Patt Morrison for Friday, May 11, 2012

PATT MORRISON SCHEDULE

Friday, May 11, 2012

1-3 p.m.

 

CALL-IN @ 866-893-5722, 866-893-KPCC; OR JOIN THE CONVERSATION ONLINE ON THE PATT MORRISON BLOG AT KPCC-DOT-ORG

 

 

 

1:06 – 1:30 - OPEN 

 

 

1:30 – 2:00
Mad Men pays $250K for the use of a Beatles song
The most recent episode of AMC’s period drama, Mad Men featured an excerpt from The Beatles’ 1966 psychedelic soundscape “Tomorrow Never Knows” as an essential plot element. The example is unique – both for the rarity of the biggest band in the world granting permission to use the song as well as for the hefty fee. Recorded music from both popular and unknown artists has been an integral part of movies and television for decades, but what makes a 46-year old song so unique that a television show with a relatively small budget would spend $250,000 dollars for 128 seconds of it to be used onscreen? In the advertising world, musicians used to shy away from being perceived as “selling out” and using their songs to sell diapers… but things have changed. Whereas avant-garde crooner Tom Waits once successfully sued Frito Lay for using a song eerily similar to a song they’d tried to license to sell snack chips, now artists actively court advertisers because they can get their big break by getting their songs into a TV commercial. Film, advertising and TV licensing can be important sources of revenue for musicians in the new millennium - especially in the face of plummeting CD sales. How much is a song worth? And how does the use of music fit into a film… or a TV commercial?

 

Guests:
Barry Coffing (coughing), CEO of musicsupervisor.com, a music licensing company that places music in film and television programs

Jess Penner, singer-songwriter and the face of Days Inn’s new advertising campaign
IN STUDIO

 

 

2:06 – 2:19

Senator Boxer demands car rental companies stop renting recalled vehicles

The next time you rent a car, you’ll want to check the manufacturer’s safety recall records because some car rental companies may be renting cars that have been recalled due to dangerous defects without having them serviced. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has called on major rental car companies to pledge not to rent out vehicles facing safety recalls until they are repaired in light of the 2004 deaths of two Santa Cruz women who died while driving a recalled rental car that had been neglected. Senator Boxer and Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), have sponsored legislation that would make it illegal for companies to rent or sell vehicles until safety defects that triggered recalls are fixed. Boxer said she wrote to the four leading companies -- Hertz Corp., Avis Budget Group Inc., Enterprise Holdings Inc. and Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group Inc.-- asking them to voluntarily agree to "this basic commitment to protect consumers." Boxer said Hertz already has a policy consistent with the pledge. Should car rental companies be required by law to have recalled cars serviced before renting them to customers?

 

Guests:

Sen. Barbara Boxer, (D-California)

 

Cally Houck, mother of Raechel and Jacqueline Houck who died in a 2004 crash involving a rental car that did not get the safety recall upgrade needed

 

Unconfirmed

TBD, Representative from a rental car company

  

 

2:21:30 – 2:39

Black women and fat: Is black fat different than white fat?

If current obesity rates don’t change, 42 percent of American adults will be obese by 2030 and about one-quarter of that group will be severely obese, a condition that shortens life and incurs large medical expenses, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine. As it is, 35.7 percent of adults are already obese, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Everyone agrees that obesity is an expensive medical and social health problem that needs to be alleviated, but not everyone agrees on how to effectively approach the fight against it. Some organizations advocate instituting a sugar tax, others push for a penny-per-ounce tax, while some individuals simply call for a “body-culture revolution.” Certain minority groups suffer from dangerously higher obesity rates, including black women, with four out of five of them considered to be seriously overweight. In a New York Times article published last week, African American scholar Alice Randall stated that black women choose to be fat because “our men like us bigger.” She goes on, “Chemically, in its ability to promote disease, black fat may be the same as white fat. Culturally, it is not.” A report from the Institute of Medicine released on Tuesday backs a multi-pronged approach to fighting obesity, but admits that there is no magic bullet to solve the problem. What will it take to buck the trend and curb obesity? Do we as a society need to completely change the way we think about our health and our bodies? Will lowering obesity rates require a profound and massive cultural revolution?

 

Guest:

Alice Randall, food activist committed to reforms that support healthy bodies and communities; author of The Wind Done Gone, Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, Rebel Yell, and Ada's Rules. She is a Harvard educated African-American novelist who lives in Nashville and writes country songs

 

2:30 – 2:58:30

Life and death: not always so simple to distinguish

What are the criteria for death? At various points in history, cultures believed that putrefaction or failure to answer when one’s name was called were proof enough. In 1968 in the United States, thirteen men on a Harvard University committee decided that “loss of personhood” was a better indication than anything else (including a stopped heart), but failed to specify what would denote such a loss. Is someone brain dead based on measuring the activity in the brain stem or the cortex, for example? Does modern medicine mispronounce people as dead for the sake of convenience? And what do the answers to these questions this say about our system of harvesting organ transplants? Join Patt and guest Dick Teresi, author of the book “The Undead,” to parse the nebulous territory between life and death.

 

Dick Teresi, coauthor of The God Particle and the author of “The Undead”; science journalist; former editor-in-chief, “Science Digest”

 

 

 

 

Producer - Patt Morrison
89.3 KPCC - Southern California Public Radio
213.290.4201 – mobile/SMS
626-583-7121  – office
474 South Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA  91105
jarmstrong@kpcc.org