Today on the show, we'll start with a conversation about Pope Francis's first year as head of the Catholic Church. Then, we take a look at the Church abuse charges in Puerto Rico. Plus, a profile of musician Jessica Childress at SXSW, Barry Manilow on writing music for the stage, scientists discover fossils of a giant cousin of T. Rex, and much more.
A look at Pope Francis's first year
One year ago, white smoke announced the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis. He took over following the resignation of his predecessor Pope Benedict, and so far, he's been seen as much more progressive, tolerant, and welcoming:
"The church is not the church only for good people. Do we want to say who belongs to the church? The sinners. All of us sinners have been invited. You either enter with everyone or you remain outside."
He definitely has several fans among KPCC's Catholic listeners.
Jim Hassinger wrote to us on Facebook: "Francis's Church is something I respect in the same way I respected some of the Jesuits who taught me. Benedict's church was why I left."
For a look at Pope Francis's first year, we're joined by the BBC's David Willey, based in Rome.
Catholic Church abuse charges widen in Puerto Rico
Allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church have grown in recent years. Now, charges in Puerto Rico are drawing concern on the mostly-Catholic island.
Four dioceses are now under investigation, according to local officials and residents say a sense of immunity to scandals in other parts of the US, has been shattered.
For more, we’re joined by Dánica Coto, reporter with the AP, in San Juan.
SXSW: LA songstress Jessica Childress looks for her next big break
Since it started in 1986, SXSW has been one of the premier places for bands to make a name for themselves because of the number of people attending from the press and the music industry.
In fact, you may have heard of bands like The White Stripes or Bon Iver, or artists like Janelle Monae, all of their career big breaks came about because of buzz drummed up by SXSW.
That’s what LA artist Jessica Childress is hoping for, but like thousands of others that’ll be going to SXSW, artist Jessica Childress is hoping for her big break. Actually it would be her second big break
Because she already competed on NBC's singing show "The Voice."
The show is similar to others like "American Idol," where the goal is to be the last contestant standing. The audience loved her rendition of the Bruno Mars song, "Marry You," but she didn't last for that long, getting eliminated after a few rounds.
"You go into it knowing that there's an end date. Like only one person can win and the odds are not in your favor," said Childress.
By the time she was finished with the show, even though millions of people had heard her voice, she still didn't have a record deal by the end of it all. She'd already quit her PR job to pursue singing.
So she worked something out with Phil Jaurigui, the owner of Swing House Studios in Hollywood. He offered to help her produce an EP. So, Jessica got to work with a songwriter.
“We sat down and we wrote the song I quit, which is kind of autobiographical about quitting my job and saying you know what, I'm done checking boxes," said Childress. "I'm done doing the things I feel like I'm supposed to do. I quit that life and I'm going to do that life that I want to live."
The album did alright and since then, she’s sold out some shows and gotten some buzz online, but Jessica wants something much bigger. So, she's headed to SXSW in a crappy bronze band van.
The van looks exactly how you think it would. Beaten up with seats pulled out to fit in instruments. Sometimes it doesn't start, and she'll be sleeping in it. On top of that, the budget that Jessica and her band have to live on is a bit tight.
"So, we have $100, and we have to feed all these people and what do we have left? How hungry are you really? Like do we need to stop or can we like stretch till dinner?" said Childress.
This whole thing is a very romantic story: The broken down van, the struggling artist with the beautiful voice who quit her job to pursue her passion, but now it’s time for a reality check.
What’s the likelihood that anything good — a record deal, getting signed by a label — will come out of a music conference where more than two thousand bands are playing?
To find out, I turned to Clive Davis , the chief creative officer at Sony music. He’s got five Grammys, he’s in the rock and roll hall of fame and he says there's definitely a possibility of something good happening for her.
“My first signing was Janis Joplin who I found as a member of Big Brother and the Holding Company at the Monterey festival," said Davis. "So can it happen? The answer that I would have is definitely yes.“
But Shirley Halperin, music editor for The Hollywood Reporter and Take Two regular has been going to the festival for a while now and while she thinks there's a remote possibility that Jessica could blow up some day, she doesn't expect it to happen at SXSW.
"The odds of her becoming the biggest thing ever coming out of South by Southwest are kind of slim. She already had a huge stage with "The Voice," said Halperin. "But what is likely is that she will go down to Austin and she would get in front of people who maybe didn't watch "The Voice," but still have the influence to get her on the radio. To get her music to other places...to other people."
That's what Jessica is hoping for. If she gets noticed by people like music supervisors or record execs, or if she's able to grow her fan base, that can elevate her to a whole new level. Even though she's only one of thousands of people trying to catch the attention of those important people, she's staying optimistic about the whole situation.
"If you are willing to do that grimy grungy sort of sleeping in the van and stick with it, I feel like that commitment will pay dividends in the long run. That is what I tell myself and that is what I choose to believe," said Childress. "If I don't tell myself that I'm like crouched in a corner like crying and crouched in a corner questioning every life choice I've ever made."
It’s the same sentiment uttered over and over again by many struggling musician. Stick with it you'll make it. And maybe that’s because for the lucky few it works out, but we'll have to wait and see if it pans out for Jessica. Her first performance of the week is today at 3PM at the Swing House Studios Showcase.
6 questions for Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman on 'Harmony'
Now to a musician you'll probably never hear at South by Southwest, even though he's an international star who has sold 80 million records: Barry Manilow.
Many of Manilow's hits were penned with the help of his good friend, Bruce Sussman. Take Two recently had the chance to talk with them about their latest collaboration, a musical titled "Harmony" on now at the Ahmanson Theatre.
Interview Highlights:
On what drew them to the story on the Comedian Harmonists, the subjects of "Harmony":
BM: "What's interesting to us about the Comedian Harmonists is that nobody ever knew them and they were the architects of the kind of music that we all love. From The Manhattan Transfer to Take 6 to The High-Lows and they were funny. And nobody had ever, we had never heard of them and if you ask the person on the street they had never heard of them. But if you ask people in Germany, they are the Beatles of Germany, still to this day."
Bruce Sussman: "Why we didn't know who they were is the story and this would be musical about the quest for harmony in what turned out to be the most discordant chapter in human history. That was very appealing to us and excited us."
On what happened to the Comedian Harmonists because of their faith:
BS: "The group formed in the very tumultuous years known as the Weimar period in Germany, between the wars. The legendary hyperinflation, millions of marks to buy a slice of bread, people wallpaper their walls with money because it wasn't worth anything. And out of all this came these six remarkable young men from very diverse backgrounds, cultures, social strata, they got together to create a new brand of entertainment. There was a Bulgarian singing waiter, a Polish rabbi, a German doctor, an Italian opera singer, a self-taught musical genius and a brother pianist."
"They rehearsed in abandoned subway stops because the acoustics were good and rocketed to fame. Sold millions of records, toured the world, played the most prestigious concert houses in the world, from Carnegie Hall to the Berlin Philharmonic, performed with the greats of their day Marlene Dietrich, Josephine Baker, made over a dozen movies. What I just described to you is our first act. Their confrontation with the collision course with history is our second act."
What happened to this group, because they had Jewish members?:
BS: "Well, the Nuremberg Laws happened and the Nuremberg Laws deprived Jews of citizenship, Jews could no longer perform in film and education and various fields and they actually got exemptions from the law because they were so wildly popular and the Third Reich thought, at least in the early months of the Third Reich, they thought well if people are afraid of us, look at this, this is a great advertisement for Germany. So they escaped some of the initial restraints put upon Jew, but that gradually changed."
On what it's like to write songs for this musical:
BM: "This was a very deep experience for me. I found myself soaking in the world of the '20s and the '30s in Germany. It was very deep. I had the blues for a long time having to go into this terrible world and try to write funny songs and uplifting songs and I know a lot about the music from the '40s so you give me something about the '40s and I'm fine. I didn't know too much about the music from the '20s and the '30s so I had to go digging and figure out what the heck they were doing back then in Germany and so when you do that you have to go dive in into a pretty rotten world."
On the long road from conception to showtime:
BM: "You know, we just didn't give up. Every show goes through a lot of problems. We went to through all of them. If there was a problem, we would have it. Only business. It never had anything to do with the play and after a while Bruce and I just said, let's put it away. It's too hard. When you write something like this you put your heart and soul into it. I can't say I put my heart and soul into all the pop stuff, but it wouldn't go away. It was yelling, 'Don't forget me! Don't forget me!'
"So we decided instead of going to the big, $10 million Broadway version of this show, why don't we go if a regional theatre would like to help us put this on just so I could see it one more time before I croak. I just wanted to see it one more time. So we decided without the agents, without the lawyers, without anybody, Bruce and I just called the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.
"We called the main number one afternoon. We heard this gal named Susan Booth, who ran the place and she said, 'Who's calling?' And I said 'Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman.' And she connected us and Susan must've been told who was on the phone and she answered the phone and this is a quote, she said, 'Gentleman, please tell me you're calling about 'Harmony.' And both of us went for the Kleenex because it has been a real rough road.'
BS: "And an hour later we had an opening night. We started moving along with the Alliance and the phone rang and it was the Ahmanson Theatre saying, 'We hear you're doing 'Harmony' at the Alliance, we've heard great things about it, would you be interested in a co-production?' Hello, yes! And that's why we're here.
On what's next for him:
BM: "I've got another pop album in the works right now. Listen, there's always the next one with me. I have like five. I'll be on my deathbed yelling, "Wait a minute! I got one more idea!" There's always the next one with me."
Sports Roundup: Phil Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Jonathan Martin and more
Has the the Zen Master found a new hoops dojo? A running back walks away and Barry Bonds is back! All this means it's time for sports with Andy and Brian Kamenetzky, who have covered sports for ESPN and the L.A. Times.
The NBA world is on Phil Jackson watch. The 11-time champion former coach of the Bulls and Lakers is expected to take over basketball operations for the NY Knicks, a team he played for when he was younger.
Jackson is arguably the greatest coach of all time but how might he be as an executive?
Now to the Los Angeles end of this story which has a lot more soap opera. A legendary team owner, his son, his daughter and a family legacy.
ESPN is reporting Kobe Bryant is out for the rest of the season.
Moving on to football, Jonathan Martin the offensive lineman who accused Miami Dolphins teammates of bullying has a new home?
Former Steelers and Cardinals running back Rashard Mendenhall retired this week at the age of 26. Brian, that sounds a little young to be calling it quits?
With all the information we now have on the possible long term effects of playing football you think this could be the start of a bigger wave of players checking out early?
Now to baseball as Barry Bonds is back in Giants uniform. No, at 49 years old he has not discovered the fountain of youth so he won't be playing, instead he's going to be hitting instructor.
Bonds was one of the most disciplined hitters I have ever seen and had an amazing eye at the plate.
As with Phil Jackson sometimes success in one area doesn't mean success in another. What do you think of the all-time home run king as a coach?
Seems like some of the sluggers from the so-called Steroid Era of baseball are having no trouble getting back in the game?
Etiquette Lesson: Why good sportsmanship is important on and off the field
College basketball's March Madness is right around the corner, and whether it's real or fantasy sports — or maybe even competitive board games — there is a fine line between friendly competition and just plain being a poor sport.
So how do you maintain that spirit of good sportsmanship in all areas of your life?
Slate's Dear Prudence advice columnist Emily Yoffe is here with some Etiquette tips to keep in mind when competing with friends, loved ones or co-workers.
Fossils unearthed by Metro reveal LA's watery past
The LA Metro's extension of the Purple Line won't just extend out to Westwood some day -- it also reaches hundreds of thousands of years into Southern California's past.
Right across the street from LACMA, construction workers are in the first stages of creating a new Metro station.
They're digging 75 feel into the ground to test the soil and plan out what's possible to build. At that depth, they're finding fossils from about 300,000 years ago -- much older than the artifacts found across the street at a shallower depth near the La Brea tar pits.
These fossils tell an interesting story because these are marine fossils -- including what could be a sea lion skull millions of years old. That means Los Angeles used to be completely covered in the ocean. Also, there are indications that the climate was once as cool as northern California.
Earlier this week, A Martinez took a trip to the corner of Wilshire and Ogden to the edge of the hole they're digging ... about as wide as a backyard swimming pool and met with the Metro's on-site paleontologist Kim Scott.
Marine fossils by LACMA? Huh?
"The beach used to be here. In fact, the beach used to be as far inland as Arizona and New Mexico. California has a huge geologic history, and much of that history is history of the ocean. We see that a lot in the building up of California, and it's not until you get into the last 60 million years or so that most of California started creeping up out of the ocean."
What kind of marine fossils are they finding?
"Adorable little sand dollars. Geoducks -- it's a cool water clam, which tells us the water is cold such as you'd see in northern California, Oregon, Washington, Puget Sound, actually. Clams and snails. We've also got Monterey Cypress cones, which tells us the climate here was much like what you'd see in Carmel and the Monterey Peninsula, today."
How is this different than what's been found across the street at the La Brea tar pits?
"At the La Brea tar pits, all their fossils range from about 10,000 to 45,000 years old. The stuff we're finding here, we have found the older stuff which ranges from about 50,000 to 300,000 years old."
If there's so much interesting stuff to find, why not dig it all up?
"You don't want to rip up everything out of the ground because a century from now, two centuries from now, what happens is you have more knowledge and you have more technology. You can do much more with what you find, and we're always building on science that way."
What happens to these fossils?
"These are all going to get cleaned up to the point of preservation and identified. And then they're going to be transferred to the Natural History Museum of LA County. When and if we find La Brea-style deposits, that will go across the street to Rancho La Brea."
Fossils of giant T. Rex-like dinosaur discovered in Portugal
Meet Torvosaurus Gurneyi, but you can call him by his first initial, T.
He's about 30 feet long with giant razor sharp teeth and he was the biggest carnivore ever to roam Europe. Researchers identified the dinosaur in the most recent issue of the journal Plos One.
Here to tell us more is Brian Switek, who blogs about all things dinosaurs for National Geographic.
Santa Cruz Island's plant restoration a model for others
On a bright, warm California day, a couple dozen botanists gathered in a valley on Santa Cruz Island for a group picture. Instead of saying cheese, they each shouted out their favorite native plant species. These are the die-hard plant enthusiasts attending the first annual California Islands Botanical Extravaganza.
App Chat: 3D printing Oreos and spreading secrets at SXSW
Now it's time now for App Chat, South by Southwest edition.
The festival kicks into music mode Wednesday, but here's an overview of my favorite apps that I saw on the interactive floor earlier this week.
If you REALLY love Oreos
Oreo, along with a couple of design companies, built a custom 3D printer that can customize frosting designs onto already baked cookies.
The line was up to three hours long Tuesday morning. But for those who survived the wait, a touch screen with a built-in app allowed for the selection of frosting and cookies. The various customizations were based on trending tweets. (So for instance, let's say Fourth of July is trending. That means your cookie would most likely be adorned in stripes of red, white and blue.)
Then, one of the 16 3D printer nozzles extrudes cream in a pattern — bullseye, pie shapes, stripes, swirls — on your cookie. Each time, the machine hits an exact amount of cream to cookie ratio, which is 6.8 grams of icing per Oreo. Each layer comes out to about two millimeters of frosting.
Did we mention? This whole thing was constructed in just six weeks.
There were two flavors of cookies: chocolate and vanilla. For the cream on the cookies, several types were being served. They also had ginger bread, birthday cake, lemon, peppermint, banana and sherbet-flavored creams.
The only one I tried was sherbet; it was awful and no one should have to eat that ever. We're hoping at least one of the others was delectable. Maybe a banana and chocolate combo?
Regardless of the taste, Mondelez International, the company that owns Oreo, said that they eventually bring this sort of Oreo customization technology to the public. But for right now, they're just using it to test out flavors.
If you've been drinking, make sure you're safe to drive
You can check out Breathometer. It's a little piece of hardware that you plug into the headphone jack on your phone, you blow into it and the app tells you your blood alcohol level, how long it's going to take for you to get sober and whether you're over the legal limit.
It costs about $50 and it's supposed to be pretty accurate, but you do have to wait 20 minutes after you drink for it to accurately reflect what you've consumed. So in that time, the device might not accurately reflect a persons blood alcohol content.
If you have a "Secret" to share
For the past couple of years, social apps have dominated SXSW. Back in 2009, Foursquare was the big breakout app. Twitter also blew up there, but this year it was all about Secret.
In previous years it was about sharing and building your online persona, but this year it was about hiding your identity. Not surprising, it's mostly been about sex and drugs. You can check out their
here.
There are things like this: "I survived SXSW with monogamy intact. Yay me." I guess we all need our little victories.
Here's how it works: You post anonymously in the app and it shares the message with your friends — if they're on the app as well. But it doesn't say who's sharing the secret. If they comment or like any of your secrets, it spreads to their friends and then it spreads some more.
But I don't see how it would ever become as big as something like Twitter. It seems like it's more of a novelty.
Will Obama's 'Between Two Ferns' appearance boost healthcare.gov?
Finally, to the video that's been blowing up the internet, President Obama's appearance on comedian Zach Galifianakis' "Between Two Ferns."
The Funny or Die video got millions of views yesterday, and some of those viewing went to to check out the real reason the President showed up, healthcare.gov.
New Obamacare enrollment numbers were released yesterday. Last month, about 940,000 people signed up for healthcare plans, that figure includes about 140,000 new enrollments through Covered California.
The new numbers for February bring the total to about 4.2 million new enrollments since the sign-up period began in October. The administration's goal for signups by the end of the month is 6 million.
Sam Baker, health care correspondent at National Journal, recently wrote about this and joined us to talk more about the enrollment numbers.
Centinela Valley Superintendent gives himself a pay cut...to $295,000
Last night, angry parents met with members of the Centinela Valley Union High School District in Southwest L.A. The parents were more than a bit dismayed when they learned that school superintendent Jose Fernandez is making $663,000.
KPCC political reporter Sharon McNary has been following the story and is here to bring us up to date.
Correction: The number of campuses in the Los Angeles Unified School District was misstated. The LAUSD has more than 1,000 campuses.
Drought may force officials to truck salmon downstream
Remember that old feminist slogan, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle? Well, no commentary on women, but some fish here in California may actually need a set of wheels soon.
Due to the extreme drought, millions of salmon might have to be trucked downstream next month rather than swimming down the Sacramento River. Bob Clarke, fisheries program supervisor with the US Department of Fish and Wildlife, joins the show with more.
Restoring a river habitat outside of San Diego
Urban rivers are enjoying a renaissance across California. After decades of neglect, a growing number of cities are re-imagining these waterways, as environmental and recreational assets, including the Los Angeles River.
From the California Report, Erik Anderson tells us about another restoration project in San Diego.