House 'Gang of Eight' reaches deal on immigration proposal; Can Trutanich survive Feuer in LA city attorney’s race?; Test driving the office treadmill desk with writer Susan Orlean; Mojave Desert star parties bring space geeks together; 'Fruit Hunters' follows Bill Pullman's quest to grow exotic fruit in Hollywood; Friday Flashback: IRS scandal, budget deficit and more, plus much more.
House 'Gang of Eight' reaches deal on immigration proposal
Finally, after months of negotiations, the House has an immigration bill of its own. California Democrat Zoe Lofgren and Republican John Carter of Texas appeared together last night to announce that the bi-partisan, so-called "Gang of Eight" has a deal "in principle."
The details aren't yet public, but our very own Washington Correspondent Kitty Felde has been outside the negotiation doors.
Can Trutanich survive Feuer in LA city attorney’s race?
Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich is fighting for his political life. The latest poll, by the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State LA, shows him down 11-points to his challenger, former State Assemblyman Mike Feuer. But the poll also finds nearly half the voters are undecided.
RELATED: Check out KPCC's handy voter guide before you hit the polls
KPCC's Frank Stoltze says the race has turned sharply negative as the feisty incumbent seeks to scramble back into contention.
Friday Flashback: IRS scandal, budget deficit and more
It's time for Friday Flashback, in which we talk about the week that was with our regular journalists in-the-know. On tap this week are Christina Bellantoni, politics editor for PBS Newshour, and James Rainey from the Los Angeles Times.
You know it's been a bad week when reporters seek out Bob Woodward and ask if the recent IRS scandal this is another Watergate. We had the news that the IRS had been targeting conservative groups, and the revelation that the Justice Department was snooping on AP reporters. Those two pretty much blew Benghazi out of the headlines.
The acting commissioner of the IRS, Steve Miller, was fired. Now he's testifying before a House committee it what seems like another "who knew what, when" investigation. How damaging is this to the White House, even without all the other scandals?
This has put the spotlight back on Attorney General Eric Holder, who has a lot of experience being on the hot seat with Republicans. This week, he didn't hold back in an exchange with California Republican Darrell Issa.
Issa is also chairman of the Oversight Committee, and he's gone after Holder time and again. He's pressed the administration on Benghazi, and now he will be all over the AP and probably the IRS investigations.
Test driving the office treadmill desk with writer Susan Orlean
Are you sitting down? Well you might want to stand up for this story.
The evolution of modern-day office desk set-ups looks a little something like this: First came the ergonomic desk chair, then the giant inflatable ball chair and the stand-up desk.
Now, believe it or not, some people are upping the healthy-while-working design by walking while they work at treadmill desks. Sounds like a recipe for spilled coffee, but the idea has been taking off in offices across the US.
The state of Oregon is currently considering a bill to provide treadmill desks for state workers, and recent studies have come out claiming that sitting for several hours a day is very detrimental to your health.
Anyone who's worked at a desk job knows how it feels to spend 6+ hours sitting. Your back starts to ache, your legs fall asleep, and you can even feel sluggish by the end of the day. But is walking while you work really the answer? Or will this new trend be revolutionary for the health of US office workers?
Among the early adopters of this aerobic workspace is writer Susan Orlean. She recently traded in her Herman-Miller Aeron chair for a treadmill desk and wrote about the transition for the New Yorker. We happen to have a treadmill desk at KPCC headquarters, so we thought we'd take it for a spin and ask Orlean for her input.
Interview Highlights:
On why she decided to get a treadmill desk:
"This came about because of two different things, first of all I found it harder and harder to make time to work out. Then on top of it I had to have some surgery that meant I couldn't run, and the exercise that I was told was most ideal for me while I was recuperating was walking. I thought I don't have time to walk. Well, the amazing thing about the treadmill desk is suddenly all that time that I was spending working, I could be spending walking."
On Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic and the emerging field of inactivity studies:
"First of all, you have to spend a moment savoring the term inactivity studies, because it really is one of the funniest sounding academic pursuits I've ever heard. [Levine] studies the non-exercise burning of calories, essentially trying to figure out how the body uses calories in normal life. He began noting that people who stay slim seem to move all the time. Pacing a little while they're on the phone or jiggling their legs, they're just active, He came to the conclusion that that is actually burning lots and lots of calories in a way that we hadn't anticipated. Then there were lots of studies that started to show that just sitting itself puts your body in a kind of hibernation and that if you're doing that six hours a day there are a lot of health consequences that are really bad."
On how it feels to walk while working as opposed to sitting:
"Honestly you don't get the endorphin high of running or stair climbing. The payoff is not that high of hard exercise. I never get that kind of anxious, kind of jittery feeling that I get when I'm sitting at a desk and the sentence isn't coming and I feel like my leg is jiggling and I'm tapping my keyboard and chewing gum. I just have a lot of nervous energy, and that doesn't happen now that I'm walking."
On the difficulties of using a treadmill desk:
"There are a few things that you can't do on a treadmill and drinking hot coffee is one, and I can speak from experience, so please take my advice and don't repeat the mistake. That's one thing that's very hard to do. The thing that you have to remember and remind people who are sort of puzzled by how you can possibly work on a treadmill is it does have an off button, you are able to turn it off and stand still and god forbid even sit."
On whether a treadmill desk is realistic for the average person:
"The $4,000 price tag is only for the very top of the line Steelcase treadmill desks. You can get a walking desk treadmill for a couple hundred dollars. I'm not suggesting that that's within everybody's price range, but like all new technology, first of all the price will go down. You can get a used regular treadmill for $75 or less. People pay you to take their treadmills out of their house when they're not using them. I'm not suggesting that this is something that everyone can go out instantly and afford."
The Big Parade challenges Angelenos to hit the pavement and discover the city
The Big Parade is a two-day, 35-mile journey on foot from Downtown LA to Mt. Hollywood that winds through neighborhoods, parks, and more than one hundred public stairways.
That's a lot of walking -- and not on a treadmill! Journalist Dan Koeppel, the founder of this urban excursion, joins the show to tell us more.
Fitz and the Tantrums are back with 'More Than Just A Dream'
Los Angeles-based sextet Fitz and the Tantrums was born in 2008 out of the depths of post-breakup despair of lead singer Michael Fitzpatrick.
"I think for all musicians, when you're making music it's a cathartic thing. It's an expression of yourself, you're not really doing it for other people," said Fitzpatrick. "For me it was a moment of being heartbroken and devastated and just writing some songs to try and heal and get out of the funk that I was in."
However, in the band's latest effort, their second album "More Than Just A Dream," despair seems to be left out of the equation.
"The first record was kind of exclusively about heartbreak and anger over lost love," said Fitzpatrick. "On this record there are still songs about love and relationships, but you also have to write about what you know and what you're living to have it be truthful and authentic."
Singer Noelle King says the chemistry between her and Fitzpatrick became palpable while they were touring for their debut effort, "Pickin' Up The Pieces." This time around, producer Tom Hoffer put the pair inside the studio together to capture the energy they dispel on stage on tape. The song "6 a.m." was recorded this way:
"[Our producer] put us in the booth together to actually sing the duet looking at each other," said King. "The first take was basically money on the fact that we had these riffs we were doing off one another very naturally, in the same way we do the live show. I've got to say "6 a.m." is probably one of my favorite songs that we recorded during this time."
The band, known for their tireless work ethic, has become a group of musical nomads, touring constantly, never staying in one place for too long. This time away from friends and family inspired the song "Merry Go Round," in which Fitzpatrick ruminates on the often disorienting feeling of constantly being on the move:
"One of the experiences over these past three years is we've been musical nomads, we're never in a city for more than 18 hours a day and it's very confusing sometimes," said Fitzpatrick. "Merry Go Round is a song that I cannot actually listen to because it puts me in such an emotional place. There's a lyric about being in a room where you don't know where you are and you can't even remember your own name. You're confused by the whirlwind you're in. It's not to say you're not grateful for this amazing experience in life, but it comes sometimes at a price."
Federal judge drops consent decree on LAPD
The federal oversight of L.A.'s police department has finally come to an end. Known as the consent decree, it was first imposed in 2001, after the LAPD came under fire for a corruption scandal.
A federal judge ended that oversight on Wednesday, putting the LAPD back in charge of its own affairs. For more on this, reporter Joel Rubin of the LA Times joins the show to explain.
The 2013 TV Upfronts come to an end
The annual viewing party known as television upfronts has ended for this go-round. Networks spent the last week presenting their new programming to advertisers.
For a final update, we're checking in again with Jace Lacob, West Coast Deputy Bureau Chief for The Newsweek Daily Beast Company.
What's the difference between a blood alcohol level of .08 and .05?
This week we talked about the debate the National Transportation Safety Board stirred up when they made recommendations about lowering the legal limit for drunk driving from .08 to .05.
The proposal is controversial, although that is the legal limit in many European countries. We asked KPCC Science Reporter Sanden Totten to explore what the different levels mean, and what it takes to reach them.
How can the military curb sexual assault among its ranks?
Another leader of a military sexual assault program has been dismissed in the alleged mistreatment of women.
The officer in charge of the Air Force's sexual assault prevention program was arrested last week for violently groping a woman in a parking lot. Then on Tuesday, the Army announced it was investigating a sexual abuse educator in Fort Hood, Texas for alleged running a small prostitution ring and sexually asssaulting another soldier.
Congressman Buck McKeon, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he "was outraged and disgusted by the reports out of Fort Hood," calling them the "latest chapter in a long, sordid history of sexaul abuse in our armed forces."
Now the White House and Congress are scrambling to find ways to tackle the problem. With more is Greg Jacob, policy director of the Service Women's Action Network.
'Fruit Hunters' follows Bill Pullman's quest to grow exotic fruit in Hollywood
Sapucaia. Ylang-ylang. Belimbing. Clove lilly pilly.
I'm not talking in tongues, those are all the names of actual fruits found around the world. These delicious, exotic fruits and the people who study, grow and often obsess over them are the subject of the new documentary, "Fruit Hunters."
The film is based on the book by Adam Leith Gollner.
USC journalism student has 'mixed feelings' about graduation
We've been talking with soon-to-be graduates of some of LA's colleges and universities to find out how they're feeling about being thrust out into an uncertain world. We visited with students at Cal Tech, Occidental, and Cal State LA, and today we hear from 21-year-old Jenny Chen, who spent the last four years studying journalism at USC.
We met up with her during a busy lunch hour outside the school's commissary, where she told me how she was feeling about the challenges ahead after finishing school.
Dinner Party Download: Ultimate cow fighting, school lunches, and more
Every week we get your weekend conversation starters with Rico Gagliano and Brendan Newnam, the hosts of the Dinner Party Download podcast and radio show.
On tap this week:
The Battle Royale of Cow Fighting
It happens in the Swiss village of Aproz, the great Battle of the Queens, that's what they call the World Series of Cow Fighting. There's a breen of cow called Heren Cows, and they're known for their genetic predisposition for combativeness. But the fight is, basically, these cows walk up toward each other, then start bumping heads, and when one can't take it anymore they turn around and walk away and that's the end of it. There are a number of sub-tournaments, then at the end they put all the cows in at once, it's like a battle royale.
11-year-old Muckraker Makes Mini-Doc About Gross School Lunches
A fourth-grader in New York named Zachary Maxwell has become a documentarian of the moment because he made a documentary, with the help of his father, about the school lunches at his school. The movie is called "Yuck: A Fourth-Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch."
The Curious Case of Ronnie Biggs
This week back in 2001, a guy named Ronnie Biggs returned to England from Rio. This was a big deal because he had been on the lam for 35 years for having pulled off a train robbery in 1963. He was caught shortly after the robbery, thrown in jail and he escaped in broad daylight, then surgically altered his face, dodged cops on three continents and ended up in Rio. He hung out in Rio, thumbing his nose from across the pond an England. While he was in Rio, he recorded a song with the Sex Pistols. He extradited himself, he voluntarily went back to England because he said he just wanted to have a British pint before he died.