The Uncertain Hour

American Public Media

The Uncertain Hour is an immersive docu-pod that reveals the origin stories of our economy in unexpected and provocative ways. Host Krissy Clark dives deep into one topic each season, unpacking what we see as normal to show it didn't just happen. Brought to you by Marketplace's Wealth & Poverty Desk, the first season explores the uncertainties of Welfare as we don't know it. Season one episodes are biweekly beginning April 28.

The Uncertain Hour is an immersive docu-pod that reveals the origin stories of our economy in unexpected and provocative ways. Host Krissy Clark dives deep into one topic each season, unpacking what we see as normal to show it didn't just happen. Brought to you by Marketplace's Wealth & Poverty Desk, the first season explores the uncertainties of Welfare as we don't know it. Season one episodes are biweekly beginning April 28.

More Information

Location:

United States

Genres:

Public Radio

Business & Economics Podcasts

Economics

Documentary

Media & Entertainment Podcasts

Networks:

American Public Media

Description:

Twitter:

@mpwealthpoverty

Language:

English

Contact:

(213) 621-3500

Website:

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/uncertain-hour

Email:

Letters@marketplace.org

Episodes

S2-08: “Mosquitoes in a nudist colony”

3/7/2018

President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress rolled back gun regulation last year that would have restricted some people with mental disabilities from buying guns. Now, this story isn’t about gun control, but the law they used to erase that rule and 14 others last year. It’s a tale that goes back decades, and it starts in Kenya in the 1960s. Along the way, we’ll meet a man in a white suit and an army of used car dealers. This story is also the last episode of our second season, all...

Duration:01:19:08

S02-7: Law and Odor: a crime story about orchids, pig smell, refineries, and you

1/25/2018

There are lots of different ways to commit a crime. Some of them are obscure — it’s a crime to sell Swiss cheese without holes, for example. Some deal with serious safety and environmental issues — it’s a crime for a refinery to release more than a certain amount of the carcinogen Benzene. There are people who argue there are just too many federal regulations with criminal consequences, that with thousands of potential criminal acts on the books, how can you know if you’re doing something...

Duration:01:08:56

S02-6: Who's regulating whom?

1/4/2018

The U.S. Constitution doesn't mention corporations once. But if you want to talk about federal regulations, you have to talk about private enterprise, too. They're yin and yang, intertwined over centuries, locked in an eternal struggle. This week, we're tracing that history back to the 13 colonies, when corporations helped to create the basic framework of our democracy. And we hear how railroad companies, the country's first big homegrown corporations, regulated the people before the...

Duration:00:45:34

S02-5: Your regulations questions, answered

12/21/2017

We’re working on the next batch of episodes for season two, but this week we're taking a quick break over the holidays to bring you a sort of reporter’s notebook, a glimpse behind the scenes. First we’re going to answer some of your questions about the stories we’ve brought you so far in this season. Then, because regulations have been in the news so much, we’re also wanted to give you some helpful context for what you’ve been hearing. Subscribe to The Uncertain Hour podcast.

S02-4: The sentence that helped set off the opioid crisis

12/13/2017

When OxyContin went to market in 1996, sales reps from Purdue Pharma hit one point particularly hard: Compared to other prescription opioids, this new painkiller was believed to be less likely to be addictive or abused. But recently unsealed documents in this investigative episode shed light on how the maker of OxyContin seems to have relied more on focus groups than on scientific studies to create an aggressive and misleading marketing campaign that helped fuel the national opioid crisis....

Duration:01:05:18

S02-3: The peanut butter verdict

11/22/2017

For the past two episodes, we've been telling you the birth story of a single regulation, one of the most pivotal, misunderstood regulations in American history: The number of peanuts that should be in peanut butter. Today, that story comes to an end. We're picking up the action in 1965. It's been more than six years since the Food and Drug Administration discovered a bunch of big peanut butter brands were using fewer peanuts and more artificial additives. Those heavyweights went back and...

Duration:00:38:55

S02-2: The Peanut Butter Wars

11/10/2017

It's 1959 and Ruth Desmond, the gurney-climbing, cook-from-scratch co-founder of the Federation of Homemakers was prowling the halls of the FDA, about to earn her "peanut butter grandma" namesake. She stumbled upon this unassuming, but ultimately history-changing memo. It was four little paragraphs, a proposal to regulate one of the most popular foods in the country. The government was trying to answer an existential question: how many additives can you put into a jar of peanut butter...

Duration:00:38:02

Meet Ruth Desmond, a concerned citizen who changed the face of food regulation

10/27/2017

Reining in federal regulation has been on lawmakers minds for decades. President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are just the latest to promise economic growth through deregulation. But how did we become a regulatory state in the first place? On this season of "The Uncertain Hour," we traced it back to Ruth Desmond, a D.C.-area homemaker turned powerful consumer activist. By the 1970s she was the so-called Peanut Butter Grandma, the Terror of Washington who "spit in the corporate...

Duration:00:09:04

S02-1: The Peanut Butter Grandma goes to Washington

10/25/2017

Donald Trump, the business man president, isn't the first politician to rail on government regulations. In 1979 Jimmy Carter, the Democrat peanut farmer president, told a crowd: "It should not have taken 12 years and a hearing record of over 100,000 pages for the FDA to decide what percentage of peanuts there ought to be in peanut butter." That really happened. It's one of the most ridiculed, infuriating and misunderstood moments in American history, and it all started with one Virginia...

Duration:00:33:25

S01-7: The Album, “Work Makes the Difference”

8/17/2016

One county welfare office made a whole album of motivational work songs. Listen to the whole thing.

Duration:00:11:53

S01-6: The road not taken

7/7/2016

20 years ago, welfare reformers chose to emphasize work over education

Duration:00:43:05

S01-5: “Pregnant? We can help.”

6/23/2016

In some states, crisis pregnancy centers get federal welfare dollars.

Duration:00:22:07

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