Today on the show we'll discuss Pope Francis's latest comments against trickle-down economics. Then, inside the secret Guantanamo facility called Penny Lane, we meet an East LA school that teaches gratitude every day, A new album celebrates the mash-up of Jewish and Latin music, plus much more.
Do Pope Francis's comments signal a new direction for the Catholic Church?
Pope Francis has spent less than a year as head of the Catholic Church, but in that time a series of his pronouncements have gained a lot of attention.
He's offered welcoming words to atheists, for example. Regarding gays, he said, "Who am I to judge them? They shouldn't be marginalized." Now, in a major statement issued yesterday, he has the world — Catholic and non-Catholic — buzzing again:
"Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills."
For a look at what this signals about the future direction and philosophy of the Catholic Church, we're joined by Christopher Kaczor, professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University.
Guantanamo Bay facility 'Penny Lane' home to covert CIA program
Black sites, waterboarding and Guantanamo Bay are all familiar names in the War on Terror.
Now there's a new name to add to the mix: Penny Lane. The Associated Press broke a story this week about a secret CIA program at Guantanamo Bay prison that attempted to turn inmates into double agents.
Associated Press Reporter Matt Apuzzo, who broke the story, joins the show to explain.
East LA preschool teaches toddlers gratitude every day
It's the time of the year where we all give thanks for what we have -- our families, our homes and the food on the table. At one preschool in East LA, those lessons start early and ways before Thanksgiving.
KPCC's Deepa Fernandes spent a morning there to learn how toddlers are taught to be grateful.
Big Sunday gears up to help those in need during the holidays
This time of year can be particularly tough for those in need, facing abuse or missing loved ones far away. It's also a season where many take out time to help those who need it the most.
Enter Big Sunday, a non-profit organization that's served as a one-stop shop for those looking for a way to give back to their community for 15 years. This holiday season is no different.
David Levinson, founder and executive director of Big Sunday, joins the show with more.
New album celebrates mashup of Jewish and Latin music
Happy Hanukkah! Tonight is the first night of the festival of lights, and it's the first time that Thanksgiving has overlapped with the Jewish holiday for more than a century.
If you are looking for some music to mark the occasion, we've got the perfect thing for you. It's a new two disc set called "It's a Scream How Levine Does the Rhumba the Latin Jewish Music Story." Alex Cohen recently talked about the collection with one of its producers, USC Professor Josh Kun.
Sports Roundup: Kobe Bryant contract, USC vs. UCLA and more
It's Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Rivalry Week all at once, baseball owners don't seem to care about PED's and the Black Mamba will be forever draped in Purple and Gold. This all means it's time for sports with Andy and Brian Kamenetzky.
We start with Kobe Bryant's new contract and all of the questions oozing out of it. We lay out the details, including length, term, pay, etc.
The question of Kobe's value is being debated and that's a bit of a tricky one because NBA salaries are controlled by a cap. Is Kobe worth the dough?
Last year Tim Duncan of the Spurs cut his salary in half to allow the team to spend more money on other players. They went to the Finals and today they are 13-1. Should Kobe have taken less money?
While basketball experts have forecast that his contract will cripple the Lakers, Kobe has taken to Twitter to let them all know that they have no idea what they're taking about.
Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez is a bitter battle with MLB over his 211-game drug suspension and is now his lawsuit is naming one big name. Meanwhile, MLB owners continue to seemingly be very forgiving of players who have served drug suspensions.
Which leads us to the Baseball Hall of Fame. There's name on this ballot that could set a tone for future potential inductees. How sacred is a Hall of Fame ballot anymore?
This is a pretty big week. Hanukkah starts tonight, Thanksgiving tomorrow and USC vs UCLA football on Saturday. The college rivalry pranks have already begun, journalism school style. Last night USC students emptied Daily Bruin newspaper racks and replaced them with the Daily Trojan.
How to prepare for Obamacare discussions on Thanksgiving
When you sit down with family and friends, you can bet that along with all the "pass the cranberry sauce" and the "mmm, these mashed potatoes are perfect," someone will bring up Obamacare. That's your cue that an uncomfortable political discussion is about to ensue.
RELATED: Holiday Survival Guide: How to deal with dreaded family members
Fear not, gentle celebrator. We have invited Washington Post healthcare wonkette Sarah Kliff to our table, for a little pre-Obama care Thanksgiving briefing.
LA cracks down on feeding homeless in public
According to a report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, there are more than 50,000 homeless men and women in LA County. Recently efforts to feed some of them have come under fire.
For more than 25 years, the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition has given out free meals to anyone that wants it. Their latest location feeds people from a food truck near Santa Monica and LaBrea; the organization estimates that they hand out between 100 to 250 meals a day.
Residents in the area have lobbied community leaders and local politicians to put a stop to it because of safety concerns and problems with people squatting in the area. Recently two city councilmen proposed a ban on feeding homeless people in public spaces, only allowing it in areas like homeless shelters and soup kitchens.
We reached out to city council member Tom LaBonge, one of the people behind the measure for an interview, but he was unavailable. In a written statement, he said:
My motion requests that city departments study how other cities are addressing the issues surrounding homeless feeding programs on the street. I want to know how other people ensure the safety of people being fed in the public right of way.
How do they ensure that public health codes are met? It also asks what legislative remedies are at our disposal.It is heart-breaking to see people lining up on the street to be fed from the back of a truck. I know we can do better as a city.
He went on to say that he was working with the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition to identify a permanent location for their service, but what would the ramifications be if such a ban was adopted?
For some insight, we're joined now by Jerry Jones, executive director for the National Coalition for the Homeless.
Affordable Care Act expansion could reduce homelessness
The Affordable Care Act will expand Medicaid to individuals well under the poverty line, 138 percent below, and it’s expected to include several homeless men and women.
Although the task of signing up the homeless is onerous because few people have emails or telephone number, it could help reduce homelessness in this country. Annie Lowrey of the New York Times joins the show with more.
Squatters built Tijuana, but they still frustrate city planners (video)
Tijuana. For many of us in Southern California, it's a place to go for some nightlife, or maybe to pick up some bargains. But for Mexicans, Tijuana is a magnet. A place to find a job, and a new life.
The city's rapid growth has kept urban planners on the run in an effort to keep the city livable. Jill Replogle from the Fronteras Desk brings us the first in an ongoing series exploring the history of Tijuana and its neighborhoods. She begins in the city's squatter settlements, which have come to define the city.
Lucy Durán was tired of raising seven kids on her own in Guanajuato, in central Mexico. Her husband had moved to Tijuana more than a decade earlier to work, and one day, she decided to up and move the whole family there. It was 1990.
Rosario Gibbs, one of Durán’s daughters, was 14.
“When I was in Guanajuato, I was so excited to move to Tijuana because I thought it was this big, huge metropolis, kind of like the U.S.,” Gibbs said as we drove along a wide, paved boulevard marked with modern shopping malls and mega grocery stores.
But when she first got here with her family, most of this area — most of what is now Tijuana — was just miles and miles of scrubby, sandy hills. And few roads were paved.
Gibbs remembers that it was really, really dusty.
“I was like, ‘Oh man, this is disgusting. I don’t like it,’” she said with a laugh.
We’re headed to the house that Rosario’s mother, Lucy Durán, built 22-years ago with the tenacity that characterizes most migrants who settle in Tijuana. Migrants — mostly from other parts of Mexico — make up more than half of Tijuana’s population.
We turn right down a steep hill into the Colonia Solidaridad Gabriel Rodriguez. The neighborhood is now a mix of two- and three-story concrete homes and wooden shacks like the one Durán and her fellow squatters first built here.
The mishmash is typical of neighborhoods that sprung up during the 1990s, when Tijuana’s maquiladora industry boomed. There wasn’t enough housing for the people who came from all over Mexico for the jobs.
So many people, including Durán, sought help from guys like Jesús Minchaca.
Minchaca has a thick nose underlined by a thick, greying mustache. Deep grooves run through his cheeks and forehead.
Minchaca's business card identifies him as a “community leader” and he says he has a passion for helping the poor.
The maquiladora boom created Minchaca’s job, too. He helped organized Durán and others looking for land to set up squatter colonies in the empty hills around Tijuana.
“We didn’t trespass on this land here because we wanted to,” Minchaca said, sitting on the patio of his comfortable-looking home in the neighborhood he helped bring into being.
“We had to,” he said. “Because no government...no government agency that could have resolved the problem was interested.”
The problem was that Tijuana simply didn’t have enough housing for poor people who came from all over Mexico for the factory jobs.
Land occupations by groups of squatters became a primary driver of the city’s growth. Up until recently, more than half of Tijuana’s population lived in what are called informal neighborhoods. This is typical of large Latin American cities.
Minchaca and his colleagues would recruit people looking for land, particularly newcomers, from Tijuana’s poorer neighborhoods. Interested families were required to attend weekly meetings to plan the land invasion.
Lucy Durán remembers, if you were willing to camp out at the invasion, you could get one of the best pieces of land, the ones on high, flat ground. But it was also risky business. The police regularly broke up land invasions — sometimes violently — and threw the squatters in jail.
Durán didn’t camp out. She said she wanted to, but her daughters wouldn’t let her because they thought it was too dangerous. So the family ended up with land on a steep, sandy hill.
They built one small room out of wood torn off of discarded pallets. They had no electricity or running water. Their bathroom was a latrine with a blanket for a door, up a steep hill behind the house.
But that was part of the deal — squatters were told that if they were willing to sacrifice without basic comforts for awhile, eventually the city would have to recognize the neighborhood and bring in basic services. And it did.
Minchaca’s role was chief negotiator for the squatters.
“I’m tenacious,” Minchaca said, adding that he loves to negotiate with government bureaucrats. First, he said, he asks nicely, on paper. Then he shows up and demands an answer, he said with a laugh.
Minchaca still organizes people to get land on the outskirts of Tijuana. And though a hero to many of Tijuana’s poor, Minchaca and others with similar job descriptions are the nemesis of city officials like Esteban Yee Barba, Tijuana’s secretary of urban development.
Sitting in his office at Tijuana's city hall, Yee said community leaders like Minchaca “don’t understand the problems they’re causing.”
Instead of strategically mapping out new roads, sewage pipes and telephone lines, city planners are forced to play catch up as new squatter communities pop-up around the city’s periphery.
Yee said some squatter settlements are practically inaccessible.
“Some are on top of a hill that you need a four-wheel drive to get to,” he said. “And it’s extremely expensive and difficult to get them pavement, put in drainage, etc.”
Plus, a lot of squatter neighborhoods in Tijuana are downright dangerous when it rains. In January 1993, flooding and mudslides killed more than 30 people and left some 10,000 homeless.
Rosario Gibbs remembers when government officials came to her neighborhood and told everyone they had to evacuate.
“Nobody left,” she said. “Everybody was in danger and not one single person left.”
Gibbs said the family’s shack slid about three feet down the hill during the storm, and the latrine filled with mud, making it unusable. But no one was hurt.
Where city officials see hazard, hundreds of thousands of Tijuana residents see hope, or at least reality. And something else — a sense of unity.
The original house that Lucy Durán built is now much improved: two bedrooms, a spacious, concrete-walled kitchen and dining room, running water, electricity.
The neighborhood roads are paved. There’s a school and a small park.
Another of Durán’s daughters now lives in the home. A few years back, Lucy moved to a new, brick house in one of Tijuana’s planned communities.
Even though her new house is more comfortable, Lucy said she misses the old neighborhood.
“We were all really united here,” she said. “In my new neighborhood, nobody talks to you.”
Lucy’s daughter, Rosario Gibbs, now lives in San Diego. She’s a successful engineer with a pay grade well above most in her old neighborhood.
But still, she said she could go back to the way she lived before, crunched into a one-room shack with her mom and six brothers and sisters.
“We were very happy,” she said. “The union in the family was great, so regardless of the material stuff and the inconveniences, I learned so much from all of that.”
Wood frame buildings vulnerable to earthquakes
As we approach the 20th anniversary of the Northridge Earthquake early next year, we've been looking into how prepared we are for the next big one.
One person that's been helping us out with that is Ron Lin at the Los Angeles Times, who, along with his colleagues, has been looking into building safety in Southern California. In his most recent piece, out today, is about the status of what officials call "soft" wood frame buildings.
Lazarus Project successfully clones extinct frog embryo
Ever since the film "Jurassic Park" demonstrated how DNA technology could bring a long-extinct creature back to life, people have daydreamed about someday walking with the dinosaurs.
Of course we're a long, long way away from that happening, but de-extinction isn't just the stuff of science fiction. A group called The Lazarus Project has succeeded in raising from the dead an extinct species of frog.
Scientists were able to clone an embryo of the frog. Though it didn't live more than a few days, genetic tests of the embryo showed that the dividing cells contained the genetic makeup of the extinct frog.
The project has just been named one of the best "inventions" of the year by Time Magazine. Here to tell us more about this project is professor Mike Archer who's leading the research in Australia.
Lemonade chef Alan Jackson on how to transform your Thanksgiving leftovers
After finishing your Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, you'll likely think you can't imagine even thinking about food again. But on Friday when, despite yourself, you do, we thought you might like some fresh ideas for both the leftovers, and maybe some lighter fare for the weekend.
To help us with that, we turned to Alan Jackson, founder and chef of Lemonade restaurants. He also has a new cookbook out with some great recipes for transforming your leftovers.
Creative cocktail ideas for Thanksgiving
Take Two visits Litty Mathew of local craft distillery, Greenbar Collective, where they produce locally-sourced vodka and liqueur. She gives us the skinny on how to mix up some Thanksgiving cocktails.
Granny
2 oz TRU organic vanilla vodka (
1 oz canned pumpkin puree
1/2 oz maple syrup
1/2 oz half & half (or non-dairy sub)
1/2 oz simple syrup
1/4 oz fresh lemon juice
Rim glass with sugar + cinnamon
Shake all ingredients
Double strain into martini glass
The New Side Dish (our fall take on the cosmo)
2 oz TRU organic lemon vodka
1 oz fresh lemon juice
1 oz freshly prepared cranberry sauce ( we used a metal jigger to measure the sauce)
.5 oz simple syrup
Shake all hard. Strain into martini glass; garnish with cranberry chunk from sauce or lemon twist.
The Gravy Boat (this is a mini cocktail - perfect for the dirty martini lover)
1.5 oz TRU organic Garden
.5 oz veal demi-glace (it might work with really good turkey gravy, too)
roasted sage leaves (salt and lightly oil before baking in oven till dry and crisp)
Shake TRU and demi-glace, pour into martini glass. Garnish with roasted sage leaf. Served and consume immediately.