Last night in front of a rare joint session of Congress, President Obama addressed the issue that has been on everyone's minds: health care reform. His speech was to-the-point, tackling issues such as insurance reforms, pre-existing conditions, malpractice insurance reform, and calling to task members of Congress for their failure to move more quickly. The president seemed to endorse much of the latest draft of a health care reform bill, one being circulated by Sen. Max Baucus, but hinted that he may be willing to pass the bill without bi-partisan support. For more we talk to our Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich as well as David Herszenhorn, the congressional correspondent for the New York Times, who was live blogging the speech.

In case you missed the presidential address, here it is in its entirety:

Americans paid off $21.6 billion in credit card debt and other consumer loans in July. That is the biggest decline in consumer debt since 1943, when the Federal Reserve started keeping track. The Takeaway's business contributor, Louise Story, a finance reporter for the New York Times, says the economy will fundamentally change if Americans take on a new attitude about spending money they don’t have.

Our Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, finds himself far outside the Beltway today. He is in Detroit after attending a townhall held last night on health care reform. While the crowd was mostly Democrats and supported President Obama, they had a lot of tough questions about health care reform.

President Obama’s push to reform the nation's health care system is not a new fight. It has been a battle fought by just about every occupant of the Oval Office for the past 75 years. From Roosevelt to Eisenhower to LBJ and Nixon to both Clintons, universal health coverage has been a long-fought campaign. We speak to James Morone, political science professor at Brown University and co-author of The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office, about waging war in Washington.

D. FENCE! D. FENCE! It's that time of year again. Pull out your hoodies and foam fingers; your beer cozies and the ability to clap in sync. It's the first day of the season for the NFL and everyone is talking quarterbacks: Tom Brady, Brett Favre, and...Michael Vick. The best competitors at the U.S. Open continue towards the final rounds, but American teenager tennis phenom Melanie Oudin lost last night. Here to tell us what to watch out for out on the field is The Takeaway's sports contributor Ibrahim Abdul-Matin. And he's even got some gossip for those of you that don't take a liking to men in helmets and shiny pants. (Gasp!)

Yesterday friends and family gathered in New York City to say farewell to one of the nation's most beloved figures: Walter Cronkite. The TV anchor and star journalist was memorialized by an all-star cast of friends including Jimmy Buffett, who sang a song for his sailing buddy; former President Bill Clinton, who remembered a friendly gesture during a difficult time; and President Barack Obama, who stopped by before addressing a joint session of Congress. The Takeaway's guest host Lynn Sherr remembers her old friend and neighbor.

Below is President Bill Clinton's speech from the memorial service. Click through to see the eulogies from President Obama, Bob Schieffer, and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart.

Call it Big Brother or call it being a conscientious employer, but there's a new kind of software that monitors your use of email and online messaging: how many messages you send, how often, and when. It's called Cataphora and it also looks at instant messaging, word processors, and keycard use, to find out how useful an employee you are. We talk with Cataphora's CEO, Elizabeth Charnock, along with Takeaway contributor Beth Kobliner, author of Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance In Your Twenties and Thirties.

Last night President Obama used his bully pulpit to make a very specific pitch for health care reform before a joint session of Congress... and, incidentally, the watching American public. The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, gives us the highlights. Before the speech, we spoke to some of our listeners who were unconvinced by the current state of the health care reform debate and the plans for reform promoted by Congress. Today, we check back in with Faith Dow of California, Brad Bynum in Oklahoma, and Troy Erickson from North Dakota, to see if the president won their support.

WDET hosted a town hall meeting in Detroit yesterday to discuss (what else?) health care reform. Craig Fahle, host of WDET's Detroit Today, moderated the meeting; he joins us with a recap of a refreshingly civil and informative discussion.

Yesterday, at an otherwise Apple-standard products announcement, the master of ceremonies was someone who has been out of the spotlight for months: Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs had been away from his position as the company's leader on sick leave, for what turned out to be a liver transplant. In an unusually revealing speech at Wednesday's show, Jobs spoke about his illness. We speak to Wired senior editor, Steven Levy, who was at the event.

It's not definitively known whether cell phone radiation has a detrimental effect on health. While scientists try and figure it out, non-profit watchdog Environmental Working Group just released an analysis of 1,000 different cell phone models and their radiation levels. We talk with Richard Wiles, the group's spokesperson; and Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News, an online publication that covers radiation issues.

If you're in the market for a new phone and concerned about radiation – though we should point out there's no firm evidence yet saying whether you should or should not be – you may want to consider Samsung, which has the phones that head the Top 10 list for lowest radiation. For more information, read the Environmental Working Group's rankings.

Amidst rising casualties, there are new questions about the commitment of NATO allies in Afghanistan. The BBC's Jonathon Marcus speaks to us about British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's offer to host a major international conference on Afghanistan, seeking to shift security responsibilities from foreign forces to Afghans. We also ask Robert Hunter, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and now a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation, whether Britain, Germany, and France are looking for an exit strategy.

Knock it off, Don Juan. In Spain, the health minister has asked citizens to put a stop to the traditional greeting of kisses on both cheeks, to help prevent the spread of H1N1, or "swine flu." Some schools in the U.S. are asking students to refrain from high fives and officials from France to Lebanon and Kuwait have encouraged people to limit contact. Do we really need to swap fist bumps instead of kisses to protect ourselves from the flu? Sewell Chan, from our partner the New York Times, joins us to discuss the risks in greetings.

All week we are reviewing the year that was — the year that marked the beginning of the financial meltdown and the recession that we continue to live through. Today we’re taking stock of how the nation’s banks are managing, one year after the government spent billions of taxpayers' dollars to bail them out. For a look at what regulations need to be in place to avoid future financial disasters, we talk with Eliot Spitzer. He was New York's attorney general before being elected governor; he first made a name for himself for keeping an eagle eye on the banking industry. We are also joined by Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University and author of the new book, Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World. (click through for the interview transcript.)

There was a moment during the president's address to Congress last night when all eyes were not on President Obama. As the president called "untrue" the canard that health care reform would provide coverage to undocumented immigrants, Representative Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) broke a decades-long tradition of comity and heckled the president, shouting "You lie!" The room booed his poor manners. To find out who Joe Wilson is, we talk to Mark Quinn, host of South Carolina ETV and Radio’s Public Affairs Program, The Big Picture. And for a look at the history of congressional comity we speak with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Watch Wilson's outburst in this clip from last night's address: