The Brian Lehrer Show

Cities like Atlanta and Birmingham ground to a halt this week as freak snow and ice storms caused traffic jams, power outages, and mass disruption. Why did the South cope so poorly, and should Northerners who are mocking the response think twice? As Clinton Yates at the Washington Post and Brian Bartlett at Gizmodo have pointed out, many Southern cities don't have the budgets to plan for the snow, and the weather is rare enough that a big reaction to a little snow should be expected. We open the phones for anyone with ties to the South to provide some context. Call 212-433-9692 or post below. // Post by Brian Lehrer.

A call-in segment for local business owners: Is Super Bowl week the windfall you expected? And what do you have planned for this weekend? Call in to report on how the influx of NFL fans is affecting your bottom line. And then, plug away -- if you've got a Super Bowl event planned, or have some other sort of Super Bowl related special going on, let us know. We'll compile a database for fellow WNYC fans. Want To Tout Your Business? In the comments below, tell us about your business and what you have planned around the Super Bowl. Post: Your Name The Name of Your Business The Address and Contact Information (or Website) What You're Planning and Why We Should Come! We'll compile the results on our page. Will, owns Army/Navy store, plugging his wool coats for Super Bowl: "If it's good enough for Afghanistan, it's good enough for New Jersey." — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) January 30, 2014 Adina, a cabbie, on the "Super Bowl bounce," says: "Don't believe the hype. I haven't picked up a single customer in town for the game." — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) January 30, 2014 Joel from an audio/video company says business is great - installing tons of temporary projectors and flat screens in bars/restaurants/etc. — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) January 30, 2014

The Christie administration is under federal investigation for linking Hoboken Sandy funds to a Rockefeller Group redevelopment deal. New York Times reporters, Charles Bagli and Patrick McGeehan, talk about new emails and trace the history of the deal and the conflicting accounts by Mayor Zimmer and the Christie administration.

Glenn Reynolds, law professor at the University of Tennessee, founder of the Instapundit blog, and author of  The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself (Encounter Books, 2014) argues the internet will allow students to bypass education bureaucracies and get low-cost, high quality educations.  

City & State will release a new Power 100 list, listing the most powerful figures on the New York City political scene. Editor-in-Chief Morgan Pehme will explain the rankings. Then: the latest on the now-controversial Hoboken development deal. Plus: a new book argues that technology will save education; and we ask local business owners to tell us if Super Bowl week has been an economic boon…or a bust. 

Do you make your living working outside? How has the recent snow and cold temps affected your business? Stephanie Barreto, staff organizer for the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center talks about the challenges presented by the recent extreme winter weather to street vendors and others making their livings out of doors and is joined by Bernard Haynes who sells merchandise on the street in Harlem. The Dosa Man from Wash Sq park calling in: "Yesterday I was really cold." Says he only worked about 8 days in January. — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) January 29, 2014 "Working out in the cold like this, it's just all mental." -- bike messenger on the power of positive (warm) thinking. — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) January 29, 2014 "The thing is... no matter what the weather, they have to go outside and pee. We're like the mailmen." -- Sean the dog walker. — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) January 29, 2014 "The Obama posters...they don't really sell right now" says vendor talking about working outside in the cold. These days, scarves and hats. — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) January 29, 2014

Host and managing editor of WNYC's New Tech City, Manoush Zomorodi gives tips on how to effectively detox from your digital gadgets. Plus, if you must stay plugged in, tactical advice on how to use technology more purposefully.

In his State of the Union speech last night, President Obama chided Congress for their inactivity, and vowed to make 2014 a "year of action" on the minimum wage, climate policy, and immigration. James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic, reviews the speech and what comes next.   Caller Yvette says her favorite SOTU line was the "son of a barkeep" shout-out to Boehner. @JamesFallows agrees: "We all have a story." — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) January 29, 2014 Brian's Five Key Quotes from the State of the Union Flipping the Script on the Usual "State of the Union" Line "Tonight, this chamber speaks with one voice to the people we represent: It is you, our citizens, who make the state of our union strong. (Applause.)" Can He Really Get Businesses to Voluntarily Raise Wages? "Nick Chute is here today with his boss, John Soranno. John’s an owner of Punch Pizza in Minneapolis, and Nick helps make the dough. (Laughter.) Only now he makes more of it. (Laughter.) John just gave his employees a raise, to 10 bucks an hour -- and that’s a decision that has eased their financial stress and boosted their morale. Tonight, I ask more of America’s business leaders to follow John’s lead: Do what you can to raise your employees’ wages. (Applause.) It’s good for the economy. It’s good for America. (Applause.) To every mayor, governor, state legislator in America, I say you don’t have to wait for Congress to act -- Americans will support you if you take this on." The Only Gun Control Reference. Still Promising Action? "Citizenship means standing up for the lives that gun violence steals from us each day. I’ve seen the courage of parents, students, pastors, police officers all over this country who say “we are not afraid." And I intend to keep trying, with or without Congress, to help stop more tragedies from visiting innocent Americans in our movie theaters, in our shopping malls, or schools like Sandy Hook. (Applause.)" Forceful on Climate Change. "Because a changing climate is already harming Western communities struggling with drought, and coastal cities dealing with floods. That’s why I directed my administration to work with states, utilities, and others to set new standards on the amount of carbon pollution our power plants are allowed to dump into the air. (Applause.) The shift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require some tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. (Applause.) And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did. (Applause.)" How Will He Boost The Tech Sector? (James Fallows Has Been Reporting on "Turnaround" Communities) "We also have the chance, right now, to beat other countries in the race for the next wave of high-tech manufacturing jobs. My administration has launched two hubs for high-tech manufacturing in Raleigh, North Carolina and Youngstown, Ohio, where we’ve connected businesses to research universities that can help America lead the world in advanced technologies. Tonight, I’m announcing we’ll launch six more this year. Bipartisan bills in both houses could double the number of these hubs and the jobs they create. So get those bills to my desk; put more Americans back to work. (Applause.)"

In addition to local franchises getting tax breaks, the NFL as a league retains nonprofit status that lets it avoid millions of dollars in taxes. As we prepare for Sunday's Super Bowl, Gregg Easterbrook, author of The King of Sports: Football’s Impact on America, discusses the arrangement and the big money in pro football.

Raphael G. Warnock, senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and the author of The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety, and Public Witness, traces the roots of and seeks to bridge the gap between the socially progressive black theology and the more personally conservative black church.

Peter Beinart's essay in The Atlantic explores his moral conflict between his love of watching football with his young son and the inherent violence of the game. As you make plans to watch the Super Bowl this weekend, are you conflicted between your enjoyment of watching the game and teaching your kids to love it too, despite the violence? Do you worry about the message you're sending to your kids when you cheer every time a player on the opposing team gets hit? Heartbroken football fans flooded the lines. One listener who had played and coached for 25 years even said sometimes when he sits down to watch a game on Sundays he just cries. Callers said they talk about the dangers of the sport when they watch games with their kids. Daniel in Queens said he doesn't even know what else he’d do on Sundays if he didn't watch football. But: “I’m completely conflicted. I’m a huge football fan. My son is just turning 5 years old and I love the game. And I've talked to my fiancé about it and we made the decision that we probably would not let him play,” he said. “You used to watch football back in the day and you’d see the 1 o’clock game, the 4 o’clock game, the nighttime game, Monday night football game…and throughout all of those games, you may see one guy get knocked out of a game, now you see it multiple times in each game you watch. Like every four plays somebody’s getting knocked out of the game. The guys are so much stronger and faster now. And obviously everything’s been coming up about CTE and I've just gotten to the point that I don’t think that I would let my son play, at least according to the things I've heard from doctors, not before the age of 14.” Lev in Brooklyn was a lifelong Jets fan who said the news of the traumatic brain injuries forced him to give up watching the game. “Everybody who says they’re conflicted is just ignoring the evidence. The facts are in. This game messes you up really bad.” To add to the conversation, leave a comment below. 

Folk singer and activist Pete Seeger died today in New York at the age of 94. We remember his life, music, and impact -- and play an excerpts of his WNYC appearances, from 1941 to 2012.   In our building there's a photo of Pete Seeger at WNYC, 1948. When he visited last summer we made sure to get a pic. pic.twitter.com/ECNotLocdU — Jody Avirgan (@jodyavirgan) January 28, 2014 Pete Seeger in '12 on how he'd like to be remembered "He made up songs to try and persuade people to do something, not [just] say something" — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) January 28, 2014 Pete Seeger on WNYC in 2012 (Full Interview)

Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, discusses Edward Snowden's effect on the Sochi games, and whether his presence could negate any potential deals.

Monique Morris, co-founder of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute and the author of Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-first Century, shares the good news and the bad contained in the statistics on black Americans. She is joined by Dr Khalil Gibran Muhammad director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at The New York Public Library and the author of The Condemnation of Blackness, who also wrote the introduction to Morris' book. Some of the Stats Mentioned on Air R&B albums outsold hip-hop 2:1 in 2012 Black K-12 students are 16 percent of the public school population but get 35 percent of the suspensions 36 percent of Black women do not use hair straightening products, up ten points since 2010 The percentage of Black people among the executives and managers in the private sector is 3%

Neera Tanden of The Center for American Progress discusses the president's expected proposals for addressing economic inequality in tonight's State of the Union address.  Plus: How does Edward Snowden's presence in Russia during the Olympics complicate his chances of a deal? And a new book that compiles statistics about African Americans in 2014, from education to income to economic mobility and more. → Tonight: State of the Union Live Chat | Starts at 8:45pm