Today on AirTalk: Romney presses reset on foreign policy, Obama closes in on raising $1 billion for his campaign, we take a look at why sports fans love to hate, search for Richard III's skeleton, figure out what it takes to win a Nobel Prize, examine the effects your digital life has on your health life, and invite Lynn Povich on to discuss how the women of Newsweek changed the workplace. Plus, Patt Morrison is guest hosting for Larry Mantle.
Romney presses reset on foreign policy
Mitt Romney gave a foreign policy speech today in an attempt to reset his foreign credentials for the presidential race.
Even though foreign affairs are highly unlikely to play out as an important issue with voters come November, the Romney campaign is still tasked with the burden of proving to America that Romney is capable of representing the country competently on an international level. His tour of Britain, Israel and Poland was rife with gaffes, and his criticism of the Obama administration in the wake of the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens did not shine well on the candidate.
How is Romney revising his sales pitch to voters in this recent speech? What does he have to say about the Osama bin Laden raid, as well as the President’s handling of the uprisings in the Middle East? How is the White House responding thus far?
The remaining debates will all include foreign policy as a topic in some way. Which candidate is likely to come out on top?
Guest:
Aaron Blake, Political Reporter for The Washington Post
Obama campaign may break monthly fundraising record as presidential race reaches final stretch
The Obama campaign reportedly raised more money last month than any other campaign in this election cycle. The Obama team’s September total is expected to exceed $150 million, according to reports, and with funds raised by the DNC, the combined total will be near $1 billion. This tally does not include funds raised by independent organizations such as Super PACs.
The anticipated monthly total would break the previous monthly record of $114 million set by the Obama campaign in August. Officials have declined to comment on campaign fundraising numbers while donations are still being counted. The Romney campaign is not far behind having raised $112 million in August. A large portion of the funds on both sides are spent on television advertising.
Both campaigns have until October 20 to report their September totals to the Federal Election Commission.
WEIGH IN:
How much will President Obama’s funding surge help his campaign? What does the trend symbolize in terms of campaign support?
Guest:
Matea Gold, writes about money and politics for the L.A. Times
Sports fans love to hate
Whether it’s the Giants and the Dodgers, Raiders and the Broncos, or Duke and North Carolina, rivalries are a treasured part of sports.
But does the joy come from watching you team emerge victorious or is it seeing the team you despise the most lose? Is it because you’re not a fan of the Celtics moldy green uniforms? Or maybe Kobe Bryant’s standoffish personality rubs you the wrong way? Are you rooting for your team to win? Or do you just want your rival to lose?
What does that say about your personality? Does that make you a good fan, but a bad person? Some say that sports fandom is based on a shared experience. Others say that it is rooted in tribal times when we were warriors protecting their own. One thing is certain; sports fans love to hate.
Guest:
Aaron Rochlen, Associate Professor in Counseling Psychology, University of Texas at Austin. He is also a Past President of the Division 51 (Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity) of the American Psychological Association
Josh Levin, Slate’s executive editor; host of Slate’s weekly sports podcast “Hang up and Listen”
Frank Cruz, USC alumni and avid fan
The search for Richard III’s skeleton
For centuries after the Battle of Bosworth Field and the end of the War of the Roses, the slain body of King Richard III went missing after a hasty burial. 527 years later, a team of archaeologists started digging under a parking lot in Leicester, England, hoping to find the ruins of a medieval monastery. Instead, they found a skeleton with the remnants of a metal arrow in its back, a severe injury to the skull and a deformed spine, consistent with historical accounts of Richard III.
Finding the skeleton, however, was the easy part. In order to prove that the skeleton could have belonged to the King, genetic samples of the bones and a living heir of Richard III need to be compared to see if to see if the skeleton belonged to the fallen King.
John Ashdown-Hill, a historian and member of Britain’s Richard III Society, traced the lineage of the king 527 years, from Anne of York, Richard III’s older sister, to 55-year-old Michael Ibsen, a Canadian furniture maker, who, as most furniture makers, had no idea that he could be linked to the last English Plantagenet King.
Guests:
John Ashdown-Hill, historian and member of Britain's Royal Historical Society, and author of “The Last Days of Richard III”
Michael Ibsen, Canadian furniture maker & descendant of Richard III’s sister, Anne of York
Who deserves a Nobel Prize?
Sports fans have the Olympics and the Superbowl; film buffs have the Oscars, music lovers the Grammys. But for the followers of dark matter, single-molecule spectroscopy and nuclear hormone receptors, Nobel Prize week is the most exciting time of the year.
The fun started this Monday morning with the announcement of the Nobel Laureates in physiology or medicine: John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka, for their work in stem cell research. It continues throughout the week as the prizes in physics, chemistry, peace, economics and literature are given out.
In the days leading up to the announcements, prominent scientists, journalists and pundits have been speculating as to who should receive the coveted prize in each field. Physics geeks are lobbying for the team behind the “God particle” or the inventor of transformation optics – a weirdly nifty theory involving warped space-time and light-bending that could explain Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak.
And then there’s the biggie: the Nobel Peace Prize, often the subject of controversy, as in 2010’s selection of President Barack Obama. Of course, like any other competition, the road to the Nobel can be fraught with political intrigue, professional rivalries, jealousy and backstabbing. And there can be a number of stumbling blocks along the way.
Who would you like to see win a Nobel this year? What major accomplishments in science, literature, economics and world peace have gone unrecognized by the respective Nobel Committees? Who deserves the recognition – and who doesn’t?
Guest:
Peter Doherty, Michael F. Tamer Chair of Biomedical Research at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, Nobel Laureate and author of “The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize: Advice for Young Scientists” (Columbia University Press)
Can your digital life corrupt your physical health and livelihood?
As social media sites like Facebook become increasingly popular, our social lives are becoming increasingly digital. For some, virtually all of their social interaction revolves around using social media through the Internet. Such prolonged digital socializing is possibly affecting our lives in ways we don’t even realize.
A series of new research studies from professors at Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh suggest that prolonged use of social media can have adverse effects on our behavior and our health. Specifically, the studies indicate that people who spend more time on Facebook are more likely to have lower self-control, leading to meanness, more credit-card debt, unhealthy diets and less motivation to complete difficult tasks.
"If you spend some time on Facebook, seeing what your friends are up to and staying connected, that's great because actually it has a nice, positive impact on how you feel about yourself," study co-author Andrew Stephen said. "On the other hand, there's a negative consequence of that which could
relate to lower self-control."
Researchers found an association with Facebook usage and peoples' credit scores. The more frequent users tended to have lower credit scores and higher credit card debt.
Stephen said that these correlations were found after people used Facebook for a mere five minutes. "Overtime, all these little doses can add up and result in a meaningful difference," he continued.
Karen North of USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism said social media may influence livelihoods, but some people might be more susceptible to these characteristics.
"You also have to wonder about what kinds of people are more drawn to spending more of their
time online, posting online, and staying with the people they know online," she said.
According to Stephen, those with a closer replication of their meaningful, offline friendships on social media are more prone.
But why does social media have the propensity to make us meaner? North said social media seeks entertaining content.
"We seem to be raising a generation of people who want to be entertaining. Sometimes that means being funny, and sometimes that means being mean, because it's sort of shocking and entertaining in that way," she explained. "People forget sometimes that they're interacting with people on the other end."
North added that the digital realm allows people to project an ideal self, even if that doesn't match with who they really are.
"When your'e posting info online, there's nobody there to call your bluff. You can start creating a persona for yourself. In someways, that's a healthy thing to do, but the problem comes up when people start acting in a way to get attention."
Weigh In:
How healthy is it to let our social lives be dominated by social media? Is the widespread use of social media the first step on a path toward living exclusively digital lives with little or no real human interaction?
Guests:
Andrew Stephen, professor of marketing at the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. Co-author of the paper that will be coming out in the Journal of Consumer Research early next year.
Karen North, Director of the Annenberg Program on Online Communities, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
Lynn Povich on the story of a newsroom uprising at ‘Newsweek’
Gender discrimination became legally prohibited following the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but that didn’t (and doesn’t) mean that such mistreatment was eradicated. Discrimination toward women was still rampant at the offices of “Newsweek” in the 1960s. All of the magazine’s writers and reporters were men while women were lucky if they were promoted to simply be researchers or fact checkers.
After years of struggling for equal treatment, the women of “Newsweek” finally sued management – twice. Journalist and author Lynn Povich, who became the first female Senior Editor in the magazine’s history in 1975, recounts the events that culminated in a revolution for women in her book “The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace.” Listen in as guest host Patt Morrison gets the inside scoop from fellow journalist Lynn Povich.
Guest:
Lynn Povich, author, “The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace” (PublicAffairs); and the first ever female Senior Editor at “Newsweek.”