Kateri A. Jochum

The next time your children get filthy playing in the riverbed or taking apart the remote control, stop before you scold. Scientists say that this kind of play is actually like hands-...

Everyone had a favorite teacher growing up, but did you ever wonder how that person got you excited about learning? According to new neurological research, it might be because that te...

The media put a new face to the Trayvon Martin case last week: Mark O'Mara, the red-haired lawyer representing George Zimmerman, the man charged with murdering Martin in February. O'M...

Former Senator John Edwards was once one of the country’s most promising politicians: a vice presidential nominee and presidential hopeful. But for the next six weeks, he will be a pr...

Some call it the Emerald Empire, others Rain City, but Takeaway listeners at KUOW Seattle call it home. Host John Hockenberry has been visiting Seattle this week, and had the opportun...

For 40 years, students have been tossing the Frisbee back and forth on college campuses in impromptu games of "Ultimate" — a non-contact football-like game where a disc substitutes for a ball. Over the years, the game has gone from pastime to a full-on organized sport with teams competing across the country. Now, ultimate is turning professional — with the establishment of the new American Ultimate Disc League. Raymie Younkin, general manager and head coach of Kentucky's "Bluegrass Revolution", one of the eight new pro teams, joins us to explain why he believes the new league could become this generation's NBA.

Since the violence in Syria began, the country's First Lady Asma al-Assad, known for having a cherished place in her husband's inner circle, has been silent about the uprising. A new graphic video released this week by two UN ambassador's wives addresses the woman called "the real dictator" of her family directly, calling on Asma as a woman, a mother, and wife to the most powerful man in the country to "forget the image — and end the violence." Huberta von Voss-Wittig is the wife of the German ambassador to the United Nations, Peter Wittig. She explains why she thinks this video could make a difference.

For today's sports fans, it’s hard to imagine professional teams segregated by color. That changed 65 years ago when Jack Roosevelt Robinson, the son of Georgia sharecroppers, joined ...

"Do you Yahoo?" was the web giant's catchphrase, but not enough people are answering in the affirmative these days. Yahoo has announced that it is laying off 2,000 employees in the ho...

Yesterday on the show, ProPublica reporter Kim Barker said that going through Ron Paul's expenses was "like poetry." "I really just saw it like a way to track what it's like to campai...

Mohammed Merah, a French national of Algerian descent and former member of Al Qaeda, was allegedly behind two separate attacks in France this week. Benjamin Abtan, head of the Europea...

How much would you pay for a 2005 Chrysler? Well, an anonymous seller on eBay is asking for a million dollars, but it's no ordinary car. The Chrysler once belonged to none other than President Barack Obama, who used it when on trips home to Chicago when he was just a Senator from Illinois. So is a President's former sedan really worth one million dollars?

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.

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction was part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which Congress passed last week. The bipartisan committee is made up of six Senators and six Representatives, with an equal number of Republicans and Democrats represented. These are the same Democrats and Republicans who spent weeks and months in a deadlock over the national debt. The committee must produce debt-reducing legislation by November 23 — what is the likelihood that they will be successful?

This week, The Spine Journal, a scientific peer-reviewed journal of the North American Spine Society, came out with a special issue that critically compared clinical reports of products used to foster bone growth, in a case of a major conflict of interest with potentially devastating results. Doctors had been writing positive peer-reviewed research reviews about a product called Infuse, by a medical device company called Medtronic, but failed to mention that their own research showed the product had proven complications, including higher cancer rates and male infertility. The same doctors were also collecting royalties and fees totaling at least $62 million from Medtronic.

President Obama spoke to the press on Wednesday in his first press conference in three months. He said that Democrats were willing to make compromises on spending, and pushed Republicans to "take on their sacred cows" and agree to tax increases for higher income earners and corporations. But the real sacred cow might be in his veiled threat to ask Congress to stay in session through their August summer holidays, if need be.

11,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where a wildfire has burned more than 110 square miles of land since Sunday. On Wednesday, crews began to burn a blaze to act as a barrier. The new fires are meant to protect the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where 10,000 drums—each containing 55 gallons of radioactive waste—are stored above ground.

 

 

A mixture of cheers and jeers followed seven-term New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner's announcement Thursday that he would be resigning from public office. Weiner apologized to his constituents and to his wife for the sexting scandal, in which he admitted to sending lewd messages and photos to at least six women. Weiner was one of the more outspokenly liberal members of the House – and his 9th District that has been a Democratic stronghold for decades. Will his successor's replacement change the political spectrum or become a referendum on President Obama's politics, as a litmus test for 2012?

There are around 70 million people born between 1946 and 1964 — known widely as Baby Boomers. Around 65 million of those people are in the workforce today and of those, 28.7 million are over the age of 55. What if those positions were suddenly freed up? How many jobs would that mean for the nearly 11.5 million people under the age of 55 currently unemployed? What economic benefits are there for companies, who would get cheaper insurance premiums with a younger staff? And what kind of stress would this put on Medicare and Social Security?

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) held a second hearing Wednesday on the radicalization of Muslims in America — this time focusing on those incarcerated in U.S. prisons. Witnesses included law enforcement and counter-terrorism officials, like Michael Downing, Commanding officer of Counter-Terrorism at the Los Angeles Police Department. "Instead of providing a balanced, peaceful, contemporary perspective of one of the great and peaceful religions of the world, we are left with a hijacked, cut and paste version known to the counter-terrorism practitioners as 'prislam,'" Downing said at the hearing.