While the number of illegal crossings at the border has plummeted dramatically — roughly half the number than during peak years — just as many people are dying. Meaning for those coming into the country illegally, it is now more deadly, more lethal, than at any time in recent U.S. immigration history. For years the age [...]
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Echoes of a shooting
On December 14, 1992, exactly 20 years before the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a student went on a sudden rampage at Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Massachusetts. The gunfire killed a beloved student, Galen Gibson, and professor, Ñacuñán Sáez, and wounded four others. PBS Need to Know sat down with survivors of [...]
Need to Know: May 3, 2013: Retraining America
Rick Karr travels to the state of Washington to report on The National STEM Consortium – a program designed to target this type of structural unemployment by improving the scientific, technical and mathematical know-how of American workers.
Need to Know: April 26, 2013: Debating the Second Amendment
With the gun control debate raging after the mass school shooting in Newtown, CT, Need to Know examines the history of the Second Amendment and how it shapes the discussion today. Ray Suarez anchors a panel including: George Mason Law School professor Joyce Lee Malcolm, former New York Times foreign correspondent and editor Craig Whitney, [...]
Need to Know: April 19, 2013: Mississippi Savings
A program designed to help low-income, mostly African-American children save for college – and teach them about banking and money along the way.
Need to Know: April 12, 2013: Main Street: Findlay, Ohio
How many times during the past several years have you heard one commentator or another express the same familiar lament? “We just don’t make anything anymore.” Of course, it’s not true. Not even close. No country exports more than the United States except China. What is true is that millions of manufacturing jobs have been [...]
Need to Know: April 5, 2013: Working bridges
In this program, we visit employers implementing the program, who agree it has dramatically reduced employee turnover and increased productivity.
Need to Know: March 29, 2013: Economic inequality and mobility
We’ve invited three highly-respected economic thinkers from different perspectives, to see if there is some common economic ground, and whether that common ground tells us anything about how we can improve our economic health.
Need to Know: March 22, 2012: Medical devices
Dr. Emily Senay examines whether the Food and Drug Administration’s medical device review process is adequately protecting the public. While the vast majority of these devices are safe and effective, according to the GAO, hundreds are recalled every year. And the impact of an unsafe device can be devastating.
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