Patt Morrison Tues, 9/9

PATT MORRISON SCHEDULE

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

1-3 p.m.

 

1:00 – 1:40

OPEN

 

 

1:40 – 2:00

Azzam the American – Alive or Dead?

Jihadist and intelligence officials alike will be watching this September 11 to see if Adam Ghadan, known as Azzam-al-Ameriki, or Azzam the American – will release a new video, as he has done every year since 2003.  If not, it may prove that he was killed in the recent U.S. Predator airstrike along the Afgan-Pakistani border, as many suspect.  Born Adam Pearlman, Azzam is a former heavy-metal fan raised in Orange County who converted to Islam in 1995 and later became an al-Qaeda operative, and the first American charged with treason in over fifty years.  He hasn’t been heard from in months, leading officials to suspect he may be dead.

 

Guests:

NOT CONFIRMED

Raffi Khatchadourian, author of New Yorker article ‘Azzam the American: The Making of an Al Qaeda Homegrown’

 

 

 

[NPR NEWS]

 

2:00 – 2:30

Sacramento's Budget Blues: Blame the 2/3 Vote?

Sacramento is now some 70 days past the budget deadline. There's no shortage of blame to go around but one thing is clear: the process of requiring a two-thirds majority to pass the budget is a culprit. Four years ago Californians voted to keep a 2/3 legislative vote instead of a simple majority to pass a state budget – do we think differently now, as the Sacramento showdown goes nowhere?

 

Guests:

Senator Elaine Alquist (D-13)

One of the legislators signed on to SCA 22, introduced by Sen. Tom Torlakson in March, which would amend the constitution to allow for a majority vote instead of 2/3.

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Peter Schrag, former editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee and author of California: America's High-Stakes Experiment.

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2:30 – 3:00

Boo Yah! Research Shows Pride and Shame have Biological Origins

In cultures around the world, when athletes win a competition, they throw out their chest, raise their arms, and give a triumphal shout. They do that because they've seen other victorious athletes do that, right? Actually, no. In the Paralympics, congenitally blind athletes do exactly the same thing. So do members of isolated cultures. A new study shows that expressions of pride and shame are actually hard-wired into our genes. Researchers, Jessica L. Tracy, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, and David Matsumoto, a psychology professor at San Francisco State University, examined the spontaneous reactions of blind and sighted athletes from 37 countries. Which begs the question, what other human expressions of shame and pride, hatred and love, are part of our genes instead of our culture?

 

Guests:

Jess Tracy, assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. Also a study author.

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Dacher (DAK-er) Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California Berkeley

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• Cultures take the complex communicative basic stuff and emphasize it
• But sometimes gestures are purely cultural. For example: A-okay gesture means COMPLETELY different things in different cultures (which leads to some really funny miscommunications)