Today on the show, we start with a discussion about President Obama's visit to Malaysia. Then, a huge settlement was just reached in a tech industry anti-trust lawsuit. Plus, how the sharing economy has grown into such a huge industry, One Day In L.A. storytelling event brings together filmmakers from 11 cities, the latest in California's drought news, the Paris Photo exhibit features rare photos from the LAPD's crime scene archives and much more.
What is the significance of Obama's visit to Malaysia?
President Obama began a tour of Asia earlier this week. He's currently in South Korea, and is expected in Malaysia tomorrow.
It's a trip that was supposed to happen last fall but was cancelled due to the partial government shutdown. Obama is only the second U.S. president in history to travel to the country — the last was Lyndon Johnson in 1966.
To talk about the significance of the Malaysia-US relationship we turn to Amitav Acharya, an expert on Southeast Asia from American University.
Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe agree to settle antitrust lawsuit
An antitrust lawsuit out of Silicon Valley pitted more than 64,000 software engineers against some of the biggest names in tech: Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe.
The plaintiffs allege these tech giants conspired to stunt their employees' careers. When we talked about it earlier this week with the Wall Street Journal's Jeff Elder, he said a settlement seemed near. He was right.
Friday Flashback: immigration reform, Boehner's GOP criticism and more
It's the end of another week and time for the Friday Flashback, Take Two's look at the week in news. This morning, we're joined in-studio by Los Angeles Times columnist James Rainey and in DC by Jamelle Bouie of Slate.
While Congress is in recess, a number of lawmakers from both sides have been pushing Speaker of the House John Boehner to bring up the issue of immigration reform again. Many believe it'll still be a long fight.
A fight that Boehner, apparently, thinks is caused by members in his own party. Here he is yesterday poking fun at Republicans while talking to a group of people in his own district:
“I don’t know whether we’re going to get to it this year or not. I think we should, but the appetite amongst my colleagues for doing this is not real good … Here’s the attitude. 'Ohhhh. Don’t make me do this. Ohhhhhhh, this is too hard.' You should hear them. You know, we get elected to make choices.”
Is this a case of Boehner talking without realizing that this would get everywhere, or is it him sort of rattling the cages of the GOP?
This week, another big story was the Supreme Court decision related to the University of Michigan and affirmative action. The court upheld — in a 6 to 2 vote — a Michigan law, enacted in 2006 that banned affirmative action.
Is this the end of affirmative action efforts as we know them?
Let's look ahead for another interesting case on the high court's docket: whether lying in political campaigns is protected speech. Where would politics be without lies, lies and more lies?
Now to some politicians we hope have been telling the truth. There are four very close Senate races in the south with some big consequences.
This week, the growing fissures in the GOP was a topic of discussion because former Republican Senator and former Presidential hopeful Bob Dole returned to his home state of Kansas on what he called a "thank you" tour.
Let's talk about the latest conservative folk hero implosion: Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. As you might remember, he's the rancher who had a standoff with federal officials over land he uses to graze his cattle on. After forcing federal agents to retreat last week, he was lionized by some.
How the sharing economy has rationalized our trust in strangers
Today, in the United States, people are allowing strangers into their homes and cars more than ever. They're allowing them to borrow their most prized possessions and sometimes even take care of their pets while they're away.
The sharing economy, comprised of companies like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and others, has changed the way we do business. It's also changed how much we're willing to trust our fellow man.
Jason Tanz is the Executive Editor of WIRED Magazine and joins us to talk about his article, "How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other."
'One Day In LA': 11 cities collaborate on 24-hour storytelling project
This Saturday, in 11 different cities across the U.S., including L.A., amateur and pro filmmakers are taking part in a 24-hour film collaboration.
It's part of a storytelling project called "Your Day. Your City. Your Future." The idea is to paint a portrait of life in an American city by documenting the stories that happen on one day.
Kyle Ruddick is the founder and director of the project and he joins us now to tell us more about it.
Want to participate? Visit the One Day In LA website to sign up.
RELATED: One day in Los Angeles
'Years of Living Dangerously': Can celeb power urge action against climate change?
Read the credits for the new Showtime series "The Years of Living Dangerously," and you'd be forgiven for thinking it's an edge-of-your-seat Blockbuster of epic proportions.
Produced by James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the show features stars from Matt Damon and Don Cheadle, to Jessica Alba and even Indiana Jones himself, Harrison Ford. But despite the list of exotic shooting locales, this is not some fictional swashbuckler.
It's a documentary series about global climate change and how it's affecting real people. We're joined by Heidi Cullen, chief science advisor for the series.
Study: Antarctic region was once as warm as California
To really get a handle on climate change, it's important to look at not only what's going on now, but also what's happened in the past: The way, way past, like 50 million years ago.
According to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, things were a lot different back then climate wise. Peter Douglas, post doctoral fellow at Caltech and one of the people behind the studies joins the show with more.
What's Griffith Park telling us about drought in LA?
There's a little bit of rain expected for this weekend, which is nice. But it doesn't really help with our drought problem.
Recently, we've been thinking what LA would look like without sprinklers. To get a sense of that, KPCC's Jed Kim went to the wilds of Griffith Park.
The lawsuit's called Vergara, but the name you should know is Welch
Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch made his money creating breakthrough technology in fiber optic communication and building hardware to run the massive interenet networks of the future.
He's spending it - at least some of it - on a pet project that could substantially change teaching in California and the rest of the country.
Welch is the man behind Students Matter, the advocacy group that recruited nine public school students to sue the state of California, saying teacher job protections harm their ability to get the 'adequate' education they are promised in the state constitution.
Despite not having a background in public education, he said he had no choice but to take on the issue.
KPCC's Adolfo Guzman-Lopez tells us more about the man behind Students Matter.
Picture This: Inside the LAPD's rarely seen crime photo archives
WARNING: Some of these images are graphic in nature.
Photography fans might want to visit Paramount Studios' New York City backlot this weekend for Paris Photo, a huge art show featuring 80 photo and video artists from around the world. It was started in 1996 and is usually held at the Grand Palais in Paris, France. This is the second year that the event has been held in Los Angeles.
One of the most striking exhibits at the event is a collection of rare crime scene photos unearthed from the LAPD's archives, dating as far back as 1925 up to the 1960s. These photos never would have seen the light of day if it weren't for photographer/LAPD reserve officer Merrick Morton and his wife Robin Blackman.
Under the gallery name, Fototeka, the couple has spent years culling the LAPD's records to bring these images to light. But gaining access to the photos wasn't easy.
The images were shot for evidence and contained confidential and sensitive content that the LAPD was hesitant to open up to the public.
"I remember the quote from the city archivist at the time, she said she likes my idea, but hell will freeze over before they give you any access to this," said Merrick.
But that all changed when Merrick met John Thomas, adjutant to then-Police Chief Bernard Parks, who had been working on an archival project about African-American LAPD officers. Together, they wrote a proposal to Chief Parks who granted them access.
"To our surprise he said, 'OK, you can have access to these.' So we were actually the first people ever allowed access to actually sift through these negatives," said Morton. "We're talking hundreds of thousands."
Take Two caught up with Merrick Morton and Robin Blackman at the Paramount Lot for a preview of the show, and to find out more about these fascinating historical images.
Interview Highlights:
On first beginning this massive project:
Robin Blackman: "I was a little overwhelmed, because I'm the one who organizes everything. He's the hunter and I'm the organizer, so I knew it was going to be a huge task. We were dealing with old negatives and old envelopes and deterioration and chemical issues as well. It was huge and it was huge that we saved it...They would have been sitting on the shelves in the shortage facility where it was not temperature controlled. It's an environment meant for paper and not for negatives. We had no idea we were going to walk into that when it happened."
On the image of the Black Dahlia murder scene:
Robin: "We're from here, born and raised in L.A., and we love seeing not only what the crime is, but what's going on behind it. The documentation of what the city was 50 or 70 years ago.
Merrick: "And also, when we choose an image, let's say from this case here, we're trying to choose something that's not exploiting it. The image is graphic in its nature but I think when it's included when the architecture, with the hills and the landscape, I think it turns into a piece of art more than just this crime scene of her."
On the art behind these crime scene photos:
Robin: "The photographers are amazing. They are trained photographers, and they have an extra eye...is what we've discovered. For instance, he framed [Image #2 in the slideshow] so perfectly, he knew what he was doing. You see repeats of the way room interiors and exteriors are shot, but because they are photographers and they have that eye, I suppose they couldn't help themselves but capture something like this.
Merrick: For us this is the iconic LA image of film noir. We actually had a friend who we were speaking to about this image and he said, for him to purchase this image and have it hanging on his wall, it's like hanging a Raymond Chandler image on his wall."
On how the LA film industry was inspired by these photos:
Merrick: "Sometimes filmmakers would have access to seeing these images. We have a shot of Alfred Hitchcock from the early 1950s and he's looking through some of the crime books and some of the images. So when he goes out and shoots a film, is he saying, 'I saw this great image, let's set the scene like this'?
On the images of Charles Manson's first police photos after the Tate-LaBianca murders:
Merrick: The thing that stands out is when you look at the height/scale there, he was only 5-foot-3 inches tall. He's always seen and he's projected as this larger-than-life person, but in reality he's a very small person."
On the future of this project:
Robin: "We would love to see this as a public database that people can access and use as reference material, similar to what the New York Municipal archives offers. So we hope to have that one day and have every image archived and documented and all the metadata collected and everything in one place and the negatives are safe in another place. Would really love to see that happen."
Paris Photo is open to the public starting Friday, April 25 until Sunday, April 27. Fototeka is under contract with the LA Cultural Affairs Department and the LAPD to create an online archive of the photos, which will eventually be accessible to the public.
After 14 years, Wayne Kramer is back with a jazz album, 'Lexington'
Fifty years ago, the rock band MC5 got its start in Lincoln Park, Michigan. Fueled by the riffs of guitarist Wayne Kramer, MC5 came to be known as one of the greatest American hard rock bands of all time.
But with his new album "Lexington," Kramer goes a different route. It's his first full length solo album in 14 years and it's all about Jazz, which you can hear on the track, "Chasing a Fire Engine."
The name Lexington refers to Lexington Federal Prison in Kentucky, a place Kramer spent some time for drug related charges. Kramer says that his prison experience from 40 years ago impacted his album now.
"I make a living nowadays writing music for movies and television shows and I was hired to score a documentary on the United States Public Health Service Narcotics Farm at Lexington... That was the original designation of the facility. And it was America's first attempt to deal with drug addiction as a social problem.
It was built in the '30s in the progressive era. And through the forties and fifties and sixties they did research there and tried to come up with a cure for addiction. In the 1970s it was taken over by the federal bureau of prisons and I had the misfortune to end up there for a couple of years. So, you know, to score this film kind of dredged up all these memories that I kind of buried in my psyche. I combine that with my anger at hyper-incarceration in America.
I've watched for these 30 years as more and more regular people like me have gone to prison for longer and longer, more severe sentences for non violent economic drug crimes. And I thought you know, I had great musicians together, maybe I can repurpose some of these themes and use this album as leverage for this conversation about this national disaster of hyper incarceration.
Lexington has a storied history according to Kramer.
"Lexington, when it was conceived, was a place where you could actually check in voluntarily to take the cure. The cure being the cure for addiction...Well, in the '30s and the '40s their idea was good clean country air, farm work and some early psychotherapy. Some combination there would cure people of this mental disorder. It didn't work... And all the great jazz musicians... that were addicts went through Lexington. They all went their to take the cure."
And Kramer recognized that as he went through the prison, it left a lasting impact.
"I felt part of a great historical tradition. As twisted as it might be. And I was lucky enough to serve part of my sentence with a great jazz musician. There was a trumpet player named Red Rodney who replaced Miles Davis in the Charlie Parker Quintet. He was in his mid-50s then and he was a unbelievable artist and musician and became my musical father."