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.
1 Listener
All episodes
Best episodes
Seasons
Top 10 The Uncertain Hour Episodes
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 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 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!
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!
1 Listener
What happened to Keith?
The Uncertain Hour
03/22/19 • 32 min
One day, early in the semester, Keith Jackson didn’t show up to class. He’d been arrested for selling crack, but for his classmates, that wasn’t the surprising part.
Answering your “History of Now” questions
The Uncertain Hour
06/17/20 • 29 min
We’ve spent the past five weeks trying to make sense of this moment, where the inequalities of our society have been suddenly set in high relief. In that time, you all have written in with a bunch of questions big and small. Today, we’re going to cap off this pop-up season by answering a few of them. Questions like: What would chicken cost if plant workers got better wages and benefits? And how did health insurance get tied to our jobs anyway? We’ll also look back at two very clear moments, both after pandemics, when economic inequality started to fall dramatically.
Thanks so much to everyone who listened and sent in questions. We’ll be back later this year with new episodes. Until, then, there’s always our first three seasons.
The peanut butter verdict
The Uncertain Hour
11/22/17 • 38 min
For the past two episodes, we’ve been telling you the birth story of a single regulation, one of the most misunderstood, and yet pivotal, 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 forth with the government, and consumer activists like Ruth Desmond made their voices heard. It all lead up to the surreal moment when peanut butter was put on trial.
There’s more to come in season two of The Uncertain Hour, where the things we fight the most about are the things we know the least about. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app.
George H.W. Bush and his baggie of crack
The Uncertain Hour
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.
The Peanut Butter Grandma goes to Washington
The Uncertain Hour
10/26/17 • 33 min
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 caught the attention of one Virginia housewife. Ruth Desmond, or the “Peanut Butter Grandma,” as she came to be known, first traveled to Washington, D.C., to learn about the risks of food additives. She ended up taking on corporations, and tipping the U.S. into a regulatory state. This is her story.
Welcome back to The Uncertain Hour. Where the things we fight the most about are the things we know the least about. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app.
What’s love (styles) got to do with it?
The Uncertain Hour
05/26/16 • 34 min
What do you think of when you think of welfare? Probably something along the lines of help or money given to families living in poverty. Or, work requirements to receive assistance.
But actually, in 2014 only 23 out of every 100 poor families received basic cash assistance. That’s partly because states have a lot of discretion in deciding how to spend federal welfare block grants, known as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF.
States spend welfare money on the obvious things, like childcare and work-related activities. They also spend a significant chunk on some very surprising things, which you can see using this online tool from Marketplace.
We took a trip to Oklahoma to hang out in a marriage class for middle-income couples, funded by — you guessed it — your taxpayer dollars.
Welcome back to “The Uncertain Hour,” the Wealth & Poverty desk’s new podcast hosted by Senior Correspondent Krissy Clark.
The Peanut Butter Wars
The Uncertain Hour
11/10/17 • 37 min
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 before it’s not peanut butter anymore? Trying to answer it kicked off a years-long battle that upended the, uh, peanut butter industrial complex. And honestly? Battles like this are how a lot of regulations get made in this country.
Welcome back to The Uncertain Hour. Where the things we fight the most about are the things we know the least about. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app.
Show more best episodes
Show more best episodes
Featured in these lists
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.
Show more FAQ
Show more FAQ