When should popular professional athletes decide to retire, UCLA's study on the struggle of undocumented students, Tuesday Reviewsday.
Finances, deportation fears add to stress of migrant college students
College students in America already face a tough road ahead.
There are high-intensity classes, rising tuition rates and, once they turn their tassles, a rapidly changing and competitive job market.
But if you're a college student who first came to this country illegally, it gets even tougher.
A new report from UCLA looks into the story of migrant college students and the extra pressures they face.
Co-author Carola Suárez-Orozco explains that fears of deportation, financial worries and the shifting political landscape all contribute to their anxiety.
Picture This - Artifacts of a Kidnapping
Every so often Take Two presents our Picture This segment, a conversation with photographers about their work.
Glenna Gordon is a journalist and photographer whose subject matter is one of the most unusual in our series. She captures images from people who were kidnapped and held hostage.
But not images of their actual captivity, but of the objects they had while being held.
Her series is titled - Artifacts of a Kidnapping - the Things they Carried Home.
The psychology behind deciding when and how to retire
Lakers star Kobe Bryant heads to the operating room tomorrow, to fix a torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder.
And yes, that's his shooting arm.
This injury is just the latest in a long line of woes for Bryant. He missed the playoffs in 2013 with a torn Achilles and broke a bone above his knee after playing just six games last season.
All of this has sparked a debate over whether it's time for the NBA's highest-paid player to call it quits.
But deciding when and how to retire involves many factors, said Ronald Riggio, psychology professor at Claremont McKenna College. He's written about retirement for Psychology Today.
Should college athletes get paid after graduating?
A new on-line startup called FanPay is offering people a chance to pay student-athletes if they stick around long enough to get their degrees.
Instead of pay to play, it's more like pay to stay.
"The current incentives in college sports are misaligned," said one of the founders, Kelly Garvy, who is also a graduate student at Duke University. "There are all these incentives to just keep the student athletes working their butts off for their sport and less and less emphasis for education."
Gravy said she and her co-founders hope that FanPay can increase transparency and empower student athletes.
"We'll see a higher quality of education, more graduation rates and more fair dispersion of some of the wealth that's generated in college sports," said Garvy.
But the project raises ethical and legal issues in college sports and has received push back from the NCAA. According to a column published by the NCAA in November, there are some restrictions to how college athletes can engage in crowd-funding programs.
What's hot? Flu-fighting fashions
Many people behind-the-scenes at KPCC have been feeling under the weather, lately. It's not pretty seeing hacking coworkers through the cubicle slats.
But designers are finding ways to turn germs into fashion gems.
Flu- and cold-fighting clothes are hitting the market, says Fashion Trends Daily's Michelle Dalton Tyree.
The Germinator jacket, for example, by Betabrand and Gravity Tank, includes anti-microbial fabric on the collar, cuffs that can wrap around your hands to prevent contamination and more.
"It was based on observations that the team at Gravity Tank saw about how hard it was to protect yourself on public transportation the moment someone sneezes," she says. But she adds, "I wondered how much of this is a gimmick and how much of this is based on science."
Tyree found out that one of the developers of the jacket Amy Seng from the firm Gravity Tank had ties with Mayo Clinic, and has also been working with other doctors who say they'd love to see their scrubs outfitted with this anti-microbial fabric, too.
This jacket isn't the only one of its kind out there, either.
Out of Brooklyn is the Scough.
"Think of the Scough as like a fashionable cross between a face mask and a scarf," she says.
Hidden inside the fabric is a filter designed to trap, neutralize and kill germs.
Tyree says it's probably the closest Americans might get to the Japanese practice — and sometimes fashion statement — of wearing surgical masks.
"It's odd for Westerners, so it's kind of a way to have a little bit of both."
2015 LA homeless census: Thousands of volunteers hit the streets
Los Angeles has one of the largest populations of homeless persons in the nation and the number seems to be increasing.
Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which conducts a homeless count every two years, counted nearly 39,500 homeless persons in 2013. To get an accurate picture of how the population has changed since then, LAHSA will send 6,000 volunteers throughout the county from January 27-29. The purpose of the census is to find out who the homeless are and where they are living to better allocate federal, state and local resources.
Clementina Verjan, interim director of policy and planning at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, has more on the census.
For more information about the count visit LAHSA's website.
Tuesday Reviewsday: The Lone Bellow, George Ezra and more
A Martinez is joined this week by music journalist Chris Martins and Shirley Halperin - music editor at Billboard Magazine for Tuesday Reviewsday, our weekly new music segment.
Shirley's Picks
Artist: The Lone Bellow
Album: "Then Came the Morning"
Songs: "Then Came the Morning," "Cold As It Is"
Notes: I’d like welcome you all to the church of Zach Williams, lead singer for Brooklyn-by-way of Georgia band The Lone Bellow. Zach - as you can tell in the song "Then Came the Morning" - has quite a voice and, on stage, he commands an almost evangelical presence, inviting the audience to sing and clap along almost as if at a Sunday sermon.
And in fact The Lone Bellow has made many new devotees in the last few years as it’s been building buzz. The band’s signature three-part harmony, the voices of Zach Williams, Brian Elmquist, and Kanene Pipki, is the undeniable hook here, but it’s also the way they meld gospel with country, folk, a hint of the blues.
Elsewhere on the album are several heart-breakers, songs like “Watch Over Us,” “Take My Love” and “If You Don’t Love Me,” a lot of which have to do with emotions Zach felt when his wife broke her neck in a horse riding accident. Fortunately, she recovered fully and Zach Williams’s scars made for some pretty terrific tunes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHrLPs3_1Fs
Artist: George Ezra
Album: "Wanted On Voyage"
Songs: "Budapest," "Did You Hear the Rain"
Notes: The modern-day troubadour has been an interesting thing to watch in recent years. You have Ed Sheeran, your teen-friendly acoustic guitar-slapping pop maestro; You've got someone like Jake Bugg, who’s the three-chord indie rock version; Hozier and “Take Me to Church,” which in all its simplicity is incredibly intense in its messaging and its sound.
But what's the one thing all three of these singer-songwriters have in common?
They all hail from across the pond — Hozier is Irish — as does newcomer George Ezra, who’s from Bristol, England and is already making a name for himself with songs like, “Budapest.”
He’s been compared to Van Morrison and he himself name-checks Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie as influences, which is pretty amazing considering this kid was born in 1993. And that’s what I like about George Ezra, how he brings in this element of distortion, almost a nod to the grunge era, to this folksy, whimsical sound he’s concocted for himself. A good example is the song “Did You Hear the Rain”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbfHe3nd_Lo
This album is titled "Wanted On Voyage," which at first look read like a British-ism and I’m honestly still not sure what that means. If any readers out there would like to enlighten us, by all means, please do so in the comments.
Chris's Picks
Artist: Howlin' Rain
Album: "Mansion Songs"
Songs: "Restless," "Big Red Moon"
Notes: A perfect visualization of evolution is the classic monkey to man graphic, but Oakland guitarist/songwriter Ethan Miller has been doing it backwards across his 15-year career. He started out as the lead man in Comets On Fire, a truly wild psych-rock outfit. Then he founded Howlin' Rain, a blustery blues-rock band. Now, after taking a few years off, he's back, basically solo, with a stripped-down version of Howlin' Rain.
There was a lot of hype around the last Howlin' Rain album in 2012. Super-producer Rick Rubin famously had them write 150 songs before they began recording. A lot of critics felt the end result was overworked and over-produced. So, Miller dissolved the band, parted ways with his major label, and went back to the shed. He said he was aiming to make something that "junkies in the Tenderloin could feel at home wandering through."
Artist: Cotillon
Album: "Cotillon"
Songs: "Gloom," "Asteroid"
Notes: Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the lush, wistful sounds of a musical style we'll call bummer-pop. Check it out.
That's a song called "Gloom" by a young band called Cotillon. They've earned comparisons to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, and My Bloody Valentine — folks who famously made pop grittier.
The project was started by former Angeleno Jordan Corso when he was working as an assistant at an insurance company on the East Side of Los Angeles. During his lunch breaks he'd head over to Elysian Park, write out song ideas, and hum melodies into his phone. At night he'd stay up recording. It started as a solo experiment about isolation — hence the "bummer" part. But pretty soon, Jordan had an actual band, and the chance to record with someone he'd looked up to: producer Chet "JR" White, from the band Girls.
Jordan's since moved to White's San Francisco, where he has discovered better vibes and a relationship that doesn't inspire songs with names like "Holding You Back" and "Should Have Known Better." Those all hail from Cotillon's self-titled debut LP, out now on Fullerton's excellent Burger Records label.
Old water distribution system unearthed in San Gabriel Valley
Water played a key role in the building of Southern California. Recently, archaeologists got a better sense of how the wet stuff was channeled many years ago.
An ancient distribution system was unearthed under old Union Pacific railroad tracks in the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles.
Here to talk about his discovery is John Dietler, an archaeologist with the environmental consulting firm SWCA.
Filmmaker Miranda July on her debut novel 'The First Bad Man'
What doesn't Miranda July do? She writes and directs films, like her breakout "Me and You and Everyone We Know," which she also acted in. She makes music, and does performance art too. And now she's written her very first novel, called "The First Bad Man."
It's based in L.A. and focuses on the life of a middle aged woman, Cheryl Glickman, who works at a women's self-defense non-profit, and lives alone until a nightmare houseguest named Clee is forced upon her.
Miranda July joined Take Two to discuss her new book "The First Bad Man."
Greek Theatre debate: City council votes in favor of Nederlander Concerts
A heated debate is playing out over the future of the Greek Theatre in Griffith Park.
Concert promoter Live Nation wants to take over the venue, but the current owners, Nederlander Concerts, want to retain its control.
A city council committee voted in favor of the incumbent on Monday night.
Here with more is Emily Alpert Reyes from the L.A. Times.
Solving the world's chocolate shortage
It's no surprise that the world loves chocolate. But all that adoration has led to a problem: there's a worldwide shortage.
Fear not -- researchers are hard at work to make sure we don't run out of the delicious brown stuff.
It's a fascinating topic Megan Giller wrote about for Slate. She joins Take Two with more.
Finding food and friends on a 62,000 mile journey
Jules Verne took us around the world in 80 days.
But Southern California adventurer, Allan Karl traversed the globe alone in three years on the back of a motorcycle.
He traveled 62,000 miles, pumped over 1100 gallons of gas, crossed over 55 borders on five continents and took 50,000 pictures.
Allan Karl chronicled his epic journey - and the many tasty meals he ate along the way - in his new book, "Forks: A Quest for Culture, Cuisine and Connection".
Take Two's A Martinez spoke with Allan Karl about his experiences in Colombia, Syria, Ecuador and beyond.
Fattoush Salad recipe
Ingredients:
1/2 English cucumber, peeled, seeded (if necessary), and cut into 1/4″ dice
2 large pitas (preferably pocketless, Mediterranean -style), cut into 3/4″ square pieces
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, premium quality
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, or to taste
3 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 medium red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and cut into 1/4″ dice
1 vine-ripened tomato, seeded and finely chopped
1/4 cup green onions, finely chopped
2 tablespoons stemmed and finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon stemmed and finely chopped cilantro
3 tablespoons stemmed and finely chopped mint leaves (save a few sprigs for garnish)
Hearts of romaine, hand torn, rinsed and spun dry, for garnish
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese, preferably from sheep’s milk (optional)
1/8 cup pitted kalamata olives (optional)
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
Place the diced cucumber into a strainer, sprinkle with salt and allow to drain for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, place the pita pieces on a cookie sheet and bake them in the oven until crisp and golden brown, about 20 minutes, shaking the pan 2 or 3 times as they toast. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly. (If you’re preparing outdoors, you can toast the pita pieces until crisp and brown in a basket or skillet on a grill or over a fire.)
Make the dressing by whisking together the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and salt and pepper in a large mixing bowl.
Continue whisking until the dressing is emulsified, then stir in the bell pepper, tomato, green onions, parsley, cilantro, mint, pita strips, and cucumber. Season to taste with more salt and pepper and toss well to coat.
Gently toss in feta and olives, if using, and transfer to a large platter garnished with the romaine and the mint sprigs. Serve immediately.