Comic-Con starts today in San Diego. For 'Super Size Me' director Morgan Spurlock, it's a chance to revel in fanboy heaven, and promote his new movie, coming this fall. The subject: the superfans of Comic-Con. He profiles 9 individuals and the lengths they travel to get to the annual entertainment mega convention. Spurlock joined Madeleine by phone from New York ahead of his own journey to San Diego.
There's news this morning that the three-week-old hunger strike in California prisons may be over. Strike leaders have reportedly called off the action and accepted food trays after four weeks protesting treatment in isolation units. At Pelican Bay State Prison more than a thousand inmates are being held in small, soundproof cells for 22-and-a-half hours a day. Corrections offiials say they're sent there for refusing to renounce their gang membership. KQED and California Watch reporter Michael Montgomery joins Madeleine with the latest.
Following four weeks of hunger strikes from inmates at Pelican Bay and three other California detention facilities, the state has not put into practice recommended reforms for its isolation units. Former New York City Corrections Commissioner Martin Horn teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He joins Madeleine to discuss how California's isolation units are the most punitive in the country -- and why the reasons prisoners get sent there are different from other states.
John Moe, host of the Marketplace Tech Report, joins us to talk about Google's announcement that it will shut down Google Labs. The experimental wing of the company created products like Google Maps and the Google News. Moe will also talk about Amazon's efforts to compete with Netfilx and the TSA's plan to phase out the naked X-ray scans at airports.
Post-war Korea is the setting for a new novel called "This Burns My Heart," about a young woman whose decision to marry a man she doesn't really love changes her life forever. It's also about the role of women in a rapidly modernizing country. Author Samuel Park joins Madeleine in studio to discuss his real-life inspirations for writing the book.
Randy and Jason Sklar, host of the Sklarbro Country podcast, join Madeleine to discuss what's weird and wonderful in sports: the NFL lockout may soon be over, Tiger Woods fires his long-time caddy and Yao Ming, the tallest player in the NBA steps down.
