First Take: Toyota Hearings, Doctor/Lawmakers on Health Care, Expiration Dates Don't Matter?

Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - 11:35 AM

Toyota logo

UPDATED 4:45 p.m. A quick update from Alex Goldmark, producing this evening, with some ideas we're considering.

We're still looking to find out how cities like Miami and New York can help Haitian schoolchildren with distance learning. American educators have just come back from Haiti; they're trying to assess how technology and willpower might meet the needs of kids who are still showing up each day in front of crumbled school houses, hoping for a plan to get their schooling back on track.  It's not certain this will be on tomorrow, but we all think it's an intriguing story.

The FCC is looking at broadband access in rural America. We're reaching out to mayors and business folks in states where many, many people still don't have reliable access to broadband internet. (Compare this to highly connected Finland, which recently declared broadband access something that every one of its citizen has a legal right to.) We want to know the economic and social change that might come with the new FCC plan. Maybe it's better without internet in some ways. What do we know here in wired NYC?  Another story that might come together for tomorrow, or might hit later on.

http://www.switched.com/2010/02/23/fcc-report-31-percent-of-americans-with-broadband-access-wont/

 

POSTED 12:45 p.m. Anna Sale here on the day shift.

Tomorrow, expect to hear sound and analysis from the Toyota hearings on Capitol Hill. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Toyota USA President Jim Lentz testify today. CEO Akio Toyoda will be there tomorrow. We'll hear testimony from the hearing room and from protesting Toyota dealers who've come to town to defend their brand. We'll also hear from Bill Emmett, former editor of The Economist and Japan expert, on how Toyoda reached the helm of his company.

As the health care debate resumes in Washington, we'll hear again from physicians who happen to be lawmakersRep. Michael Burgess (R-Tex.) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) join us to talk what concrete measures they are watching for that would improve care and bring down costs. A roundtable of people far away from Washington, D.C. will be listening in and will let us know whether they heard anything new, or are still looking for answers about how their lives might be affected by this months-long debate.

Finally, in our weekly conversation about food, we may have you rethinking your relationship to that five-year-old jar of mayonaisse in your fridge. Slate's Nadia Arumugam joins us to talk about her reporting that found we may be overreacting to expiration dates on our food. Really? I'm skeptical because I've harvested some impressive cultures from milk jugs in my day. We'll also have a food science professor on hand to give us all the facts about gray meat and some really large-curd cottage cheese.

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