Today on AirTalk, we'll examine the proposals put forth in President Obama's gun violence speech this morning. How powerful is executive action? We'll also discuss safe sex smartphone apps, personal fitness in public parks, and the salesperson mentality in the American workplace. Later, director Michael Apted speaks with Larry about the "Up" series, his lifelong project.
White House announces 23 executive orders on gun violence
In the month since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, Vice President Biden has led a committee tasked with honing in on ways to curb gun violence. The 23 executive orders announced by President Obama this morning include more stringent background checks for those purchasing guns, a ban on high capacity magazines and assault weapons, and a commitment to finalizing mental health parity regulations.
While many of the President’s proposals will require Congressional action and legislative battles, some will likely have an immediate effect. A large part of the recent gun violence discourse has been a focus on mental illness. Gun control advocates aim to close gaping loopholes in the current background check system and to regulate types of guns and ammunition become publicly available.
Gun advocacy groups argue that the concentration should be on mental illness; there have been proposals that psychologists and psychiatrists should disclose information on patients who may pose a violent threat. President Obama’s announcement also included a directive to improve mental health services alongside other gun control legislation.
What is the role of mental health in the gun violence discussion? What is the most important focus point in this dialogue? What kind of weight will President Obama’s executive action carry in the grand scheme of things?
Guests:
Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and professor of law at the UC Irvine School of Law.
Paul Neuharth,
Attorney based in San Diego who works on gun ownership cases
Doyle McManus, Washington Columnist for the Los Angeles Times
The following are the 23 Executive Actions the President announced Wednesday:
Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.
Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).
Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.
Nominate an ATF director.
Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.
Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.
Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.
Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.
Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.
Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.
Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.
Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.
Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.
Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.
Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.
Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.
Safe Sex Smartphone App
There is a long, if not distinguished, tradition of truth manipulation in romantic pursuit. On the innocent end of the spectrum, one might offer to pay for a dinner or three that might normally not fit within that person’s budget. On the more consequential side of the spectrum, one might lie, or at minimum, maintain a willful silence about their sexual health with a potential mate.
The future, however, may involve a much more candid sexual health disclosure between partners, thanks to smartphone apps like MedXCom. The app provides a service where doctor-approved test results and medical records are verifiable via smartphone. Scoundrels beware.
But does this create a slippery slope towards a world with no medical privacy? Will the tech-savvy jerks of the future be able to completely subvert services like these, and legitimately endanger the sexual health of others? Is this progress, or an electronic toy attempting to take the place of real, mature communication many consider essential for healthy sex?
Guests:
Tracy Clark-Flory, writer for Salon.com who has written about the mobile app MedXCom.
Gail Wyatt, professor of psychiatry, the Associate Director of the AIDS Institute, and Director of the Sexual Health Program at UCLA.
Is Palisades Park in Santa Monica overcrowded by trainers?
Should parks charge personal trainers to use public spaces? In Santa Monica’s Palisade’s Park, several personal trainers hold classes all week long. Yoga classes and popular boot camp classes bring groups of people looking for an outdoor workout to the park, where there are sometimes 75 courses in one week.
Trainers in the city of Los Angeles are already charged $60 per hour to use the park as a personal training venue, but overcrowding in Santa Monica parks has prompted reevaluation of the process. The city of Santa Monica is considering a new report on personal training in public parks, and may charge trainers 15% of their revenue to continue to hold classes. Some critics argue that a tax on these fitness classes is an unfair deterrent to the groups of people exercising and to the trainers. Other park-goers think that charging trainers to hold their personal classes in a public space will cut down on over-crowding in the parks and will make them more enjoyable.
Should personal trainers be taxed for holding classes in public parks? If you use public parks, are you bothered by an overcrowding of group fitness? What is the best way to make the parks usable and fun for everyone?
Guests:
Sonki Hong, founder and CEO of Sonki Fitness, has been training in Palisades Park for over ten years
Karen Ginsberg, Director of Community & Cultural Services, City of Santa Monica
To Sell is Human
Do you have any experience in sales? Well, if you have a job in today’s society, author Dan Pink says the answer is yes. While one in nine Americans work in a traditional sales department, the other eight draw upon the same techniques salespeople use every day.
Pink attributes this to the displacement of power in business relations. For instance, salespeople used to have all the power over their potential buyers. They had the resources, the information and the connections to control everything to their advantage.
Nowadays, that isn’t the case. With the Internet giving more and more access to products and data for consumers, the formal sales role has been diminished. But Pink stresses that the art of moving people is more important than ever. That’s because while not everyone is formally selling something, there is some sort of persuasion and exchange going on in business interactions. You can trade thoughts, ideas, opinions, time and even effort. But how do you make the most sales in a world full of salespeople? What’s the best way to stand out in the crowd? How does messaging affect the pitching of an idea? What have you noticed works for you in and out of the office?
Guest:
Daniel Pink, author of “To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others” (Riverhead Books, 2012); Pink’s previous books include bestsellers "Drive: The Surprising Truth About Motivation" and "A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the World." Previously, he was chief speechwriter for then Vice President Al Gore.
Pink will take part in a conversation for Live Talks LA & Think LA on January 17th at 7pm. More information can be found here.
'7 Up!' grows up into a life-long project for Michael Apted
“Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man” reads a Jesuit maxim, and in 1964, a group of British documentarians set out to see if it’s true. Michael Apted’s first job was as a researcher on "7 Up!" and he helped to find the 14 schoolchildren profiled in it.
The filmmakers followed the youngsters through their homes, schools and neighborhoods, and recorded their thoughts about their lives, their hopes and fears, their plans for the future. Since, then, the film crew has visited those same children - Nick, Neil, Tony, best friends Jackie, Lynn and Sue and the rest - every seven years to chronicle their changing lives.
The series has aged with the children - the cheeky teens of "Seven Plus Seven" had barely graduated to adulthood in "21 Up!"; adult responsibilities weighed in with "28 Up!" and "35 Up!"; both middle-aged resignation and self-reinvention were setting in by the time of "42" and "49." Meanwhile, Apted continued his own life trajectory, becoming an acclaimed director, and revisiting the series and its subjects every seven years.
The latest installment, directed by Apted, is "56 Up!" Those youngsters we first saw in black and white, playing on England’s streets and playgrounds, have weathered the slings and arrows of fortune - marriage, divorce, children and grandchildren, homesteading and homelessness - the stuff of everyday life, examined with a long lens.
Interview Highlights:
On how the "Up Series: became what it is today:
"It started out as just one film with a group of 7-year-olds about England in 1963, -64, we never intended to go back, but the film was successful. It still took us about 5 years to figure it out, but we did go back and from that moment on we could see that it was a big idea. No one had ever done this sort of thing before, so it wasn't brain surgery to keep it going. I had a sort of epiphany with 28 Up when I brought that to America, I thought I was doing this little documentary about the class system in the UK, but I was persuaded to bring it here and show it at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Americans got it gang busters, and despite all the technological language about the class system they understood it, and I understood it for the first time … It had universal truths to it."
On criticism of the series by some of the subjects:
"It's always been difficult to keep Susie aboard and I was thrilled when she agreed to come back. She announced at 49 that this was the end and they I got her to come back. A lot of them complain about it, but all of them always show up. They have a lot of fair complaints, the choices I make, how much of the material I use, what I don't use and all this, but someone's got to do it. And in the end I think it's got todo with trust between me and them, and them and me, and that's what's kept us together all this length of time."
On how he's managed to keep almost every "Up Series" subject to agree to come back:
"I think I must have got them right even if it's only in real short hand because they've stayed aboard. That's what I say to them 'Do you feel you've been misrepresented?' They have some control over it too. Doing these longitudinal documentaries, as a filmmaker, you've got to behave yourself. You can't deceive them or lie to them or do something you said you wouldn't do because they simply won't come back next time. They get a chance to see it before it comes out, and they get a chance to say no I'm not going to talk about that…so they're not exactly innocents, as it were, pray to the wolf Mr. Apted."
On the biggest lesson he learned while shooting with cab driver Tony:
"When I met him when he was 7, I thought I need to have this in the program. He's survived as the great character. All of his family are cab drivers, so it was in his blood. I made a big mistake, a number of mistakes along the road, but one with I'm when he was 21. He was running money at the dog track and things, and I thought he was going to end up in prison. So I did a sequence of him driving around the East End of London looking at all the great crime spots, expecting that at 28 I'd be visiting him in prison and I'd be able to show background to it, but I was wrong. He never did. He got his life together and he is well, so that taught me never to try and play God, never to try and anticipate what will happen to people."
On how important family has become to the subjects in "56 Up":
"I was worried that it was going to be depressing, that people would be worried about the future, about the economic crisis, looking back on live that hadn't achieved all they wanted, but nearly all of them had found a real solid base with families. Those that had invested their time and their energies into their families at an early age, this was a real encouraging sense of a payoff to that. I compare that with my life, when I was more interested in building a career and being ambitious and coming to America at the expense of my family and I think I paid a price. So it's a lesson to me in a sense watching this film as much as to anyone else who is watching it."
On how they relate now that they've grown older:
"I am 15 years older, but it has made a huge difference. Now we're much more collegial, It's much more intimate, It's much more emotional. I was big brother, I was an adult figure, but now we're all in the same boat together so I think the programs have gotten better, the interview had got better and I think there's just more stuff in it now because we're closer."
On the biggest surprise about the group he chose for the film:
"We only really wanted stereotypes from the different class system. Then you look 49 years later and here are these real great personalities and we didn't vet them particularly, we didn't audition them which leads me to believe that everybody has a story. They were arbitrarily picked, and they've all turned into these very interesting storytellers."
On who would take over production if he no longer could:
"Claire Lewis who's my producer on it has been with me since 28, and she's got a few years younger than me, so if I lost my marbles or passed away she could probably carry it on. But I don't know whether anybody could come in from outside the family. I've had the same photographer since 21, the same editor since 28, the same sound man from 21, we're all extremely old and incapable people, but nonetheless it gives a familiarity and a warmth to the whole proceedings. I love it, it's the most important thing I've ever done."
Guest:
Michael Apted, director of "56 Up"; his previous films include "Coal Miner’s Daughter", "Gorillas in the Mist" and "Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader"
The latest installment in the groundbreaking UP SERIES opens this weekend at Landmark's NuArt Theater in Los Angeles. Special Post-Screening Q&As January 18th-19th with Director Michael Apted and Variety Senior Editor Pat Saperstein following the 4:45 pm and 8:00 pm shows.