As the GOP field narrows itself down we wanted to take a closer look at each candidate's economic plan for the 2012 election. Which candidate is addressing your concerns about the economy, and what initiatives will have a positive impact on the size of your wallet? American Public Media's Marketplace has a good shapshot of each candidate's economic plan. We've put a more comprehensive view of the candidates' positions below.

On Thursday's show, Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich will try to explain the difference between each economic vision. Have a question about who will address your concerns? Tell us what issue you'd like the next president to tackle at 1-877-8-MY-TAKE. 

The rise and fall of Michele Bachmann in Iowa has brought to light an uncomfortable truth about Iowa politics. The state, which holds the first caucus in the nation, has never elected a female to the U.S. Senate, Congress, or the governorship

Czech writer, anti-Communist, and first president of the country Vaclav Havel died this weekend during surgery for respiratory ailments stemming from cancer. The former dissident playwright led Czechoslovakia's "Velvet Revolution" in 1989, leaving him as one of the heroes of Eastern Europe's struggle with Communism. He died at 75. Takeaway producer Kateri Jochum spoke with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright earlier today about Havel's death and legacy.

Virginia Tech freshman Kelsey Starr, of Avon, Conn., has been live tweeting her experience on campus in the wake of a shooting incident Thursday that left a police officer and one other person dead. Starr, who writes for the university's newspaper, the Collegiate Times, told Takeaway producer Mythili Rao that the campus was under strict lockdown. "They don't know exactly where he is and everyone's on lockdown," she said. "Everyone's scared and I'm actually in one of the academic buildings here. I locked myself in a room with 3 other girls." Listen to the interview: 

Economically, Detroit is arguably a city fighting to diversify, reimaging itself everyday as a hub of entrepreneurship. But socially, some say, Motown is stuck in neutral, still weighed down by decades of racial divisions and a reputation as one of the most segregated cities in America.  

"Racism continues to cast a shadow over southeast Michigan, and we are still feeling the impact,” said Thomas Costello. Costello is CEO of The Michigan Roundtable, a human rights group that’s come up with what it considers a bold idea to tackle issues of race in Detroit: an independent truth commission on racial inequality. 

Occupy Wall Street and other Occupy movement protests have made headlines this week — both in New York and elsewhere around the country. Tuesday and Today, protesters clashed with police in disputes over their right to occupy parts of lower Manhattan. We want to know: Has your view of the Occupy movement evolved in light of recent events? How? Answer our poll. 

"Melancholia" is being called perhaps director Lars von Trier's most commercial work, but that doesn't mean it's not a bit of a downer. Focusing on a pair of sisters contemplating the end of the world — a "rogue planet" named Melancholia is on a collision course with earth — von Trier ponders whether one sister's depression actually makes her better-equipped to deal with existential emergency.

Anyone watching the American economy might question what it means to have job security 2011. In Detroit this week, a group of national community organizers will be taking the question to the extreme as they ponder: What does it mean to work? The traditional answer—get a job and keep it—is suddenly beyond the reach of so many Americans, that the very definition of work must be re-imagined; say organizers of the Reimagining Work conference.

Earlier this week we asked our listeners to participate in a flash poll about GOP candidates participating in the 10th presidential debate. With so many Republican debates so far (Wednesday was the 10th), and so may to go (12 more), we wanted to see how listeners might thin the herd. We wanted to know: of the four candidates polling the lowest, who would you "vote off" the next debate? The choices were Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), and Jon Huntsman. Who did you choose? 

America’s shrinking cities might want to take note of a new alternative bubbling up from Detroit’s ongoing battle with blight. In truth, the idea is more old school than new: Why demolish when you could deconstruct and re-purpose the remains of ruin into a job creation tool?

Detroit is besieged with at least 60,000 reasons to consider the question. That is the number of abandoned homes and buildings around the city, depending on who’s counting. In fairness, the question belongs to a number of American cities where demolition has long seemed the only alternative. But the concept of deconstruction is rising to challenge that conventional notion in the city perhaps most synonymous with decay. 

If Michigan legislators have their way, the state could soon be home to some of the most permissive charter school regulations in the nation.

Michigan, and Detroit in particular, is widely seen as one of the epicenters for a number of experimental school reforms. The recently introduced legislation aiming to relax the cap on charter school growth, follows a move, earlier this year, that essentially placed the worst performing schools in the Detroit Public School system into a separate district. The city and the state have been rallying to overcome U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s declaration, last year, that DPS was “arguably the worst urban school district in the country.’’

But in the push to implement sweeping school reform, some veteran educators say Detroit and the state may be missing an opportunity to make student and classroom-centered changes.

As Occupy Wall Street has spread from a rag tag group of protesters to a nationwide movement and media fixation, Takeaway listeners have been sharing with us their photos from the demonstrations. We want the sights and sounds of protest in your own city. Use the Takeaway iPhone app to take a picture, record video, or interview one of the demonstrators. Don't have an iPhone? Send your submissions to MyTake@TheTakeaway.org, or call us at 877-8-MY-TAKE.

Today we spoke with Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Middlesex" and "The Virgin Suicides." His new book is called "The Marriage Plot," and an excerpt from the first chapter is below.

Excerpted from THE MARRIAGE PLOT: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, to be published in October 2011 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey Eugenides. All rights reserved.

Detroit and Berlin both know something about abandoned buildings. After the fall of the wall when the former east opened up, parts of Berlin looked a lot like Detroit today, where scores of buildings stood unclaimed, their purpose unclear. While officials worked on a city’s future, Germans like Dimitri Hegemann, relished in exploring the relics of Berlin’s industrial past. 

"We were very curious...so when I could go in… I was curious like a young boy," he says. "What is this building? Oh, it’s empty? Let’s look inside. And this happened 1,000 times. We just invaded. This was, you must understand, the frame of these days. The atmosphere was burning. It was an amazing situation." 

Americans have a fear of taxes, period. There's a historical precedent for this, detailed in every middle school kid's history book, and as it relates to the history of tyranny, it's an understandable fear.

We often bury this fear in mounds of denial and guilt, sort of like the silly idea that we live in a world without obscenities. You know, Planet Family Values, where the Gods bleep out everything we're not supposed to hear. Bleeps are, of course, a form of emphasis, not suppression.

You don't have to be an urban planner to know that cheap quality space can mean artists, and artists can mean revitalization. With a video slide show, Martina Guzman of WDET tells the stories of artists who have moved or even returned to Detroit and Berlin, not only for the cheap space, but for businesses and manufacturing infrastructure open to their needs. 

Detroit has long been called the birthplace of techno, and helped bring house music to a global stage in the 1980s — the kind of impact that still resonates around the world today, in the form of tens of thousands of auditory permutations. Berlin, which gave rise to "The Berlin School" of electronic music in the 1970s, has been equally influential — and is still a pilgrimage destination for DJs and electronic music aficionados from all over the world. So it's no surprise that DJ Rolando, internationally-known techno DJ from Detroit, is also a favorite in Berlin. 

WDET's Martina Guzman spent six weeks in the German city of Berlin, exploring a long-recognized but underreported connection between that former manufacturing giant and the Motor City. In this post, which you can hear from the radio here, she gives a first-person account of visiting Berlin and talking with several people that recognize the connection between the two cities, especially their diminished but still "sexy" industrial prowess. 

Two cities, both alike in industry: Detroit, U.S.A. and Berlin, Germany. In a recent series for WDET, Martina Guzman explored the similarities and differences between the two iconic hubs of industry that came into their own in the 20th century.