News & Politics
Weekend America on News & Politics
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New Restaurant + Bad Economy = Crazy Idea?
Restaurants have gotten a bit of break lately. Cheaper gas has meant lower food prices, cheaper ingredients. But Moody's Investment Service reported last week that restaurants still have a tough road ahead of them as businesses because it's so hard to refinance debt right now. Still, some ambitious restaurateurs are moving ahead with their dreams. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Cast Iron Cafe has just opened for business.
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Changing the Emergency Room
The New Year brings a new president and the prospect of change to the U.S. health care system. Reformers want more people to have affordable care and health insurance. Massachusetts isn't waiting for the rest of the country on this issue. They're already pursuing universal health care for all residents. It hasn't been fully implemented yet, but ERs there are already changing how they deal with patients with chronic conditions.
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Dilbert's 2009 Forecast
It's a tough economy. Even cartoon characters are losing their jobs. Dilbert, a character who's spent 20 years chronicling the daily frustrations, humiliations, shenanigans and incompetence of the American workplace, will get his pink slip. Fittingly, Wally, his cynical and lazy co-worker, will stay on. John Moe talks with Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams about finding the humor we crave when the economy sinks and life gets absurd. Adam's latest book is Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert.
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A 21st Century Revulsion
19th century Americans lived through plenty of recessions, but they called them "revulsions" back then. New Yorker Magazine writer Adam Gopnik talks with John Moe about our historical amnesia when it comes to capitalism overheating. Gopnik is out with a new book "Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln and Modern Life" that looks at how a president and an evolutionary scientist used clear language to explain the complexities of their own times.
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Advising Obama from Your Living Room
It's less than three weeks until Barack Obama takes the oath of office and becomes president. A big reason why is that during the campaign, his team was astoundingly effective at mobilizing volunteers, getting citizens to be stake-holders in the campaign, running phone banks, ringing doorbells, holding house meetings. Obama won, but that apparatus is still in place and house meetings are still going on.
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Hunger In the New Year
A lot of people are thinking about plans for the upcoming year this weekend. Ann Shotwell knows a lot about planning, though for her, it's more week-to-week. She runs a hot meal program three Wednesday nights a month out of Morningstar Baptist Church on Cleveland's east side. It's a low income neighborhood hit hard by foreclosures. One-hundred and fifty people or more show up for the meal, and Mrs. Shotwell gets most of the food for it by shopping at Cleveland's food bank.
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The Economy at the End of the Year
As 2008 comes to an end, Americans find themselves in the thick of a recession. This was the year that Americans had to come to grips with their spending and debt and boy, it was not a pretty sight. Chris Farrell, American Public Media's chief economic correspondent, is here to sift through the economic news of 2008.
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Walking to Alaska: Is it Really Over?
We've spent over a year on the trail of Erin McKittrick and Bretwood "Hig" Higman. The couple started walking from Seattle to Alaska in June of 2007, and we've been checking in on their progress. Last time we caught up with them, the couple had ended up in Seldovia, Alaska. We invited them onto the show for one last hurrah and to look back at what their trek has taught them.
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2008: A Stunningly Predictable Year
2008 was the year that Weekend America Host John Moe turned 40. It might sound crazy to be surprised by your own birthday, but somehow he was shocked. Then he realized something: If he was stupid to not be thrown by a highly foreseen event, then all of America was stupid. Because in retrospect, the big events of 2008 were completely predictable and yet they blew our minds anyway.
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Honoring Cold War Veterans
This weekend marks the 17th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the official end of the Cold War. Some Americans will be observing this weekend as if it were a holiday. These folks flew the Berlin Air Lift, or played cat and mouse games with Soviet subs, like in a Tom Clancy novel. Independent Producer Eric Molinsky says these retired servicemen are facing a new battle.
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Gated Into Foreclosure
In the massive wave of foreclosures that have hit many parts of the country this year, nowhere has been hit harder than Las Vegas. Things are especially dire in the recently built subdivisions, like the gated community of San Niccolo. Weekend America's Krissy Clark first went behind the gates of this neighborhood last spring, and she's been bringing us stories from behind the gates.
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Christmas in Hamtramck
Sisters Charnita Monday and Helen Hatcher have been inseparable their whole lives. But in the 1970s, they were kicked out of their homes in Hamtramck, Michigan. This spring, after a discrimination suit, Charnita and Helen moved back to Hamtramck into side-by-side houses. Weekend America's Desiree Cooper checked in on them this holiday season to see how they were doing.
