Another moving student piece from Curie Youth Radio, a Chicago high school radio workshop: In My Plate Full, Yours Empty, a student thanks his mother for sacrificing her own meals while her children ate.

Curie Youth Radio is a workshop at Curie High School on Chicago’s Southwest Side in which students write, record, and produce their own radio pieces. Many of these can be heard on PRX and some have been aired on Chicago Public Radio and NPR’s All Things Considered. A sampling: Prison Visiting Hours – a teenager [...]

In this episode of the EconomyBeat, Detroiter Jean Wilson takes WDET’s Zak Rosen to one of her favorite organic markets late at night. Well, actually, she takes him to the dumpster behind the market, to talk all about how she and a lot of other people are getting full for free in Metro Detroit. Jean Wilson has been diving for herself, friends, neighbors, and even her mother for more than five years. The 50-year old Wilson estimates she’s spent $50 on food in the last five years!

In this episode of the EconomyBeat we are reminded that times are tough, but they could be (and have been) a whole lot worse. And we are reminded that mines are a terrible place to work, especially if you are nine years old.

The recession has certainly changed the way many of us live our daily lives: second-guessing that impulse purchase at the mall, perhaps opting for the cheaper vacation near home rather than the exotic trip abroad. But it’s also shifting the way some people handle major life events. Couples getting married are scaling down their weddings, and couples trying to end their marriage are putting it off indefinitely. Seriously! Tina Antolini of WFCR in western New England has the story of married couples staying married only because the economy is making them.

In this first episode of EconomyBeat, KALW’s Zoe Corneli goes on a ride-along with sheriff deputies as they evict people from their homes. In Alameda County in Northern California, foreclosures have increased the number of evictions from about 300 to about 500 each month. The deputies who perform those evictions have a first hand look at some of the real life impacts of a down economy. This piece originally aired on KALW’s nightly news program Crosscurrents.