The latest news about unrest in the Middle East. Plus, the ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. military's women in combat policy. Then, a new study takes a peek inside a rapper's brain, a salmonella outbreak may cause an organic peanut butter shortage, and much more.
Middle East update: Car bombs in Syria, Morsi protest and more
The situation throughout the Middle East continues to escalate.
In Syria, twin suicide car bombs ripped through a suburb of Damascus today killing at least 34 people. In Egypt, two of the highest appeals court suspended their work today in protest of President Mohammed Morsi's power grab.
Meanwhile, in New York, the UN General Assembly is expected to vote tomorrow to approve the Palestinian bid for non-member status.
Here with analysis on the latest in Middle East affairs is Ambassador Dennis Ross. He served as the Middle East envoy under President Clinton and is currently a counselor with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Sea levels rising quicker than initially thought
In a new climate study, researchers have suggested that sea levels are rising far faster than previously thought. We speak to Coral Davenport, Energy and Environment Correspondent for National Journal
Lawsuit takes on US military's women in combat policy
The ACLU of Northern California has filed a lawsuit on behalf of four female service members who say that the Department of Defense's policy has hampered their ability to get the same kinds of promotions that their male counterparts receive.
According to the ACLU there are an estimated 238,000 jobs in the military that women are banned from performing because of their sex. We'll speak with Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar, one of the soldiers filing the lawsuit.
Status of female soldiers in Israeli army threatened as religion reigns
In Israel, women have already served in combat positions in the Israeli Defence forces for 20 years. Women make up 33 percent of the military, and just last year they appointed Brig. Gen. Orna Barbivai as the first-ever female major general.
After two decades of side-by-side training and fighting, Israeli women are facing very different concerns than their American counterparts.
As soldiers in the IDF become more religious, and more orthodox, physical contact required by training has caused controversy within the corps, in some cases, preventing women from advancing up through the ranks. Plus, more women are coming under pressure from orthodox rabbis to choose national service in schools and hospitals over army service.
Joining the show is
, executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, who wrote about this for Slate.
Is NBCUniversal's Jeff Zucker a good choice to lead CNN?
And now some news from the world of news...
There's buzz that Jeff Zucker, the former head of NBC Universal, will be taking the reins at CNN. Earlier this year, Jim Walton said he'd be stepping down as head of the struggling cable news network.
Variety's TV editor Andrew Wallenstein joins the show to tell us why he thinks Zucker may just be the right man for the job, despite some of his missteps in programming at NBC.
NPR librarian Kee Malesky invites readers to 'Learn Something New Every Day'
What was the greatest thing before sliced bread? What color did carrots used to be? Why do many American spellings differ from their British counterparts?
In her new book, "Learn Something New Every Day: 365 Facts to Fulfill Your Life," NPR librarian Kee Malesky enlightens readers on 365 little-known facts.
Interview Highlights:
On the first American books:
“Well, there is a book called ‘Famous First Facts’ and it was one of my sources because it has lots of really cool, mostly unknown bits about American history. So this was what I learned: The first book published by a settler in the new world, a true relation of such occurrences and accidents of note as have happened in Virginia since the first planting of that colony by Captain John Smith, using the pseudonym T. Watson in 1608. It was a plain, unadorned accounts of hardships, but it had to printed in London because the first printing press didn’t arrive in America until about thirty years later.”
The title of the first American children’s book:
“Milk for babes drawn out of the breasts of both testaments chiefly for the spiritual nourishment of Boston babes in either England, but maybe of like use for any children”
On what is Operation Acoustic Kitty:
“In the height of the Cold War in the mid 1960s, American spies thought it would be a good idea to surgically implant a microphone and transmitting gear inside a cat. The animal, they thought, could then be trained to eavesdrop surreptitiously on the Kremlin or at Russian embassies. After investing millions of dollars, the CIA was ready for the first live trial. The cat was released, and immediately run over by a taxi cab. Spies cut their losses and ended the program, noting in a memo that despite successful training, using cats to spy would not be practical.”
On the story of the founding of Los Angeles:
“September 4th, 1781, 44 settlers, a diverse group of people of Spanish, Native American, and African descent known as Los Pobladores, or the townspeople, founded the city now known as Los Angeles. Its precise, original name has been a source of contention ever since. It was called, ‘El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles del río de Porciúncula,’ the town of our lady the queen of the angels of the river Porciuncula. There’s as many as eleven versions of the name in the early days, depending on which books, papers, plaques, maps, or old documents you consult. Even the historical markers around Olvera Street, the center of old Los Angeles, do not agree. Whatever it’s original formal name, we do know that the city, which had only 315 residents in 1800, grew by 3000% between 1890 and 1940. Today the population of the Los Angeles Long Beach Riverside combined statistical area is about 18 million.” Learn Something New Every Day:365 Facts To Fulfill Your Life
Study looks inside a rapper's brain to reveal the origin of freestyling
Ever wonder what's going on under the hood (i.e. in the brain) when a rapper busts out a freestyle rap on the fly?
A recent study by the National Institutes of Health scanned the craniums of MCs for clues about what's happening in the brain when a performer is improvising rhymes.
The research was co-authored by Dr. Allen Braun. He did a similar study in 2008 that involved scanning Jazz musicians brains while they improvised. For this study, Braun enlisted the help of hip-hop producer Daniel Rizik-Baer.
Braun and Rizik-Baer created a control condition by using conventional rap lyrics set to a background beat produced by Rizik-Baer, which the MCs were then asked to memorize. In the test condition, the artists had to freestyle rap.
In both conditions, Braun explained, “we acquired images related to brain activity, and this is using an fMRI method,” (functional MRI) “and that tells us what areas of the brain are more or less active and we can get a picture of what the brain is doing, specifically during freestyle rapping.”
Unlike most rap performances, once inside the MRI machine, no movement is permitted. So the rappers were unable to keep time using their hands or by nodding their heads.
“However,” Rizik-Baer said, “it ended up not being that big of a deal. Once you got into it. Once you were in that machine, it was kind of like being in a whole different world, time flew by.”
Braun examined the brain images of the rappers while they were freestyling rhymes. He found an interesting pattern of activity in the prefrontal cortex. Basically, the areas associated with self-generated and self-motivated behavior were active but the areas that monitor or censor behavior were de-activated. So while there is an aspect of the brain that is energized by using improvisational skills, there is much less self-censoring at play.
Hip Hop Producer Daneil Rizik-Baer said the findings seem in-line with what he expereinced while freestyling. He noticed that when he wasn't as worried about making sense or winning audience approval, he was able to tap into his subconscious and generate creative rhymes. “I was surprising myself,” Rizik-Baer said. “You’re not thinking about the words, it’s almost like they’re being handed to you and you’re just providing the vehicle for them to come out.”
Researcher Allen Braun explained that as this self-censoring area of the brain is deactivated, the “artists... are able to produce these improvisatory associations, surprising connections between words and rhythmic patterns and so on, that are produced really outside of conscious awareness.”
In subsequent studies, Braun was able to discover that anyone is capable of generating this disassociated pattern of brain functions during improvisation. “So it’s not any kind of magical, you know, hot spot in the brain that occurs only in creative people, everybody is capable of it,” Braun added. “It’s what is made of it by these highly creative individuals that’s different.”
Web text by Jenna Kagel
UN Ambassador Susan Rice still facing harsh criticism for Benghazi comments
UN Ambassador Susan Rice and potential next Secretary of State is back on Capitol Hill today, meeting with senators. She's been trying to mollify criticism over statements she made after the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Some Republicans, such as Arizona Senator John McCain, say Rice lied when she initially claimed there was no terrorist involvement in the attack. Her defenders say she was merely passing on talking points prepared by the CIA.
It's turned into a full-on dog-fight, and here to explain why is Politico's Scott Wong.
Lawsuit planned for 1953 death of man CIA drugged with LSD
We turn now to another story about the CIA, one that has become part of popular lore: the curious death of U.S. Army biological warfare specialist, Frank Olson.
It sounds like the stuff of "X-Files" or the "Manchurian Candidate," a government scientist working on bio weapons during the height of the Cold War. On a November night in 1953, Olson plunged to his death from the tenth-floor window of his New York hotel room.
Just days before, he had been given LSD by the CIA without his knowledge as part of a series of secret experiments in mind control. The government labeled Olson's death a suicide, but his family has always believed there was more to the story.
Today, nearly 60 years later, Olson's two sons are filing a wrongful death suit against the government. They allege their father's death was not suicide, but murder.
Here to talk about the case is journalist Jon Ronson, who wrote about Frank Olson in his book, "The Men Who Stare at Goats."
20-year-old Mexican beauty queen killed in drug cartel shoot out
A 20-year-old beauty queen was killed in Sinaloa, Mexico this past weekend in a gun battle between suspected drug traffickers and the military. Authorities say Maria Susana Flores Gamez was used as a human shield in the face off.
According to the attorney general's office, Flores Gamez, who was crowned 2012 Woman of Sinaloa in February, exited a car with a gun in her hands while other gunmen hid behind her. This is not the first time a beauty queen has gotten mixed up with the drug cartels.
Jose Carlos Cisneros Guzman, an ethnographer at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. He's been writing on the role of women in the cartels and he joins us now.
Still waiting for nuclear fusion at Livermore's National Ignition Facility
Now on to another potentially amazing feat of human achievement: the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California.
NIF, as it's known, is a $5 billion, taxpayer-funded super laser project. It's been hailed as the ultimate in revolutionary science and dismissed as the mother of all boondoggles.
Its humble goal? Nuclear fusion, the creation of a tiny star inside a laboratory. But so far that hasn't happened, as the California Report's Amy Standen explains.
Salmonella outbreak may cause shortage in organic peanut butter
If you've had the munchies lately, you may have noticed that some of your favorite organic peanut butters are still missing from the grocery store. As it turns out, that could very well be the case for months to come.
That's because this week, the largest processor of organic peanut butter in the U.S. had its facilities shut down and its food-processing license revoked by the FDA.
This was after 41 cases of salmonella sickness were tied to contaminated peanut products from the plant.
Here to talk about the shutdown is Marion Nestle, professor of food politics at NYU.
Should kids with cancer use medical marijuana?
In the wake of this month's elections, there are now 18 states which allow the medical use of marijuana. As acceptance of medical marijuana grows, so have questions about its use by young people.
In Oregon, at least 50 children have been using medical marijuana, including one girl with leukemia who's just 7 years old.
Noelle Crombie, who has been writing about the story for the Oregonian, joins the show.