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The Uncertain Hour

Marketplace

Each season, we explain the weird, complicated and often unequal American economy — and why some people get ahead and some get left behind. Host Krissy Clark dives into obscure policies and forgotten histories to explain why America is like it is.

The latest season examines the “welfare-to-work industrial complex” and the multi-million dollar companies running today’s for-profit welfare centers.

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Top 10 The Uncertain Hour Episodes

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Chapter 1: The dream

The Uncertain Hour

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03/22/23 • 44 min

When a struggling mother of two in Milwaukee hits hard times, she turns to a local welfare office for help — a welfare office outsourced to a private, for-profit company. Inside, staff preach the power of work, place people into unpaid “work experience” and enforce work requirements for welfare recipients, all in the name of teaching self-sufficiency.

But who’s set to benefit most? That struggling mother or the for-profit company she turned to?

Host Krissy Clark takes listeners into the world of for-profit welfare companies to examine America’s welfare-to-work system, work requirements and the multimillion-dollar industry that’s grown up around it.

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03/22/23 • 44 min

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Chapter 3: Race and rumor

The Uncertain Hour

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04/05/23 • 36 min

In the 1950s, a rumor that people were moving to Newburgh, NY to live off welfare riled up the city. When city leaders essentially declare war on welfare — and the people who get it — things tumble out of control.

Plus, how national suspicions grew about people getting welfare right as more black people started gaining more access to welfare benefits.

Host Krissy Clark and producer Peter Balonon-Rosen go back in history to tell a surprising origin story of part of our welfare system — and take a magnifying glass to how our country determines who deserves help and who doesn’t.

Give today to help cover the costs of this rigorous reporting. Every donation makes a difference!

https://support.marketplace.org/uncertain-sn

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04/05/23 • 36 min

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04/12/23 • 35 min

In 1961, city officials in Newburgh, New York, declared war on their poorest residents by proclaiming, without evidence, that the city was overrun by welfare cheats. It was a moment in history when the belief that certain people need to be forced to work gained influence in our country’s system to help poor people.

Officials led by City Manager Joseph Mitchell launched a campaign of harsh crackdowns on welfare recipients that included surprise police interrogations, rigid eligibility restrictions and forcing able-bodied men to work to receive a welfare check. But were these new rules designed to reduce welfare fraud or to target members of the city’s Black community?

After a national controversy erupted over Newburgh’s welfare rules, the city found itself at the center of a fight over welfare policy that’s still playing out today.

Producer Peter Balonon-Rosen takes us back to Newburgh to tell the story of its war on welfare and how race became central in a battle over welfare policy.

Give today to help cover the costs of this rigorous reporting. Every donation makes a difference!

https://support.marketplace.org/uncertain-sn

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04/12/23 • 35 min

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The COVID-19 pandemic arrived at a moment when the gap between rich and poor in this country had hit a record high. One place that inequality is most visible is in the neighborhoods where we live. Generations of discriminatory housing policy, and lending practices that favored white borrowers, have entrenched segregation in American cities. This week, we’ll examine the housing policies that emerged from past economic crises, policies that excluded black people and other people of color, preventing them from building the wealth that middle class white families built.

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06/03/20 • 33 min

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Chicken is America’s most popular meat. But chicken supply chains — in fact, many of our food supply chains — are in danger of breaking down. Part of the reason is the workers who process and package those goods are getting sick. In some cases, they’re dying.

For the first episode of our new season, “A History of Now,” we focused on America’s chicken supply chain because it raises a huge, looming question: How is it that essential workers don’t have essential protections? How do we get through a crisis — any crisis — if we can’t be sure our food-producing workforce is safe?

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05/13/20 • 29 min

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05/06/20 • 3 min

There’s not much more uncertain than our current moment. Our day-to-day lives and our economy have been upended by the coronavirus pandemic. On this season, “A History of Now,” we’re digging into the history and policies that help make sense of this current moment, a time where issues of wealth and poverty feel even more stark than usual. New episodes start May 13.

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05/06/20 • 3 min

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05/20/20 • 29 min

As long as there’s been such a thing as quarantine, each person’s experience under it has depended largely on their economic status. On this week’s show, we take a tour of quarantines through history, from the bubonic plague outbreaks in 14th and 17th century Italy, to the a typhoid outbreak in New York in the early 1900s and a few other stops along the way. Those quarantines looked very different if you were, say, an immigrant, or a Jewish textile merchant, or a sex worker.

Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic shine a spotlight on all the inequalities already lurking in the system, and ideas of what the government owes to people in quarantine have changed over the centuries too. Long gone are the days of the government sending your family fennel sausage, cheese and wine to make it through.

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05/20/20 • 29 min

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03/21/19 • 45 min

It was the perfect political prop: drugs seized by government agents right across the street from the White House, just in time for a big presidential address. The reality was more complicated.

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03/21/19 • 45 min

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Kicking the habit

The Uncertain Hour

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04/18/19 • 49 min

Many people in Wise County agree that they can’t jail their way out of a drug epidemic, but there’s a lot less agreement on what to do instead. And we find out what happened to Joey Ballard.

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04/18/19 • 49 min

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12/19/19 • 15 min

We just found the answer to a really big question that’s been bugging us for years, about why the opioid crisis has hit some places so hard while other places have been relatively protected. The answer comes in the form of new academic research, that builds upon our reporting. Specifically, a secret internal marketing document from Purdue Pharma that senior producer Caitlin Esch discovered in the bowels of a county court house. She’s on this bonus episode to talk about it.

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12/19/19 • 15 min

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FAQ

How many episodes does The Uncertain Hour have?

The Uncertain Hour currently has 53 episodes available.

What topics does The Uncertain Hour cover?

The podcast is about News, Podcasts and Government.

What is the most popular episode on The Uncertain Hour?

The episode title 'Chapter 1: The dream' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on The Uncertain Hour?

The average episode length on The Uncertain Hour is 36 minutes.

How often are episodes of The Uncertain Hour released?

Episodes of The Uncertain Hour are typically released every 7 days, 16 hours.

When was the first episode of The Uncertain Hour?

The first episode of The Uncertain Hour was released on Mar 8, 2016.

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