Volkswagen Fallout, Section 8 Housing, and Jonathan Franzen's Purity

Volkswagen’s CEO, Martin Winterkorn, resigned this morning, and its stock has taken a nosedive. The company has set aside more than $7 billion to deal with the fallout of the clean diesel scandal, affecting more than 11 million cars worldwide. And, in Los Angeles, more than 26,000 people are living on the streets. City leaders have declared a state of emergency and they want to spend $100 million fixing the homeless problem. One thing is for sure: Section Eight housing will be a part of whatever plan is proposed. Section 8 is a federal program that subsidizes rental housing. Last year, it accounted for nearly half a billion dollars in the city of Los Angeles alone. Then, Jonathan Franzen’s new novel Purity is already number two on the New York Times bestseller list. But it’s also been controversial. Purity has been called everything from a masterpiece to sexist to nonsense. So what does the author make of it all? Franzen sat down recently with KCRW’s bookworm, Michael Silverblatt, to talk about his new book. Finally, to clerk for a Supreme Court justice is to rocket into the upper echelons of the law profession. Recent clerks are offered $300,000 bonuses to join elite law firms. So what does it mean, then, that only a third of Supreme Court law clerks are women? And that the pool of clerks is overwhelmingly white?