MWD Declares Drought Emergency & Snow Survey Shows Improved Snowpack
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is declaring a drought emergency, restricting outdoor watering to once a week starting June 1. Water districts throughout the area will be affected by this resolution, giving us a clearer picture of the current status of our record drought. In Northern California, there was some positive news, with this month’s snowpack helping lessen the severity of our drought–but will the trend hold?
Today on AirTalk, we talk to water resource manager at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California Brad Coffey, manager of the snow surveys and water supply forecasting unit for the California Department of Water Resources Sean de Guzman, and Amir AghaKouchak, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Irvine.
When It Comes To Storytelling, Who Should Be Allowed To Tell Someone Else’s Story?
Are we allowed to write outside our own identities? That’s the question raised in a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times titled “The Limits of ‘Lived Experience.’” In the piece, the author challenges the notion that only people who have had ‘lived experiences’ can write about that experience, whether it be surviving a tsunami, a lifetime of racial discrimination, or immigrating to a new country. Writers have taken on outsider’s perspectives all the time – men write characters that are women, those who can see write characters that are blind, and white people write characters who are Latino. Now more than ever, writers are reckoning with how to write about people and experiences that are beyond their own reality so as to not perpetuate harmful stereotypes. At the end of the day, writers can write about anything they’d like. But should they? What is gained when someone writes about another person’s experience? And what is lost when they’re not the ones telling their own story?
Today on AirTalk, we’re joined by professor of English and Director of the Latinx Cultural Center at Utah State University Christopher Gonzalez, and freelance editor, children’s literature agent and authenticity reader D. Ann Williams to discuss storytelling, representation, and the rise in authenticity readers.
CDC Estimates 3 In 4 Kids Have Been Infected With COVID-19
Three out of every four U.S. children have been infected with the coronavirus and more than half of all Americans had signs of previous infections, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers estimated in a report Tuesday. The researchers examined blood samples from more than 200,000 Americans and looked for antibodies from infections, not vaccines. They found signs of past infection rose dramatically between December and February, when the more contagious omicron variant surged through the U.S. For Americans of all ages, about 34% had signs of prior infection in December. Just two months later, that number had jumped to 58%. Today on AirTalk, we get a better understanding of those findings, and other major COVID-19 news, from Dr. Dean Blumberg, professor of medicine and chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at UC Davis Children’s Hospital
With files from the Associated Press
What Responsibility Do Storytellers Have To Stick To History When Creating Dramatic Retellings?
How much creative license should someone get if they’re telling a true story? The HBO series, Winning Time, has drawn steep criticism from several of the real-life basketball legends it depicts, including former Lakers Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Another former Laker, Jerry West, is seeking legal action against the series’ producers. HBO meanwhile is standing its ground. They point out that the series doesn’t claim to be a documentary, and can therefore add dramatic flare. Today on AirTalk we’ll talk with Greg Braxton, senior culture writer for the LA Times, about the responsibility storytellers have when they write about history.
How The Emergence Of Field Behavioral Threat Assessment Could Help Us Prevent The Next Mass Shooting
Mother Jones’ Mark Follman is best known for the database of mass shootings that he runs which tracks information about each event, from the nature of the shooting to the number of people killed and injured to the types of weapons used. In his new book “Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America,” Follman turns his attention from tracking what’s already happened to looking at how we might head off and prevent the next tragedy before it warrants entry into his database through the use of behavioral threat assessment, a method that law enforcement across the country are increasingly using to identify behavioral patterns and warning signs of a potential mass shooting in the hopes of intervening in advance.
Today on AirTalk, we’ll talk to Follman about “Trigger Points,” find out what the field of behavioral threat assessment could help law enforcement authorities identify potential threats before they evolve into active shooter situations, how it grew out of FBI serial killer hunting and Secret Service investigations in the 70s and 80s and how it’s evolving and being applied today, and how schools across the country are approaching violence prevention with their students today.