On today's show, how the continuing debate over Ferguson is driven by the different Americas we grew up in. Also, why turkey trot marathons are a growing Thanksgiving tradition across the country. Plus, the band Tears for Fears marks the 30th anniversary of their seminal album, "Songs from the Big Chair."
Why there's a divide in how we react to Ferguson
Ferguson, Missouri, is now shorthand for racial unrest in America, joining Watts, Oakland, Crown Heights, and other places where citizens turned to the streets after violence.
Ferguson also joins the growing list of racially-tinged events that prompt severe divisions in how the general public perceives what happened, and what should happen.
When the district attorney's office released massive amounts of information on Monday in the Michael Brown case, every person readings those came away with a different impression.
That is, in part, because we all have biases -- whether we want to acknowledge them or not -- that stem from the subtle experiences that we gather over a lifetime.
Tess Vigeland talks with Brenda Stevenson, professor of history at UCLA and author of, "The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender and the Origins of the LA Riots," and Joshua DuBois teaches at Princeton University. He's also the weekly religion and values columnist for The Daily Beast.
EPA proposes cuts to ozone emissions
The Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans to tighten up a key air standard for ozone - one of the main culprits in smog.
It's an issue that the Obama Administration walked away from three years ago and today's move sets the stage for a likely battle with Republicans in Congress.
Business groups argue it could be one of the costliest regulations of all time but public health officials say ozone is a major pollutant and that a reduction could help curb cases of asthma and other lung disorders.
Southern California Public Radio's environment reporter Molly Peterson has looked into the pros and the cons - and she says the proposed cuts would reduce ozone by about 7 to 13 percent, but that to do so can be really complicated.
The science of happiness and the midlife crisis
There’s a growing body of evidence that shows the relationship between age and happiness.
The theory is called the Happiness U Curve, and it shows a dip in happiness in middle age, but shows a rise later in life.
It cuts across countries and ethnic groups, and has been reported even in primates.
Jonathan Rauch is a contributing editor of National Journal and The Atlantic, and a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution.
He wrote about the Happiness U Curve, and his own experience with it for the Atlantic.
Running a race — on Thanksgiving Day?
While most people tend to think about expanding their waistlines on Thanksgiving, there is a growing population of people who are doing something decidedly different: Many are planning to run a marathon. Sort of.
It turns out that running short races — sometimes called fun runs or turkey trots — is becoming more popular. According to Running USA statistics, Thanksgiving has overtaken the Fourth of July as the most popular racing day in the country.
Take Two talked with writer and avid runner Jen Miller, who wrote about the phenomenon for Running Times.
http://www.seecalifornia.com/events/thanksgiving-events.html
Racially diverse high school in St Louis leads the way in tackling race issues in the area
Not far from Ferguson, Missouri and the shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a white police officer, high school students have been holding tough conversations about race.
It's part of a special program at Maplewood-Richmond Heights High in Maplewood, Missouri -- one of the most racially diverse schools in the area. The school is 47% white, 40% black, and about 4% Hispanic.
The program, called Student Group on Race Relations, began months before Michael Brown was shot by Officer Darren Wilson. In April of this year, Maplewood-Richmond Heights High Principal Kevin Grawer visited a high school in Shaker Heights, Ohio with a similar racial makeup. He was invited to sit in on a small student-run race-relations meeting, and was inspired to give students at his school a safe place to talk race too.
Principal Grawer now supervises SGORR at his high school. In meetings held before first period, he takes a seat in the back and lets students take the reigns, exploring how to talk with each other about race and how it impacts their lives -- respectfully.
Grawer joined Take Two, along with 12th grader Jazmen Bell, who participates in the program. They both agreed that SGORR helped prepare students for the fallout from the Ferguson case in their community by giving students the tools to discuss the case in a constructive way.
Bell told Take Two her fellow students have definitely been talking about the shooting of Michael Brown, "and sometimes those conversations get one sided. So bringing those kinds of conversations into meetings creates an opportunity to see both sides of the issue," she said, "and a safe place to express those sides."
One of the group's helpful communication tools, or 'norms' as they call them, is the 'Oops' statement. When a group member takes offense to something someone says, they can call 'Oops' on the speaker. The group then takes a pause and the speaker "realigns the thought."
Grawer is impressed by the maturity of his students and how well they stick to their set 'norms'. "I don't know if adults could do it this well," he said.
Behind the scenes with the creators of 'Tiny Hamster's Tiny Thanksgiving'
Cooking a Thanksgiving meal for your friends and family can be pretty stressful.
Now imagine the added hassle of making a tiny Thanksgiving feast — a tiny turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, two kinds of pie — for a bunch of tiny hamsters. (Or two tiny hamsters, a bunny and a rat, to be precise.)
That's what Joel Jensen and Joe Matsushima set out to do for a web video called "Tiny Hamster's Tiny Thanksgiving":
Jensen and Matsushima are the co-founders of the Denizen Company, an ad agency that creates shareable web content, and various tiny feasts for various tiny pets.
The Thanksgiving video is just the latest in their "tiny hamster" series on their YouTube channel HelloDenizen.
There's the original "Tiny Hamster Eating Tiny Burritos" (with more than 9 million views):
Then the popular "Tiny Hamster vs. Kobayashi" (with the real Takeru Kobayashi):
And now "Tiny Hamster's Tiny Thanksgiving," complete with tiny pilgrim hats, poker chip plates and a tiny cornucopia centerpiece for the table.
So where in the world did they get this idea in the first place? Jensen says it was the product of "spending a lot of time on the internet, watching a lot of incredibly stupid things... like little hamsters eating carrots or popcorn."
And while the final result is less than two minutes long, the entire process takes weeks. The actual shoot day, Matsushima says, took more than 12 hours.
There's also a food stylist and an animal trainer involved who make sure the food is safe and healthy for the animals to eat and that they'll actually want to eat it.
"The hamster needs to like it," Matsushima says, and "not just like it, but love it. Like want to stuff its mouth. Cause if it just thinks it's okay, it'll take a nibble and look around, it may not want to eat it. So that's what takes a lot of time."
If you're wondering what tiny feast they have planned next, Jensen and Matsushima are keeping that information secret for now.
But, Jensen will say, "it's gonna be a good one and it's gonna be the hardest one we've attempted so far."
Get your tiny plates ready.
Love bacon? That's because of some clever marketing
Ohhhhhh bacon. On average we eat more than 18 pounds of it a year, and not just alongside eggs and pancakes.
There's bacon lasagna, bacon cocktails, even -- in a bridge too far -- bacon toothpaste.
But the reason why bacon broke out from the breakfast table isn't just because of its taste, but some deft marketing by the National Pork Producers Council and the story of pork bellies -- the commodity it's made from.
"Pork bellies, like other agricultural products, had seasonal price fluctuations," says David Sax, author of, "The Tastemakers: Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up with Fondue."
The price was intricately tied to tomato season because, simply put, people wanted to put slabs of bacon on BLTs.
But when the food trend of the 1980s hit -- low-fat foods -- the price of pork bellies bellied up.
Pig farmers turned to the National Pork Producers Council in desperation, hoping to find a way to get people to eat bacon again.
The council turned to fast-food restaurants who were struggling to sell the lean hamburgers, suggesting it was a cheap way of adding a lot of fat and flavor.
"They said, 'Listen, can you put bacon on your sandwiches?'" says Sax. "They said, 'Look, we'd love to. We're trying to sell these ultra-lean sandwiches because that's what people want but nobody actually wants to buy them.'"
Hardee's had the first hit with the Frisco burger, and other chains followed suit. With franchises all over the country into bacon, the market for pork bellies bloomed.
The trend branched out when smaller, visionary restaurants caught on. Innovative chefs then made bacon jam, bacon cupcakes and bacon-wrapped anything.
That's how the wave caught on, so much so that there are bacon conventions across the country.
"I saw one person who had a t-shirt [at a convention] and it was a cat surfing a piece of bacon in outer space," says Sax. "It's this interesting, Portlandia-esque collision of ironic hipster bacon love and just big old American bacon lovers, too."
Thanksgiving weekend on the cheap: whiskey on Wednesday, vegan dinner on Thanksgiving and a light fest on Friday
Just one more day until Thanksgiving, but if you're sticking around Los Angeles for the holidays -- or have family members in town and need to get them out of the house -- Southern California Public Radio's social media producer Kristen Lepore has some ideas of things to do on a budget during the long weekend.
Among the highlights: a whiskey party on Wednesday, a vegan dinner on Thanksgiving and a light festival on Friday.
Thanksgiving 2014: Free weekend? Here's how to spend your free time
Tears for Fears reissue "Songs from the Big Chair," 30 years on
If you're someone of a certain age... I don't know... like 45... this song should bring back some memories.
You probably remember "Shout," one of the many hits from Tears for Fears best selling 1985 album "Songs from the Big Chair."
To celebrate its 30th anniversary coming up, the album was re-released earlier in this month as a 6-disc box set, complete with new, never-before-released material.
Tears for Fears founders Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith showed up at Southern California Public Radio's studios to chat about their career, creating "Songs from the Big Chair" and what's next for them.