Today, we'll discuss the implications of the William Morris-IMG merger. Then, we look at the psychology behind gift giving and learn some helpful tips on managing your child's expectations during the holidays. Also, a real-life Santa tells us how to get your kids to take a memorable Santa photo, plus much more.
William Morris talent agency to merge with IMG
One of the biggest talent agencies in Hollywood, William Morris Endeavor, has announced it's merging with the talent agency, IMG. For more on what this means, we're joined now by Cynthia Littleton, deputy editor of Variety.
Philippines asks US for 'temporary protected status' after Typhoon Haiyan
Today, US Secretary of State John Kerry toured one of the most devastated cities in the Philippines, Tacloban.
It's been over a month since the storm but Kerry was still stunned by the level of destruction. The storm displaced some four million people, many of whom are still in need of significant aid.
Earlier this week, the Philippine government announced that it had officially asked the US to grant Temporary Protected Status to Filipinos living here.
For more we're joined by Aquilina Soriano Versoza, executive director of the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California.
RELATED: Pasadena Playhouse hosts relief benefit concert for the Philippines Dec. 18, 7:30 p.m.
The psychology behind gift giving and receiving
We are one week away from Christmas, which means there are seven good shopping days left to get something for everyone on your list.
But what's the psychology behind the gifts we choose for others? And how do marketing departments tailor their campaigns to our emotional connections to our loved ones?
RELATED: What's your approach when it comes to giving gifts to children?
Lisa Cavanaugh, assistant professor at USC's Marshall school of business and an expert in consumer psychology, joins the show with more.
What was the worst gift you've ever received?
We've all been there — during a birthday celebration, around the Christmas tree, or at a white elephant party—when you're handed a shiny gift to unwrap only to find something you simply don't like.
Here at KPCC, we've gotten some pretty bad gifts over the years. Someone here in the newsroom said someone gave them an unwrapped roll of tape one year.
We reached out on Facebook and asked you to tell us the worst gift you've ever received, and you delivered.
LP Simmons said, "I GOT TWO BOOTS!! NOT A PAIR OF BOOTS!! TWO BOOTS.... SAME STYLE, DIFFERENT SIZES. ONE TOO LARGE AND ONE TOO SMALL."
Yvette Romero said the worst gift she had ever received is a "A gift card with $0 credit". That has to be an innocent mistake, right?
And Ashley McIntosh told us that when she was seven, her grandma gave her "Used socks, complete with rust stains."
No 7-year-old should have to open rusty socks on Christmas day.
Check out the post below for the rest of our responses, and while you're at it, add your own!
Santa has his limits: How to manage your child's holiday gift expectations
Most parents know what not to give their kids, but figuring what to give them, and how much? Well, that's a bit trickier.
Imagine being the poor parent who received this wish list:
- Black, light blue, green, purple, and pink North Face jackets (that's five jackets for one child, if you're counting)
- A pet puppy border collie
- One-thousand dollars
- A little thing that can turn into anything anytime
Those are just some of the things from Deadspin writer Drew Magary's 7-year-old daughter's wish list.
RELATED: What's your approach when it comes to giving gifts to children?
Obviously, he can't give her the ability to change matter at will, but during the holidays, when children are taught to come up with a list of whatever they desire, how do you make your those holiday wishes come true without going overboard?
Stephanie Marcy is a pediatric psychologist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and she has some recommendations she recently offered to the hospital's blog.
Guide to buying gifts for children:
- More is not necessarily better. A child is likely to become overwhelmed by a sea of gifts, and become more focused on moving on to the next one and next one in an unwrapping frenzy rather than appreciate and enjoy the actual gift.
- Consider getting one “big” gift – the thing your child has persistently been asking for rather than the thing they just saw on a commercial, and then a few smaller gifts. Try to not let your child know they are getting a big gift, so it will be a big surprise and something they are very excited about
- Think about stringing out the gifts over the course of the day or days. Hanukkah naturally lends itself to multiple days of gifts. For families who celebrate Christmas, many have utilized the “12 days of Christmas” approach and give a gift a day.
- Communicate with extended family openly about type and number of gifts so that they don’t undermine your approach inadvertently.
What was the worst gift you've ever received?
We've all been there — during a birthday celebration, around the Christmas tree, or at a white elephant party—when you're handed a shiny gift to unwrap only to find something you simply don't like. Take Two wants to know how you've responded in such situations—and what you did with the gift.
KPCC's Facebook friends had a lot to say on this topic:
Ask A Santa: Tips on how to take the perfect picture with Old St. Nick
Santa pictures can be daunting for parents during the holiday season. Whether it’s their first time or their tenth time, you never know how your child will react to the strange man in a white beard.
So how do you get your kids to flash their adorable smiles while on Santa's lap?
RELATED: Do you have an awkward Santa photo?
Who better to talk to us than Santa himself, the man who has taken pictures with hundreds of children around the coast. Santa Don White is a member of the International Brotherhood of Real Bearded Santas (yes, that's a thing), and he's been playing Santa for 12 years.
In his long career as Old St. Nick, White has seen it all. From kids who are ecstatic to see him to those who will do anything to get away from him.
"I have been kicked in the groin on numerous occasions, I have had my glasses broken from a headbutt from a child, I almost dropped that child," said White on Take Two. "I ended up squeezing my legs together and the guy slid down my legs as if it was a slide. I had to take a few minutes to clear my head for that one."
He joins the show to offer some tips that he's gathered throughout his years as jolly Old St. Nick.
Interview Highlights:
How parents can help their kids be cool with Santa:
"Each child is different and each child has a different fear factor, and not knowing what runs through the child's mind, it's difficult to say. I know a lot of parents read stories about Santas, they watch movies about Santa, but there's something different about seeing Santa on the TV or in a book than the reality of turning the corner and here he is sitting live in front of them and they come to a dead stop. I suggest that parents come early in the season to get to know Santa in a casual way."
On what he does to put a kid at ease:
"I try to look at each child and see what kind of look they have on their face, and that will tell me how to react. Some kids, I can be overanimated, other children I have to be very calm and reserved and try to coax the child. Here we tell our kids, you don't take candy from strangers, but yet Santa's tempting that child with a candy cane. There's sometimes the child is just going to scream and there's nothing you can do about it, and I know some of the parents are frustrated and I feel for them, but I try to hold the child as calmly as I can without the fists and the hands going all over the place."
On how he stays jolly when dealing with a terrified child:
"I keep smiling and bite my tongue, seriously that's all you can do. The children aren't doing it maliciously, they in their own way they're telling mommy and daddy they don't really want to be there, and yet mom and dad really want to get their picture, so I want to be as helpful as I can and try to help out with that experience for them."
Sports Roundup: Lakers win, Winter Olympics, Peyton Manning and more
The headline in the LA Times says it all: "What's left of the Lakers outlasts the remains of the Grizzlies." Yes, the Lakers did beat Memphis last night, but like most things in Lakerland this year, it wasn't pretty.
For more on that and other happenings in the world of sports we're joined by by Andy and Brian Kamenetzky, who have covered sports for ESPN and Los Angeles Times.
The Lakers pulled out the much-needed victory. So, next stop NBA Championships?
Kobe had a huge shot from beyond the 3-point arc with about two minutes to go, but the Lakers are still doing worse since Kobe came back. Do you think they regret re-signing him for $48 million deal last month? Kobe scored 21. Is that the most we can expect him to score these days. Are the games of 30+ points over?
When you look at the Western Conference standings, there's a surprising team at the top: The Portland Trailblazers.
The Winter Olympics are now 50 days away. Yesterday, President Obama named his delegation the games. That wouldn't normally attract much attention, but it did. How come?
In NFL land, the Cowboys lost to the Packers on Sunday and wide receiver Dez Bryant left the game with 1:21 to go because was upset and didn't want fans to see him cry. Was this admirable?
You could argue the best rivalry in the NFL these days is between the 49ers and Seahawks. When the Seahawks played at Candlestick two weeks a group of Seahawks fans from Culver City paid for a banner to fly over the stadium. Now 49er fans have reciprocated.
This week Sports Illustrated named its Sportsman of the Year. It was Peyton Manning. An interesting choice since he of course did not win the Super Bowl. Who would you have picked?
Former MLB player diagnosed with brain disease: Will others follow?
Recently, former Major League Baseball player Ryan Freel became the first in the league to be publicly diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) as a result of the numerous concussions he suffered over the course of his career before he committed suicide last year.
Dr. Robert Cantu, co-director of the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, joins the show to discuss how prevalent this brain disease could be in baseball and how CTE could be diagnosed in the future.
Some private foster care providers in Calif. do more harm than good
Private agencies currently provide care for 15,000 children across California. Kids living in this private foster care system are much more likely to face physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
LA Times reporter Garrett Therolf joins the show with more.
Children with mental illness lack access to emergency beds
Imagine your child is having a psychiatric emergency. You'd probably head to the nearest hospital, but in California, four out of five counties don't have any hospital beds for kids. In Southern California and the Bay Area where most of those beds exist, they're almost always full.
The California Report's Elaine Korry has the second of three stories exploring the lack of acute mental health care in the state.
CORRECTION: From the California Report: Due to a reporting error in this story on children's mental health care, we misidentified John Muir Medical Center, Concord as the hospital where Maria Ramirez's granddaughter was first taken. In fact, she had been taken to a different facility. We regret the error.
App Chat: Keep your kids entertained during tedious holiday travel
With holiday travel coming up, now might not be a bad time to think about downloading some apps on your phone or tablet to keep the kiddos occupied as you deal with long waits at the airport or epic car rides.
Here with her picks is Ciaran Blumenfeld, author of the popular Momfluential blog.
Recommended Apps:
Dr. Seuss Camera
The Dr. Seuss Camera is a perennial kids favorite. We got this actually last winter, but we still love playing with it. It's an app that lets your kids take pictures of themselves as the Grinch or take pictures of themselves as Cindy Lou Who. You can take a picture of the dog with some antlers on then you can actually turn it into a card and send it to people.
A Charlie Brown Christmas
The entire "Charlie Brown Christmas" story has been turned into an app for kids. What I love about this is that sometimes those program that we love when we were kids and that we relate to so much, when you try to show those to your kids, they have a hard time making it past the five minutes of credit at the intro. It looks dated and they get bored. So what I have found with the Peanuts Christmas and also "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" is that it's a very true to the classic version of the story and the graphics are familiar to me and it's the stuff I loved as a kid, but you put it on an iPad or your iPhone and magically it's suddenly something that your kids can relate to.
They can do things and make things happen when they touch it. You touch Rudolph's nose and it lights up, you touch the sky and snow starts falling, there's a lot of interactive actions. In the Peanuts one, your interactive actions can actually unlock games to play some of those are app features that you're going to have to pay more money for, but some of them are included for free.
"Frozen" Free Fall
I love the "Frozen" storybook app. It is like a full feature movie-style app. There's so much going on with that one. It's a story, but what's really cool is that the story is told from both sisters' perspectives so when you flip your iPad, you get the same story from a totally different perspective. And this app also has games in it so you can stop and play games and you can play games even after you have read both versions of the story, but it's very well animated and beautifully illustrated. My only caution is that if you have not seen the film already, it has spoilers.
Toca Hair Salon—Christmas Gift
If you have ever wanted to groom Santa, this is your big chance. You can give Santa a mohawk, you can give him hot pink hair, and there's also a Christmas tree that you can groom the hair of the Christmas tree and apply ornaments to.
Impressed
This is a photo book making app and it's so simple that actually kids can make the photo book as gifts themselves. And what I love, love, love about this particular photo book app is that while you're making the photo book, you can do recordings for each and every image in the photo book. And then the photo book is printed with QR codes. So anyone who is looking at it with a smartphone can scan it and hear what you have to say. If you're at a family gathering, you can actually sing a song, you can get a quote from your grandparents. It's really a rich, interactive experience.
Ustyme
Ustyme is really clever. I think it was developed with grandparents in mind. It lets you play games, read stories, and it has a lot of the classics you would play with your grandma. It has checkers and chess and Go Fish and rock, paper, scissors. These are all built into the app and it allows you to log-in in a very special environment and then both play together or read the story together.
Uber ride-sharing service under fire for price gouging
One app that's on many of our phones is Uber. A lot of people love the ride-sharing service, which allows you to summon a car with the press of a button on your smartphone. But now Uber is in hot water for price gouging.
If you wanted a car during last weekend's snowstorm in New York City, you would have had to pay as much as $35 dollars a mile, with a $175 dollar minimum. To talk about this controversy, we're joined by Marcus Wohlsen, staff writer at Wired Business.
OC high-end car dealer accepts Bitcoin virtual currency
An Orange County Lamborghini dealership recently began accepting the virtual currency as a form of payment. Here to tell us more about it is Pietro Frigerio, general manager of Lamborghini Newport Beach.
Pope Francis appoints Cardinal Wuerl to bishop-naming panel
Pope Francis has already broken from the tradition of the Catholic Church with his statements in support of gay men and women, and the beliefs of non-Christians.
His moves have earned him the distinction of Time's "Man of The Year," and earlier this week he made another big change that signals a desire to distance the church from ultra-conservative factions.
On Monday he removed two American Cardinals from the Vatican's powerful Congregation for Bishops and appointed Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who by some accounts is less orthodox than his predecessors.
For more we turn to Christopher Kaczor, professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University.
California wine collector convicted of fraud
Today, a California wine collector was convicted of fraud for making wine in his kitchen and passing bottles off as much older vintages.
Rudy Kurniawan sold $1.3 million worth of the faux Bordeaux to wine collectors, including billionaire William Koch. For more we're joined by Tina Susman, national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. S