Mayors on Stimulus Money
With the nation’s jobless rate hitting 9.4%, President Obama is promising to speed up the delivery of stimulus money. We speak with two mayors: David Bieter of Boise, Idaho, has received more than $60 million in stimulus money for his city; Jim Burch, mayor of Cape Coral, Florida, has not been as fortunate. His city has received comparatively little economic stimulus money, even though foreclosure and unemployment rates have soared in his region.
US Journalists in North Korea Sentenced to 12 years
A South Korean man watches a TV broadcasting news about two American journalists detained in North Korea at the Seoul Railway Station, in South Korea, Monday, June 8, 2009. (AP)
North Korea has convicted two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor as the Obama administration considers stopping and inspecting North Korean ships after the country’s latest round of nuclear weapon and missile tests. We’ll look at the diplomatic challenges with our guest, David Sanger, New York Times chief Washington correspondent and author of “The Inheritance:The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power.”
Is Toyota Moving to Town?
GM and Chrysler are planning to close down what the companies say are too many dealerships. We speak with Pete Lopez, who owns two dealerships in the small town of Spencer, West Virginia. His Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge franchise will end tomorrow, and his Chevrolet franchise is due to be terminated next year. He says another dealer has told him that Toyota is eyeing rural America for more franchises.
The Future of Aircraft Tracking
With bodies and debris from Air France 447 found in the Atlantic, the search for plane’s black box, now likely at the bottom of the ocean, continues. Finding the black box is crucial to the investigation into what happened to the plane which disappeared off the coast of Brazil on May 31st with 228 people onboard. We talk with John Hansman, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about the present and future technology of flight data recorders and aircraft tracking systems.
Jack Kerouac, Fantasy Sportsman
It’s a little known side of the Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac. For most of his life, he played an elaborate fantasy baseball game. He also invented a fantasy horseracing game that he played when he was younger. He documented both in very detailed articles he wrote out in notebooks. There’s a new book about this called, “Kerouac At Bat: Fantasy Sports And The King Of The Beats.” We speak to the author, Isaac Gewirtz, curator of the New York Public Library’s Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature.
Music from the show
- Steve Earle, “America v6.0″Peter Dixon, “Nagog Woods”
- Jimi Hendrix, “Machine Gun”
- The Wee Trio, “Flint”
- Paul Simon, “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”
- Moby, “Inside”
- Steve Earle, “Transcendental Blues”
