Happy New Year! Today's show is on tape because of the holiday. Today we'll air segments about how the Afghan Army is struggling with low enlistment and high desertion from soldiers; Whether animals enjoy drugs or suffer from disorders like humans; 'Jeopardy' star Ken Jennings dispels parental myths, plus much more.
Afghan army struggling with low enlistment, high desertion from soldiers
With 195,000 soldiers, the Afghan army is bigger than ever. But it's also unstable.
Enlistment is low and desertion is high, so much so that the army has to replace a third of its force each year.
For more on the challenges the army is now facing, we're joined by New York Times reporter Rod Nordland.
Do animals enjoy drugs and suffer diseases and disorders like humans? 'Zoobiquity' suggests they do
On a recent morning at the Los Angeles Zoo, head veterinarian Dr. Curtis Eng points out to a visitor a pair of hairy teenage brothers who are two of the zoo’s seven gorilla stars.
“We actually have this bachelor group here," Eng said as he pointed through a glass barrier that separates zoo visitors from the giant apes.
One of the apes makes his way toward the humans staring at him. "That’s Hasani. He’s about two-and-a-half years older than his younger brother."
The zoo primates are treated to top-notch health care, including preventive heart screenings from UCLA cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz. She's among the physicians calling for more communication between human doctors and veterinarians.
Natterson-Horowitz said a research visit to a zoo forever changed the way she practices medicine.
“We were going to do at the zoo what we do with human patients, which is screen them with an ultrasound of the heart,” she said. "As one of the animals was being sedated, I was making a lot of eye contact because in a human patient that's what you'd do to create trust and connection."
But the veterinarian prepping the primate cautioned Natterson-Horowitz against close-up eye contact with the squirrel-sized Tamarin monkey, telling her that it might trigger “capture myopathy.”
Unfamiliar with the term, Natterson-Horowitz later looked it up. It described an often deadly syndrome in restrained wild animals. But she realized it was almost identical to something researchers had just reported in humans who suffer extreme stress, such as that caused by witnessing the death of a loved one.
“It occurred to me these were probably the same disorders with different names, or they were very connected," said Natterson-Horowitz. "But the piece of it that was just startling was that in veterinary literature and wildlife biology literature, this has been written about for decades, literally decades.”
She said the journal "Nature" had reported it more than 30 years ago.
"So that gulf raised the possibility that there were many other gulfs like that," she said. "And I'm just one cardiologist having this one 'aha' moment and I realized we needed to amplify that."
So Natterson-Horowitz set out to research the wealth of medical information that’s long been hiding in plain sight in the journals of veterinary medicine and wildlife biology. Scientific literature, she said, that few human doctors take the time to read.
"When you know that breast cancer doesn’t just affect human patients, that breast cancer affects big cats like jaguars and tigers and lions and also affects Beluga whales and also affects certain dog breeds, I believe it will improve and expand investigation which could benefit animals and human patients with the same problem.”
Natterson-Horowitz and journalist Kathryn Bowers gathered hundreds of these findings in a book they co-authored called “Zoobiquity." It offers insight into hundreds of human-animal health overlaps that include even harmful psychological behaviors considered uniquely human.
Take anorexia nervosa. Think it's just a problem for teenage girls and young women? Think again: some farm pigs are known to self-starve, said Natterson-Horowitz.
There are documented cases of obesity in dragonflies and bulimia – or self-induced vomiting - in marine mammals. There’s even drug addiction among many species: birds that get buzzed on fermented berries; cows that get high off loco weed; even Tasmanian wallabies that can’t keep their paws out of medical opium fields.
"They’re known to jump over fences and grab the poppies and ingest the poppy sap and the poppy straw until they’re intoxicated," Natterson-Horowitz said. "We learned about big horn sheep attracted to hallucinogenic lichen that grows on the tops of cliffs and they will actually scale cliffs to access this lichen."
It doesn't stop there. Self-injury, also long-believed to be a uniquely human behavior, is shared by some animals. Natterson-Horowitz said veterinarians have long identified and successfully treated it in many of their patients - from caged birds that pluck out all their feathers or peck themselves bloody to stallions that bite serious injuries into their own flanks.
"I think the human psychiatrist, psycyotherapists even a parent dealing with the challenging issue of self-injury in a patient child could look to the success that animals experts have in treating self-injury," she said.
And Dr. Eng agrees. "That’s really what our goal is with this whole 'Zoobiquity' thing," he said. "To have the conversation between human physicians and DVMs talking about the various things they have in common and then what they don’t have in common and how to make things better for both sides."
Jeopardy star Ken Jennings dispels parental myths in 'Because I Said So'
We've all heard warning like, "Don't go swimming for an hour after you eat!" "Never run with scissors," and "Chew on your pencil and you'll get lead poisoning," from our parents and teachers.
Chances are if you're a parent, you've said some of those things yourself, but are they true?
Ken Jennings, the man known for his record-breaking appearance on Jeopardy, wanted to fact check these parental gems.
Jennings joins the show to talk about his new book, "Because I Said So: The Truth Behind The Myths, Tales and Warnings Every Generation Ppasses Down To Its Kids."
How companies have used 'The Fine Print' to add fees to your bills
Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Cay Johnston talks about his new book, "The Fine Print," in which he details how the U.S. tax system distorts competition and favors corporations and the wealthy.
Interview Highlights:
On how companies increase bills using the tax system:
On why companies are still able to use this type of policy:
On how tax laws favor corporate interests over those of the consumer:
On how gas pipelines make their money:
On why America is falling behind in the world market:
"The problem is AT&T is the only provider in many locations and your only other option is a cable company, which provides virtually the same service at the same prices. And I show that these companies are now becoming a cartel. AT&T cross markets with DIRECTV, which competes with the cable companies. And Verizon cross markets its cell phone services with Time Warner, Cox, Comcast, and Brighthouse cable companies.”
On what should be done so our tax policies stop favoring the wealthy:
"If they keep their fund open until their 80s, they won’t pay taxes for fifty years. That’s simply not a fair system. You should have to pay taxes when you earn your money. And those at the very top who benefit from living in this country, with its freedoms, its military, its courts, its infrastructure, its highways, all the things that make it possible to make a fortune, should bear the heaviest burden. Because that’s the principle 2500 years ago that gave birth to democracy. The greater the benefit you get from living in a society, the greater the burden you should bear so that society will endure and the liberties of the people will endure.”
The Fine Print by David Cay Johnston
Excerpted from THE FINE PRINT: How Big Companies use “Plain English” to rob you Blind. Published by Portfolio/Penguin. Copyright (c) David Cay Johnston, 2012.
Eddie Izzard hits LA for series of rare, intimate shows at Steve Allen Theater
Comedian Eddie Izzard has been the headline act at the Hollywood Bowl and he's packed the house at Madison Square Garden, but now you can see him at a tiny, 90-seat theater in Los Feliz.
This week, Izzard kicked off a series of performances at the Trepany House at the Steve Allen Theater, which will run until Dec. 19. Needless to say, fans are happy to have him in L.A. for this rare chance to catch Izzard in such an intimate setting:
Izzard joins the show to talk about why he's performing in such a small space, and to fill us in about his new show, "Force Majeure," which he'll be taking on the road in Europe next year.
Interview Highlights:
For being so popular why are you currently performing at such a small theatre?
“It’s good for developing new material. Its probably a good idea not to go in front of a ten thousand-seater audience, which you could do but it seems like wasting audience members I noticed that the Stones did this, so I sort of stole this idea from them because I am developing new material right now.”
How do you usually come up with this new material?
“Singers always stand in the shower. Woody Allen just did a film on that, so I have this joke about comedians in the shower...we don’t do that. I get most of my ideas on stage. This is not a style I came up with Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor did this, Billy Connelly was doing it and he influenced me a lot. You are out there and talking and having a conversation with the audience. So I have little ideas I write down and I just zoom out from the ideas.”
How do you prepare for the shows?
“You don’t, you prepare by being confident. Maybe by doing a gig in Geneva in French, like I did last week. It’s a great training, its advanced navy seal of comedy training. If you do it in French surely in English it’s going to be as easy as falling off of a log. It comes from street performing, which I started out as. You react to whatever is going on, noises…it works.”
Sometimes you seem to be writing things down mid-show, are you really taking notes?
“No. Comedy and life I’ve realized, everything is about how to get out of things that don’t work, you mess up and its about how to get out of the mess up. I find that if I just pretend to scribble things on my left hand, its like a Shakespearean aside, that makes me sound very literate, it’s like a stage direction so the audience can hear the stage directions”
Are your shows very different from night to night?
“I’m supposed to record them, but I can’t remember what I say, I know roughly but I can’t remember specifics. It’s exploring, it’s a conversation with the audience. Molten material is the most interesting. If you can keep it fluid, it’s constantly ready to create new material because I tend to flip off and start creating from a fluid series of ideas and you can say oh let’s go this way. Like Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin by an accident. A lot of accidents have happened in life that have helped us create things. And that’s kind of what I’m doing in comedy…Its live and its controlled by my confidence and if I ever lose that confidence then it becomes a very awkward room.”
A lot of your shows seem to appeal to American sensibilities, how do you tweak them to be international?
“I don’t think that’s true. The theory of the universe isn’t American sensibilities, it’s world, it’s progressive sensibilities. The Santa Barbara ‘Clash of the Titans joke,’ that’s not American that’s Greek Gods, the movies are watched all around the world. I choose universal topics. So I talk about the Tour de France, everyone knows what that is. I will talk about Gods and dinosaurs and monarchy and super markets, haircuts, baked potatoes, rabbits, dung, mattresses, all known all around the world. So I’m talking to progressive, positive thinking, open minded, tolerant people who are going to change the world; they are out there. The Monty Python and the Simpsons audience is out there around the world.”
Do you plan out how to end your shows?
“Normally I work out a shape or a free way route that I am doing and I will know when it comes to the end of that. If you are improvising and trying new stuff you’ve just go to look at a clock…when I was in France I was doing it for a couple of weeks and at one show I was tired so I just thought ‘no one knows when it is supposed to end’ so I just sort of said goodbye and walked off the stage and that was that.”
Exclusive clip from Izzard's performance at the Steve Allen Theater on Dec. 5:
Exclusive: Eddie Izzard at the Steve Allen Theater by Take Two Show
Click here to purchase tickets to Izzard's show.
New Music Tuesday: Tunes to soothe your New Year hangover
Our regular music critics Drew Tewksbury, Steve Hochman and Josh Kun join Alex Cohen and A Martinez for a special hour of music to help you get over your New Year’s Eve hangover.