The Week in Philly from KYW Newsradio

Jeff Bezos announced he will be stepping down as the CEO of Amazon, the company he founded, later this year. He'll transition to the role of executive chairman of Amazon’s board. He will be replaced as CEO by Andy Jassy, who has been leading the Amazon Web Services cloud team. Amazon of course is a massive, hugely powerful and influential company which has made itself a daily part of life for mill...

For anyone who follows politics in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the news over the weekend that former Montco District Attorney Bruce Castor will be heading up former President Donald Trump's impeachment defense was a bombshell. So how did Castor get the biggest job of his life? Jim Melwert, Suburban Bureau Chief for KYW Newsradio interviewed Castor and asked about the historic nature of the ta...

More and more people are dealing with long term symptoms and problems as a result of COVID-19. You've heard this group of people referred to as long haulers. We still know very little about these people and the health consequences they're dealing with, but we are learning more every day -- so we wanted to find out what doctors have learned about what these long haulers are going through. Dr. Annet...

Whether it's DACA and the Dreamers, the Trump-era travel bans, visa reform, or paths to citizenship, immigration policy in the United States is a massively contentious political flashpoint facing the Joe Biden administration. So what are the new President's biggest immigration priorities, and which issues is he willing to compromise on? How much different is the Biden White House's immigration age...

If this week was any indication, 2021 is going head to head with 2020 for how wild a single year can get. Retail investors took on hedge funds, crypto went to the moon and back. IRL, we got some 2020 GDP numbers that help us see the pandemic economy in the big picture. David Fiorenza, Associate Professor of Practice at the Villanova School of Business joins KYW Newsradio in Depth to talk about how...

Robocalls are a massive annoyance. Every day, unsolicited calls and voice mails and text messages for fake car warranties and lawsuits and spam links get delivered to people everywhere, and it feels like there's basically nothing we can do about it. What's actually happening here? Why did robocalling start in the first place? And is anyone working on the problem? Dr. Brian Stuart, Associate Teachi...

The video game and electronics retail company GameStop has been going bonkers on the stock market after a group of Redditors decided to declare war on hedge funds and other institutional investors who were betting that the stock was overvalued. Was it overvalued? Probably, and that's not the point. Today on KYW Newsradio In Depth we're breaking down what happened when r/wallstreetbets took on the...

As more and more people are starting to get access to the COVID-19 vaccine, there are some conversations happening about employment law in the middle of a pandemic. Some frontline workers have been told by their employer that they have to get the vaccine. But what happens if they can't get it, because of a health concern? Or what happens if they won't get it, because of a Facebook meme? Kent Petry...

We've spend the better part of a year trying to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the United States, more than two million worldwide. It's been expensive, traumatic, and scary. And it's going to happen again. Are we ready for the next pandemic? What lessons have we learned? And what can we do better? The Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense has issued a repor...

The National Rifle Association filed for bankruptcy protection after New York Attorney General Letitia James filed suit against the organization, spotlighting allegations of fraud and rampant financial misconduct by executives of the non-profit organization. The powerful gun rights group also announced plans to reincorporate in Texas. So how did they get here? What does bankruptcy do for them, and...

When the IT software company SolarWinds was breached in a cyber hack, cybersecurity firewalls across the United States were effectively slashed open. The widespread damage affected companies of every size and many U.S. government agencies. Since then, more information has bubbled up about the hack, its size, and the ramifications for information security. So what have we learned since we first dis...

Former President Donald Trump was impeached for a second time just before leaving office. Congress charged him with inciting insurrection related to the storming of the US Capitol on January 6th by Trump supporters who had just left a rally where the President spoke. A President being impeached twice is unprecedented, and advancing impeachment proceedings against a former public official is uncomm...

The Joe Biden administration is unpacking boxes at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and several ambitious policy course changes have already been unveiled, but at the end of the day the American people need help kind of desperately to make it through this pandemic and the responsibility falls to Congress to act on pandemic relief. What's it going to take the get Republicans and Democrats in Congress to ac...

Today, KYW Newsradio in Depth presents The Rundown from KYW Newsradio -- a round table discussion with a group of KYW Newsradio reporters. The Philadelphia parks and recreation department puts on a basketball tournament, kind of, and the suburbs around Philadelphia wrestle with a long vaccination timetable. 

Right before he left office, President Trump issued a list of pardons and commutations. This is standard for outgoing presidents. So who did President Trump pardon? Were there any surprises, or was his list pretty consistent with previous administrations? And what does a pardon actually mean under the law? Dr. Michael Moreland, Professor of Law at Villanova University's Charles Widger School of La...

2020 was the year of at home, and while the real estate market really kind of overperformed in a lot of ways despite the COVID-19 shutdowns, different areas and parts of the country all had very different stories. So what did we learn from 2020, and what does it mean for 2021? How is the Philadelphia housing market doing, compared to other cities? And how many of the massive changes in how we live...

Joe Biden will be inaugurated as President of the United States on Wednesday. He will take power in the midst of a pandemic, and two weeks after a mob stormed the US Capitol. Have we ever seen an inauguration under circumstances like this? How will all this change the ceremony we see? Dr. Bill Rosenberg, Professor of Political Science at Drexel University joins KYW Newsradio in Depth to talk about...

COVID-19 has affected the lives of people living in the United States, but the data show the most dire repercussions of the pandemic have not been distributed evenly. So what's going on here? What's behind the inequality, and who's getting hit the hardest? And how does a country that has trouble getting on the same page about anything work together to level the playing field? The nonprofit RAND Co...

Obviously the first, second, and third priorities of the Joe Biden administration will be the coronavirus pandemic response -- but beyond that, how will the next White House tackle the complex issue of healthcare policy in the United States? The opioid epidemic got pushed off the front page by COVID-19, but it's still ravaging communities around the country. What kind of federal response should pe...

There's light at the end of the tunnel, finally, as COVID-19 vaccines are being distributed. And as more and more people get vaccinated, employers will have to start making decisions about bringing their employees back to the physical office space -- the first of an almost endless list of health related workplace decisions that are going to be front of mind after the coronavirus pandemic. Justin T...

It's hard to remember a time when conspiracy theories and the people who believe them have been more public or numerous than they are now. A growing number of Americans believe some pretty wild things, and it’s nearly impossible for a conspiracy theorist to change their mind about their beliefs. So why do we believe conspiracy theories? Dr. John Grohol, psychologist and found of Psych Central join...

President-elect Joe Biden released a pandemic recovery plan with a nearly $2 trillion price tag and a lot inside. What's inside the plan and where's the money going? How critical is funding for state and local governments? What do direct payments do for the economy? And in non stimulus news, the jobs numbers are trending in a bad direction right now. How does that particular piece fit into the puz...

Today on KYW Newsradio in Depth we asked a few of our colleagues to sit around a (virtual) table and talk about a few stories they're following during one of the most whirlwind periods of news in memory. We're calling it 'The Rundown from KYW Newsradio.' And today, KYW Newsradio reporters are discussing the newest updates to vaccine rollout plans in the Philadelphia area, along with actions that c...

The stock market continues to hit high numbers despite the overall economy being uneven, to say the least. And recently there's been a lot of people talking about whether or not we're seeing a bubble in the markets. So what is a bubble? What are the signs that one is developing? And is the market doing anything out of the ordinary right now? Cindy Axelrod, Associate Professor at the Fox School of...

What did people 100 years ago expect would happen in 2021? What did they imagine today's world would look like? It's a really interesting question that Jason Feifer, Editor In Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine wanted to answer, so he did some research and put together a fascinating article about what folks in 1921 thought our current moment would look like. Jason Feifer joins KYW Newsradio In Depth t...