Need To Know

News and Public Affairs Series / 1 Season

PBS's new TV and web newsmagazine gives you what you need to know -- along with a healthy dose of insight, perspective and wit. Need to Know cuts through the noise of nonstop news to bring you the most compelling stories of the week and of our times. Every Friday night nationwide and all week long on the web.

Watch Latest: S3 E22

25m 6s

Massachusetts mandate update

S3 E22 / 25m 6s

The Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate included President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. How might it work? Need to Know medical correspondent Emily Senay, M.D. travels to Massachusetts, the only state in the nation that already requires everyone to have health insurance - part of a 2006 health reform law signed by then-governor Romney.

Dying to get back

S3 E20 / 25m 15s

While the number of illegal crossings at the border has plummeted dramatically — roughly half the number than during peak years — just as many people are dying. Meaning for those coming into the country illegally, it is now more deadly, more lethal, than at any time in recent U.S. immigration history.

Help Wanted: Retraining America

S3 E18 / 25m 16s

Even as unemployment remains stubbornly high, millions of jobs remain unfilled because many workers do not have the necessary training to fill them. This week we look at The National STEM Consortium – a program designed to target this type of structural unemployment by improving the scientific, technical and mathematical know-how of American workers. Also, Seth Harris, Secretary of Labor.

Debating the Second Amendment

S3 E17 / 25m 16s

With the gun control debate raging after the mass school shooting in Newtown, CT, Need to Know examines the history of the Second Amendment and how it shapes the discussion today. Ray Suarez anchors a panel including: George Mason Law School professor Joyce Lee Malcolm, former New York Times foreign correspondent and editor Craig Whitney, and Fordham University history professor Saul Cornell.

Financial literacy

S3 E16 / 25m 16s

To mark financial literacy month, "Need to Know" correspondent Stacey Tisdale travels to Mississippi to examine a program designed to help low-income, mostly African-American children save for college - and teach them about banking and money along the way. Anchor Ray Suarez interviews Richard Cordray, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

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