FBI Director James Comey's public announcement to reopen Hillary Clinton's email investigation last Friday has sparked sharp criticisms - we analyze why the decision was made and its potential impact on the 2016 presidential election; NPR launches 'The Big Listen' with host Lauren Ober, a podcast about finding the right podcast for you; plus, we talk to the first psychologist to conduct an empirical study on creepiness, and the real reason clowns freak us out.
AirTalk election 2016: Debating FBI director’s decision to go public about new Clinton emails, how the fallout impacts the presidential race and what it means down ballot
Seemingly everyone's got an opinion on FBI Director James Comey's Friday letter to Congress.
He alerted committees to items found that appear to pertain to the earlier probe of Hillary Clinton's email setup. Critics say he should've stayed quiet about the finding, given the impending election. Defenders say he had an impossible choice - stay quiet and risk leaks or get in front of it and tell Congress, as he'd promised he would.
We begin with the search warrant issued yesterday to read the relevant material on former Congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop. Weiner's reportedly being investigated to determine if he had sexually-oriented communication with a minor. He's the estranged husband of Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Sources have told multiple news organizations emails of Abedin's were found on Weiner's laptop.
One of the questions is whether some are duplicates of previously unrecovered messages from Clinton's old server. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is asking the FBI to explain Comey’s letter in more detail while Donald Trump’s campaign took the opportunity to say that momentum was swinging in their favor. Furthermore, reactions to Comey’s decision to make the news of the new emails public is raising questions about whether he made the right call in going public with the newly-found emails.
Guests:
Bre Payton, reporter for The Federalist, a conservative online news magazine
Lawrence (Larry) Rosenthal, Professor of Law, Chapman University and a former federal prosecutor
Ange-Marie Hancock, associate professor of political science and gender studies at USC; she tweets
Zachary Courser, Research Director of the Dreier Roundtable and visiting Assistant Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College; he tweets
LA development roundup: Times’ Sea Breeze corruption probe, fate of The Reef and more
Real estate is huge business in the city, and developers are eager to cash in on a tight housing inventory and the seemingly insatiable desire of people who want to live here.
Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times published an investigation looking at how one particular developing project got the green light from the city to break ground, casting questions at whether corruption played a part in the approval process.
The project in question is a 352-unit, $72-million apartment complex project called Sea Breeze, which is currently being built in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood.
“Lots of apartments get building permits, lots of apartments get building zoning changes, but this one was an outlier on a number of levels,” says David Zahniser, an LA Times reporter and a co-author of the investigation. “The Planning Department’s staffs actually opposed it. Another was that Mayor Eric Garcetti’s own planning commissioners unanimously opposed it. The neighborhood council across the street had actually sent a letter opposing it.”
Despite the strong opposition from different sides, the project got the city’s blessing. And that's what tipped Zahniser and his colleague Emily Alpert Reyes off to the fact that something might be amiss. Zahniser and Reyes went on to discover that a number of people connected to the developer behind Sea Breeze donated over $600,000 to local lawmakers -- including L.A. County Supervisor candidate Janice Hahn -- during the project's review process. More importantly, 11 of those donors told Zahniser and Reyes that they had never cut those checks.
"I am looking at these donors, and some of them looked odd to me. They’re folks who are working class and yet giving quite a big number of money. As we keep knocking on doors, my colleague Emily Alpert Reyes and I, we found some of them who said they don’t remember giving, or they denied giving," says Zahniser.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles City Council is scheduled tomorrow to vote on a billion-dollar luxury housing project, The Reef, that could change the face of South Los Angeles.
At issue is how best to accommodate the needs of local South L.A. residents who could well be displaced once the project is built. One sticking point is how many affordable housing units The Reef should include in the estimated 1,500-unit development.
The developer of The Reef is not interested in having on-site affordable housing, despite pressure from the city's planning commission to do so.
“It’s a $1.3-billion project going up on the edge of the most overcrowded neighborhood in the country. And it was all about creating community and place-making with a lot of the language that was used around [the project],” says Sahra Sulaiman, an editor at Streets Blog Los Angeles who’s been following the development. “But what the commissioners had said outright to the developers, 'by saying that you were inviting the community in, but not allowing them to live on-site, you are essentially saying that it’s not for you.'”
Guests:
David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times reporter who co-wrote this weekend’s investigation into the Sea Breeze project
Sahra Sulaiman, communities editor for Streetsblog Los Angeles, who covers South Los Angeles and has been following The Reef development. Her piece on the project is slated to come out later today
Passionate about podcasts? Tell us your faves
NPR has launched a new podcast about...drumroll....podcasts!
"The Big Listen" with host Lauren Ober wades through a vast volume of new "pods" - from small-town true crime to government agency pods to grammar shows hosted by heavy drinkers - so she can recommend something for everyone. A growing minority of Americans are listening to podcasts, according to 2016 survey data from Edison research. It shows 21 percent of Americans age 12 or older have listened to a podcast in the past month - that's almost 100 percent growth since 2013.
What are your most beloved podcasts and why?
AirTalk producers' lists include "Keepin' It 1600" and "Radio Free GOP" hosted by incisive and funny political strategists; "The Read" for its blend of hip hop, pop culture and comedy; and "I am Rapaport" in which actor/director Michael Rapaport waxes offensive about life, sports and culture.
If you need a refresher on how to listen to a podcast, check in here.
Guest:
Lauren Ober, Host of NPR’s The Big Listen, a weekly podcast all about podcasts
Psychologist who has studied ‘nature of creepiness’ on why humans are scared of clowns
Once most closely associated with children’s birthday parties and the circus, most recently clowns have been tied to some unsettling sightings in over 20 states. Why?
Because these aren’t your typical pie-in-the-face, pin-juggling, slapstick clowns. These clowns are legitimately scaring people, and some reports suggest they’ve even tried to lure people into the woods. It’s gotten so bad that schools in several states have even banned clown costumes this Halloween.
The specific origin of the ‘creepy clown’ is difficult to pinpoint, but the persona became etched into the minds of many Americans after the capture of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who dressed up as a clown for kids’ birthday parties and was eventually found to have killed 33 people. From there, clowns like Pennywise from like Stephen King’s movie “It,” the killer clown at the end of “Zombieland,” and the clown under the bed in “Poltergeist” have only pushed people’s coulrophobia (that’s the irrational fear of clowns) further, and it has been heightened even more by the recent outbreak of ‘creepy clown’ sightings across the U.S.
So, what is it that creeps people out so much about clowns? Psychologist Frank McAndrew, who conducted the first empirical study of creepiness, hypothesizes that the unpredictability of clowns is a large factor fueling the fear of them. You never really know if the clown is just going to juggle for you or if it might try to prank you with a pie in the face or an unexpected zap of your hand during a handshake. There’s also the makeup, which McAndrew says could contribute to people’s fear of clowns because the makeup and disguises clowns wear could hide their true intentions.
Today on AirTalk, Larry speaks with Professor McAndrew, who has written recently about what fuels people’s fear of clowns and being ‘creeped out’ in general and the history of the ‘creepy clown.’
Guest:
Frank McAndrew, professor of psychology at Knox College (Galesburg, IL); his piece in the Washington Post is “Why clowns creep us out”