Meg Whitman to vote for Hillary Clinton, study finds millennials are having fewer sexual partners, are drought tolerant plants making the region hotter?
Will other Republicans follow suit after Meg Whitman's Clinton endorsement?
The list of Republicans voting for Hillary Clinton for president grew a bit longer yesterday.
On Tuesday, Meg Whitman, the Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO and Republican Party donor and fundraiser, posted the following on her Facebook page:
Whitman also told the New York Times that she'd donate to Hillary Clinton's campaign herself and work on raising additional money for her presidential bid.
, POLITICO's California Playbook Reporter, joined Take Two to discuss the implications of Meg Whitman's endorsement of Hillary Clinton.
'America, everything is not okay.' 'Reparations' website aims to heal racial divide
Sometimes, we all need a hand with what life throws at us. Maybe it's help picking the kids up from school, running some errands, or even buying an engagement ring.
Head to the Reparations website, and you'll find postings for all this and more. But Reparations is not your run-of-the-mill Craigslist site. It's a place for white people to offer help to people of color.
Reparations creator Natasha Marin says the website is not about reparations for slavery, which is something Black Lives Matter recently called for as part of their platform. Instead, Marin's website is a way for people to respond to modern-day racial turmoil in the U.S.
Marin joined Take Two alongside UCLA history professor Brenda Stevenson, to share more about the website, and the historical view of reparations in America.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
How does the site work?
Natasha Marin: "If you have privilege you can leverage, which means maybe you have a car, or a cellphone, maybe you've been to school or professionalized in some way, perhaps you have some Trader Joe's gift cards lying around or can purchase a Groupon for a massage, you can leverage your privilege to help a person of color in need. Many of us are responding to the news, and the brutality that we're being bombarded with is affecting us. Especially people of color, in the country, in the world ,we are usually bearing the bigger brunt of the burden, emotionally and physically. So folks who want to help out, instead of just sitting around bemoaning how horrible things are can absolutely do so."
What have reparations meant historically?
Brenda Stevenson: "Reparations today, when people hear the word, people think about reparations for slavery, because that's been a big push in the society, really ever since the 19th century and before that. The whole issue of reparations is located in our sense of, that you're paid for labor. This is a national, cultural point in U.S. history that if you work, you're paid, that if you're harmed, you receive some kind of settlement for the harm that's done to you. So the notions of reparations for slavery are based on both of those kinds of things, that African descended people worked in this country, helped to build the country, helped to build the nation's economy, etc., and therefore they should have been paid for that, and since they weren't paid for that, their descendants should be paid for it."
Is there a worry that reparations can give the impression that people are suddenly absolved?
Natasha Marin: "I think that's sort of the ongoing debate about government reparations, period. As Brenda pointed out, in 1988, people who were interned during World War II simply for being Japanese or a Japanese descendent, were given $20,000 per person by the government. Well, if you went back to those families, and you asked them, and you asked those descendants, 'How did that affect your family?' Did this check for $20,000 somehow eradicate all the pain that you've suffered, the long-lasting effects of that sort of bigotry and institutional racism?' I'm pretty sure they would say, 'No, it didn't fix it.' But if I step on your foot, I'm going to say I'm sorry, whether or not that takes away the pain. So I do think it is a complicated issue, but my project is not about all these complications. Actually it's not complicated at all, it's really simple: If you can do something, you should do something."
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue audio player above and add your comments below
Interest in skateboarding as an Olympic sport ramps up
The Summer Olympics get underway in Rio, Brazil this week, but already, there's interest in the 2020 Tokyo game.
The International Olympics Committee has voted to include a number of new sports in the next Olympiad: Surfing, rock climbing, karate, baseball, softball and... skateboarding
The inclusion of that last sport is especially exciting to Neftalie Williams*. He's not just an avid skater,. In 2015 he led the first-ever skateboarding class to be taught at a major university; namely the University of Southern California.
"[Skateboarding] gives a great space for so much diversity to be involved," Williams told Take Two's Alex Cohen. "So many kids can come from all over the world and simply pick it up very easily, there's a low barrier to entry and it teaches you to re-imagine yourself in the world around you. It helps you build community and it also helps make a better global citizen."
Allowing skateboarding in schools
USC Annenberg is on the look out for progressive ways to reach students. Williams believed that mentality would be a great match for his studies on skateboarding.
"The class itself is sort of designed to use skateboarding culture as a lens to sort of look at issues of diversity, youth empowerment, the role of public diplomacy and global citizenship."
The class is a mix of the study of skateboarding culture and a look into the business side of the sport.
"Right now there aren't that many text books that are focused on skateboarding culture so we bring in a lot of what's happening in the news itself, some books [from] global scholars on sports engagement," Williams says."We also have the heads of multi-national companies like Dwindle Distribution, Steve Van Doren from Vans Footwear ... It sort of gives everyone the ability to look at the business side, but then also look at what goes on in the culture and how it can be used for public diplomacy."
And that actual act of skateboarding itself is not a part of the course... at least not directly. "I do make special time after class for [students] to actually visit one of the skate parks here in LA," Williams says. "So it's not required, but it is good for them to do that."
Skateboarding and the Olympics
There's a contingent of skateboarders who are unhappy with the inclusion of their sport in the 2020 Olympic games. This is understandable; after all, skateboarding was built on an anti-establishment sentiment and is centered in urban culture. Joining the Olympics could be the ultimate form of the sport going mainstream.
But Williams believes that this is exciting news. "I think that it could be really great. I believe skateboarding actually has a lot to offer the Olympics," he says. "The benefits of being able to re-imagine yourself, build community, global citizenship... all those things are great traits that the International Olympic Committee (IOC)could pick up on by having skateboarding being involved."
Williams continues, "I've always felt like the best way to actually show how rebellious we are in skate is to get involved in whatever's happening in the main stream... I think that skate going into the Olympics is only going to give them another platform to say, 'Man, maybe we've been running the Olympics wrong this whole time.'"
To hear the full conversation, click the blue player above.
*At the time of this interview, the IOC had not yet voted on whether or not skateboarding would be an official Olympic sport.
VICE invades the nightly news arena
The crowded nightly news space will be getting one more participant.
VICE Media has announced that they would be airing a daily news program on HBO later this year. VICE already has an award winning series on the network, but this new show, which will be called “Vice News Tonight,” has been described by VICE executives as a way to make broadcast news more appealing to young viewers.
Here's a clip from a recent VICE show:
For more on the show and how its plan to reach out to younger audiences, Take Two spoke with Alan Mutter, veteran journalist and media analyst.
Netflix and nil: Millennials just aren't as frisky as rumored
A popular myth about the sex lives of the largest group in the U.S. population may be just that.
Sure, there are more ways for millennials to connect than ever, but a new study finds that when they do, fewer are going all the way.
The report, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior reveals they're twice as likely to be sexually inactive in their early 20s than their parents, Gen X'ers. What's more, about 15 percent of Americans age 24 or younger say they've had no sexual partners since turning 18.
For more on what's behind these numbers, Take Two spoke to study author, Jean Twenge. She's a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of the book "Generation Me."
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
Drought plants may keep water use low, but temperatures high
Throughout Southern California, there are plenty of dry, brown lawns adorned with signs reading "doing our part to save water."
In the midst of a long drought, many Angelenos are trying to do their part on the conservation front by replacing their parched lawns with water saving plants.
Now a study from the University of California suggests drought tolerant plants might actually be raising temperatures.
George Ban-Weiss is one of the researchers behind the study. He joined Take Two with more.
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
5 LA restaurants make Bon Appetit's best new restaurants list
Bon Appetit released its annual list of the 50 best new restaurants in America, and five L.A. restaurants made the list.
Those five restaurants are (pro tip: make your reservations now):
- Cassia, a stylish Santa Monica restaurant serving French-Vietnamese dishes.
- Trois Familia, a Silver Lake strip-mall spot for breakfast and lunch serving French-Mexican plates like churro French toast with Mexican chocolate.
- RiceBar, a tiny, 7-seat downtown L.A. hole-in-the-wall with Filipino rice bowls.
- Baroo, an unmarked cafe in East Hollywood that plays with all kinds of fermentation and grain bowls.
- Winsome, an airy cafe-diner in Echo Park with a mix of comfort-meets-California food.
For more about the new restaurants in L.A. that have made a splash this year, Libby Denkmann spoke to Julia Kramer, Bon Appetit senior editor. Then, she talked to Med Abrous, co-owner of the Echo Park cafe Winsome, which was named to the list.
The Styled Side: designers go for the Olympic gold
The hottest fashion accessories can be found around people's necks this Friday and in many different shades – ideally gold.
The Olympics begin in Rio, Brazil, and Michelle Dalton Tyree from Fashion Trends Daily says the style there will be leaps and bounds above anything we've seen in the past.
"We're going to have to give the Rio Olympic games a gold medal for most stylish Olympic games ever," she says, "because some of the fashion world's most notable names and brands are designing for it."
Ralph Lauren is stepping up for Team USA, H&M will be backing Swedish competitors, Cuban athletes will be outfitted by Christian Louboutin and more.
"We saw this tipping point in 2012 of designers collaborating with athletic brands and countries for a team's official Olympic kits," says Tyree, "which means everything from outfits at the opening and closing ceremonies, to hanging around the Olympic Village, at the podium and, of course, competing."
But the collaboration between designers and team countries has slowly developed over decades.
In 1932, the concept of an Olympic Village was introduced, and this is where it became fashionable for athletes to wear sportswear that represented their countries even when they were not competing.
Puma outfitted the entire West German team with shoes in 1948.
That same year Olympic hurdler Ottavio Missoni, with Giorgio Oberweger, designed the knitted wool tracksuit worn by his compatriots on the Italian team.
"This effectively launched the design career for Missoni," says Tyree. His label Missoni became one of the most well-known high-end fashion houses to spring out of Italy.
"But the top honor goes to the L.A. Olympics in 1984," she says, "because it was these games when the International Olympic Committee opened up the games to corporate sponsorship. That meant athletes could now wear gear with official sponsor logos emblazoned on them: Nike, Puma, Adidas and more."
There are some things to consider when tapped to design for Olympians, however, because it's not all laurels and accolades.
"You have to design for a wide variety of people and body styles," Tyree explains. "It is possible to get too fashion-y, too."
British designer Stella McCartney took heat for her 2012 Sochi outfits being too high-concept and not capturing her country's spirit. She designed a deconstructed Union Jack, which was too deconstructed and was missing most of the red of the flag.
But done right, a designer's outfits can made athletes shine above their competitors.