Today, we look at how the rising cost of meat has affected local butchers. Then, we'll turn to KPCC reporter Kitty Felde to see how the drought has become political. We'll end the show with a look at how an art exhibit is showcasing how the social and political commentary of some Iranian photographers flies under the radar.
Report: LA child welfare system in state of emergency
We begin today with a look at the state of child protection in Los Angeles County. Last June, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors created a Blue Ribbon Commission on Child Protection.
The move came in the wake of the death of Gabriel Fernandez in Palmdale. The boy was tortured to death, allegedly by his mother and her boyfriend, this after social workers repeatedly dismissed warnings that the 8-year-old was being beaten at home.
Today the Blue Ribbon Commission is poised to vote on a report, a report which declares a state of emergency for LA County's abused and neglected children. Joining the show is Daniel Heimpel, an executive with fostering media connections, a nonprofit focusing on journalism around child welfare issues.
DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to reevaluate deportation policies
Head of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johson said he is reconsidering the Obama administration's deportation policies. This comes after Johnson met with leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus yesterday.
Immigration activists are also putting pressure on the president after the Republican-led house failed to make any immigration reforms this year. For the latest, we're joined by Fawn Johnson from the National Journal.
A $20 million war is brewing in the font world
You might not realize it, but fonts matters a whole lot.
Times New Roman, Gotham, Arial, Helvetica — ask a group of designers about what makes them special and you'll get some nuanced answers.
But it's not just aesthetics.
Big companies recognize that picking the right font is crucial for their brand and they are willing to pay for a good one.
Tobias Frere-Jones and Jonathan Hoefler are two of the biggest names in typography. They co-created Gotham, the font used by the Obama campaign.
For years they were seen as a font powerhouse, but in January, their partnership came to an ugly end.
For more, we turn to reporter Joshua Brustein, who wrote about this in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Beef prices hit record high in US, local butchers feel the pinch
Beef prices hit an all-time high in February and they don't look to be budging anytime soon.
Experts say that extreme weather (causing problems like the drought in California) has brought the country's cattle herds to their lowest level since 1951, a time when there were about half as many people to feed.
The USDA says restoring those herds to normal levels could take more than two years, which means butchers will be paying more for beef for some time — passing the costs on to you.
For more, we turn to Jim Cascone, co-owner and butcher at Huntington Meats in Los Angeles.
Irwindale City Council declares Sriracha a public nuisance
The spicy red sauce Sriracha has become perhaps the first condiment to be declared a public nuisance. A months-long battle over the popular hot sauce came to a boiling point last night at Irwindale's City Council.
RELATED: Irwindale declares Sriracha maker a public nuisance
As we've reported on Take Two, residents there have been complaining of pungent pepper fumes emanating from the factory of the makers of a popular brand of Sriracha, Huy Fong Foods.
Some claim the fumes burn their eyes and cause respiratory issues. Joining us to break down what this means for the iconic rooster sauce is Sarah Favot, reporter for the Pasadena Star News.
Your Take: Why you won't stop driving anytime soon
Earlier this week we talked on air about how to make biking and mass transit "cool."
With the popularity of CicLAVia and the increasing network of routes on the Metro, it was a way to look at convincing millions of drivers of alternatives to getting behind the wheel.
But many KPCC listeners wrote in to say why they're sticking in their cars.
Take Two's Leo Duran joins A Martinez to explain how convenience and safety are just some of their concerns.
Join the conversation on Facebook by posting your take, too.
Facebook Post by KPCC.
$1,700 'Frozen' dolls up on eBay
The Disney film "Frozen" is the highest grossing animated film of all time, raking in over $1 billion. But what about the merchandise? How important is it for a film that's been such a big hit?
"In the grand scheme of the entertainment business it's just as important, because it's the long term relationship that people have with the content and characters. Not just the time that they spent in the theater," says Sasha Strauss, brand strategist and founder of Innovation Protocol.
Parents and kids are also going crazy over Disney's merchandise related to the film. Just check out the Disney Store Facebook page. Different pieces are sold out online and in stores. They've even spawned a submarket of folks trying to sell things like limited-edition Anna and Elsa dolls for as much as $1,700 on eBay, which normally go for around $100 dollars.
Could a toy scarcity turn off fans from the products?
"As long as the content continues to be high quality, entertaining, memorable, songs that we all love, characters we identify, we'll deal with these pain points and turn back to Frozen as an icon in our youth to the point where these children will grow up with these Frozen characters as archetypes of the types of people we want to be, the friends they want to make, this is good business."
How does Disney get people so invested in their products?
"[Disney is] assessing scripts every single day. And they're not just assessing, "is this fun or memorable," but they're asking themselves, will a father attending with his young daughter enjoy this. And then they develop the characters and story line and supplemental content so that everybody gets what they need from it."
Stephen Colbert to replace David Letterman on 'The Late Show'
From the big screen to the small screen and some huge news in the land of late night. CBS has announced that Stephen Colbert, host of the satirical Colbert Report, will replace David Letterman as the next host of the late show.
Letterman recently announced he would retire in 2015. For more on the changing of the guard, we're joined by Alex Ben Block, senior editor of the Hollywood Reporter.
State of Affairs: State of the City address, no sprinkler use when it rains
KPCC's political reporters Alice Walton and Frank Stoltze join Take Two to talk about a number of topics from Mayor Eric Garcetti's first State of the City address to why you should turn off your sprinklers when it... rains.
California drought gets political
KPCC Reporter Kitty Felde helped investigate lobbying efforts from California's (and the country's) largest agricultural water district. How much did they spend, even as most other lobbying decreased? Spoiler alert: a lot. And it may be working for them.
RELATED: The politics of drought: California water interests prime the pump in Washington
Tips for tending your garden during drought
There are plenty of things each one of us can do to help conserve water during the worst drought on record in California history, including adapting the way we tend for our gardens.
Environmental journalist Emily Green, who runs the blog Chance of Rain, talks about how these simple changes can help create a drought-resistant garden:
- Let the grass grow; leave the clippings to mulch — stopping evaporation
"It rebuilds the turf and the soil because every time you're mowing, you're drying out the grass and more of the plant dries out and the soil beneath it dries out. Whereas, you leave the grass, it breaks down and it helps build up the soil."
- Don't use fertilizer; it can pollute runoff
"This is a big problem, particularly for sprinkler-irrigated turf where you have a runoff. It either sits in the soil, in which case it comes in contact with you and your pets. Or, the worse case scenario for the public at large is it runs off into the storm drain system into the ocean. And, because we've had so little rain this year, it's going to be highly concentrated and really wreak havoc at the beaches."
- Water longer and deeper, but do it less frequently
"If you slow everything down, and you allow the water to penetrate more deeply and the grass to get a little higher, you have less evaporation, and more stored in the soil," Green said.
Can shipping containers be used as buildings?
The cost of housing in the city is making many people think small. And the micro movement loves to reuse and recycle.
Enter the idea of a shipping container as a building. KUOW's Carolyn Adolph explores an idea that seems perfect, for a port city like Seattle.
Mad Dog: New documentary probes disturbing details of Gaddafi regime
It's been two and a half years since disgraced Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed by rebel fighters during the uprising in that country.
As the country struggles to move past his four decades of brutal rule, new details are still coming to light about the dictator's abuses of power.
A new documentary premiering on Showtime explores those details. It's called Mad Dog: Inside the Secret World of Muammar Gaddafi. Executive Producer Roy Ackerman joins the show to discuss the making of the film.
Picture This: The secret meaning of Iranian photographs
When you're an artist in Iran, you live a harsh reality.
Make a politically subversive sculpture and you're censored. Create a painting that challenges religious norms and you're censored.
But a new art exhibition showcases how Iranian photographers are able to create images into social and political commentary that fly under the radar.
"The government of Iran is a religious theocratic government. And therefore it controls every facet of creativity in Iran," says Abbas Daneshvari, curator of a collection of Iranian photography opening this Saturday at the Fine Arts Gallery at Cal State Los Angeles.
"[But artists] have arrived at the point that they can express themselves in symbolic and metaphoric terms wherein it's rather difficult to decipher their messages."
For example, "Untitled" is a photo collage of two men who look like they're locked in a bloody fight. However, one could also say they're drawn together in a passionate embrace. The image is by Sadegh Tirafkan, who is gay.
"The images communicate something sexual and at the same time violent," says Daneshvari, "but it's rather difficult for a system to see it as purely sexual and the violent aspect, of course, isn't something that they would object to."
Another picture he highlights seems pretty mundane. "Reza Abbasi," by Mohammad Ghazali is just a photo of a random street. However, it's actually taken from the eyes of a sculpture of the revered artist Reza Abbasi.
"We look up to these monuments as our ideals," says curator Abbas Daneshvari, "and when we see ourselves from the eyes of the monuments we are precisely what we have always denied ourselves to be: a people in flux, a culture that is really governed by ordinary, mundane, quotidian principles."
These hidden meanings are rife throughout Iranian photography, he says, because the form specifically allows artists to break with tradition and reality.
"You question your own history, you question your own identity, you question your own thoughts, you even question your own language," says Daneshvari.
The exhibit of Contemporary Iranian Photography runs at the Fine Arts Gallery of California State University, Los Angeles from April 12 until May 7.