Tonight's presidential debate will likely touch on the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya. We'll talk to an expert about how the CIA gathers information in these situations. Plus, the New York Times reports that Iran and the United States have developed a framework to begin one-on-one talks over Iran's nuclear program, video game companies turn to Kickstarter to raise funds, acclaimed author Sandra Cisneros joins the show to discuss her newest work, "Have You Seen Marie?" and much more.
How effective is the CIA at gathering intelligence in the Middle East?
One of the main topics of tonight's Presidential debate will likely be the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, specifically, what the Obama administration knew, and when.
New reports show that initial CIA intelligence about the the attack was wrong, and that it took the agency at least four days to back off its preliminary analysis that the attacks were spontaneous rather than a planned assault.
The confusion over the cause and method of the attack which killed four americans raises questions about the quality of American intelligence.
Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA, joins the show to discuss how his agency gathers information.
Iran and US to discuss Iran's nuclear program after the election
While we're talking about intelligence gathering and the CIA, let's look at one of the intelligence community's biggest challenges: Iran.
The New York Times reported over the weekend that Iran and the United States agreed to direct talks over Iran's nuclear program after the election. There's hope the a diplomatic resolution could avoid a conflict in the region and even convince Iran to halt development of a nuclear weapon.
There's a lot of confusion about Iran's nuclear program: how far along has it come toward actually producing a weapon?
Dr. Jim Walsh studies international security at MIT, he specializes in nuclear weapons. He joins the show to give us a picture of what Iran's nuclear program looks like.
The world of high school and college competitive debate
Monday evening Mitt Romney and President Obama will verbally spar in the final of three debates. Expect to hear broad but eloquent statements on foreign policy.
While that kind of speaking is what most people in the U.S. have come to associate with the word “debate,” it’s a far cry from the world of high school and college competitive debate.
Those contests focus on rapid fire speech that forgoes flourish for a deluge of facts and figures. We’ll be joined by Jon Bruschke, communication professor at CSU Fullerton and longtime debate coach.
Control of US Senate may hang on deadlocked Montana race
Political control of the senate may hang on one Montana race between incumbent Democrat Jon Tester and veteran Republican congressman Dennis Rehberg.
It isn't usually a big-money politics kind of place but outside groups are funneling tens of millions of dollars into TV ads across Montana.
Despite the cash, the two candidates are still deadlocked and things are starting to get ugly.
OC video game companies raise millions on Kickstarter
The crowd-funding site Kickstarter lets you raise money to open a restaurant, or create a gadget, or do pretty much anything you want to do - as long as you can convince hundreds or even thousands of small investors to back your idea with cash.
Most projects bring in around $5,000. But two Orange County video game companies have been using Kickstarter to raise not thousands - but millions.
A couple of blocks from the Newport Pier, on the second floor of a two-story building, no one answers when you knock on the door to inExile Entertainment. Instead, a half a dozen people ignore the door and keep staring at huge computer screens.
They're not rude. They're just busy programming video games.
Brian Fargo is the CEO and "Leader in Exile" of InXile Entertainment. The "exile" part is a joke: Fargo is in "exile" from Interplay, the video game company he founded in the early 1980s and left 12 years later after a clash with investors.
At Interplay, Fargo created a post-apocalyptic role-playing game called Wasteland. It looks and sounds primitive today, but back in the day, Wasteland was a darling of video game critics and a cult hit.
And, of course, fans wanted more.
"I would go around and people would want the sequel. I don't care what country in the world. They would ask, 'What about Wasteland?' Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany: they were always asking about it," said Fargo.
Fargo told publishers there was a market for a Wasteland sequel, but they didn't want to hear it. They weren't interested in role-playing games; what they wanted, Fargo said, was something that could be the next billion-dollar franchise.
The video game he wanted to make was more like an "indie" movie.
"We were a bit of an endangered species, because there's the big publishers, then there's the two indie guys working out of their house,” said Fargo. “Then there's mid-level, like 15-20 people. We can build a different product than two guys can. And I like building that kind of product."
"I pretty much had given up," said Fargo. "But then I heard about Kickstarter and thought, 'This could be it.'"
Fargo's initial Kickstarter fundraising goal: $1 million.
"And we blew through that in 48 hours," he said. "Forty-seven, actually.”
Fargo brought in almost $3 million for Wasteland 2, much more than he hoped for.
But even that much is less than the Irvine-based Obsidian Entertainment raised last week to develop its role playing game Project Eternity. Obsidian is much larger than inXile. Not a video game giant, but some 80 people work there.
"We had a $1.1 million dollar goal and we hit that in 30 hours," said executive producer Adam Brennecke.
Obsidian ended up raising just under $4 million from nearly 80,000 backers in a drive that ended Tuesday night.
To entice donors, Obsidian made a YouTube pitch and created tiers for rewarding donors. At each level of total funds raised, Obsidian promised to make the game better, adding a “Player House” at $2 million and an “Adventures Hall” at $2.6 million.
There were also premiums, depending on how much you gave.
"The whole Kickstarter process when you look at how we structure our backer rewards and how we structure our stretch goals is similar to a public radio funding drive,” said project director Josh Sawyer.
No tote bags here, though.
At $15, where most people donate, you're basically prepaying for the game to get a 50-percent discount. At $3,000, you get a custom designed portrait in the game.
And for $10,000 - and yes, there are four people who gave 10 grand - you get to play the game of your choice with Project Eternity's creators.
"If you want to get your nerd on and get play a game with the people who made Project Eternity, you have the opportunity to do so," Brennecke said.
Whether you give $15 or $10,000, it's a leap of faith that Obsidian and inExile will follow through because Kickstarter offers no guarantees.
To which Obsidian says: you can trust us.
"We have a reputation,” said Brennecke. “We are an established company. We've made these games in our history. I think that's a level of trust we have with our fans, that we'll follow through on our pitch and deliver a good game at the end of the day.”
Obsidian and inXile post frequent progress updates to keep funders in the loop. Last week, inXile's Fargo was asking what his backers thought of some new theme music.
Instead of a few investors, now tens of thousands give their 10 cents.
Fargo wouldn’t have it any other way.
"With Kickstarter, a lot of the top talent is saying, 'Hey! I could do this myself,'” Fargo said. “Because this is a fun existence. We're having a blast here. We're not focusing on how to get paid every minute. We're focused on how to make a better game. There's no politics, no BS. It's fantastic."
Fargo says it's like 1983 when he entered the nascent video game industry, before big money and big publishers.
Video games are about gamers again.
Sandra Cisneros emerges from the depths of grief with latest illustrated book
Acclaimed author Sandra Cisneros is best known for her novel “The House on Mango Street,” has just released a picture book with illustrator Ester Hernandez called “Have You Seen Marie?”
The story involves two women searching for a missing cat, touching on themes of loss and grief in a way that all ages can relate to. Cisneros explains that she was inspired to write the book while dealing with the personal grief of losing her mother.
Cisneros joined Take Two to talk about how she came up with the story, what she is trying to say about mourning and why its a story perfect for children and adults alike.
Interview Highlights:
On how the story was inspired by Cisneros' grief over her mother's death:
"It's based on a true incident of a writer coming to stay in San Antonio from Tacoma, Washington and having her cat take off as soon as she arrived. I was living in a state of mourning, hiding in the house. I think when you've had a death as I have had when my mother recently died, you don't like talking to people you don't want to come out and meet anyone. You always feel like a glass of water filled to the top and any motion can set it to tipping. I was afraid that I couldn't control my emotions because people might look me in the eye and I would burst into tears. They might say something or I might feel something and I didn't want to be exposed, I felt very vulnerable like a snake without its skin. So in order to avoid this I stayed in the house.
How a forced situation made her take the first step out of grief:
"Here I had a guest who lost the cat. She was a gregarious person someone who likes to chat up everyone she sees and I had to go out with her, I was obligated to go out with her and look for her cat and put up flyers. Here she was chatting up all my neighbors, she could have run for mayor she was so popular chatting with everyone. I just felt sick…In the course of searching for the cat an idea came about to write the story that I was living. It didn't happen that I thought, 'Oh this is a brilliant idea,' I was actually was resistant. Usually we have a story dangling in front of us and we don't want to do it. And I was in that state of being in complete grief."
On the event that motivated her to write "Have You Seen Marie?":
"This little girl who picked up the flyer said, 'How much was the reward?' and her little sister, who was even smaller than her, took the flyer over to her cat and she said, 'Have you seen this kitty?' and the cat sniffed the flyer. I was so astonished at that moment and thought, 'Wait a minute, that's a great story.' What if I write a story about two women looking for a cat and make all of the animals and plants in the neighborhood, include them in the story? So that was how the idea started. Eventually in the story it includes all of the neighbors and you've seen all the loss that they have had and it becomes a very poetic and spiritual journey of transforming grief into light. That's basically what the story's about. Where do we put this grief? how do we handle it and how does it transform and change us so that we can be reborn."
Why she decided to let this story stand alone:
"I found that I had a profound effect when I would read this story, perform it out loud and I could tell which members of the audience were living in a state of grace, that state of mourning when their hearts are broken open. I would talk with them afterward and they would say 'When will that story be published?' I actually thought it was part of a collection, but the more I read it the more I thought, 'Gee wouldn't it be nice if it was its own little book?' Something you could give someone during a time of mourning, or someone can give it to someone else who's mourning. My friend Ester Hernandez, the renowned Chicana artist from San Francisco, she also lost her mom and I sent the story to her to help her heal during that time, and that's when I got the idea: 'Wouldn't it be nice, Ester, if you did the drawings and we did a little book together?'
Why the book is for kids and adults alike:
"I kept insisting this when I was reading this when it was still in paper form and it wasn't even a book, 'Oh no, no this isn't for children," but I had to concede that its for everybody. I will read it to adults and there will be children in the room. Children are the most honest critics, most difficult critics. If they don't like something they'll get up and leave. They would stay until the last paragraph. They were listening. Afterwards they would come up to me and say, 'Are you the lady that read the story about the cat?For them its a story about a cat… It's a story, I have to admit now, for orphans little and big, or people who have had a loss little and big."
On the intended message of "Have You Seen Marie?":
"I remember when I was a kid there ware a couple of things I couldn't think about without getting a headache. One was the infinity of the universe, the second one was the infinity of numbers, and the third one was finiteness of my mother and father. I think that this book is very much in touch with the indigenous way of looking at the universe, the way that Mexicans look at death. Death is not separate from the living world, it's very connected to our daily life. We don't think of people leaving us when they are transformed. We think of their presence, we call them forth when we need guidance, we meditate and ask them to take care of us, and, if we've very lucky, we can feel their presence and feel their guidance and feel their light. I wasn't trying to speak about anything magical, I wasn't talking about magical realism or metaphors I'm talking about the literal connection to the spirit world and not being afraid of it because you know you have loved ones who are your spiritual allies."
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom on awaiting trial
In the ongoing controversy over internet regulation and piracy, one alleged pirate stands out, at least as far as the United States Justice department is concerned.
He goes by the name of Kim Dotcom. He's the founder of Megaupload, the internet file storage service which the U.S. government accuses of criminal copyright violations.
He was also thrown in jail in New Zealand, where he lives. He was allowed to return to his home, but is not allowed to leave the island.
We’ll talk to Wired's Charles Graeber, who wrote a profile on Dotcom, for more.
Frontline asks why the climate change issue is missing this election cycle
Remember when Al Gore's 2006 documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" swept through theaters and scared us all witless? Four years ago, tackling climate change was the talk of the nation.
But in 2012, the phrase barely passes the lips of lawmakers. Why has climate change gone missing? A new Frontline documentary, "Climate Of Doubt," answers that question. It airs tomorrow night on PBS.
Frontline correspondent John Hockenberry shares his report on the skeptics who’ve managed to make Americans cool to climate change.
The Boy Scouts 'perversion' files & child abuse prevention
The so-called “ineligible volunteer files” the Boys Scouts of America kept since the 1920s is supposed to have been the organization’s system of protecting children from abuse.
The files – made public last week – proves that system did not always work, leaving thousands of boys vulnerable and now serving as a reminder to youth groups.
“As organizations we can’t rely on our own internal processes,” warned Cindy McElhinney, program director at Darkness to Light, a child sexual abuse awareness group.
The South Carolina based nonprofit provides child abuse prevention training to some of the country’s largest youth organizations such as the YMCA. McElhinney said the group’s training and awareness is aimed at adults because they believe adults are emotionally and intellectually stable enough to understand what is child sexual abuse and are sometimes mandated by law to report it, depending on their professional role.
“Policy has to say if there is abuse, if there’s an allegation, if there’s suspicion, it’s immediately reported and acted upon and it’s reported to the appropriate authorities based on the laws that exist in your state,” McElhinney said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a 2007 report with suggestions on policy and procedures to prevent child sexual abuse within youth organizations. The main points emphasized screening potential employees, setting boundaries for them, training on sexual abuse prevention, monitoring employee behavior and responding to breach of prevention policy.
“At youth serving organizations, we don’t catch abusers abusing,” McElhinney said. “But what we do catch is them breaking rules. They’re breaking rules on one-one time with kids, giving gifts or special treatment to certain children.”
Experts say most national youth serving groups such as the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the YMCA, and even the Boys Scouts of America have adopted strong child abuse prevention policies.
Not all policies fit all organizations. It is a delicate balance of care and caution especially for youth advocates who try to give nurturing support to kids that may not get at home with family. And lots of neighborhood clubs, groups or centers are independently run so policies are custom crafted.
At the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Monica, club president Aaron Young opens the door to the upstairs “Teen Room.” Here teenagers get homework tutoring in one study room, surf the net on the computers against the wall and can lounge on the fashion forward sofas. But the wide loft-style hangout is full of windows allowing staffers and other teens the ability to see everyone and anything.
“Our staff is never allowed to be alone with a kid, period,” Young said. “There are cameras also all over the building. That helps.”
That is one of the child abuse prevention policies almost all the large youth organizations have in common: No one-adult-one-child activity. In 1991, the Boys Scouts of America prohibited one-on-one adult and youth activities. Another common policy is background checks for staff and volunteers and abuse prevention training.
Anel Henry is the risk manager for the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles. It operates several locations at schools and has 25 YMCA branch centers.
Henry said staff and volunteers are required to have a live scan, a fingerprinting process used by law enforcement agencies. Character references are requested and all staff and volunteers must take online training modules on child abuse prevention within 60 days of working for the YMCA. For temporary workers or camp staff, the training is required prior to employment and prior the camping trip.
One of the abuse prevention policies of the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles prohibits any relationships to build and carry on outside of the Y. For example, a parent cannot ask for a YMCA staff or a volunteer to babysit his or her children on the weekend. Henry said the organization couldn’t risk giving people any opportunity to potentially groom a child for abuse outside their watch.
Bathroom breaks for children can be facilitated by one YMCA staff member but the staffer must take a minimum of three children and the bathroom must be inside of a building where another adult can watch the group walk in and out.
Henry said most of the child abuse prevention policies at YMCA of Metropolitan L.A. were implemented in the 1990s and have been updated and revised as society becomes more aware of the child abuse issue.
“People think like: ‘Wow, how did we not have this before. How did this just happen,'” Henry said.
When a staffer or volunteer hears of an allegation or suspicion of child abuse, Henry said the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services is immediately contacted to investigate. When it’s severe, the YMCA contacts the police, too.
A sign posted in the lobby of the YMCA on La Grange Avenue reads: “The Westside Family YMCA is a Child Abuse Reporting Agency.” Although staff and volunteers here are mandated to report child abuse because they work with children, Henry said it should not stop anyone from picking up the phone to report child abuse.
“You may not be mandated to but that doesn’t mean you can’t,” she said. “It just means you don’t have a civil penalty if you don’t. It doesn’t mean that you can’t, everyone can.”
Alex Witchel's memoir 'All Gone' divulges the struggle with her mother's dementia
We talk to Alex Witchel about her new book, “All Gone: A Memoir Of My Mother’s Dementia with Refreshments.”
Witchel is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and also writes "Feed Me," a monthly column for the Times Dining section.
All Gone: A Memoir of my Mother’s Dementia with Refreshments by Alex Witchel