
The Uncertain Hour
Marketplace
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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Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best The Uncertain Hour episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to The Uncertain Hour for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite The Uncertain Hour episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Chapter 3: Race and rumor
The Uncertain Hour
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

1 Listener

Chapter 1: The dream
The Uncertain Hour
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.

1 Listener

Chapter 4: The Battle of Newburgh
The Uncertain Hour
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

1 Listener

Integration Generation (bonus episode from “Unlocking the Gates”)
The Uncertain Hour
03/07/25 • 22 min
In a new collaboration between Marketplace and APM Studios called “Unlocking the Gates,” host Lee Hawkins investigates how a secret nighttime business deal unlocked the gates of a Minnesota suburb for dozens of Black families seeking better housing, schools, and safer neighborhoods. His own family included.

1 Listener

Season 6: The Welfare-to-Work Industrial Complex
The Uncertain Hour
03/15/23 • 4 min
There is a growing chorus of politicians who argue that there’s a simple solution to help all kinds of problems, including poverty, labor shortages and government deficits: putting more work requirements into government welfare programs. Some are calling it Welfare Reform 2.0. But as politicians push these programs in the name of ending “welfare dependency,” behind the scenes there’s something else going on. A group of multimillion-dollar corporations have built their businesses on these welfare-to-work policies. And critics say they have cultivated their own cycle of dependency on the federal government.
So where did this idea of requiring labor in exchange for government aid come from? And does it actually help people climb out of poverty? Turns out the answers is surprising — and troubling.
“The Uncertain Hour” is back with season six, a deep dive into the welfare-to-work industrial complex and the multimillion-dollar companies running for-profit welfare centers.

The Magic Bureaucrat
The Uncertain Hour
04/28/16 • 41 min
In the summer of 1996, on the lawn of the White House Rose Garden, President Clinton signed a bill that would dramatically transform the country’s welfare system.
Twenty years later, what the heck is welfare anyway? And we should make it clear — we’re talking about cash assistance to poor families, not food stamps or medicaid.
Welcome to “The Uncertain Hour,” the Wealth & Poverty desk’s new podcast hosted by Senior Correspondent Krissy Clark. In the first episode, we’ll introduce you to the “Magic Bureaucrat” — the former director of a suburban county welfare office. You’ll hear about his foray into synthpop music production and how he launched the welfare reform movement.
Because the things we argue most about are often the things we know the least about.

Chapter 3: Race and rumor
The Uncertain Hour
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!

You’re an essential worker. Do you get essential protections?
The Uncertain Hour
05/13/20 • 29 min
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?

Chapter 1: The dream
The Uncertain Hour
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.

An unequal history of quarantines
The Uncertain Hour
05/20/20 • 27 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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FAQ
How many episodes does The Uncertain Hour have?
The Uncertain Hour currently has 62 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 3: Race and rumor' 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, 2 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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