It was a rough week for President Obama. He lost the candidates he had nominated for two important jobs in his administration and didn't achieve the bipartisan consensus he wanted on the stimulus bill. Takeaway Correspondent Andrea Bernstein and Todd Zwillich, Reporter for Capitol News Connection, join Adaora and John to take a look back at the second full week of the Obama presidency.

Before every new technology there comes the moment of invention. Before there was ethanol, someone had to look at biomass and say, "There's energy in them thar leaves." For the last day of our Power Trip energy series, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla joins The Takeaway from the TED conference in Long Beach, California. Khosla, whose company risks millions of dollars every year to fund upstart energy technologies, ruminates on creating billion dollar industries out of wild ideas.

Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and philanthropist, addressed the crowd at this year's TED conference with his thoughts on saving the world with a new kind of philanthropy. It's long, but funny. Really.

As a result of the wave of job losses, we are about to hit a milestone in gender roles in that women will soon hold more payroll jobs than men. Catherine Rampell, who writes about economics at the New York Times, is here to talk about what this shift will mean in the lives of American families.

For further information, read Catherine Rampell's article, As Layoffs Surge, Women May Pass Men in Job Force, in today's New York Times.

While most Americans may wonder where in the world is Kyrgyzstan, the U.S. military is very aware of it this week. The United States and NATO have longed use a base in Kyrgyzstan as a vital stopover in the supply route for their operations in Afghanistan. That may be changing though, because Russia offered the country two billion dollars in aid if Kyrgyzstan agreed to close the base. For more, we turn to the BBC's Olexiy Solohubenko.

It’s the weekend! Time to kick back, eat some jellybeans, and get yourself some culture. To help make sure your time is well-spent, we asked Allison Williams, Associate Features Editor of Time Out New York, to create a list of must-see, must-listen items for your weekend to do list. What's on the list this week?

• Lonely Island's new release hits stores featuring Andy Samberg of Saturday Night Live fame perfect for your inner thirteen-year old
• Oliver Stone's President Bush biopic W is released on DVD
• Bruce Springsteen has a new release, Working on a Dream
• The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln airs on PBS

And, of course, opening this weekend is Coraline:

After burning the midnight oil — and possibly some bridges to nowhere—The Takeaway checks back with Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa for an update on last night's Stimulus Bill debate.

Click through for the transcript and click here to listen to Senator Grassley's earlier visit to The Takeaway.

Okay, okay, we heard you. You, our listeners, smartly pointed out that with all the energy efficient appliances in the world (and thousands of pounds of algae) future energy consumption will continue increasing because population is increasing. The Power Trip was shaking it's head — how could we forget to talk about this? Today, we'd like you to meet David Biello, an associate editor at Scientific American online who joins The Takeaway to talk to about population, energy, and why when one goes up, it's still possible for the other to come down. (Come on, you're as surprised as we are.)

Neuroscientist Dr. Gregory Berns has likened America’s financial system to a drug addict. If the drug is money, and if the financial sector is in withdrawal, what would the stimulus package mean for Wall Street? We turn to Dr. Berns for his prognosis. Dr. Berns is the Director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University and the author of Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently.

We’ve been on a Power Trip all week to talk about the future of energy. Today we’re digging down into some of the water-cooler wisdom surrounding energy use. Are cloth diapers really more energy efficient than disposables? Does shutting off the lights really waste more energy than just leaving them on? We’re here to debunk myths—or maybe to confirm them. To help us do that is Matt McDermott, an alternative energy writer for TreeHugger.com and Planet Green.com.

The history of the United States is filled with stories of immigrants, many illegal, who have come to the U.S. in search of work. So when the U.S. economy enters a recession and unemployment rises, do these same workers head home? According to Demetrios Papademetriou, President of the Migration Policy Institute, the answer is no. He has recently published a report that says illegal immigrants are likely to stay put in the current economic crisis. He joins us now to explain his findings.

New unemployment numbers have just been released and they are fairly grim. Employers faced with declining sales eliminated 598,000 jobs in January, the most since the end of 1974. As the unemployment rate jumps to 7.6 percent with no end in sight, we turn to Jim Ellis, assistant managing editor at BusinessWeek to help parse the numbers.

For more information, here is the New York Times report on the numbers, 598,000 Jobs Lost as Jobless Rate Hit 7.6% in January.