Robert Smith

The numbers detailing the income gap between rich and poor can be difficult to grasp, but NPR's Andrea Seabrook and Robert Smith can explain.

GDP contains multitudes. Everything we manufacture. Every plumber who fixed a sink, every accountant who carried the one and divided by five — all the goods and services we produced.

It was invented by a guy named Simon Kuznets during the the Great Depression, when everybody wanted to know just how bad things were.

Now the number is put out by Steve Landefeld at the government's Bureau of Economic Analysis.

If you've ever thought that most of politics is game-playing, you're right. Political scientists often use mathematical game theory to describe how Congress works. And when they look at the current battle over how to handle the deficit, the game that comes to mind is chicken.

Steven Smith is a professor of political science at Washington University, and he says yes, Republicans and Democrats sometimes remind him of two cars driving as fast as they can toward each other.

Clashes between Coptic Christian protesters and the Egyptian military in Cairo on Sunday left at least 19 people dead and more than 100 wounded, according to official counts. The violence erupted after the Christians were marching to protest what they claim was an attack on a church in southern Egypt by radical Muslims.

It's October, which means the country's supply of fake cobwebs is getting dangerously low.

The reason, of course, are the commercial haunted houses opening for business, filling the night with the screams of terrified teenage girls.

Wait. That's actually me — at Blood Manor in New York City. From the name, you would never guess it's on the second floor of a downtown office building. It probably used to be a hedge fund.

Ten years ago Friday morning, the men who would become the Sept. 11 hijackers were ready. They woke up on Sept. 9, 2001, in small motels along the East Coast. Their leader, Mohammed Atta, was one of the last ones on the move. He was checking in with the teams on his way to Boston.

The White House counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, was also at work that day. He was watching something happening in al-Qaida email chatter — he just didn't know what.

The world economy is so messed up right now that even healthy countries are facing a strange kind of crisis: They've become too popular with investors.

Take Switzerland. Its economy is in great shape. Low debt, low unemployment. And, perhaps most importantly, the country doesn't use the euro.

So it's not surprising that the Swiss Franc has become a popular safe haven among investors who are worried about the future of the euro and the U.S. dollar.

The U.S. economy is spooking investors. But every day, all around the world, foreign businesses are still eager to use U.S. dollars — even when their business has nothing to do with the U.S.

When South Koreans buy Chilean wine, they convert their Korean won to U.S. dollars, and send those dollars to the winery in Chile. The winery then converts the dollars into Chilean pesos. This kind of thing is routine in global trade, according to Barry Eichengreen, an economist at U.C. Berkeley.

Why not just go from won to pesos?

North Korea used to be an industrial powerhouse. Not anymore. Today, the country can't feed its own people. Its cities go dark every night for lack of electricity.

Yet helplessness wasn't the original plan. The original plan for the country's economy had a name. It was called "juche," or self-reliance. The idea was that all North Korean problems should be solved by North Koreans.

Who gave S&P the power to kick sand in the face of the U.S. government?

Oh, right. It was the U.S. government.

"There's some ironies, shall we say, in all of this," says Lawrence J. White, a professor at NYU's Stern School of Buisness.

The story goes back to the rise of the railroads in the 19th century.

It's officially summer vacation time. But if you're a candidate running for president, you'll spend your summer shaking hands in early voting states. Here, a look at the required stops and must-see attractions in the first primary state, New Hampshire.

Up and at 'em, candidates — the campaign day in New Hampshire starts early. Those pancake breakfasts don't eat themselves.

The nation celebrated the 235th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence with parades, fireworks, barbecues — and presidential campaigning. Republican candidates sought out potential voters in pivotal early voting states.

Last weekend, a group of libertarians and anarchists gathered in the woods of northern New Hampshire for the annual Porcupine Freedom Festival, aka PorcFest.

I went up for breakfast.

Lucky for me, George Mandrik has brought along 150 lbs. of bacon, which he's selling out of a tent to finance his trip to the festival. He does this thing where he weaves 10 pieces of bacon into what he calls "a little blanket," and cooks the whole thing up.

"I'm sure New York does failure better than anyone else because it does success better than anywhere else," Tim Harford says.

Harford, an economist and author, isn't just being kind. He argues in his new book, "Adapt," that success always starts with failure.

And so we've set out across Manhattan to look for some of those big ideas that didn't work out.

Out first stop is the main library. In the lobby is a classic example of how even things we consider successful were flops at the time: a 15th-century Bible printed by Johannes Gutenberg himself.

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And I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

Four years is a long time in politics. Just ask Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor first announced a run for president in 2007. Yesterday, Romney had a chance at a do-over, formally declaring, again, that he will seek the Republican nomination. Everyone knew it was coming. But it's a chance for Romney to redefine what he stands for, as NPR's Robert Smith reports.

The U.S. government hit the debt ceiling today. This makes life very complicated for the Treasury Department, which now needs to shuffle money around to pay the bills.

But originally, as it turns out, the debt ceiling was supposed to make things easier. A hundred years ago, it seemed so straightforward.

When Congress wanted to spend, it spent. And if it needed to borrow, it approved the sale of a bunch of Treasury bonds. Congress would consider each new bond individually.

NPR has been profiling some of the Republicans who are considering a presidential run in 2012, to find out what first sparked their interest in politics. Read more of those profiles.

Go to any Ron Paul event and it strikes you immediately. What's up with all the young people?

When the Libyan rebels went to look for someone to run their war economy, they went to an unlikely source: An economics teacher at the University of Washington.

Ali Tarhouni fled Libya 40 years ago after speaking out against Moammar Gadhafi. "I was given a choice to leave the country or go to jail," he says. His name wound up on a Gadhafi hit list in the 1980s.

He went back after the civil war broke out earlier this year. Now he's living in Benghazi, working as the finance minister for the rebels. His first job: Raise money to pay for the revolution.

Hundreds of people gathered in New York City at the site of the former World Trade Center. The site's twin towers fell nearly 10 years ago on Sept. 11.

There are at least a dozen Republicans considering a run for the White House in 2012. As part of a series, NPR is profiling some of them to find out what first sparked their interest in politics.

In 1971, Jon Huntsman Jr. visited the White House. He was 11 years old, and his father was a businessman and adviser to Richard Nixon. The young Huntsman, the story goes, met Henry Kissinger that day and helped carry his luggage to the car.

When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was presented with a new state tax on the wealthy, he vetoed it. He said:

You're not going to fix this tax situation by continuing to load more and more taxes onto people who have both the abiltiy to leave the state and the inclination to leave the state if they feel as if they are being treated unfairly.

It's not just Christie. Democratic governors in New York and Maryland recently dropped extra taxes on the wealthy from their budgets, citing the same concerns.

On Jan. 8, 1835, all the big political names in Washington gathered to celebrate what President Andrew Jackson had just accomplished. A senator rose to make the big announcement: "Gentlemen ... the national debt ... is PAID."

That was the one time in U.S. history when the country was debt free. It lasted exactly one year.

By 1837, the country would be in panic and headed into a massive depression. We'll get to that, but first let's figure out how Andrew Jackson did the impossible.

How much would you pay for a burger with lettuce, tomato, pickles, onion rings, cheddar and bacon?

At Corner Burger in Brooklyn, Hilda Hampar charges $9.25. At that price, tables in her restaurant often sit empty.

So she made a deal with Groupon. It sent out an offer to its thousands of subscribers: $18 dollars' worth of Corner Burger food for nine bucks.

"The next day [after] the coupon came out, this place was full," she says. "People were waiting outside."

Good news, except for one daunting piece of math.

The most offensive show on Broadway was born out a special kind of love.

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been obsessed with Mormons since long before anyone killed Kenny. A Mormon preacher shows up in their college film Cannibal: The Musical. Their early feature Orgazmo centers on a naive Mormon missionary who gets roped into the porn industry.

"Mormonism has sort of been the little thing that's fascinated us the most," says Parker.