The latest election news, including Trump's rigged election claims and how both campaigns are spinning Trump’s sexual assault allegations; the operation to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group; and why do we curse? We dive into what expletives reveal about language and our brains.
AirTalk election 2016: How campaigns are spinning Trump groping allegations, rigged election claims, and what we learned from latest FBI, Wikileaks releases on Clinton
After a difficult week for the GOP and its presidential nominee Donald Trump, the embattled campaign is trying to right the ship ahead of this week’s final presidential debate Wednesday night in Las Vegas.
After several different women accused Mr. Trump of groping or inappropriately touching them in the past, he continued to assert this weekend that the allegations were lies made up by the media and Democratic Party in an effort to elect Hillary Clinton. Despite his running mate Mike Pence downplaying claims of a rigged election on Sunday talk shows, Trump took it a step further later that day when he
The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary - but also at many polling places - SAD
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2016
that polling places were also stacking the deck against him.
Elsewhere, WikiLeaks dumped yet another batch of documents on Hillary Clinton. This time, it’s transcripts of paid speeches she gave to financial titan Goldman Sachs,during which she talks about U.S. foreign relations with Russia and Wall Street’s role in financial regulations. If that weren’t enough, the FBI has also released emails from its now-closed probe of the former Secretary’s private email server. Some have raised concerns that there may have been a ‘quid pro quo’ arrangement between Clinton’s State Department and the FBI over how an email was classified, but the FBI has denied any collusion.
We’ll also talk about Donald Trump’s son-in-law meeting with a banking executive about the possibility of creating a Trump TV network when the election is over, plus preview the final presidential debate on Wednesday.
Guests:
Matt Rodriguez, Democratic strategist and founder and chief executive officer of Rodriguez Strategies; he was also a former senior advisor to the Obama campaign in 2008
Mike Madrid, Republican strategist for Grassroots Lab, a firm based in Sacramento
After Gropegate, women remember and reframe their own sex assaults
Since The Washington Post broke the story earlier this month about Donald Trump’s lewd comments, women continue to come forward, accusing Trump of sexual assault and groping.
But the allegations against Trump have stirred up emotion far beyond the presidential campaign. There has been an outpouring of articles and social media posts about women’s experiences of groping, sexual harassment and sexual assault. And the news about Trump sparked a larger conversation about how people may be changing the way they react to these situations.
As reported in The New York Times, author Kelly Oxford asked women to tweet her their first assaults. The tweet garnered close to 27 million responses in one weekend. And hashtags such as
are showing posts of statistics, personal stories and memes about sexual assault.
How has the recent news about Trump’s accusers changed the way you perceived sexual assault? Has the news brought to light past experiences of groping, sexual harassment and assault and how you thought about them?
Guest:
Susan Dominus, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine; she wrote the recent article, “After Donald Trump, Will More Women Believe Their Own Stories?”
Analysis: The battle to take Mosul from ISIS
Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-led airstrikes advanced on Mosul on Monday, as part of a long-awaited operation to retake Iraq's second largest city from the Islamic State group.
The unprecedented operation is expected to take weeks, even months. Though some of the forces are less than 30 kilometers (20 miles) from Mosul's edges, it was not clear how long it will take to reach the city itself. Once there, they have to fight their way into an urban environment where more than 1 million people still live.
Aid groups have warned of a mass exodus of civilians that could overwhelm refugee camps.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the start of the operations on state television, launching the country's toughest battle since American troops withdrew from Iraq nearly five years ago.
Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, fell to IS in the summer of 2014 as the militants swept over much of the country's north and central areas. Weeks later the head of the extremist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced the formation of a self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque.
If successful, the liberation of Mosul would be the biggest blow yet to the Islamic State group. Al-Abadi pledged the fight for the city would lead to the liberation of all Iraqi territory from the militants this year.
With AP files
Guests:
Michael Knights, a fellow of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, specializing in the military and security affairs of Iraq, Iran, and the Persian Gulf states. He recently wrote about how to secure Mosul for the think tank
Judith Yaphe, an adjunct professor at the Institute for Middle East Studies at The George Washington University. She specializes in Middle Eastern political analysis
How tech distractions hijack the brain and what you can do about it
Chances are that as you’re reading this, your attention will be diverted by the buzz of an Instagram ‘like’ or Facebook notification, or you’ll receive that email you’ve been waiting for and you’ll switch tabs to answer it before coming back to finish this sentence.
Though technology makes it easy and enticing to multitask, the human brain may not have the capacity to keep up. But the brain also has trouble resisting – from phantom pocket buzzing to the cortisol-induced anxiety of not being able to check your phone, obsessive behavior towards tech is an unavoidable reality for many Americans.
Larry talks to Dr. Larry Rosen, co-author of 'The Distracted Mind,' to explore what goes on in your head every time you’re interrupted by your phone, as well practical strategies to resist distraction and maintain focus.
On the flip side, Tuesday we'll talk to Tristan Harris, co-founder of advocacy group Time Well Spent, who believes that tech product designers have a responsibility to pare down the addictive nature of their software.
What are the negative effects of high-tech distraction? How do you balance the benefits and drawbacks of your devices? What strategies do you use to keep focused?
Guest:
Larry Rosen, Professor Emeritus and Past Chair of the Psychology Department at California State University, Dominguez Hills; co-author of ‘The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World’
Cursing… there’s a neurological explanation for it
Why do we curse? And for those of us who do it, why do we love it?
Those are two questions that cognitive scientist Benjamin K. Bergen asks in his new book, “What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves” (Basic Books, 2016).
Bergen uses the latest in brain science scholarship to understand our impulse to swear, despite the cultural stigma around it. He also looks at how different cultures approach swearing and what are the qualities of cursing that make the practice universal.
Guest:
Benjamin K. Bergen, author of “What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves” (Basic Books, 2016). He is a professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego