Today, Take Two kicks off a week-long look at veterans and the challenges they face in Southern California. Also, the Sacramento Bee unveils the poor track records of many nursing homes in California. And Variety's Brian Lowry explains why many of the freshman TV shows survived cancellations this year.
President Obama in Asia: will midterm losses affect trade, security abroad?
President Obama is in Asia this week, flexing his political muscles abroad after a midterm defeats back home.
Today he's in China as part of what his administration calls a "pivot" in foreign policy focus. Obama is also scheduled to visit Myanmar, the country also known as Burma, and Australia on the trip.
But with just two years of his term remaining and an ongoing fight against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria there are questions about whether President Obama has the time or clout to follow through with his plans for the region.
For more we're joined by Ely Ratner, Deputy Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
Family of missing students in Mexico press for evidence, after confession of killings
Recently on Take Two, we've been reporting on the city of Iguala. That's where 43 college students went missing in late September. It was a grim story, one which remained a mystery for many weeks. Now, Mexican officials say that gang members have confessed to the crimes.
But many aren't buying it, citing lack of concrete evidence. Protesters
, Yo me cansé, after a comment from the attorney general which drew attention late last week, which some took to mean, I'm tired, or I've had enough.
For more, we're joined by Tim Johnson with McClatchy Newspapers in Mexico City. His latest story details the response to the news, from family members and officials.
Veterans face trials and triumphs when they return home
There are more than 20 million veterans in the United States. You may know one. You may be one.
Nov. 11 is the day the nation pays tribute to our veterans, and all week on Take Two, we'll explore the trials and triumphs of our troops here, on the air, on our Facebook page and on Twitter with the hashtag #vetsmatter.
For more on what veterans deal with when they return home, Anthony Hassan spoke with Take Two. He directs the Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans & Military Families at the University of Southern California.
Hassan says that the Department of Defense is not preparing military personnel well enough for the challenges ahead when they transition from life in the service to civilian life.
This piece is part of KPCC's ongoing coverage of issues affecting veterans for Veterans Day 2014. See more of our coverage at KPCC.org/vets.
'Redeployment': Gripping stories about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
There are nearly three million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for the vast majority of Americans, war is still an abstract concept.
Author Phil Klay— himself a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq— aims to bridge this gap in his acclaimed book "Redeployment."
It's a gripping collection of short stories from the front lines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that brings the everyday experiences of soldiers and veterans into sharp focus.
Klay set out to write the book a couple of months after getting back from Iraq, he says, partly as a way to think through his own experience.
"I think everybody comes back from war with a lot of questions about what that was," Klay says. "So it was a process for me to try and get a handle of what I thought about these wars and what I thought about my changed relationship to America.”
Each of the stories in "Redeployment" are told from a different perspective, including a chaplain, an artilleryman, a Marine who collects remains and a foreign service officer.
"Everybody's experience is so different based on what they did, where they were, what time they were there," Klay says. "And I wanted to get at that range and have different perspectives, and hopefully perspectives that didn't necessarily meet."
Klay says he hopes that the book will help to close the knowledge gap between civilians and veterans about war, and hopefully encourage a conversation.
"Bridging that gap and getting to a place where you can actually have a really real conversation is sometimes a difficult, fraught, and can be a painful process,” he says.
But he says it's incredibly important conversation for Americans to have.
"The way that we talk about war, the things that we believe about it, the conversations we're having about war, determine what we accept from our leaders in terms of military policy," Klay says. "They also determine how we treat our veterans at home."
On The Lot: Miyazaki retires, Disney rules and drones are huge
A big bouncy android named Baymax won the box office this weekend; Harry Belafonte sends a strong message to Hollywood; and why drones are in big demand on film and TV sets: It's time for "On The Lot," our weekly peek behind the scenes in Hollywood. Alex Cohen speaks with
, who covers the film business for the LA Times.
1) Walt Disney Animation's "Big Hero 6" won the box office this weekend, which continues the company's streak of good news at the world's largest media company. They saw profits way up this quarter thanks to the success of the Marvel films and "Frozen." But that doesn't mean there aren't more money makers on the way. Last week, Disney announced that Pixar will make "Toy Story 4," to the outrage of some of the franchise's fans. Even more unusual, it will be directed by studio executive John Lasseter. Rebecca spoke with Lasseter about his plans for the sequel, which he says will be a love story.
2) Speaking of animation, The Academy held its Governors Awards this weekend and among the honorees was the Walt Disney of Japan, Hayao Miyazaki. He told Rebecca that he'll no longer be making any new studio films.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZIG14mxB9w
Meanwhile at the awards, Harry Belafonte collected a Governors Award, and subsequently blew the audience away with his acceptance speech, which covered Hollywood's power to influence attitudes about race and culture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfj6Ja86lCs
3) Hopping across to the globe to China, the head of that country's state-run movie enterprise has said he wants to sell Hollywood merchandise in Chinese movie theaters.
4) It's been just weeks since the FAA cleared its use on film and TV sets, but business is already booming for companies that supply drones.
5) Finally, in a clever bit of marketing, Fox Searchlight has created a trailer for a fictional 1992 superhero film, "Birdman Returns" to promote their awards season entry, "Birdman."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vueAC31glPQ
Why have there been so few TV show cancellations so far?
We're well into the fall TV season right now, and the battle for ratings has resulted surprisingly few casualties. Or cancellations, rather.
Almost all of this year's freshman shows survived their first month. And while networks have pulled the plug on a handful of shows, in general, they're being more patient than usual this year.
Variety TV critic and columnist Brian Lowry explains that part of the reason is because of delayed DVR viewing, which makes it harder to get an instant snapshot of how well a show performed.
Another reason, he says, goes back to the fact that television audiences are so fragmented right now.
If a show is doing poorly, Lowry says, "there is a real sense that just pulling something off to replace it, unless you have something that you're pretty confident will do better, it could very possibly do worse. There's no floor anymore."
How fragile is the Affordable Care Act in a GOP-led Congress?
When the Democrats lost the Senate last week, they were given another bad sign right afterwards: the Supreme Court agreed to take on a case that challenges a key piece of the Affordable Care Act.
And with Republicans in control of Congress in the next term, the law could be facing a lot of future attacks.
Mark Peterson, professor of public policy, political science and law at UCLA explains how fragile the ACA will be in upcoming years.
Ruby Wax explores neurology, mindfulness, and her 'Sane New World'
For the past 25 years, funny lady Ruby Wax has delighted British audiences on shows like "Wax on Wheels" and "Wax in America."
She made a name for herself as a somewhat outlandish interviewer who could get just about any celebrity to open up with her unique brand of humor. But behind all the laughs, Wax has also suffered from crippling depression.
Ruby Wax has a new book out titled "Sane New World: A User's Guide to the Normal-Crazy Mind." It's part neurological study, part self-help book, and part memoir. And, it's funny.
Wax joins actress Carrie Fisher to talk about her book Tuesday, November 11th for Live Talks, Los Angeles. Click here for more information.
At California's nursing homes, high turnover, uneven quality in big chains
As the population ages, more Americans are faced with some very tough choices. How to find the best quality care for our loved ones. Here in California that task is especially daunting, given the difficulties of figuring out just who owns which nursing homes.
It's a subject reporter Phillip Reese has been looking into for the Sacramento Bee. He and his colleagues analyzed thousands of federal and state records about the ownership of the state's 1,260 nursing homes. Phillip Reese joins us now on the line.
Read Part One in the series: Unmasked: How California’s largest nursing home chains perform
One painting led Norton Simon to buy a whole gallery, building included
Fifty years ago, art magnate Norton Simon made a huge move in the art world: he bought the entire collection of a New York gallery once owned by brothers Joseph and Henry Duveen.
Simon even snatched up the building which housed the massive inventory.
Now visitors to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena have a chance to explore much of that collection in the exhibition, "Lock, Stock, and Barrel."
It all started with Simon hoping to get his hands on the piece, "Bust Portrait of a Courtesan," reportedly made by Italian artist Giorgione.
"Mr. Simon, starting in 1957, knew of this picture," says the museum's chief curator Carol Togneri. "[The Duveens] had told him the cost to him would be $190,000."
Thinking the price was too high for a single painting, Simon declined but kept returning to the idea of that piece for years.
"It wasn't until 1963 when Mr. Simon went back and he wanted to know what else they had," says Togneri, explaining that often times galleries will have other rare pieces of art in their backrooms that are not for sale.
Norton Simon made two different offers. One: the equivalent of $1.57 million for several pieces of art including the Giorgione painting. The other: $4 million for everything they had in stock, including the Duveen Brothers Gallery building and library.
After just a few months of inventorying the collection, Simon made clear that he wanted to buy the whole gallery lock, stock and barrel.
The museum's new exhibition of some of these pieces offers a peek into how the purchase influenced the art scene in Southern California.
When Simon loaned them out, these works once made up a good portion of the Old World pieces that were displayed in museums such as LACMA.
The Duveen collection also shaped Norton Simon's taste in what he would acquire in future years, from French Impressionism to Southeast Asian art.
"What we have now is not only his beautiful Giorgione, which was the sparkle in his eyes," says Togneri, "but galleries worth of some very interesting pictures for the history of collecting and taste."