The Week in Philly from KYW Newsradio

It's hard to imagine Donald Trump the President, or even Donald Trump the candidate, without Twitter. And after four years of being able to count on the former President to tell you exactly what he was thinking about and who he was angry with and which show he was watching on television as it was happening, the internet feels downright quiet after Twitter deplatformed Trump. Have we ever seen anyt...

There's been momentum building behind the idea of adding states to the USA, with most of the buzz around Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. It's an interesting idea, but could it ever happen? What would have to happen if America wanted a 51st or 52nd state? How would it change the political landscape? And what are DC and PR missing right now by not being states? Dr. Miguel Glatzer, Associate Profess...

In an early move on the healthcare front, the Biden administration recently opened a special enrollment period for people to sign up for the Affordable Care Act. So what does that mean, and how big of a deal is it? The Affordable Care Act was stress tested by a pandemic and a presidential administration that actively worked to dismantle it -- so what is the current state of the healthcare law? Wha...

The city of Philadelphia is looking at getting police officers a new tool for taking down suspects. It's called the BolaWrap, it's nonlethal, and it's a device a little bigger than a smartphone that shoots a Kevlar cord with weighted hooks on both ends. So how does it work exactly? And why have police departments started looking at distributing the device to police officers? Tom Smith, President a...

The world of forensics is very different than it was 50 years or even a decade ago. To say the field has changed would be a complete understatement -- the tools of surveillance in place today would look like farfetched science fiction to all but the most inventive mystery writers of the previous generations. Most people today have probably accepted that we're being watched whenever we go somewhere...

Big space news this week, as NASA landed the rover Perseverance on Mars. It was an incredible achievement to just get the rover on the planet, and now Perseverance has an important mission: to seek out signs of what used to be life. We had tons of questions about the mission and the technical achievement that was just landing on Mars, so we called a friend of the podcast to explain what happened a...

The bad news: jobless claims were astronomically high this week, coming up on the anniversary of even astronomically higher unemployment. The good news: it’s looking like whatever the opposite of trickle down economics is might be the greatest economic policy ever, after emergency stimulus checks caused retail sales to go bonkers. Time for our weekly look at the American economy with David Fiorenz...

As vaccines get into more arms, it's not crazy to fantasize about returning to some sort of normalcy sometime soon. And as the pandemic winds down, it will be interesting to see what safety protocols will continue being a part of our everyday lives once we are back to normal. Researchers at Ohio State University wanted to take a look at how people feel about keeping some pandemic habits around eve...

One of the most visible and contentious footprints left by the Trump presidency was the trade war with China. So now that the Trump presidency is over and with the benefit of hindsight, what did the trade war accomplish? Did someone win? Is the trade relationship better than it was four years ago? Were any of the Trump administration's particular grievances with China resolved by the dispute? What...

One of the more fascinating storylines of the coronavirus pandemic surrounds energy and power. Like, electrical grid energy, fuel, that kind of thing. We saw some crazy things happen last year, like oil going negative back in early quarantine. Then demand fell off a cliff and oil cartel shenanigans brought the price back up, and throughout it all one of the constants in the energy industry has bee...

The second impeachment trial of President Donald Trump is in the books. He was not convicted of inciting the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol, which wasn't a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to the state of American politics recently. But it was perhaps a little surprising that 57 senators, including 7 Republicans, thought he should be held responsible by the Senate. So wha...

The coronavirus pandemic has been this massive, terrible, exhausting part of our lives for about a year now. And when the vaccines were first announced and started to get distributed -- it felt like the end was finally in sight. But it hasn't really gone the way we thought, just like everything else in this pandemic. So, is there a right way to put together some kind of coherent, effective plan to...

According to a new survey from US News & World Report, there's a whole lot of people who say they've either been a victim of financial infidelity or committed it. This could be something like finding a credit card or bank account you didn't know about, lying about a debt or a source of income, or making an expensive purchase without telling your partner. The majority of people who were surveye...

Young adults are leaving college with staggering amounts of debt in student loans. And it seems like that college degree means a lot less today than it meant a few decades ago when it comes to job prospects and projected income. It's not a great spiral for students, and it looks like real momentum is building at the federal level to take a look at student loan debt see if helping to alleviate some...

Philadelphia is filled to the brim with history but if you live or work here it's pretty easy to forget just how much has happened in this city. Just think of how many people walk by the Liberty Bell every day and don’t stop to think, "Oh yeah, America started here." We know about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but Philadelphia is also the birthplace of probably the most imp...

We're still looking at spectacularly high unemployment numbers, especially considering we've been dealing with this pandemic for almost a year. Is it time to talk about inflation, or is that something to worry about after we stop the economic downward spiral for average Americans? Should the budget deficit mean anything to regular people? Consumer confidence vs consumer sentiment -- what's the dif...

In Pennsylvania, frustrations are mounting at just about every level over the distribution of COVID-19 vaccinations, from individuals and families to communities and politicians. So why can't we seem to get this right? We wanted to try to figure out what is happening in Pennsylvania in places outside of Philadelphia, how the distribution plan was designed, and the biggest problems that are getting...

It's becoming more and more apparent that inequality is the challenge of our time, made even more visible by a global virus pandemic that has been unsparingly unequal in its impact. We broke the wrong kind of record in 2020 -- a new report from the group Oxfam shows that for the first time, inequality has grown everywhere during the pandemic. The report is called "The Inequality Virus," and Paul O...

Ever since the start of the pandemic, the people on the wrong side of the K-shaped recovery have taken it on the chin. So many people have lost income and savings, and the number of people falling behind on the rent or the mortgage is truly hard to fathom. So what's a concrete, actually helpful thing that people can do to try and keep from losing their home? The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation publ...

The filibuster hasn't been a part of the US Senate forever but you'd be excused for thinking it was. For the last 180 odd years, the ability of the minority party to grind Senate proceedings to a halt with a speech has been an important and ever-present component in the recipe for American law. And now, as is often the case in the short windows of time in American politics when one party controls...

Calling for a hike to the federal minimum wage is nothing new, but right now there's a pretty significant amount of support behind establishing a benchmark of $15 an hour. It's a big jump from $7.25, the minimum wage since 2009. There's already a lot of people talking about the minimum wage and arguing whether we should or shouldn't bump it up -- so we wanted to sort of bypass the "should we or sh...

Under a new executive order from President Joe Biden, the federal government will not renew its contracts with private prisons. We had a lot of questions about what this means and the bigger picture -- like why did the federal government start using privately run prisons in the first place? What actually changes for guards and inmates when a prison turns private? And what are the larger societal r...

It's been a busy week -- jobs numbers, new unemployment figures, stimulus development, questions about student debt forgiveness, and why you should care about the treasury yield curve. Time for our weekly look at the American economy with David Fiorenza, Associate Professor of Practice at Villanova School of Business who joins KYW Newsradio In Depth to talk about what happened this week in the eco...

For some people Super Bowl commercials are about as highly anticipated as the game itself. But it's safe to say the vibe's going to be a bit different this year, with a country and a TV audience that has been through a lot in the last 12 months and is still in the midst of a pandemic. So how are advertisers thinking differently this year, and how have the messages they're sending changed? Sean Gre...

If you've been working from home at all for the past year you've probably benefited from having a little more flexibility in your schedule. It's really nice to stop competing with everyone else for the Friday 7pm doctors appointment, or not having to take an extra train ride home and then back to the office at lunch just to take the dog out. But with vaccines being distributed and the expiration d...