Uber adopts recommendations to fix company culture, protecting students from falling behind over the summer, new novel from Lisa See explores adoption and identity.
Amid scrutiny, Uber faces shake-up in policy and executives
Uber is in the middle of big changes that could see its controversial CEO stepping aside.
The ride-share company has been under fire for a variety of missteps - everything from using technology to trick regulators to paying drivers less than they are owed.
But after a former employee wrote a detailed account of how she was sexually harassed at the company, Uber hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to recommend changes.
Yesterday the Uber board met here in Los Angeles and voted to accept all his recommendations.
Adam Lashinsky is the author of the book Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination. He spoke to Take Two's A Martinez for the latest scrutiny on the company.
On the company culture of Uber
"Well, this is a company that was born in controversy; that has been aggressive and has broken rules as part of its corporate culture. This is in its DNA. It started that way. One would assume that the report will say that that led to a culture of permissiveness; that asks people to work harder than they do at other companies; that doesn't treat people well; that doesn't treat women well; that doesn't treat partners well; that doesn't treat regulators well and so on."
On Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick
"Travis Kalanick is from the Los Angeles area. Born in Northridge. Went to UCLA. Dropped out of school to do a start-up. He has a reputation for having a tireless work ethic and also for being ruthless. And for sort of [the attitude that], 'I don't care what other people say. This is what we're doing.'
I have described Travis Kalanick as Uber's greatest asset and its greatest liability, simultaneously. He is the person that built Uber into the global force that it is. He is the person that has presided over a corporate culture that has brought so much criticism on one company. I would say almost unprecedented in any company I've looked at and certainly any young company like this."
To hear the full conversation, click the blue player above.
Answers have been edited for clarity.
Anti-Sharia rallies stoke conflict in San Bernardino
Over the weekend, rallies were held across the country protesting a perceived threat that Sharia law was having a growing influence in American politics.
The rallies, dubbed March Against Sharia, were organized by the group, ACT for America, which has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. One of these rallies was held at the site of the 2015 terror attack in San Bernardino, and police were forced to separate rally attendees and counter protesters
Brian Levin, Director of Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino attended that event and talked to A Martinez about it.
How the Golden Motel could portend trouble for homeless strategy
Are millennials the failure to launch generation?
It's that time of the year again:
Graduation season.
In California, most college grads are moving back in with their parents and staying there...for a lot longer than usual. About one in four Californians between the ages 25 to 34 are still living at home.
That's 1.3 million people.
Matt Levin is the data reporter at CALMatters and he wrote all about generation "failure to launch". He spoke to A Martinez about the stay at homers, what's different from past generations and the reason behind the staggering numbers.
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
On The Lot: The Mummy Stumbles
Universal's hoped that Tom Cruise could conquer Wonder Woman. He didn't lay a glove on her. The Mummy failed to excite audiences - even avid movie fan A Martinez says he fell asleep during the film. Twice.
Vanity Fair's Rebecca Keegan tells us Universal is hoping for better box office overseas, but notes the film is the latest in a series of financially disappointing films starring Tom Cruise. She says it wasn't helped by a poor "freshness" rating on the popular movie site, Rotten Tomatoes. And Keegan says that site is becoming increasingly important to the success or failure of films, so much so that it has Hollywood execs alternately praising and damning it.
Keegan also tells us about an interesting event she attended. It featured Jerry Seinfeld questioning Netflix Reed Hastings, and she says the comedian is a remarkably good interviewer. Hastings explained why Netflix recently cancelled two critically acclaimed series, and shed some light on how he sees the streaming business developing.
Click the blue bar to the full conversation with Rebecca Keegan
How you can fight the "Summer Slide"and keep your kids engaged
For most school age kids, today is the first day of the summer break. But it’s also the start of the “summer slide,” the tendency for students, especially those from low-income families, to lose some of the achievement gains they made during the previous school year.
So, how do you keep your kid learning while allowing for summer fun? For some advise on how to prevent the "summer slide," A Martinez speaks with Cynthia Perez. She's community outreach coordinator for Families in Schools and the summer education program, Passport to Success.
‘The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane’ explores adoption and identity
China's Yunnan province is home to some of the world's oldest and most precious tea — pu'er.
And Yunnan is where "The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane" begins, when a young woman named Li-yan gives birth to a baby girl in the mountains, and knows she can't keep her.
Her child, Haley, is adopted by a white couple living a world away in Pasadena, California. But before they give Haley away, her mother gives the child a family heirloom. A very old cake of tea.
"The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane" is a story about family, tradition and identity, explored over the span of decades and across continents.
Author Lisa See stopped by "Take Two" to talk about the new book.
Together but worlds apart
With "The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane," I was really telling two parallel stories. One is about Li-yan, an Akha woman who lives in Yunnan. She she's telling her story in the first person.
For her daughter, Haley, who's adopted by a family here in California, at first you can't hear her voice. She's just a baby. And so I do use these devices to tell her story until she's ready to start speaking for herself. There are emails between her adoptive mother and her adoptive grandmother. And it isn't until she's about seven or eight years old that you start to hear Haley in her own voice.
I thought it would be interesting to tell their two stories simultaneously, side-by-side so that you would see the effect that this separation has brought about for both of them.
Tea as a metaphor
Tea serves several purposes in the novel. I use tea, in a sense, to show the growth of China from being a very poor country — and certainly, up in the tea mountains of Yunnan, that was very poor until very, very recently.
But for the two characters, it serves a much more personal purpose. When Haley is born, Li-yan's mother helps to wrap, and protects her neck, by putting a special but very old cake of this pu'er tea behind her neck to help support her. And so the only thing that tells her anything about her past is this mysterious tea cake.
As seen through a changing city
I chose Pasadena, California, for Haley to grow up in because I am from Los Angeles but I have this great affinity for Pasadena. My great-great-grandfather had a store here that sold Chinese antiques.
But for me, there was one other element. Just in my lifetime, I've seen how Pasadena — but also really, the San Gabriel Valley — has changed from being predominantly white to having this large influx of people from China, or Chinese-American families. And to be able to explore that, I thought would be really interesting. It became a way to explore a different aspect of the Chinese-American experience.
And so, here she is: a child adopted into a white family, but she's Chinese. And she's going to a school where there are other kids. Some of them Chinese-American. Others who may have just recently come from China. I could explore all of that.
A struggle for identity
I found young women who had been adopted from China who would have a little bit more perspective than a five-year-old or a nine-year-old. And I sent them questions.
Two things really struck me about them. The first is that many of them struggle with issues of identity. And they grow up wondering, "What am I? Am I American? Am I Chinese? Am I Chinese-American? Or am I something else?" And so that struggle for identity, or what is their identity, is very key to their experience.
The other thing is that party because of that struggle, they have a label called the "grateful-but-angry" adoptee. I came to think of it a little differently. That is wasn't the "grateful-but-angry" adoptee, but the "grateful-but-sad" adoptee. This was really summed up for me by one young woman who said, "I know I'm the most precious person in my family" — and of course, she is.
The families who've adopted from China, they've struggled. They went through a lot before they decided that they would go to China to adopt. For the most part, those families are pretty well off, those kids get pretty wonderful educations, so, they are lucky. So, she said," I know I'm the most precious person in my family. But I wasn't precious enough for my birth parents to keep me as their one child."
*Quotes edited for clarity