President Obama's approval ratings hit 50 percent, kids who begin their transgender transition early, new music with Tuesday Reviewsday.
Approval ratings rise for President Obama
For the first time in more than two years, President Obama’s approval ratings are at 50 percent. That's according to a CNN/ORC poll conducted over the weekend.
These results follows some big political wins for the Commander in Chief on issues like the Affordable Care Act, Same Sex marriage, and of course, there was this moment at the memorial service for Reverend Clementa Pinckney who was killed at a South Carolina church:
For what this could mean for the President’s legacy, we talk to Scott Bland, Editor-in-Chief of National Journal's Hotline.
Republicans see opportunity to recast Party after gay marriage ruling
The Supreme Court has legalized gay marriage. The confederate flag may be poised to come down from South Carolina's capitol grounds. And Caitlin Jenner's coming out as a transgender woman has been met by widespread support.
Are these cultural shifts a set back for conservatives? Or is it an opportunity to recast the movement for a new national mood?
"We're going to have to follow where society is going," said Mike Madrid, GOP strategist. "And the [Republican] Party does have some really strong positioning with some issues that are going to begin percolating in the minds of voters."
Privacy and technology, for example, are areas where Republicans can stake out positions ahead of big elections, said Madrid.
Documentary examines tough choices for kids who are 'Growing Up Trans'
Believing you were born the wrong gender can be an excruciating feeling for anyone, but it's especially tough for young children.
Recently some kids have been making incredibly difficult and controversial decisions to take drugs which delay puberty and in some cases, assist their bodies in changing genders.
Several of these children, their parents and their doctors are featured in a new FRONTLINE documentary called "Growing Up Trans" premiering tonight on PBS stations.
Filmmaker Miri Navasky, co-producer of "Growing Up Trans," and Dr. Robert Garofalo, director of the gender program at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, join Take Two to discuss the film.
To hear the full interview with Miri Navasky and Dr. Robert Garofalo, click the link above.
Probe raises questions about University of Phoenix's recruitement of veterans
For veterans, one of the most important benefits coming out of service is the GI Bill.
Since World War II, the program has funded college tuition for veterans – to help them get much-needed degrees and update skills to transition into the workforce.
But what happens when millions of that taxpayer money go to for-profit schools?
A new investigation from Reveal and the Center for Investigative Reporting takes a look at how a 2012 presidential order to protect veterans may not be working as intended.
For more, we're joined by reporter Aaron Glantz.
New music from ArchiveX, Tiempo Libre, and Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams
If you love music, but don't have the time to keep up with what's new, you should listen to Tuesday Reviewsday. Every week our critics join our hosts in the studio to talk about what you should be listening to, in one short segment. This week, music journalist
Artist: ArchiveX
Album: "Some Ungodly Hour"
Songs: "Hymmmn," "Brother"
Notes: ArchiveX is…. well…. we don’t really know. The San Francisco artist is trying, perhaps too hard, to maintain a mystique by not revealing his identity. It’s not really a needed gesture — the music of the debut album, Some Ungodly Hour, has mystique a plenty in its mix of gospel, blues, glam, spooky ambience and sunny spirit. As the title suggests, this is secular gospel. As the music makes clear, it’s about earthly and not heavenly matters, be they delights or challenges, or often both.
The more ambient tracks, such as wordless, many-layered-voices opener "Hymmmn" (yes, that’s how it’s spelled) and the somber "Pilgrim of Sorrow," might recall Antony & the Johnsons’ Antony Hegarty, but without the affected drama. Some of the funkier songs, "Been Down" in particular, have Prince stamped all over them, though by way of Southern-rock with slithery slide guitar and rollicking piano, and the instrumental "Meltdown" kicks that into overdrive. "Brother" is pure gospel-soul, but with guitar licks in the chorus borrowed from Queen.
Maybe the anonymity is meant to be ironic — a secular gospel album directed by an unseen hand from a being whose real name is not to be spoken. Either way, with ArchiveX there are some praises to be sung.
Artist: Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams
Album: "Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams"
Songs: "Surrender to Love," "Everybody Loves You"
Notes: "Surrender to Love"? A sweet way for married couple Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams to open their debut album. Well, even if that surrender is 27 years in the making, it having taken that long since they wed in 1988, under a tree in her tiny hometown of Peckerwood Point, Tenn., until they made this album.
Well, it’s not like they’ve just been harmonizing on the porch all that time. Campbell has established himself as one of the unheralded stalwarts of Americana, serving for eight years as guitarist and leader of Bob Dylan’s Never-Ending Tour band and then another seven anchoring ex-Band man Levon Helm’s group, including the regular, storied Midnight Ramble gatherings in Helm’s Woodstock barn up to his death in 2012. The professional partnership goes back 30 years to when she was a country singer and he was playing pedal steel in the Bottom Line club in his native New York.
It was with Helm that the pair honed the sound heard here, Williams a featured singer in that band and Campbell wielding a variety of stringed instrument, most distinctively his stinging electric guitar. In the course of it, they worked with a wide variety of Ramble guests, and the eclectic nature is on display, with gospel-y Southern-romp ("Bad Luck Charm"), down-home yearning ("Do You Love Me At All") and mountain hoedowns ("Everybody Loves You") working their way through the original songs, his unaffected voice a nice complement to her soaring songbird. Two cover choices frame it all perfectly: Rev. Gary Davis’ spiritual blues "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning" (here kind of a revival tent hootenanny treatment) and the Grateful Dead’s sweetly melancholy ballad "Attics of My Life."
Comparisons come easily to mind, given the couples core to country and Americana: Tammy Wynette and George Jones, Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, Buddy and Julie Miller, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, just to name a handful. Campbell and Williams may have bided their time to join them, but they’ve joined them in style.
Artist: Tiempo Libre
Album: Panamericano
Songs: "Somebody to Love Me," "Dime Que No."
Notes: While the album title isn’t exactly a lie, it’s not quite the truth. No musical offering could be fully pan-American. Or even pan-Latin American. Or pan-Caribbean. But Tiempo Libre certainly gives it a good try, from the almost hip-hop intro to "Callejero" to the Latin funk of "Gallo Fino" to the Santana-like salsa-rock of the bilingual "Somebody to Love Me" (with guest Yunel Cruz).
Still, compared to 2009’s Grammy-nominated Bach in Havana (which is just what the title suggests) and 2008’s O’Reilly Street (a collaboration with classical flutist James Galway centered on two suites by classical-jazz crossover composer Claude Bolling, also a Grammy nominee), this album is a relatively focused timba foray. That’s the dance-igniting Cuban hybrid of salsa, funk and folk styles. And for all of the accomplishment and ambition of these seven Cuban-born, Miami-based musicians, it’s Tiempo Libre’s wheelhouse, heard forcefully in the first single, "Dime Que No."
Arguably, the album title is more about the musicians’ personal multi-cultural experiences than about the music itself, per se. The songs, all written or co-written by leader-pianist Jorge Gómez and conguero Leandro Gonzalez, draw on their lives and loves (and the related challenges). As such it works as a precursor to the group’s next ambitious project, Cuba Libre, a Broadway-hopeful musical based on the group’s colorful history in Cuba and Miami, set to debut this fall in Portland under the guidance of the producer of Tony-winner Fela, with Tiempo Libre performing the music on stage amid a company of actors, singers and dancers.
In the meantime, Tiempo Libre is on tour, with destinations from Beijing to London. Maybe the next album will be "Panglobo."
Father of young Leukemia survivor reacts to new vaccine law
Governor Jerry Brown signed SB-277 - the highly controversial vaccine exemption bill - into law Tuesday. California will now have one of the toughest school vaccination laws in the country.
The new law will require almost all children to be fully vaccinated in order to attend school - public or private - regardless of their parents' personal or religious beliefs. The only exception would be for children with medical conditions.
The legislation spurred heated, sometimes raucous debate leading up to its approval.
Check out the latest from KPCC 's Health Reporter Rebecca Plevin on SB-277 here.
One of the law's most vehement and constant supporters is Carl Krawitt, whose son Rhett is a Leukemia survivor and has a compromised immune system and, therefore, could not previously be vaccinated.
Krawitt previously told Take Two, “Our goal is not to keep people home from school, we just want to find another vehicle to force parents to have the conversation with their pediatrician and realize how important it is to immunize their kids, not just for their own kid’s safety, but to also protect those that are vulnerable like my son.”
Krawitt's son also joined the fight. At only six years old, Rhett testified before the California Senate Education Committee, imploring lawmakers to pass SB-277, adding, "Thank you for making sure that kids like me don't get sick at school."
Now, at just seven years of age, Rhett is an experienced vaccine and healthcare advocate. His dad, Carl, returned to Take Two Tuesday after news broke that the bill would become law. He told host Alex Cohen that he couldn't be more proud of his son and pleased that their family's efforts have proven successful.
But, he added, their fight doesn't end here. The Krawitt family plan to continue to fundraise for research to cure diseases like cancer that have no vaccines. And now that Rhett is healthy enough and almost up-to-date on his vaccine schedule, they plan to take a much needed family vacation.
Click on the audio player above to listen to Take Two's entire interview with Carl Krawitt.
KPCC's Health Reporter Rebecca Plevin joined Take Two for a wrap-up on the fight over SB-277 leading up to its passage. Click on the audio player above to listen.
'The Chronic' by Dr. Dre makes its first digital appearance with Apple Music
Apple's new music streaming service, Apple Music, went global Tuesday nearly a month after the company announced that it was going to be released.
They're charging about $10 a month for users to stream all of the music they want from the company's catalog. That price point puts it in the same category as competitors like Spotify and Rhapsody. But it's not just the new program that's creating buzz, it's also which artists and albums they're going to be streaming exclusively on the platform.
One of those albums is an L.A. classic: "The Chronic" by Dr. Dre. It's also the first time that the iconic album has gone digital.
Take Two contributor Oliver Wang joined host A Martinez to talk about why this is such a big deal.