The landmark deal on Iran's nuclear program, a possible end to the ban on transgender people in the military, New Horizons makes its closest approach to Pluto.
Transgender servicemembers: What lifting the ban means for the military, vets
The Pentagon announced Monday it will take steps to end the ban on transgender people from serving in the military.
"We have transgender soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines — real, patriotic Americans — who I know are being hurt by an outdated, confusing, inconsistent approach that’s contrary to our value of service and individual merit,” said Defense Secretary Ashton Carter in a statement.
Carter ordered a six-month study aimed at ending the ban.
Making a smooth transition, however, may mean rethinking more than active duty fighting. What does it mean for barrack assignments, medical care, service records and more?
Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center at San Francisco State University, explains some of the logistical and cultural challenges. The Center specializes in research about gender, sexuality and the military.
Meanwhile, there are more than 134,000 transgender veterans in America, too. Navy vet Fallon Stone, a transgender man, shares some of the progress and pitfalls the military has made in providing benefits.
New push to regulate teen residential treatment centers
Congressman Adam Schiff introduced legislation aimed at regulating the country's residential treatment and "boot camp" programs for troubled teens yesterday. While some facilities successfully treat young people, a federal report from 2008 cites instances of physical and emotional abuse at a number of camps across the country.
The report also revealed that many religiously-affiliated camps still offer gay conversion therapy--a practice already banned in California.
The legislation would hold treatment centers to new federal standards and outlaw discrimination against disabled teens and LGBT youth.
Click the top play button above to hear more about the proposed legislation from Congressman Schiff. The congressman is also joined by treatment camp survivor, Jodi Hobbs.
Click the second play button to hear the response from Megan Stokes, with the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs.
Local reaction to the Iran nuclear deal
A landmark nuclear agreement with Iran was reached today. The US and the six other nations involved in negotiations have agreed to lift sanctions if Iran makes steps to dismantle its nuclear program.
Take Two spoke with Najmedin Meshkati, an Iranian American and professor of engineering and international relations at USC, about the details of the deal, and how local Iranian community is responding.
Press the play button above to hear more.
The Brood: Mother and daughter pen memoirs on life with anorexia
Anorexia nervosa is among the most common psychiatric diagnoses for young women, and also one of the most misunderstood illnesses.
It's often difficult to understand its causes and full effects. Plus, there is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to treatment.
Elena Dunkle and her mother, Clare, wanted to help families gain a better understanding of anorexia, so they wrote two books. One is a memoir about Elena's struggle with anorexia called "Elena Vanishing." Clare has also written a memoir from her perspective called "Hope and Other Luxuries: A Mother's Life with a Daughter's Anorexia."
The two joined Alex Cohen for a conversation about the impact of anorexia on their lives and their relationship.
To hear the full interview, click the blue audio player above.
EXCERPT FROM "ELENA VANISHING":
I wake up in a panic, and acid churns in my stomach. A nurse has walked into my hospital room. I was asleep. How long was I asleep? How long has it been since I last reached for the makeup bag under my pillow? Does the nurse see a girl with a bright future ahead of her? Or does he see a sweaty, tearstained mess?
As it turns, out, I don’t need to worry. All the nurse sees is my lunch tray. “You didn’t eat any of this,” he says. “You didn’t even unwrap it.”
I like this nurse. Yesterday he yelled at me, but I could tell he only did it because he was worried. Now he huffs, “Anorexia! You and my niece. Two beautiful girls, destroying your lives over a diet!”
I take careful note of the comment: beautiful. This nurse is the fifth person in the last four days to call me beautiful. But worry poisons my relief. What do I weigh now? I need to know the number that’s made me beautiful.
As soon as the nurse is out of sight, I double up in agony, clenching my teeth to keep from groaning out loud. If I make a sound, I know he’ll hear me and come rushing back to help. And I don’t want anyone’s help.
Anger and bewilderment are forms of admiration. It’s pity I can’t stand. Pity wraps you up inside your problem until the problem is all people see. Did you hear what happened to her? they whisper behind your back. Can you just imagine? No wonder! And when you do something amazing, nobody’s jealous anymore. They hug you and cry and call you brave, when what they really mean by that is damaged.
So I lie still and take deep, quiet breaths. Pain doesn’t bother me. I’m not afraid. I’m used to living with pain.
He saw you looking like a mess, warns the voice in my head. You weren’t careful enough. You let down your guard.
That’s my conscience. We all have one. Mine never lets me settle for second best. There’s no place in life for losers.
So, even though the pain in my stomach still has me clenching my teeth in agony, I pull the little makeup bag out from under my pillow and touch up my face in the compact mirror.
Perfection. That’s what I want people to see when they look at me. Nothing but perfection.
Anger is honest. Hatred is a backhanded compliment. Envy is the best gift of all. But let them turn you into a victim and you’re labeled for life.
Pity is the sea you drown in.
© Elena Dunkle and Clare B. Dunkle from Elena Vanishing. Published by Chronicle Books.
San Francisco couple's battle over embryos brings implications for families
A complicated legal battle over a batch of frozen embryos has sprung up in San Francisco. The case involves a couple in the middle of a nasty divorce, and it could have big implications for future families.
Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury News joined the show to explain more.
New Horizons spacecraft reaches Pluto after 9 1/2 years
The New Horizons spacecraft has reached to the dwarf planet, Pluto. Now 7,000 miles above the surface, New Horizons is the first-ever space mission to explore a world so far from Earth.
Scientists are now waiting for New Horizons to "phone home." Data from the spacecraft could rewrite what is currently known about Pluto.
For more on why this is such a technical achievement, Emily Lakdawalla, science and technology coordinator at The Planetary Society, joined the show.
Click on the blue audio player above to listen to the interview.
Tuesday Reviewsday: New music from Galactic, Watkins Family Hour and Jason Isbell
If you don't have the time to keep up with the latest in new music, we've got the perfect solution for you: Tuesday Reviewsday. Every week our music experts come by to talk about the best new tunes in one short segment. This week, music journalist Steve Hochman joins A Martinez for a chat about rock artists in Los Angeles, New Orleans and Nashville.
Artist: Watkins Family Hour
Album: "Watkins Family Hour"
Songs: "Hop High," "Steal Your Heart Away"
Summary: For more than a decade, one of the most reliably delightful music destinations in L.A. has been the somewhat regular Watkins Family Hour evenings at the Largo club, with siblings Sara and Sean Watkins (of Nickel Creek) hosting a varying cast of friends in some charming and often stunning performances. The nights are also full of down-to-earth goofiness, genial needling and joking around, very loosely given an old-timey feel as singers often gather around one vintage-looking microphone. It’s sort of a home-made answer to "A Prairie Home Companion" (which, as it happens, has recently announced that Chris Thile, the other member of Nickel Creek, will take over as host when Garrison Kielor steps down).
The album, the first under the Watkins Family name with a short national tour to follow, brings together some of the key compatriots — including Fiona Apple and Heartbreakers piano man Benmont Tench — into a little collective ensemble. The earthy flow of the show isn’t recreated on the album, but the spirit is in every song as the album runs from folk and country (Harlan Howard’s "Where I Ought to Be" sung by Apple, the comical "King of the 12 Oz. Bottle" sung by drummer Don Heffington) to blues (Little Brother Montgomery’s "Prescription for the Blues," sung by Tench) to Dylan (the touching "Going, Going, Gone," sung by multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz) to the Grateful Dead ("Brokedown Palace" as a gorgeous album-closer).
At the hub, though, is always the Watkins’ folk-bluegrass roots, strong in Sara’s fiddle, Sean’s guitar and their blood-twined harmonies. It’s explicit in the traditional "Hop High," but no less so in what may be the surprising highlight, a version of Lindsey Buckingham’s "Steal Your Heart Away," sung by Sara. If it sounds like she’s singing with a smile that can light up a room, well, ask anyone who’s been to the shows: She is.
Artist: Galactic
Album: "Into the Deep"
Songs: "Into the Deep," "Sugar Doosie"
Summary: It’s two! Two! Two bands in one! One one front, Galactic is perhaps the funkiest, sharpest instrumental in New Orleans of the last couple of decades. On the other, it’s been a terrific backing band for a wide range of singers. In that regard it’s something of the heir to NOLA’s own core band, the Meters, and a bit of Memphis’ Booker T. and the MGs, not bad precedents to follow. Often, though, it’s seemed the split personalities have been at war, or at least at odds.
This new album doesn’t exactly mend the rift, but in many ways the two sides are now reconciled better than ever. Having singers the caliber and renown of Macy Gray (who’s been their featured guest in recent concerts) and Mavis Staples doesn’t hurt. Both the title song with Gray and "Does It Really Make a Difference" with Staples would be standouts on their own respective albums, and here show Galactic’s ability to play to, with and for the singer (in the past they’ve worked with various R&B, rock and hip-hop figures quite effectively). It’s a matter of both sensibility and adaptability. Not to mention considerable chops, anchored by Stanton Moore, who ranks among the best drummers in a city known for great drummers.
The problem is, Galactic sometimes takes on the singer’s persona at the expense of its own, even though the band wrote or co-wrote every song — not bad if this was a singer’s own album. But this is a Galactic album, and if you really want to know what this band can do, you need to go to the four instrumental tracks. Here’s where the quintet, augmented by an assortment of ace New Orleans brass players, really come to life. The opener "Sugar Doosie" is, well, a doozie of classic New Orleans funk, Galactic-style.
Artist: Jason Isbell
Album: "Something More Than Free"
Songs: "24 Frames," "Something More Than Free"
Summary: "You thought God was an architect, now you know / He’s something like a pipe bomb, ready to blow," sings Jason Isbell in the song "24 Frames." Well, wow. If that line doesn’t grab you, hang on a second, another killer is coming right along. And if the song’s central notion, life as a movie that we sometimes just watch happen, is not exactly new, Isbell makes it seem as if no one has really explored it before.
At once celebrating and lamenting the every day, The North Alabama-raised, Nashville-based Isbell takes on topics and scenarios we may have heard and seen many times before, but with fresh eyes on the world-weariness. It’s all rather, to coin a term, Kristoffersonian. And he puts an even tighter frame around the scenes than the panoramic views of and from the New South he helped create with Drive-By Truckers, the band he was in before going solo in 2007.
There’s the couple in "Flagship" trying to forestall the stagnation and dissipation they see around them. There’s the lunchpail guy getting up every morning in the album’s title song — somewhere between Bruce Springsteen’s "The Working Life" and Jackson Browne’s "The Pretender." There’s the guy who doesn’t have to go to work thanks to a workers’ comp settlement in "The Life You Chose" — "I got lucky when I finished school / lost three fingers to a faulty tool." There’s life in a "Speed Trap Town." There’s the premature adulthood in "Children of Children."
The music is, by and large, subservient to the words, and with words this astonishing that’s how it should be. But that’s not to say the music is dismissible. The melodies help paint the pictures, bringing out the emotions and characters with vivid colors. And the band, which includes his wife Amanda Shires (a wonderful artist in her own right) on fiddle, walks that fine
line between impressive and intrusive. And when they do crank it up, as on the penultimate "Palmetto Rose," it’s a double-barreled blast. Even without that, this album affirms Isbell as one of the superior writers and performers in Americana, and beyond.
Recreating the Wright Brothers' first flight in Virtual Reality
At the Electronics Entertainment Expo in downtown Los Angeles earlier this summer, virtual reality was one of the biggest attractions. Samsung, Sony, Facebook and Google have all developed their own headsets.
But while the technology has been refined, deciding what users want from virtual reality is still a puzzle, because, as you can imagine, creating content for it is different than creating something for a flat screen.
We were so interested in that process that we recently brought in Steve Holtzman and Daniel Gregoire whose company Matter VR is creating virtual reality content. They even brought in a virtual reality headset for A to try on, as you can see in the image above.
In the headset, A is watching Matter VR's recreation of the Wright Brothers first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Click on the audio embedded above to find out how virtual reality movies are made and whether we could see a Hollywood blockbuster come through on the platform anytime soon.
Full disclosure - Steve Holtzman is the significant other of one of our team members.
Joan Sebastian: A remembrance of the Mexican singer-songwriter
Mexican singer-songwriter Joan Sebastian was known for sentimental love songs and a fondness for the rodeo that ran so strong, he even performed on horseback.
Sebastian died Monday after a battle with bone cancer. He was 64.
Leila Cobo, executive director of Latin Content at Billboard Magazine, joined the show to tell more about his life and music.