Owners of the National Football League approved the relocation of the St. Louis Rams to Los Angeles on Tuesday; President Obama delivered his last State of the Union-- what did we learn?; Political parties vie for Asian American votes; and the psychology behind buying a lottery ticket.
What lies ahead after NFL owners approve Inglewood stadium, Rams move to LA
More than two decades after the Raiders and Rams played their last games in Southern California, professional football is returning to the Los Angeles market.
30 of the 32 NFL team owners voted in favor of St. Louis Rams’ owner Stan Kroenke’s plan to build a stadium in Inglewood and move his team to Southern California. The NFL has updated its website to reflect the move, changing the St. Louis Rams' name on their roster to the Los Angeles Rams.
The San Diego Chargers also have the option to come to L.A., where they’d share a stadium with the Rams, but their fate remains up in the air.
Read the full story from KPCC’s Ben Bergman here.
Guests:
Ben Bergman, Senior business and economy reporter at KPCC who is in Houston for the NFL owners’ meetings. He tweets from @TheBenBergman
Laura Wingard, editor at KPBS in San Diego
Andrew Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of economics at Smith College
GOP, Democratic strategists analyze President Obama’s final State of the Union
Tuesday night marked the last time that Barack Obama gave the annual State of the Union address as President of the United States.
Among the highlights from the speech were the president’s decision to hand control of finding the cure for cancer to Vice President Joe Biden and his sharing of what he says is one of his biggest regrets from being in office: that he couldn’t ease simmering tension between Republicans and Democrats.
For more analysis of the State of the Union and a full transcript of the speech, click here.
Guests:
John Feehery, Republican strategist and President of Quinn Gillespie Communications; he’s also a columnist for The Hill
Bill Burton, Managing director at the Los Angeles office of the public affairs agency SKDKnickerbocker and former deputy White House press secretary in the Obama Administration. He tweets from
The quizzical sport of Oscar award predictions
Forecasting Academy Award nominees is a complex, fun, and influential game.
The top predictors in showbiz can be found on the website Gold Derby, including film critic Thelma Adams.
Adams and her fellow prognosticators start gaming nominees during international film festivals in Toronto, Telluride, Venice, etc. They take into account not just a film's merits, but whether the studio and players are willing to campaign for gold, or whether their campaigning will go overboard.
Plus, there's the Susan-Lucci effect, unpredictable backlashes, or an intangible failure to gain traction.
What are your predictions for tomorrow's Oscar nominations and why?
Guest:
Thelma Adams, Film critic and long-time expert awards predictor for Gold Derby - a foremost media outlet dedicated to entertainment awards. She tweets from
Capturing the Asian American vote is as important as ever in 2016
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton launched her grassroot outreach to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders last week in the San Gabriel Valley, where more than half-a-million AAPIs call home.
Asians are slated to outnumber Latinos as the largest immigrant group coming to the U.S., according to a Pew study released last year. Specifically, Asian immigrants and their children are projected to make up roughly 88 percent of the country’s population growth over the next half century.
That means being able to capture the Asian American vote is as important as ever. In the last few presidential elections, Asian Americans had leaned heavily democrat.
What are the two parties doing to get the AAPI vote? If you identify as Asian American, how have you voted in the past? How would you likely vote in 2016?
Guests:
Harmeet Dhillon, Vice Chair of the California Republican Party
Courtni Pugh, a Partner at Hilltop Public Solutions where she heads all California-based operations for the firm. She tweets from
Why you might think twice before jumping in that (Powerball) pool
Tonight’s Powerball jackpot: $1.5 billion. Your chance of winning: less than zero.
Still, that sober reality has not stopped hopefuls across the country from buying Powerball tickets, and office Powerball pools from forming.
What’s the psychology behind the craze? If you bought a Powerball ticket, what’s your reason for doing so despite the hopeless odds?
Read the full story here.
Guests:
Robert Wilson, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona
Noah Smith, an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University and a contributor to Bloomberg View. His latest piece looks at the Powerball craze