’s other credits include production design on Wes Anderson's 'Moonrise Kingdom' and Wes Craven's 'Scream 4,'-- and art direction on Wes Anderson's 'Darjeeling Limited' and Charlie Kaufman's 'Synecdoche, New York.'