First Lady Michelle Obama visited Fort Bragg in North Carolina yesterday and asked people to embrace the military families in their communities. With an expected surge in U.S. forces to Afghanistan later this year—approximately 17,000 new troops will be deployed there—her message comes at an important time.

In the op-ed piece, How to Leave Afghanistan from the New York Times, Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. says the U.S. should pull out of Afghanistan altogether.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said today that he's worried about the safety of the the U.S. Treasury Department's large holdings and other debt. He noted nearly half of China's $2 trillion in currency reserves are invested in U.S. treasuries making China the largest creditor to the U.S. Joining The Takeaway to discuss the prime minister's remarks is BBC correspondent James Reynolds in Beijing.

Each year, 10 billion animals are raised for consumption in the U.S. and most spend their lives on industrialized farms that aren't federally mandated to treat animals humanely. An activist and investigator that goes by the name of "Pete" went undercover at factory farms to document abuses towards animals. A vegan, Pete worked undercover at a farm in Ohio and took footage of how farm animals are treated for the new HBO documentary, “Death on a Factory Farm." He joins The Takeaway to talk about his experience.

Watch a clip of "Death on a Factory Farm" below.

Listeners from Oklahoma, New Jersey and as far away as Cuba call in to talk about what the American dream means to them.

Laid-off workers across the country are building business plans instead of sending out resumes. Economists say that when the economy takes a dive, it's common for people to turn to their inner entrepreneur to start their own businesses.

Alex Andon in San Francisco and Lucy Aponte in the Bronx join The Takeaway to talk about their bright ideas. Also weighing in on the conversation is Stephen Key, co-founder of InventRight , a company dedicated to educating investors about how to pursue their ideas. He offers advice to these budding entrepreneurs.

Jennifer Baszile grew up black in the affluent, predominantly white suburb of Palos Verdes Estates, California in the 1970s and 1980s. She was part of the first generation of Americans born after official segregation came to an end. The experience of growing up African-American in that context hasn't been chronicled much, and now Baszile has written a book, "The Black Girl Next Door," to fill the gap. She shares her story with John and Farai.

It's no doubt that part of the economic crisis is rooted in fear. People are holding back on spending even if their financial situation hasn't changed because of their anxiety about the future. Two companies are trying to address that fear as a way to increase sales. JetBlue and Hyundai are both offering refunds to people who lose their jobs.

John Krafcik, CEO of Hyundai North America Motors, and Dave Barger, CEO of JetBlue Airlines, join The Takeaway to explain their companies' refund programs for the involuntarily jobless.

Three astronauts on board the International Space Station had a bit of a scare when space debris whizzed by the space station at 21,000 miles per hour. The crew took refuge in the Soyuz capsule, an attached Russian spacecraft. This incident happened a month after two satellites collided in space.

To talk about the space junk orbiting the earth is Ben Baseley-Walker, a legal and policy consultant at the Secure World Foundation.

Former Secretary of Defense, William S. Cohen and his wife Janet Langhart wrote the book “Love in Black and White: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Romance,” published in 2007, about their marriage and life together as an interracial couple living in the United States. They met in 1974 and married on Valentine's Day, 1996. They are hosting the 2nd annual Race and Reconciliation in America conference in Washington D.C. Both join The Takeaway to talk about race in America.

Watch William S. Cohen and Janet Langhart discuss their book and their marriage in the video below.

In Post-World War II America, when the American Dream was in full bloom, African-Americans were systematically written out of the narrative. Key programs of FDR’s New Deal consciously excluded African-Americans and reinforced patterns of racial segregation. Today as we see the dream dwindling, a new Pew study reports that African-Americans are the most optimistic group about their economic future. An upbeat vision that persists even though unemployment among African-Americans is at 13.4 percent; a rate that surpasses the nationwide average.

Joining The Takeaway to sort through the trajectory of the African-American experience in pursuit of the American dream is Ta- Nehisi Coates. Coates is a contributing editor and blogger for The Atlantic, he’s also the author of “The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood”.