How our current path to US citizenship works and how it might change with immigration reform; House "Gang of Eight" group working on its own immigration bill; Is it about time to start charging an Internet sales tax?; A new project maps the greenness of cities; Tuesday Reviewsday featuring Jessie Ware, Daft Punk, Major Lazer, plus much more.
The path to US citizenship and how it might change with reform
The Senate is heading into its third day of judiciary hearings on the immigration bill. At 844 pages, it's a complicated piece of immigration reform that many people are just beginning to comprehend.
But what about our current immigration law? It, too, involves a complex matrix of rules and procedures. For more on the path to citizenship as it stands now and how that might change, we're joined now by Angelo Paparelli, an immigration attorney here in Los Angeles.
House 'Gang of Eight' group working on its own immigration bill
While the Senate's Gang of Eight is debating their immigration bill, a bipartisan group of eight congressmen are working on their own immigration reform proposal, a House Gang of 8 made up of Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho), Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), Sam Johnson (R-Texas) and John Carter (R-Texas).
One of the members of that group is Democratic Congressman Xavier Becerra, who represents California's 34th District, which includes most of L.A.
Nia Vardalos on becoming an 'Instant Mom' through adoption
Being a parent is never easy, but for many it can be overwhelming, especially when it happens almost overnight.
Actress Nia Vardalos, star of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," chronicles her path to parenthood in her new book, "Instant Mom." She talked to Alex Cohen from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this past weekend.
Interview Highlights:
On her struggle to conceive:
"I was in such a funk. I didn't want to take acting jobs, I didn't want to be on camera, it took something that was an accident happened that was so surprising that it knocked me out of my stupor, that comes with fertility drugs. I'm so grateful that that happened, I'm grateful for everything that didn't work, because it lead me to my real daughter."
On deciding to adopt:
"I can't explain how when Mother Nature poked me in the eyeball over and over again and said, Nope, nope nope, as I was trying to carry a child to term, I realized, I'm supposed to be talking about adoption. I tried everything, I tried infant domestic adoption, we were on a waiting list for China, we were on a waiting list for Greece, and the phone didn't ring with a match for us. Then I found out about American foster care. There are 129,000 kid living in group homes and in loving, loving foster homes, who are legally emancipated. That made a lot of sense to me."
On how she and her husband met their daughter:
"How we met our daughter was we got a call, we drove to a parking lot, our daughter was almost three years old, living in a loving foster home, and she was in a social worker's arms. As we walked toward her, there were lots of people in the parking lot, she turned around and looked at me. My only thought in eight, nine years of being a parent, was 'Oh, I found you.'"
On the challenges welcoming an older child into their home:
"This child is eight years old now, but the transitioning of my daughter into my home was not easy, was really challenging. Again, I make fun of Ian and I in the book because we hadn't even changed a diaper and we were handed an almost three-year-old child. When we got the call that we had been matched with her, she came to live with us. She didn't eat or speak that day either, she walked around a lot, she was very curious.
"That night she didn't sleep, of course, at all. An almost three-year-old little girl and she cried through the night. This poor kid let us know that she was really mad. She didn't understand the situation, she didn't know where she was, she didn't know who we were and she fought and kicked and punched her way through the day, through the weeks. It was fantastic to witness, because she was protecting herself ... Within a year an a half, she tested as being ready a year earlier than the age she should have been for Kindergarten."
New project maps the greenness of cities
Look around different neighborhoods in the city and you might see green, or in many cases, the brown of paved surfaces. The greenness of different neighborhoods and cities around the country has actually been measured. New York for instance scores pretty high, Fresno is toward the bottom of the heap, and LA is pretty much right in the middle.
But what does that actually mean for the people that live in those areas?
A new project lead by environmental historian Jon Christensen is seeking to find out. He's mapped out the greenness of cities around the country and compared that with data about wealth, crime, infrastructure.
Is it about time for an Internet sales tax?
Politics may be the art of the possible, but sometimes it seems more like the science of expediency. A recent example: the Senate bill which would require online retailers to collect state and local sales tax for purchases they ship to customers.
Yesterday, this legislation survived a procedural vote, and is expected to be approved, perhaps later this week. So, what's this online sales tax all about? How will it work, who will pay what, and who's for and against it?
Here with some answers, Jordan Weissmann of the Atlantic.
Tuesday Reviewsday: Jessie Ware, Major Lazer, Vampire Weekend
Now it's time for Tuesday Reviewsday, our weekly new music segment. With us today is Shirley Halperin, music editor from The Hollywood Reporter, and music supervisor Morgan Rhodes.
Artist: Jessie Ware
Album: Devotion
Release Date: April 16
Songs: "Sweet Talk," "Running"
Artist: Vampire Weekend
Album: Modern Vampires of the City
Release Date: May 14
Song: "Step"
Artist: Major Lazer
Album: Free the Universe
Release Date: April 16
Song: "Get Free (ft. Amber of The Dirty Projectors)"
Artist: Charli XCX
Album: True Romance
Release Date: April 16
Song: "You (Ha Ha Ha)"
Artist: Daft Punk
Album: Random Access Memories (out May 21)
Song: "Get Lucky"
Mayoral debate between Garcetti and Greuel gets heated
It was a firey night for the two Los Angeles mayoral candidates. Last night, Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel squared off in a heated debate at the USC health science campus. There are just four weeks left before voters head to the polls.
KPCC's Frank Stoltze was one of the moderators at that debate and he joins the show with a recap.
Riverside County considers using inmates to fight fires
The Riverside County board of Supervisors is considering a proposal to allow as many as 200 of their local inmates to battle fires in California. Prisoners have long played an important role in firefighting in this state, but that's changed recently thanks to prison realignment.
For more on this, we're joined now by Daniel Berlant of Cal Fire.
Two JPL scientists make Time's 100 Most Influential list
Don Yeomans and Richard Cook from NASA/JPL were recently featured on Time Magazine's 100 most influential people list.
Today, Yeomans manages NASA's near-earth object program, and Cook's the project manager for the Mars Science Laboratory. Earlier I had both of them in the studio to get updates on the the Mars Rover Curiosity and to find out if any asteroids were going to smash into Earth anytime soon.
The Congressman will see you now: Rep. Ruiz comes home
For the first time in 17 years, the Palm Springs area is not represented in Washington by Mary Bono Mack. She was the last Republican woman in California's Congressional delegation until she was defeated in November by emergency room doctor Raul Ruiz in a race that drew national attention.
KPCC's Ben Bergman recently caught up with Ruiz on a visit to his district.
Swiss artist Ursus Wehrli reorganizes everyday life in 'The Art of the Clean Up'
Some people are perfectly content living in an non-color-coded, non-alphebetized world, but not Swiss comedian and artist Ursus Wehrli. In his version of paradise, alphabet soup reads A to Z, bookstores are organized by color, and you'd never mix up the various hues in your laundry.
His first book, “Tidying up Art,” took well-known paintings like Van Gogh's "Bedroom" and "cleaned them up" in a way. His latest work "The Art of Clean-Up, Life Made Neat and Tidy," reorders and reorganizes items of everyday life.
He joined Take Two to tell us more about his motivation to organize the world and what he's hoping readers will take from his projects.
Interview Highlights:
On what motivates him:
"I always like to look at things differently, in another way and to move things around. Sometimes you have an ordinary situation, or an ordinary object, or a picture, and if you move things around and if you look at it from a different point of view — for example if you tidy or clean it up — then it gives a whole new perspective. I always though that alphabet soup was a huge mess: either you just eat it, or you just go on and sort it alphabetically, and then it's much more fun to eat it afterwards!"
On what he did with his new book "The Art of the Cleanup":
"It's quite simple. It's a book about putting things in order, which of course might sound a bit boring at first glance, but I do photographs, and I put things in order you don't actually have to bring into order. For example, I take a bunch of flowers, and I sort the flowers by the stem, the blossoms, the petals, etc. With the new book, I devoted myself also to much bigger situations. For example, I tidied up a whole car park!"
On what he's trying to say through his work:
"I always try to not have too much of an intention or a purpose. I just like it if my work supports the fact that our world needs both chaos and order, I just think everything we look at in our life is in some kind of order, even if it's messy (that's another kind of order). I like to play between these two poles."
What's behind LA's secret staircases?
Tucked into the hillsides of San Francisco and Los Angeles are lots and lots of hidden public staircases. They help pedestrians get from point A to point B a lot faster, and they also make for a great workout. But how did this idea get started?
Roman Mars and Sam Greenspan of the podcast 99 Percent Invisible have the story.