SCOTUS punts affirmative action case back to lower courts; Immigration reform package's future in House is uncertain; Why is Edward Snowden seeking asylum in Ecuador?; Imperial Courts homicide draws attention to area's transition; #MyName: The importance of names and what they say about you; Hell Is Other People app helps you avoid unwanted run-ins, plus much more.
SCOTUS punts affirmative action case back to lower courts
This morning, the Supreme Court issued its decision on a case involving affirmative action and race-based admissions at the University of Texas, Austin.
In a 7-1 ruling, the high court "vacated and remanded" an earlier decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which had upheld the university's program. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself because when she was a lawyer at the Justice Department she had been involved in the case.
In other words, the justices said is that the case needs to head back down to the lower courts for a review.
For your explainer on why is Daria Roithmayr, professor at the USC Gould School of Law.
Reactions to the Affirmative Action decision:
Why is Edward Snowden seeking asylum in Ecuador?
First WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sought political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Now Ecuador has received an asylum request from former U.S. Intelligence contractor Richard Snowden and will process it when he arrives in the South American nation.
For more on Ecuador's emerging role in granting political asylum to whistle blowers is Riordan Roett, director of the Latin American studies program at Johns Hopkins University.
Pharmacists would be allowed to provide more care to Californians under SB493
Starting next January, millions of uninsured Californians will have to buy health insurance under the new federal health care law. The resulting influx of new patients could exacerbate the shortage of primary care doctors.
That's prompted state legislation to expand the role of certain health professionals, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants. As KPCC's Stephanie O'Neill reports, a similar push is underway to give pharmacists greater freedom to provide certain types of medical care.
Immigration reform package's future in House is uncertain
The Senate continues debate on a comprehensive immigration reform package. Many believe it will pass before the week is out with as many as 70 votes. Then it heads to the House, where Republican Sen. Rand Paul predicts it will die.
For more on this we're joined now by Reid Wilson, editor-in-chief of the National Journal.
Susan Orlean's next book to mine stories from LA's Central Library (Photos)
Writer Susan Orlean has a knack for turning ordinary sounding subjects into extraordinary stories. Her inquiries into the arrest of an orchid thief in south Florida became a best-selling book that was eventually adapted into the film, "Adaptation," starring with Meryl Streep as Orlean.
In addition, her article about young surfer girls in Maui became the inspiration for the film "Blue Crush."
Recently, Susan Orlean relocated to Los Angeles where she's found the subject of her next book: the Central Library.
"What made this the one that attracted me so much was, number one I love being contrarian, nobody thinks anyone in L.A. reads and of course that's not true, so it's much more fun to write a book about the L.A. Public Library," said Orlean. "This library has a fascinating history, most significantly is its near death experience is what made me think, 'wow this is a great story.'"
Orlean has been spending hours at the historic building on Flower Street in downtown L.A. studying the library's history and interviewing librarians past and present. We recently had the chance to join Orlean in the rare books room where she told me about her earliest library experiences.
Interview Highlights:
On her favorite memories of libraries:
"I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, there was a branch library almost walking distance from my house and we went multiple times a week. To me it was a magical place. It has this charged feeling and everything s free. I looked at librarians as these almost saintly creatures who wanted to help you find great books. It was probably my favorite place."
On the fire that almost killed the L.A. Central Library:
"In 1986 at a time when Downtown L.A. was really in the doldrums, the library itself was absolutely jam packed, had run out of space, had faulty wiring, it was kind of a bit bedraggled at that point in its history. In 1986 a fire broke out in the library, it spread very quickly, it burned for about seven hours and was the largest structural fire in the history of Los Angeles. It destroyed close to half a million books. The damage of putting the fire down resulted in 700,000 volumes either being water or smoke damaged. The library then was closed for six years. That's a huge event. It gave me this fabulous narrative drama and also hearing it was arson...I mean we all love true crime stories and in this case you can't help but wonder why would someone want to burn down a library?"
On how she found out about the fire:
"The way I first heard about the fire, when I was being given a tour of the library the person who was giving me the tour took a book out and sniffed it and I thought, well, people have all sorts of odd habits, I wonder why he's sniffing the book. He said, 'Some of them still have the smoke smell in them.' I said, 'from what,' and he said 'Well, you know, the fire.' So if you see a small red-haired woman in the Central Library sniffing books, it's me and it's for my research."
On what research she's doing for her new book:
"I've been talking to a lot of retired librarians who were here at the time of the fire and of course each one of them is fascinating. If anything I'm going to have trouble sorting out who I'm going to focus on. I've been spending a lot of time talking to a gentleman who had been the head librarian for 20 years and he was here at the time of the fire. He is a real character, he's a magician, he's a jazz musician, he's a bit cantankerous and a challenging person, but those tend to be the people who I find the most interesting."
On The Lot: 'Monsters U,' audition prank, Melissa McCarthy and more
Now its time for our regular Monday discussion of the entertainment biz, On the Lot with LA Times reporter Rebecca Keegan.
It has all the makings of a huge summer hit: Brad Pitt and zombies. Yet "World War Z did not top the box office this weekend. It got beat out by "Monsters University."
One of the challenges of "Monsters U" was making a film about college antics that could carry a G-rating. The filmmakers kind of had to go back to college themselves. They all went to art schools, not the typical college experience.
Some critics have complained that Pixar might have lost its mojo lately. Will the success of "Monsters U" put the zip on those lips?
A very strange story reported in the LA Times last week about a casting call for a feature film called "May the Best Man Win." Turned out it was more like a casting call for Punk'd. Doesn't SAG-AFTRA consider audition material to be private?
There's some buzz around Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock's new buddy cop movie, "The Heat."
McCarthy is pretty reserved when she's out of character, but when she's in it, she is absolutely take no prisoners. If "The Heat" is a success could it spawn a sort of "Lethal Weapon" franchise for these two?
Odd Hollywood Jobs: Military liaison
This is one in a series on Odd Hollywood Jobs — not acting or directing, but rather the tasks you haven't heard of. You can read other segments in this series at the links below the story.
When he joined the Army 18 years ago, Lt. Col. Steven Cole never thought he would be working in Hollywood. After a long career with the Army that has sent him around the world, he now serves as a liaison between the Army and the entertainment industry.
"The army has an entertainment liaison office out here in Los Angeles that basically serves as a conduit between production companies for film and television, studios or individual production companies, and the army," said Cole on Take Two. "We help translate army into production company and production company back into army."
As part of our series on little-known Hollywood jobs, Cole joins the whow to talk about how he got into this line of work, what he does and how he balances the real with the fictional.
Interview Highlights:
On what his day to day is like:
"Who we deal with on a day to day basis are the people that roll through on the credits. I see productions as army units, so director is the commander, the talent are the soldiers, and then the producers and all those that make the movie or TV show run, those are the people that I deal with."
On the Army's longstanding relationship with Hollywood:
"I think one of the most interesting things about the job is that the very first Academy Award-winning Best Picture in 1927 was a movie called "Wings," a silent movie. The army provided an aircraft for it. In a lot of ways the army has been involved in Hollywood as long as there has been a Hollywood. There's times where we do more and there's times where we do less just based on viewer appetites for films that depict the army."
On why its important for the Army have a relationship with Hollywood:
"We don't work for Army recruiting, but one of the biggest barriers to military service in general and the Army in particular is just familiarity with the service. I happen to come from a family that has a long military history, but if you don't know anything about the Army, all you know is what you see on television. So outdated depictions of the army may be all that you know. So what we try to do is depict the Army as realistically as possible so that future soldiers come in with their eyes wide open about what it is they're joining up to do."
On how he became a military liaison:
"The golden path to this job, I was commissioned out of West Point in 1995, that was about eight years of my career, spent in what conventional Army units. Then the military academy asked me to go back to graduate school, then I went back to teach at the military academy for three years in the history department. From there I became a public affairs officer and then deployed to Afghanistan to be part of the international security assistance force NATO staff there. Coming back from that assignment went to work at FleishmanHillard, which is a corporate global communications firm, to try to understand how big business uses communication to explain what it is they do. Took that experience and I'm not really applying those lessons to explain what the Army is all about."
On toeing the line between real and fiction:
I think there's a fine line between exciting and reality, so sometimes you want sexy. The lone wolf character, or whatever, and we say look the Army is a team sport. This isn't how it would be. Most people that work with us understand that and that's why they ask us to participate. The DOD instruction that we follow provides for those things that don't exist, but in a world where they did exist how would the Army react to them? The U.S. Army having Superman's back is probably what we would do, in defending the country and supporting the Constitution of the United States, that's our job. So would we do that in these make-believe worlds? Sure. If we were doing that how would be act? That's how we have to think about our roles in these films.
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Imperial Courts homicide draws attention to area's transition
Early Sunday morning, a man was shot while standing outside the Imperial Courts public housing development in Watts. He's the 19th person to die in South Los Angeles this year, but just the first homicide in nearly two years in Imperial Courts, a pocket neighborhood once notorious for gang violence and fatal shootings.
For more on this story, we're joined by KPCC's Erika Aguilar.
Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton on immigration reform
Today almost 200 mayors from across the country are gathered in Las Vegas for the 81st annual conference of mayors. These leaders are discussing all sorts of issues, from school safety to energy efficiency. But one of their top priorities is immigration.
Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton is leading a delegation of mayors who hope to help shape the debate in Congress by providing a local government perspective on the need for immigration reform.
For more on this we're joined now live by Mayor Stanton.
Selling Obamacare to California's immigrant communities
As we mentioned earlier - this coming January the Affordable Care Act goes into effect. But in a state as diverse as California, what will it take sell Obamacare to ethnic communities where English is a second language?
The California Report's Mina Kim visits one of the state's largest Vietnamese neighborhoods to find out.
Clippers and Celtics reportedly reach Doc Rivers deal
The L.A. Clippers had arguably the best season in their history after winning the Pacific Division and sweeping the Lakers, both franchise firsts. While they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the Memphis Grizzlies, the Clippers did show signs they are a team on the rise.
Last night, the Clippers took another step in the right direction after reportedly agreeing in principle to a deal with the Boston Celtics for their head coach Doc Rivers. The deal is pending league approval.
Here for more on what this means for the Clippers and their profile in L.A. is ESPNLA columnist Arash Markazi.
Hell Is Other People app helps you avoid unwanted run-ins
With social networks like Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and Twitter, there are plenty of ways to keep track of your friends, family members and co-workers. But what if you'd rather avoid them?
Well, turns out there's an app for that, too. It's called Hell is Other People. For more on this new app, we're joined by its creator, NYU masters candidate Scott Garner.
Hell is Other People: Walk One from Scott Garner on Vimeo.
#MyName: The importance of names and what they say about you
Chances are if you were born in the last year, your name would be Jacob or Sophia, the most popular baby names in the country right now. Or maybe your name is something more unique, like North West, reportedly what Kanye West and Kim Kardashian named their newborn.
Or perhaps your name isn't as special as you thought it was:
"My name's Grant Alexander Murray, and I thought I was named after Ulysses S. Grant. One day I was talking to my mom about it and it turns she was watching 'General Hospital' when she was pregnant and there was a Dr. Grant on the show. One day she decided to name me Grant. It kind of feels like a cheap shot, like, yeah, I just grabbed the first thing I saw on TV."
That's a listener from our Public Insight Network, and we heard from many of you when we asked, "What's the story behind your name?"
So we want to look at how important names can be and what they say about you. Joining us is Dalton Conley, a sociology professor at New York University, whose own kids have their own unusual names: his daughter E, and his son Yo Xing Heyno Augustus Eisner Alexander Weiser Knuckles.
Interview Highlights:
How he settled on his kids' unusual names:
"E was born two months premature and we were caught a little off-guard. We had a number of 'E' names that we liked, including Early as a play on the fact that she came early. We ended up deciding, 'Hey, let's just give here the letter 'E' and she can decide what it stands for.' So far, she's been E the whole time. She's 15 now, and should be rebelling against her parents, but she seems to like the name.
"As for my son, it would have been funny if we had just named him John or Mike after E, but I think we wanted to give an equally unique name to him. I thought, 'Let's pick a name where we really confound the expectations of his ethnicity.' He's a blond-ish, blue-eyed white kid. We settled on Yo Xing. It's 'I' in Spanish but also 'hey' or 'you' in New Yorkese. When he was three, he wanted to be able to control his name like his sister could, so he added a couple of names himself. 'Heyno' and 'Knuckles,' which was my dog's name when I was a kid. Even though he did, like his sister, go through some phases where I think he wanted a 'normal name.' He called himself Sean for a while. He's now reverted to his own name, and he's pretty happy about it."
Listener Story: "My name is Revvell Revati. I guess when I was in my 30s I decided to change it. Revel, to me, has meaning because, at the time, I was going through a lot of mental, emotional and physical changes. Having a new name, especially something like 'Revel,' meaning 'to celebrate life,' and so I figured it was time to start doing that. I wanted a name I could live up to
On people deciding their own names:
"If someone wants to change their name and embrace something new and have a new start in life, that's great. You may argue that giving kids some control over their names undermines their sense of being taken care of or security or the structure of society. I don't think that's the case in our kids' instances, but who knows?"
On personalities attached to names:
"As a researcher, I have to say that we don't know what, if any, the effects of names are. However, as a parent, my intuition tells me that it's 100 percent true that it's not the dominant effect on the human you become, but it probably plays a certain role. The name probably puts some constraints on you and opens up some opportunities. In my kids' case, I know that, because they have the weirdest names in their schools, people have known who they are well before they've met them."
Listener Story: "My full name is Sharon Patricia Fiblecorn Chapman. I went through most of grade school as Patricia, and when I got older, I went by Sharon. Sharon was a little more refined, you hit junior high and think, 'Hey, I'm growing up, and I need to be more of a girl.' Pat was a little bit of a tomboy and would rough-up, but now that I look back, I think I was more of a Pat than I thought."
On how someone could think Pat is more of a tomboy:
Often, you can have a name that has a personal meaning, or no major meaning, but then popular culture comes in and rewrites the meaning of your name for you. For example, Kim, prior to the 1950s, was an androgynous name. You had an almost equal number of male Kims and female Kims. In fact, you may have had more male Kims. In 1957, Vertigo, the Hitchcock film, came out. That made Kim Novak an instant star. All of a sudden, the next year, there were no more male babies being named Kim. It had become a feminine name because of the aura she gave it. Sometimes, your name gets rewritten for you, whether you like it or not.
On what's at stake when you choose your name:
"There's a big debate in the academic literature as to whether or not names can affect your socioeconomic opportunity. There is some evidence, for example, that boys who end up with gender-ambiguous names tend to be more disruptive or get into more fights or get into more problems in school once they hit adolescence. There's evidence that kids with blacker sounding names get treated worse in schools than kids with whiter sounding names. We can't really know for sure, but I think there is enough evidence to say that there are some serious consequences for names. The biggest reflection of a name is what it says about the parents' tastes."
On how common name changing is when entering a new culture:
"I think people are more likely to take on a different abbreviation of their name. Sometimes they're Robert, sometimes they're Bobby in different contexts. The wholesale swapping out of a new name or using your middle name as opposed to your first name is more rare."
See more #MyName stories from KPCC listeners:
NPR's Neal Conan signs off from Talk of the Nation
Come next Monday, there will big some big changes in the world of public radio and here at KPCC. We're pleased to announce that Take Two will be airing a special version of our show weeknights at 8 pm, and KPCC will be adding five new programs to our schedule.
Sadly, we will also be saying farewell to Talk of the Nation, a show that's been on NPR for more than two decades. Neal Conan has been hosting the show since 2001 and he joins us now from NPR in Washington DC to talk about the show's legacy and what's next for him.
Remembering 'Family Ties' creator Gary David Goldberg
Gary David Goldberg, the creator of the hit 80s TV show "Family Ties" as well as several other series, died yesterday, just two days shy of turning 69.
He introduced the country to the Keaton family. Helmed by liberal parents Elyse and Steven, the family's true star was their conservative son, Alex P Keaton, played by Michael J Fox.
Although the show was his most well-known work, Goldberg actually came to TV late in life, He grew up in Brooklyn, but spent most of his young adulthood going in and out of college and waiting tables.
He also spent over a year traveling around the world with his future wife, along with their dog, and once he returned, Goldberg finally settled in California, eventually breaking into Hollywood.
He wrote several episodes of the "Bob Newhart Show" and produced the drama "Lou Grant." But he hit it big when he created "Family Ties" and showed off a family with differences, but still managed to love each other in the end.
Years later, Goldberg still had an influential hand in many famed TV series. Like "Brooklyn Bridge," starring Marion Ross, which drew on his childhood to showcase a Jewish American family living in Brooklyn. Or the sitcom "Spin City," set in the fictionalized NYC Mayor's office.
But Goldberg didn't always generate laughs.
During a 2009 age discrimination lawsuit filed by TV writers, Goldberg was quoted saying that his show had, quote, "No writers on the set over the age of 29, by design."
Regardless, he had a storied career that also branched into movies, like "Bye Bye Love," starring Paul Reiser.
His own family also continued the tradition of working in Hollywood: his daughter Shana ended up producing a successful sitcom, herself: "Friends."
Gary David Goldberg is being remembered by his friends and colleagues.
Booker T changes pace with 'Sound the Alarm'
In 1962, the band Booker T. & The M.G.'s released their first hit: "Green Onions." Since then, the sound of the B3 Hammond Organ has become a hallmark of Booker T's music.
However, the B3 is just one of many sounds you'll hear on his new album "Sound the Alarm." Booker T. joins us from the studios of NPR West in Culver City.