Immigration Reform and Labor
Next week could be the week Congress unveils comprehensive immigration reform legislation. California is home to more than two million immigrants who are here illegally, and a deal on immigration would be huge for California -- affecting workers, service and high tech employers, growers and families with mixed immigration status. Host Scott Shafer sat down with two people representing key interest groups in this issue.
On Immigration, High Tech and Agriculture Don't Meet
For immigrants, there's a world of difference between picking apples and working for Apple. When it comes to immigration reform, Silicon Valley and the Central Valley don't always see eye to eye.
De-Extinction
It's been 4500 years since herds of wooly mammoth roamed the earth, and passenger pigeons have been gone for a century. But if a group of biologists and genetic scientists is successful, they might just make a comeback. We report on a project to bring back extinct animals.
'American Dream Machine' Captures a Human Side of Hollywood
Hollywood has inspired plenty of writers, from Joan Didion to Harold Robbins and Gore Vidal. Author Matthew Specktor didn't have to look far for his inspiration -- he grew up in Hollywood with two parents working in and around the film industry. The California Report's book critic Oscar Villalon says Specktor's new novel, "American Dream Machine," goes beyond Hollywood's underbelly of ambition and greed.
Music and Memory
A new report published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine came to a staggering conclusion: The cost of caring for Americans with dementia will more than double within three decades. Treatment of patients with diseases like Alzheimer's can be frustratingly ineffective, but one approach does show hope: music. We visited an assisted living facility in Southern California where iPods loaded with customized playlists are used to reach patients with lost memories.