President Obama is preparing his Wednesday address on health care reform to a joint session of Congress. Aides say the president is about to adopt a more vigorous role in the debate as lawmakers return from recess. We talk to Takeaway regular Julie Mason of the Washington Examiner and Theda Skocpol, professor of government and sociology at Harvard University and author of "Boomerang: Health Care Reform and the Turn against Government
Dust off your remote control and fire up the TiVo, because the fall television season starts this week. We talk to Kim Potts of tvscreener.com to find out what to watch, what to miss, and why show choir is on the tip of everyone's tongues.
Watch the director's cut of the pilot episode of Glee here or (if you can) wait until Wednesday when it airs on Fox. To watch previews of some of the other anticipated shows, click below:
(click through for an extended clip from NBC comedy Community)
Today we look at sports upsets that dominated games over the weekend. Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, the Takeaway sports contributor joins us to talk about the U.S. Open, where we saw a slew of top seeds get eliminated. Most dramatically, seventeen-year-old Melanie Oudin stunned thousands of spectators as she beat top seed Maria Sharapova. Other casualties included Andy Roddick, Venus Williams, James Blake and women’s number one player, Danira Safina. Tennis wasn't the only sport that saw upsets; in college football, BYU defeated number one Oklahoma.
For this week's agenda, we look ahead to President Obama's upcoming speech to school children across the country, the week on Wall Street after the long holiday weekend, and the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Joining us today is Marcus Mabry, international business editor for The New York Times. And from Bush House in London Jill McGivering, Asia editor for the BBC World Service.
The first of the major bank bailouts happened one year ago today. We listen to what the financial crisis sounded like as it happened — immediately before and immediately after.
As some public schools experience steep budget cuts, they turn to parents for help. Among other things, they're sending letters home, asking for cash to help keep school programs running. To find out what else schools are asking parents to do during a budget crunch, we talk to New York Times Motherlode writer Lisa Belkin, and Jody Becker, a mom and journalist based in Irvine, California who is helping her daughter's school.
President Obama's "green-energy czar," Van Jones, has resigned unexpectedly. To understand the strange road that led to his resignation late Saturday night, we need to look back a couple of weeks, to when Glenn Beck appeared on Fox and Friends and said that President Obama "has a deep-seated hatred of white people." (Click through for Van Jones' previous appearances on The Takeaway.) For a closer look at the resignation and how this effects President Obama's favorability, we talk to Julie Mason. She covers the White House for the Washington Examiner.
As the summer winds to a close, President Obama is facing a number of trials and tribulations that have nothing to do with the health care debate, believe it or not. His poll numbers are slipping, his embattled green-energy czar has resigned, and even his upcoming speech to school children is being called "indoctrination" by conservative groups. Sheri Fowler, spokeswoman for the Rockwall Independent School District in Texas, talks with us about why her school district is making the president's speech "optional viewing."
At the end of last month, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan formally announced his plan to spend $3.5 billion dollars to radically change the nation’s worst-performing schools. As part of our look at back-to-school challenges, we talk to someone who is reimagining American education. Steve Barr is the founder of California-based Green Dot Public Schools, which has developed a reputation for making radical changes in large public schools in Southern California with lightning speed.
Steve Barr and Green Dot Public Schools took over ownership of Locke Senior High School in Los Angeles and changed it radically.
"We made the school safe, we pushed the gangs off the campus who used to own the campus to one block off. We found out, like we have in most neighborhoods that we serve, gang members don't want their kids to be gang members so they want the schools to work."
—Steve Barr, is the founder of California-based Green Dot Public Schools about radically changing Locke Senior High School
Tomorrow, children across the country head back to school. Today, however, we’re joined by three health care professionals to talk about what school communities are doing to combat the spread of the H1N1 virus. Dr. William Schaffner is the chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Vanderbilt School, Lisa Swank is a public health emergency preparedness coordinator from Maryland, and Carol Johnson is the superintendent for Boston Public Schools.
"Stay home for 24 hours after your symptoms have resolved. And for people, particularly with underlying illnesses, once the systems start, immediately call, you don't visit, but call your doctor because your doctor may want to prescribe an ant-viral medication for you, which will shorten the course of the illness."
—Dr. William Schaffner, chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Vanderbilt School,for students who start to feel symptoms
On the very day that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, September 15th 2008, the art market was at the height of its own boom, celebrating Damian Hirst's sale of $200 million worth of art in one day, including "For the Love of God," a diamond-covered platinum skull. In a twist of timing, the art that hung on the walls of Lehman Brothers corporate offices will be going to the auction block in a few weeks. We talk to Lawrence Pollard, the BBC art correspondent who has been investigating what's happened to the Lehman Brothers art collection.
A year ago today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury bailed out mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By the end of the week, financial behemoth Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy and a global economic crisis had taken hold. We start a week of coverage that looks at the repercussions of the financial meltdown and where we're at, a year after it began.
We are joined by a roundtable of leading business journalists including Gillian Tett, capital markets editor for The Financial Times and author of “Fools Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe;” Jon Hilsenrath, chief economics correspondent for The Wall Street journal; and New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera.
Listen to all the segments in this series.
Today's Takeaway: Dharun Ravi, NATO Summit, David McCullough, Chen Guangcheng and Unemployment for Older Americans
Why Texting in Class Might Actually Be a Good Thing
Why Increased Immigration is the Solution for America's Ailing Economy
The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with The BBC World Service, New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.
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