A closure announcement at Rio Vista Elementary in North Hollywood as LAUSD schools close following a threat on Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2015.; Credit: Mary Plummer/KPCC

The two largest school districts in the U.S. received threats this morning and officials in those cities chose to handle it in two very different ways.

Here in Los Angeles, L.A. Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines shut down all LAUSD campuses this morning after what was described as a ‘credible threat.’ Parents were instructed to keep their kids home, and those who had already dropped their children off were required to come back with proper ID to pick them up. Faculty and staff were also told to stay home. The email threat has been traced to Germany, though there is little other information available about the nature of the threat or how its credibility was determined.

Meanwhile, the nation’s largest school district, New York Public Schools, received a similar email threat but it was determined to be a hoax. NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton suggested during a press conference that LAUSD had overreacted in closing all its schools so hastily.

For more on this story and a list of school districts in the greater Los Angeles that remain open, click here.

Guests:

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, KPCC Education Reporter

Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Advisor to the President of the Rand Corporation and one of the nation's leading experts on terrorism and homeland security

Federal Reserve Bank Chair Janet Yellen holds a news conference following a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee.; Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Federal Reserve will convene this Wednesday for their last meeting of 2015 -- and the smart money is on Janet Yellen and company to finally raise interest rates.

A rate hike will end 7 years of historically low interest rates in the country, which  has made borrowing money dirt cheap. At the same time, low rates have also hit savers hard.

What is the economic impact of a rate hike? For Southern Californians, would higher interest rates ease what has been a difficult real estate market?

Guests:

David Wessel, Director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, which provides independent, non-partisan analysis of fiscal and monetary policy issues

Mark Schniepp, Director, California Economic Forecast, an economic consulting firm that forecasts real estate prices in Southern California based out of Santa Barbara; former Senior Economist for the California State Controller's Office

Two children try to light a candle at a memorial for Martha Sanchez, a store clerk who died Tuesday night during a robbery. Many of the parents and children in the area said they knew Sanchez. ; Credit: Erika Aguilar/KPCC

Paris. San Bernardino. LAUSD. With terrorism in the headlines and hitting closer to home, it can be difficult for parents to discuss these events to questioning children.

After the attacks in Paris, articles emerged with advice on how parents can talk to their kids about what happened. With ISIS setting its sights on the West, parents wanted to know how much to tell their children, what they should let them watch and how the conversation should start.

With a “credible threat” to the LAUSD Tuesday, Angeleno kids could feel confused, upset or anxious knowing the danger is much closer than Paris. So how should parents respond?

Guests:

Stephen Brock, Ph.D., leading crisis expert in California for the National Association of School Psychologists

Betsy Brown Braun, child development and parenting expert; best selling author of "Just Tell Me What to Say: Sensible Tips and Scripts for Perplexed Parents" (HarperCollins)

A Google self-driving car is displayed at the Google headquarters on September 25, 2012 in Mountain View, California.; Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

From Google to Ford to Elon Musk, seems like everyone nowadays is working on a version of the self-driving car.

The autonomous vehicle, when it actually becomes a reality, is supposed to relieve traffic jams, takes the stress of the daily commute from the embattled driver, and make the road generally a safer, saner place.

According to Pulitzer Prize-winning auto critic Dan Neil, the self-driving car will also end the need for us to own a car.

Just how? Stay tuned for Larry’s conversation with Dan Neil.

Guest:

Dan Neil, Pulitzer Prize-winning auto columnist at the Wall Street Journal and author of a piece titled, “Could Self-Driving Cars Spell the End of Ownership?”

; Credit: Annie Gilbertson/KPCC

Parents were notified of the LAUSD closures this morning, due to a “credible threat,” not long before school bells were scheduled to ring - leaving hundreds of thousands of families scrambling for childcare.

Some parents were informed of campus closures this morning via cell phone, while others heard of the news on the radio. Zayda Hernandez, like other parents, drove her son to school despite hearing of the closure to ensure that the campus was closed indefinitely.

Children who have already been dropped off at school will be supervised until parents with proper identification return for their children. For parents who are unable to pick up their child, Metro busses and trains will provide free transportation to students with a valid LAUSD identification card until noon.

LAUSD Board president Steve Zimmer asked employers to make accommodations for parents struggling to find care for their kids. Zimmer pleaded, “I want to be very clear: We need cooperation of the whole of Los Angeles today.”

How did the closure impact you? Has the whole of LA come together today?

Have you had to leave work early to return for your student? Has the communication been clear and helpful? Parents with questions or concerns can call the LAUSD hotline at (213) 241-2064 for more information.

Guests:

David Tokofsky, former LAUSD board member

A pregnant woman holds her stomach June 7, 2006. ; Credit: Ian Waldie/Getty Images

A Thousand Oaks surrogate mom is refusing to abort one of three fetuses she is carrying, despite requests from the intended parents.

Brittneyrose Torres, the 26-year-old surrogate, is carrying triplets, the New York Post reports. She was implanted with two fertilized eggs, and one of them split. So she’s been carrying a female fetus and male twins.

Torres said she was asked by the intended parents at week 12 of the pregnancy to abort the female fetus5 out of the safety concerns.

“I told her I couldn't abort one of the children,” Torres told the New York Post. 'I could not emotionally and physically do that at nearly 13 weeks. I believe it will be killing this baby.”

What are the laws governing surrogacy in California? What rights does the surrogate have? What rights do the intended parents have?

Guests:

Judith Daar, Professor at Whittier Law School, Clinical Professor at UCI School of Medicine and current Chair of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Ethics Committee

Andrew Vorzimer, reproductive law attorney at Vorzimer Masserman, a fertility and family law center in Woodland Hills. He is the independent counsel for the intended parents

In this undated image provided by the U.S. Army, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl poses in front of an American flag.; Credit: U.S. Army/Getty Images

The U.S. army announced Monday that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will face a military court on charges of desertion and endangering fellow soldiers.

A court-martial has been ordered, which is in direct opposition to the original recommendation from Bergdahl's preliminary hearing who recommended that Bergdahl be referred to a special court-martial and not face jail time.

Guests:

Rachel VanLandingham, Associate professor of law, Southwestern Law School. She's a military law expert and a 20-year Veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces

Richard Rosen, Director at the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech and former Professor officer in the Judge Advocate General's Corps, U. S. Army

Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump (L) and Jeb Bush argue during the presidential debates.; Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Sin City is the site. The Republicans are the subject.

Let’s talk presidential politics, shall we? The GOP presidential field rounded out the 2015 debate schedule last night and we’ll take a look back today on AirTalk.

Guests:

Ashley O’Connor, managing partner at the Republican campaign strategy firm Strategic Partners & Media; Ashley has worked on several presidential campaigns, including Mitt Romney’s in 2012 and George W. Bush’s in 2004

Erikka Knuti, Democratic political strategist with Purple Strategies, a political consulting firm based in Washington, D.C.

Lori Robertson, managing editor at FactCheck.org

A wax figure of the Star Wars characters Darth Vader (C) and two Stormtroopers are displayed.; Credit: Clemens Bilan/Getty Images

We figured that it was time to ask that age old question of sci-fi fans everywhere: Star Wars or Star Trek?

With the latest movie releasing this week, Star Wars is once again in the pop culture spotlight. Director JJ Abrams has gotten early praise from those who have already seen The Force Awakens.

Of course, JJ Abrams is also known for reestablishing another great franchise with the recent Star Trek movies.  Next year will see the release of a new Star Trek movie along with a new TV show and video game.

Which franchise are you more a fan of? What has that franchise done to pique your interests more than the other? What has that franchise done to pique your interests more than the other?

Guest:

Ronald D. Moore, Writer & Producer of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and "Battlestar Galactica” among many other science fiction credits. He tweets from @RonDMoore

File: William Porter, one of six Baltimore city police officers charged in connection to the death of Freddie Gray earlier in the year, walks to a courthouse for jury selection in his trial on Nov. 30, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland.; Credit: Pool/Getty Images

In the case involving the death of Freddie Gray, the jury has been unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the charges against Baltimore police Officer William Porter.

Larry Mantle discusses the significance on AirTalk.

Guest:

David Alan Sklansky, Professor of Law, Stanford University

Iraqi policemen raise their weapons during a training session at a camp in the Bardarash district.; Credit: SAFIN HAMED/AFP/Getty Images

The word “radical” is in the zeitgeist.

The word has been used to describe the political ideas of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, as well as the religious beliefs of Colorado Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Lewis Dear and the San Bernardino attackers Tashfeen Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook.

In the past, the adjective had also been deployed to describe everyone from political activists to civil rights leaders.

The FBI today uses the word carefully, and sees the use of violence implicit in the process of “radicalization”. While the U.S. Homeland Security Department shies away from the use of the word altogether, preferring the term “violent extremist” and “violent extremism.”

What does “radical” mean? How has the term’s meaning changed over the years? What does becoming “radicalized” mean?

Guests:

Timothy McCarthy, core faculty and program director at the Carr Center for human Rights Policy at the  Harvard Kennedy School. He’s a historian of social movements, whose books include “The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition” (The New Press, 2011). He tweets from @DrTPM

David A. Snow, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine who focuses on collective behavior and social movements

Elon Musk, Chairman, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors, addresses a press conference to declare that the Tesla Motors releases v7.0 System.; Credit: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

This week, a handful of Silicon Valley leaders, including Elon Musk, launched OpenAI - a billion-dollar, non-profit focused on sharing advances in artificial intelligence.

The founders of OpenAI have expressed fears about the technology getting out of control and say this new venture aims to ensure AI does more good than harm.

Wired magazine's Cade Metz's analysis surmises, "In the shorter term, OpenAI can directly benefit Musk and Altman and their companies (Y Combinator backed such unicorns as Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe). After luring top AI researchers from companies like Google and setting them up at OpenAI, the two entrepreneurs can access ideas they couldn’t get their hands on before. And in pooling online data from their respective companies as they’ve promised to, they’ll have the means to realize those ideas. Nowadays, one key to advancing AI is engineering talent, and the other is data."

What are the implications of sharing artificial intelligence technology? 

Guest:

Sam Altman, OpenAI Co-Chair and President, Y Combinator - a Silicon Valley seed-stage

In this photo illustration, the Monopoly iron game piece is displayed on February 6, 2013 in Fairfax, California. ; Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

When adults play games with kids, conventional wisdom would suggest that the outcome of the game is largely in the hands of the adult.

Whether you’re talking physical competition like backyard sports or something more strategy-based like chess, adults often have the advantage of being bigger, stronger, smarter, and more experienced than young kids, simply because of the age and development gaps.

But what about the idea of letting your kids win?

A recent Wall Street Journal article explores this idea through the lens of playing Monopoly. There are differing schools of thought on this. Some might argue that a child who always wins never learns to deal with failure, and no one likes a sore loser.

Life can be tough, and learning to deal with and overcome failure at an early age is important to a child’s development. Young kids can still tell when you’re not giving your all, and might view your lack of effort as having given up on them. But if you always use your full adult ability when competing with your kids, you’ll risk driving your child away from playing with you and them developing a sense of what psychologists call ‘learned helplessness,’ the feeling that you can’t overcome a challenge regardless of the odds.

What’s your policy when it comes to playing games with your kids? Do you let them win or do you play your hardest, no matter what? Is there a middle ground that can be found as a parent, where you’re still trying to compete but also teaching your child values beyond winning?

Guest:

Stephanie Marcy, Ph.D., licensed psychologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles

Airbnb is the target of a lawsuit brought by five tenants who say they were kicked out of their Fairfax District apartments so their landlords could rent the units on the company's website for more money.; Credit: MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images

Home-sharing giant Airbnb is the target of a lawsuit brought by five tenants who say they were kicked out of their Fairfax District apartments so their landlords could rent the units on the company's website for more money.

The lawsuit alleges Airbnb is liable for facilitating the rental of these rent-stabilized units by acting as an intermediary between the landlord and renter.

Read the story here

Complaint of Former Tenants Against Airbnb

Guest: 

Randy Renick, a partner with Hadsell Stormer & Renick LLP, in Pasadena. He is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit

Robert St. Genis, Director of Operations at The Los Angeles Short Term Rental Alliance, which advocates for Angelenos renting out properties

Photograph taken while visiting the Transgender Person Health Program at Kaiser Permanente Southern California. ; Credit: Ted Eytan/Flickr

Kaiser Permanente plans to establish its first medical school in Southern California.

The school’s first cohort is expected to accommodate 48 students in 2019, with curriculum focusing on primary care and research. Further information such as the prospective location has yet to be disclosed.

Bernard J. Tyson, Kaiser’s CEO, is confident that the company has a vision that will better serve the future physicians on 21st century medicine. As the first U.S. insurer to open its own medical school, it will face skepticism and competition.

How do you see this affecting the future of medicine? Will it make it difficult for graduates of other medical schools to secure employment at Kaiser?

Guest:

Dr. John Prescott, chief academic officer for the Association of American Medical College

A customer walks in to a Pizza Hut restaurant during lunchtime on April 19, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. ; Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

It’s 2015 and you can get the cuisine of your choice delivered to your door with a few taps on your smartphone screen. But how much does quality matter to you when compared to convenience?

Pizza Hut is banking on many of their customers to answer that question with “not much.” The Yum! Brands chain has recently taken its focus off the quality of its product and put it on convenience instead. Companies like Uber and Amazon are often praised for their success because they’re easy for customers.

Pizza Hut wants to take a page out of their books. It’s unclear whether this means the quality of Pizza Hut will visibly suffer, but Pizza Hut and Yum! figure that customers will sacrifice meticulous attention to detail if it means getting your pie faster and easier.

What do you think of Pizza Hut’s ‘convenience over quality’ philosophy? Does it hold water when applied to other industries? Can a company survive in 2015 focusing on convenience over quality?

Guest:

Chris Muller, Professor of the Practice in the School of Hospitality Administration at Boston University and an expert on chain restaurant management and branding

President Barack Obama makes a statement on the climate agreement in the Cabinet Room of the White House on December 12, 2015 in Washington, DC. ; Credit: Pool/Getty Images

President Barack Obama will hold his annual year-end press conference at the White House Friday, before taking his holiday vacation to Hawaii.

After the news conference, Obama will make his way to San Bernardino, where he plans to visit the families of 14 victims of the recent mass shooting.

The president is scheduled to return to the White House a few days after New Year's to start his last year in office.

With files from the Associated Press

A still from the second Planned Parenthood video release; Credit: via YouTube

Recordings secretly made by an anti-abortion group at meetings of abortion providers could put providers at risk and fail to show criminal wrongdoing, a federal judge said Friday, citing the recent shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco made the comments during a hearing over the National Abortion Federation's request for a preliminary injunction that would continue to block the release of the recordings.

Orrick did not immediately issue a ruling. He previously issued a temporary restraining order blocking the recordings pending the outcome of the preliminary injunction hearing.

Catherine Short, an attorney for the Center for Medical Progress, said there was no evidence the Colorado shooter was motivated by the group's videos or that doctors have been directly threatened. The release of the recordings is vital to furthering public discussion about topics such as whether the country's abortion laws are too loosely written, she said.

The center says in court documents its work is the equivalent of investigative journalism and protected by the First Amendment.

With files from the Associated Press.

Guests:

David Daleiden, Anti-abortion activist, Center for Medical Progress

David S. Cohen, Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University; Co-author, "Living in the Crosshairs: The Untold Stories of Anti-Abortion Terrorism" (Oxford University Press; 2015)

A customer shops at the newly opened IKEA store.; Credit: STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images

A recent study from the University of Tromso in Norway found that men are better at women when it comes to assembling IKEA furniture.

The study asked 40 men and 40 women, all around the same age, to  put together an IKEA kitchen cart on their own. Some had the instruction manuals, some didn't; iu both scenarios the men outperformed their male counterparts.

The researchers were quick to point out that their study doesn't symbolize a shift in the idea of gendered brains, it does beg some questions: how did this trend occur? Is this indicative that males have been expected to learn how to build things, and thus can build them better? Or does it go even deeper than that on a cognitive level?

Guests:

Jorgen Edvin Westgren, co-author of the study and a psychology student from the Arctic University of Norway

Daphna Joel, lead author of the new study, “Sex beyond the genitalia: The human brain mosaic,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She is a professor of psychological sciences at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel

Filmmaker George Lucas (L) and writer-director J.J. Abrams attend the Premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."; Credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

“The Force Awakens” broke all kinds of box office records this weekend, pulling in $238 million in its opening weekend.

The franchise’s parent company Disney plans to roll out a new Star War iteration every year until 2020, doubling down on the fervor of generations of fans to pack the theaters.

But how would the film's success play out for Disney? The Mouse House's stock price fell Friday after the film's extraordinary debut -- and again today.

Still, some industry insiders are expressing concerns that Disney might be over-relying on the franchise -- and the franchise alone -- to drive the company’s growth.

Guest:

Brooks Barnes, covers media for The New York Times, including the movie studios and movie theater chains; the Walt Disney Company and its many parts. One of his recent articles looks at the outsized role the new Star Wars franchise could play in Disney’s stock prices