Even for people who work in the real estate markets every day it is hard to tell what way the housing market is heading. New-home construction held steady at almost 11 percent in March, according to government data released yesterday. But foreclosures are up, with nearly 804,000 homes getting a notice in just the first three months of this year. That's a 24 percent increase compared to the same time last year. But other analysts are seeing hope and some first time homebuyers are finding themselves in great positions to buy.

To help us parse the numbers we turned to two experts: Behrooz Shahidi, a realtor in New Jersey, and Michael Corkery, housing reporter for The Wall Street Journal.

Getting a little positive reinforcement from the watchful eye of a good teacher can make a big difference in the educational life of a young child, especially for a kid that’s struggling in school. Now a new study published in the journal Science, shows that encouraging young black children to write about their own value systems can make a big and lasting effect on their future success. Oh my, Oprah had it right! But, according to this study, that finding only holds true for minority students, not white students. Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, a co-principle investigator in the two-year study and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Columbia University joins the The Takeaway to talk about her study.

Imagine the ease of riding trains between metropolitan areas in the U.S. Simply buy a ticket, board a train, kick back and read, sleep, listen to your podcasts of The Takeaway. Doesn't that sound better than braving crowded airport drop-offs, hours-long security lines or snarled traffic on the interstate? This vision of the future of travel may become a reality. Yesterday, President Obama expressed his ambition towards building high-speed passenger rail lines in ten regions across the country. To discuss how this will be possible The Takeaway is joined by Matt Dellinger, a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and the New York Times .

Here's a brief look at how one town, Springfield, is planning on upgrading their infrastructure:

Yesterday the White House released four memos detailing the directives for handling terror suspects during the Bush administration. These so-called "torture memos" detail the sleep deprivations, slapping, holding, confinement with insects, and waterboarding that marked the interrogation techniques during the Bush years. John Hockenberry takes a moment to consider how these memos will look to future generations.

"Sugar" is the second feature film from husband and wife team Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. (Their first was 2006's acclaimed Half Nelson, with Ryan Gosling.) It's the story of Miguel "Sugar" Santos, a promising young pitcher from the Dominican Republic who makes it from a training camp there to the minor leagues in the U.S. The film is simultaneously a baseball movie and a look at how extreme inequality affects the life of one young man. Fleck and Boden join The Takeaway to talk about their critically-acclaimed film.

Watch the trailer for "Sugar" below.

Yesterday, the White House released the so-called "torture memos" of the Bush administration. These memos detail the directives for what the Bush administration calls enhanced interrogation techniques. The release marked the most comprehensive public accounting to date of a program that some senior administration officials, and human rights groups, say included illegal torture. In advance of the publication of the memos, President Obama absolved the CIA from prosecution for the harsh tactics used in the interrogation of terror suspects. To explore these memos and their fallout, The Takeaway is joined by Jane Mayer, New Yorker writer and author of The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.

President Obama landed in Mexico City yesterday, pledging his support to help President Calderon and the Mexican government in its fight against the drug cartels that have ravaged the country. The outburst of crime, turf wars and shootouts killed over 6,000 people last year. Though drug violence tops the agenda, Presidents Obama and Calderon will also discuss energy, the economy and immigration. Later today President Obama will continue the conversation when he heads to Trinidad and Tobago for the Summit of the Americas. For a look at how President Obama’s visit to our northern neighbor is defining U.S. foreign policy we are joined by Andres Martinez. He is the Director of the Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program for the New America Foundation.

President Obama arrived in Mexico yesterday just a day after 16 people were killed in a shoot out between suspected traffickers and soldiers near Acapulco. But President Obama didn’t shy away from America’s share of responsibility in violent scenes like that one instead saying, "More than 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our shared border. So we have responsibilities as well. We have to do our part." But who exactly in America holds that responsibility? Gun dealers? ATF agents? Border police? Lawmakers? Two people who deal with those issues every day join The Takeaway to help answer those questions. Jim Pruett is the owner of Pruett’s Guns and Ammo in Houston, Texas and William McMahon, is the Deputy Assistant Director of Field Operations for the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco.

It may not be that easy to find a mall to go hang out and shop anymore. General Growth Properties, one of the biggest mall operators in the country, filed for bankruptcy yesterday. And we are seeing more and more malls die out. In fact as our next guest wrote in The New York Times earlier this month, no new malls have been built in the U.S. since 2006. So what is happening to the mall? And what should happen to the near empty malls now littering the American landscape? To help answer that question, The Takeaway is joined by Ellen Dunham-Jones, Director of the Architecture Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the co-author of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs.

Read the New York Times article, 101 Uses for a Deserted Mall, including a contribution from our guest Ellen Dunham-Jones.

How I Met Your Mother's Robin Sparkles knows how to love a mall:

It’s called simply “Trivia," and its organizers say it's the largest trivia contest in the world. It gets underway at 6 PM tonight in Stevens Point Wisconsin, and runs for 54 hours straight. This year is the fortieth anniversary, and over 400 teams are expected to compete, including one made up of soldiers in Afghanistan. University of Wisconsin junior Scott Clark is promotions director of the contest, and he'll join The Takeaway to explain how it works.

Today we close our series “The Color of Money,” which has been an examination of how the economic downturn is affecting minorities. We’re ending the conversation with a look at what it would take to turn the lives of the poor around. With unemployment rates higher among African Americans and Hispanics, and the median income about $20,000 lower than it is for whites, these ethnic groups run a greater risk of staying poor and bearing the consequences.

Joining us to talk about how the urban poor are experiencing the recession and what it will take to get out of it is Sudhir Venkatesh. As a sociologist he has done in-depth field work, most famously a six-year immersion in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes housing projects, where he experienced, first-hand, exposure to gang dynamics, the black market and the psychological toll that chronic poverty can have on a community. He is the William B. Ransford professor of sociology at Columbia University and author of numerous books, including Gang Leader for a Day and Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor.