The Supreme Court will not be hearing a challenge from the Golden Gate Restaurant Association against San Francisco’s universal health care program – Healthy San Francisco. The program is available to all San Francisco residents regardless of immigration status, employment status, or pre-existing medical conditions and has enrolled 53,000 previously uninsured people. Where does the [...]
When Latinos go to the polls, most have the same political agenda, right? Not necessarily, says CalTech’s Michael Alvarez. He’s the co-author of a new book that looks at the political identity, public opinion, turnout and voting behavior of the nation’s largest minority group. What do the data predict about Hispanic voters? Which factors most [...]
A spider is just one of those creatures greeted with an automatic “ick” from humans. They jump, they crawl, the hang from webs, and, most importantly, they have fangs. Nonetheless, they’re here to stay. Some are poisonous, but many are harmless. So which spiders really warrant a scream and squish? Patt talks to an expert [...]
Larry talks with actress Pam Grier about her candid new memoir detailing her life and career. She shares her thoughts on being a “Blaxploitation” star, (describing herself as “Chekhov in a wet T-shirt!”), working with Roger Corman and Quentin Tarantino, remembers her relationships with Richard Pryor, Freddie Prinze and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and talks openly about [...]
From a small farming town in Mexico to the top of Latin music charts, Los Tigres del Norte have come a long way over their three-decade career. The norteño-ensemble of brothers and cousins are fixtures in the Latin music scene, with more than 55 albums under their belt and five Latin Grammy Awards. Their corridos [...]
Are Americans afraid to take vacation? We’ve earned a global reputation as workaholics; we’re the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee paid vacation time to our workers; and now, in a recession, could it be that we’re scared of losing our jobs if we take our due time off? According to [...]
Less fat, less salt, more exercise, limit meat and sweets. So says the USDA committee reviewing the agency's dietary guidelines. Exhaustive research and the use of the newly minted Evidence-Based Nutrition Library has yielded… the same advice we’ve heard for 30 years? Why, then, are Americans fatter than ever? Are we obstinately overweight? Given the [...]
Probably nothing is more certain, more studied or more essentially “human” than war, but new study may change that. Dr. John Mitani of Michigan University recently completed a ten-year look at warfare among chimpanzees, finding that they cooperate to organize themselves with the intent to capture territory, their behavior is adaptive, and that natural selection [...]
In 1919, the US passed the Eighteenth Amendment banning the sale and consumption of alcohol. The result: one of the worst crime sprees in US history. The rise of organized crime around Prohibition is well known, but Okrent looks at a forgotten aspect of this period: the reaction and response of ordinary citizens to this [...]
War is not the perfectly-edited adrenaline rush of a two-hour movie. It’s also not the three-minute summaries on the nightly news. War is a feeling and a life that only those involved can understand. That’s what filmmakers Sebastian Junger (author of <i>WAR</i> and <i>The Perfect Storm</i>) and Tim Hetherington (<i>Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia [...]
