college education. unfortunately right now, the federal budget generally has been a political football. i want to expand early childhood education so it's accessible for every young person in america. we are going to have to prepare for a different energy future than the one we have right now. >> nbc's kristen welker is traveling with the president. kristen, the vice president will also be joining him next hour as well. >> hey, abby. good afternoon. that is right. we are on the bus right now headed to that final stop in scranton. this will be the first time we will see vice president biden since he spent the past week in houston with his son beau biden, who is being treated there at a houston medical center. he was released. we should say that, and is in good spirit and good health right now. vice president biden will be at president obama's side for this final stop on this college affordability tour, if you want to call it that. of course, the optics are going to get a lot of buzz.

this is the vice president's hometown, scranton. this is biden country. he's very popular there. so you can bet that there's going to be a lot of buzz about 2016 in the wake of this event. certainly the optics will give into that. but the president focused on his current campaign, which is really about sort of teeing up these fall budget battles with republicans. this tour is focused on college affordability, as we have been talking about for the past two days. the president has unveiled his plan for college affordability, which would link federal funding to this new college rating system. the president just talked about that at the town hall event in binghamt binghamton. the president got a number of questions at that town hall event. everything from college affordability to health care and also the swe queequester. i thought it was interesting. he got a lot of questions about what he's going to be duking it

out with this fall. of course, this all comes as some congressional republicans have threatened to shut down the government over defunding the president's health care law. we should say the congressional leaders don't seem to have the stomach for that, though. republican leadership signaling they do not think that's a good idea. nonetheless, we're getting a little bit of a preview about some of the fall budget battles we'll be reporting on in the coming weeks. for now, we are rolling on to scranton. this is the final stop on the president's two-day bus tour, which has been focused on college affordability. that is the very latest. it's about an hour and a half trek. we're getting comfortable and prepared for that last stop. >> giving us a great view. kristen welker with the president. thanks so much. for more on the president's policy proposals, let's bring in global business editor for "newsweek" dan gross.

always great to have you here. let's talk about the politics. it's no secret the president is sort of bypassing republicans, talking directly to the american people now. we're starting to get a sense, a little more insight into what republicans are going to bring to the table come this fall. this is what speaker boehner told a group of gop members in a conference call yesterday. quote, when we return, our intent is to move quickly on a short-term continuing resolution that keeps the government running and maintains current sequester spending levels. our message will remain clear until the president agrees to better cuts and reforms that help grow the economy and put us on a path to a balanced budget. the sequester he himself proposed, insisted on, and signed into law stays in place. this short-term continuing resolution, what will this mean come for the fall? >> part of what that does is take this huge debate and the brinksmanship off the table with respect to the budget for another four or five months and allows them to get to the main event, which is the debt limit.

it's easier, i think, for boehner to say, you know what, pocket the sequester. we'll declare victory on that and kind of go forward with the spending at those levels. but our base and our members are really hopped up about using the debt limit, which is coming in october, probably, as a way to get president obama to approve the keystone pipeline, defund obama care and do, you know, all sorts of -- maybe make mitt romney president. i don't know what their wish list is. none of which they'll get from this. i think the continuing resolution drama is -- it's like the preview. it's the undercard and the prize fight is going to be about the debt limit. >> i think you're exactly right about that, dan. if only the president would just resign, then they wouldn't have to shut down the government. that's all they're asking for here. but democrats are signaling that they think they could use these fights, the government shutdown fight, the debt limit fight, as leverage to potentially win back the house in 2014.

they're pointing to the gop approval rating at a whopping 22%. but we know from 2012 democrats actually won the popular vote in the house, obviously. did not take control. a scientist at princeton university said it would take about a five-point victory in the popular vote to be able to take control for democrats in the house. is it realistic at all to think that democrats could potentially take the house in 2014? >> i don't think so. part of it has to do with the gerrymandering and the fact so many republican seats are safe. part of it has to do with the fact that almost regardless of what republicans do, the business lobbies and the big funders will not abandon them. the business lobbies, the chamber of commerce, national association of manufacturers, these guys all want an end to the sequester. they want a big infrastructure program. they want tax reform. the republicans in the congress are giving them none of that and show no ability to do that, and yet there's no sign that means they will say, okay, you know

what, we'll strategically back a bunch of democrats or strategically back a bunch of people opposing moderate republicans, who are the ones in the most dangerous because of the larger agreement about the size of government and taxes. it's one thing to look at the voting behavior, but it's the business backers, the places that fund congressional campaigns, they show no sign of kind of peeling back from the house republicans. >> dan, you say the debt limit fight will be the big heavy weight battle. i wonder if it will be more like mayweather pacquiao, the fight that never happened. but i want to go back to it the open since we're talking about scranton. we're talking about "the office." "the office," of course, was a hit nbc show, ari, about a company that made and sold paper, even if sometimes that company was a little misunderstood. >> not very many people have heard of us. i mean, when i tell people that i work at dunder mifflin, they

think we sell mufflers or muffins or mitt tens. frankly, all of those sound better than paper. i let it slide. >> of course, what they did was make and sell paper, but there's an analogy for the united states right now. we never actually saw them making the paper. we only saw them selling the paper, which seems to me goes to the modern united states in that the manufacturing has gone away and we're only in advanced service economy. it doesn't strike me as a way forward or a sort of long-term strategy to have this gigantic nation that's ultimately only in advance service economy. can we sustain ourselves like that over the long term? >> actually, i've heard that dunder -- "the office" actually closed down, but it's airing in a costa rican version if spanish next year. the actors and production teams are cheaper there. they're more business friendly. >> makes sense. >> look, the manufacturing sector has come back to a degree. we're never going to get that kind of employment back. one of the quiet things

happening in the u.s. economy is our trade deficit has fallen by about 20% the last couple years because we're eating a lot more of what we're making and not just the food we make and the entertainment we make, but energy, energy production is up huge. look at the plains states where unemployment is 3 and 4%. the places where people are making stuff, whether it's commodities, national ral gas, oil, grains, et cetera, those places are thriving and have a lot of jobs. we have to figure out ways to do more of that in more parts of the country. >> you know, toure played that clip. i also wanted to get your response to a clip of jim putting dwight schrute's phone in jell-o and see if we could link that. we don't have that clip. you were talking about the business model of colleges and whether in light of the president's proposals and where we need to go, whether this model actually works. tell us about that. >> it's interesting. he's doing what these -- what he's doing with the education

speeches he's doing with health care. he's saying we need a new set of standards because the system is bankrupting people. it's not working. part of what he's saying is we'll have this rating system and it'll determine who gets resources and people should know what they're getting for their value. what we've seen in the last 20, 30 years is this arms race where universities, you know, they build fancier dorms to attract people. they pay more. they just keep jacking up tuition without any regard of their customers to pay for it, which is sort of what happened with health care. at a certain point, you get to a point where only really rich people can afford it. when lower income people get in there, they're trapped economically and can't finish. i think we're going to have to see the same type of large-scale restructuring in sort of big education, as we've seen in other types of industries where, you know, the model of jacking up prices 10%, 15% every year for ten years doesn't really work. >> i think you're absolutely right on that point. dan, always great to have you here. >> thanks. thousands, including our own, are getting set for the

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the march on washington changed america, but somehow so many of the problems it was meant to combat are still with us. barack obama broke the highest glass ceiling, but we have still not overcome. black americans are still battling disparities in hiring,

wealth, education, and criminal justice policies that create a structure that make it nearly impossible to ascend in class. i'll be there. i hope you'll hop on a train to d.c. and join us. i'm honored to welcome in the president of the national urban league. what are the most important steps for the black community to take right now? >> great to be with you. today we took a historic step when four of us, reverend sharpton, the naacp, melanie and myself and our organizations released the 21st century agenda for jobs and freedom so that this march would not simply be a one-day celebration but an effort to mobilize around a series of issues. as you mentioned in your open, we see wide disparities in unemployment. the jobless rate among black americans is twice as high and not much better for latinos.

we see certainly a public system of education which is failing to meet the needs of the 21st century and isn't educating all of our kids to the fullest extent of their abilities. we see health care. in the voting rights arena, which was an important success area of 1960, we see a vicious assault even coming from the supreme court on voting rights and democracy. there's no lack of current issues certainly for us to confront, even against the backdrop of a nation that's made great progress in the last 50 years. >> mark, that's exactly right. this is a time of remembrance, but it's also a time to reflect on how far we've come and how far we still have yet to go. a recent poll, some of these numbers surprised me, 49% think a lot more needs to be done to achieve the color blind society that king envisioned in his 1963 "i have a dream speech." the economy was a large factor. the poll shows the economic

divide between white and black people is roughly the same as it was half a century ago. half a century ago. i mean, how much of the problem here is economics? >> a good part of the problem is economics. self-sustainability economics, the ability to afford those necessities of life and some niceties of life. one has a less greater degree of problems, there's no doubt. economics. i think it's important for people to recognize the situation has eroded. the great recession cost the nation. it cost people of all backgrounds, but it especially cost those who were locked out, left out, and cost communities of color. but it's also against this larger backdrop of a widening gulf between the economic classes in this nation that has been a narrative for the last 20 years. i hope finally with the march and some of the discussions

we're going to have and the agenda we've released, we're going to confront the idea that income inequality is not an american thing. an economy which is more equal, an economy which provides meaningful opportunity and upward mobility for all, that's the american economic value we need to try to achieve. >> mark, you mentioned voting rights. we know that the march on washington was about jobs and justice. we know we have laws on the books now, the civil rights act of '64 and the voting rights act of '65 that grew out of those marches. many republicans, as you know, have historically been helpful in renewing those laws. yim sensenbrenner fought to renew the voting rights act most recently in 2006. yet, i want to read to you a very disturbing thing that he said yesterday in response to the texas lawsuit on voter i.d.

issues. he said, i regret that the doj announced its intent to file a lawsuit against the texas voter i.d. law, citing the voting rights act, which i mentioned he supported. he said, i spoke with the attorney general and requested he withdraw the case until there can be a legislative fix of the vra. the lawsuit would make it much more difficult to pass a bipartisan fix to restore the heart of the vra. to translate that, you basically have a republican who's typically been on the side of voting rights act renewal now saying he doesn't think we can get there unless the attorney general doesn't enforce parts of the law that supreme court didn't even touch. i view that, yesterday's statement, as one of the worst things that's happened in this debate. what do you think going into this weekend is important for the folks you're working with to try to get section four and section five of the voting rights act restored? >> this attorney general has an obligation. he put his hand on a bible, took an oath of office to enforce the law. there's no more egregious violation of the voting rights act than some of the actions

that have been taken both in texas and now north carolina, which really, really put us back 50, 60, 70, 80 years. notwithstanding that, i think there's an opportunity if congress acts quickly enough. certainly that those measures, those suits that have been filed against the state of texas would not have to come to trial if, in fact, congress can do what it needs to do. so jim sensenbrenner has been a great champion for us on voting rights. i'm hoping there are many of him on the republican side of the aisle and that we can get a fix. but time is of the essence. the right to vote is so essential to democracy. i think we've got to support the attorney general's obligation to enforce the law. i don't think the supreme court asked the attorney general to tie his hands. >> mark, i'm so excited to see the crowds on the mall tomorrow, to hear the speakers. i think it's really a time to be

reinspired and reengaged and reactivated. what would you challenge people to do over the course of the next year? we know progress isn't going to happen in one day, but over the course of the next year and the years to come, what would you encourage people and challenge people to do to push for the causes of social and economic justice? >> i think there are a number of things, krystal. first of all, we've got to inspire a young and new generation of leaders to become civically engaged and to recognize that politicians many times respond to activists, to active movements by citizens who make demands, make requests upon them. certainly at the top of my list is to insist that congress passes a renewed section four of the voting rights act. number two would be that congress can make a down payment on confronting income inequality, bypassing an increase in the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation. number three, i think, congress

can pass a jobs act. the president has proposed one. i've seen the alternatives suggested that would create the kind of jobs, particularly in those areas where unemployment is the highest. i think people, we need a renewed spirit of activism, a renewed spirit of civic engagement, a fundamental understanding that people have to be active and involved in they want the politics either in washington or their state capitals or city and county governments around the nation to move on those issues that are of great concern to us. america is a great nation, but we have challenges that we must confront. >> amen, mark. you know, we got to go, but you remind -- tomorrow remind me of the million man march. i was in new york, jumped on the train that day and was in d.c. tomorrow might be a day like that for a lot of people. i hope a lot of people jump an the train and come join us in d d.c. thank you for your time. this week, each member of "the cycle" team took a photo to

display how we're trying to advance the dream. to see what we're saying, head over to our facebook page and join the conversation. of course, msnbc will have full coverage of the march on washington and speeches at the steps of the lincoln memorial all day tomorrow, so be sure to check it out. on monday, we'll show you a little bit of what it was like to be part of the historic day tomorrow, but there's still much more "cycle" ahead. we're wondering what's going on. [ female announcer ] birdhouse plans. nacho pans. glass on floors. daily chores. for the little mishaps you feel use neosporin to help you heal. it kills germs so you heal four days faster. neosporin. use with band-aid brand bandages. neosporin. iand we're talkingl time with diane about the walmart low price guarantee, backed by ad match. you got your list? i do! let's go! here we go cinnamon toast crunch. yay! a perfect school day breakfast. i know if you find a lower advertised price they'll match it at the register. that's amazing. look at that price. i like that. they need those for school.

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top of the news cycle, the ft. hood shooter has been found guilty by a group of his major peers. major nidal hasan was convicted on 13 charges of premeditated murder stemming from the 2009 shooting spree at the texas base. protesters are back on the streets of cairo today. supporters of ousted president

mohamed morsi have been holding up pictures of him and chanting against the military on the streets and mosques. most of the major thoroughfares are quiet because security forces are there in a show of force against the demonstrati s demonstrations. we could get official word on san diego mayor bob filner's resignation within the hour. all that's left now is a city council ruling on what he gets in exchange for stepping down. tentative deal emerged after days of settlement talks in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a former aide. the city has promised not to use taxpayer dollars to defend filner. now you are caught up on the news cycle. >> all right. we're going to turn to a pretty big development in the debate over president obama's counterterror policies. whatever people think of leakers like bradley manning or edward snowden, one of the key defenses of the nsa surveillance has been that congress authorized and therefore it's legal. in fact, that's been a bipartisan defense since the news first broke that the nsa had drastically expanded its power.

>> what is clear from this information released by the dni is that each of these programs is authorized by law. >> -- overseen by congress and the courts and subject to ongoing and rigorous oversight. >> i'm glad the nsa is trying to figure out what terrorists are up to overseas and outside the country. >> what you've got is two programs that were originally authorized by congress, have been repeatedly authorized by congress, bipartisan majorities have approved them, congress is continually briefed on how these are conducted. there are a whole range of safeguards involved. and federal judges are overseeing the entire program throughout. >> but we just learned that's actually not quite true. a new bomb shell "new york times" story demolishes this court offense of the nsa's expanded spying program. turns out a secret court ruled

two years ago that system of these new spying tactics were actually unconstitutional the ruling was by a federal judge who has been generally very supportive of the nsa. he wrote he was, troubled that the nsa had substantially misrepresented how the new spying powers functioned. this morning even the president himself admitted he has to do what he calls a better job of giving americans confidence in the programs that the nsa has instituted. the new ruling, i would argue, turns this debate on its head. that's what we'll spin about today. abby, you and i were talking about this. >> a pretty heated debate. >> we've talked about it on the show before. i view this as day one, start over on how we look at the spying debate in this country. what we just showed was president obama saying the federal courts are overseeing this, the judges have looked at it. what he left out then, and the biggest point now that thankfully has been declassified, is the very spying court that looks into this stuff said the new powers are unconstitutional.

they violate the fourth amendment. further than that, the nsa and doj have been misleading the court. we knew some of the intelligence officials had lied to the public. now we know they've been lying to the courts, which depending on how you word it and look at it, is perjury. what court are we talking about? the fisa spying court approves 99.7% of all requests for surveillance. this is a very friendly court for any kind of broad surveillance, whether that's phone, meta data, electronic. this particular judge was appointed by george w. -- originally a george w. bush appointee, put on the courts by roberts, who's very friendly to this stuff. we have to take a big step back. you can still have the debate over whether you want really invasive surveillance of all of your electronic communications. what we learned this week, and what i think people have to get their arms around, is that we have the government lying to the very court that's supposed to oversee this, misleading that court over massive surveillance.

so we haven't had the honest debate. we're finally getting little dribs and drabs it of it. you have everyone from mcconnell to president obama basically leaving us with an impression for years this was all overseen by the court, overseen as if it was okay. in fact, the court was waving a flag saying, this is wrong, this is unconstitutional, and don't lie to us. >> regarding that, you know, oversight by the court, to me that is the most troubling part. not only are there concerns over the points you raised, but the fact of the matter the court has said they basically have to rely upon the government and the nsa itself to bring them problems to say we think we were bad here because they have no ability to independently verify that the nsa is following the law. so to me that's the most troubling point. i would put in context here, you know, the ruling that we're talking about in 2011, which the government says they have changed their procedures since then to fix the problem, but the rules was concerning about 56,000 e-mails that were

improperly collected. it sounds like a huge amount. it is a large number. but we should keep in context that about 144 billion e-mails are sent each day. in the grand scheme of things, this is a small amount. i agree with you, though, it is troubling. politically, though, what i think democrats need to really be concerned about, especially looking forward to 2016, is that young people are responding to this story and their concerns about the nsa in a way that's different from the population as a whole. young people ages 18 to 29 have shifted in their approval rating 14 points away from the president since these nsa revelations started to come out. so looking forward to 2016 when we will certainly have a debate about the nsa, about surveillance and how far is too far, i think republicans should be looking at this polling and licking their chops saying maybe this is a way that we can pull some of those young voters, which have been such an important part of the obama

coalition, maybe that's how we pull them into our fold. >> no, krystal, i think it's a great point. especially about the younger generation really having this lack of trust with the government. i'm someone that believes in a strong foreign policy, having grown up in and out of embassies with my dad serving the united states abroad. so when this debate first started, i think i, like many others, thought, look, if this is just information being collected in a database, they're not reading our e-mails, listening in on our calls, i don't really care that much. if this means we're better protected from terrorism, i'm fine with that. the more information that comes out, as you were saying, as this conversation continues to build and we're realizing that, you know, the government has been misleading the courts in a number of different ways, you have to take a step back here. i've taken a step back and said, look, this absolutely legitimizes the argument that there has been an overreach of government. this is the perfect time to step back. i think we can all agree here that we live in unprecedented

times. we're fighting an invisible enemy. we're fighting an enemy that's not part of one nation state. we're seeing this sort of hangover post 9/11. we put a blanket over everything. we tried to protect ourselves from this enemy, and now we're saying, you know what, we have this huge director of national intelligence organization. it's over the entire intelligence community. too top heavy. i think this is a time we should make restructure the intelligence community, take a step back and say, how are we assessing information? how can we reorganize our intelligence community in a way that we find the right balance between security and our personal freedoms? >> you know, abby, i started on the same place as this issue. we talk about this all the time. surely we musts have somebody minding the story. we must be able to grab the whole hay stack to find the needle. i've done a lot of reading on this, read through books. one of the things i started to find is that the government is

not actually doing as much as they can for us here. if they can't concretely say this is the thing that we stopped out of all this information that we're collecting, then i'm saying this isn't pragmatic and you're not even able to tell us, here's why we're doing this. part of what i got is this is a cold war program that -- an old government's program to fight to survive, just like my human being would. it seems like this is a program that fought to keep itself alive and morphed into this modern terrorism era, but it's a bit outdated at this point. >> i know we got to go. you make such an important point there. it's bigger than who's in charge of it. we showed the president and mcconnell. but these programs are functioning with all of this power, regardless of who's in charge. if they can lie to the court, obviously we're in trouble. i'm sure we'll have more on the story. up next, we've got something pretty interesting. forget your wives tales. we have a harvard trained economist with the real deal on

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one phillips' colon health probiotic cap each day helps defend against these digestive issues... with three strains of good bacteria. [ phillips' lady ] live the regular life. phillips'. some of you "cycle" faithful might remember back in the spring just before the arrival of baby lowell, i just can't get enough of that picture, i made a few bold pregnancy confessions. one that me and my fine-month baby bump lunched on sushi and six months in i had half a glass of wine. oh, yes, i did. well, haters, get a load of this. it turns out i've got science on my side, or at least math. emily oster is a harvard-trained economist separating pregnancy advice fact from fiction in her new book "expecting better: why conventional wisdom is wrong and what you really need to know." emily, thanks so much for

joining us in debunking some of these myths. let's start with wine. how terrible and horrible of a mother am i for having that half a glass of wine? >> you're not. this has clearly touched a real nerve for people. certainly i'm not saying pregnant women should have a license to go out and drink to excess. i, probably like you, came from a place of confusion. my ob said two glasses a week is fine. the internet was like, none at all. i really went into this study, and i tried to use my training and data to figure out the answer. the answer was when you look at the evidence on drinking an occasional glass of wine like you did, you know, even a few glasses of week, there's no evidence of harm. >> ecmily, i absolutely loved your book. as someone who hasn't had child

yet, i'm already overwhelmed. my mom said they didn't have any of that information. she was just fine. i'm curious, though, in terms of activities because you mentioned avoiding hot yoga, hot tubs, even gardening. you say those aren't good. what activities should we absolutely avoid, and what activities might surprise women that are okay to do when you're pregnant? >> so absolutely avoiding hot tubs, especially early on, actually put your kid at risk for birth defects. that's something to definitely avoid. exercise in general, which i think a lot of women are nervous about. i get a lot of questions like, i'm running and people are looking at me funny. exercise is great, totally fine. so women, if you like to go running, you like to exercise, go right ahead. >> emily, i find it refreshing to hear that the doctors were right and the internet was wrong. >> it's true. >> but i want to touch on third

trimester nookie. is it okay to have sex when the baby is so large? >> yes, it is okay to have sex. i've never gotten this question on tv. this is because, i guess, there's a man. yes, sex is fine if you are feeling into it, which to be fair, not everyone is. >> yes, excellent point, emily. and last, one of the things that a lo a lot of women are most fearful about is how much weight they gain. there's a lot of scrutiny. are you gaining too much, not gaining enough? what is the right amount of weight gain, or should we be that concerned about it? >> a little bit here and there we shouldn't be that concerned about. the thing i found so striking was there was this idea like if you go over 35 pounds -- like, are you going to explode? i always thought maybe the baby will just explode out. it won't. but the normal range for a woman who's normal weight the

beginning of pregnancy is 25 to 35 pounds. that's great. i actually argue you should be more worried about gaining less than that than gaining more than that. i think women who are kind of like watching every cookie, you know, don't eat too many cookies, but don't freak out too much. that's the general message. use data to not freak out. >> just live in moderation. >> in moderation. everything in moderation. exactly. >> there you go. emily, thank you so much. so glad we had you to clear all this up. >> thank you for having me. all right. up next, more fun with science. ever feel overwhelmed in the grocery store with all the choices? you are not alone. is like hammering.

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[ male announcer ] it's the car you won't stop talking about. ever. hurry in to the volkswagen best. thing. ever. event. and get 0% apr for 60 months, now until september 3rd. that's the power of german engineering. who thinks more is better than less? okay. why? >> more is better than less because if stuff is not less -- if there's more less stuff, then you might -- you might want to have some more, and your parents just don't let you because there's only a little bit. >> right. >> we want more. we want more. like, you really like it. you want more. >> i follow you. >> you follow that? a little overwhelming. kind of like walking into an electronics store knowing that you want to get a new 50-inch tv to watch "the cycle" every day, of course, but you get to the tv section and there's a gigantic wall full of options. the 52-inch, the 60-inch, the plasma, the lcd, the 120 hertz.

should you get a sony, pan sonic, another brand? the choices are endless. it makes you wonder if more is better or worse. it's what some call the paradox of choice, the idea that while consumers like the idea of choice, we can get overwhelmed by the sheer number of products presented to us. our next guest says that idea may be wrong. we have "the atlantic's" business editor derek thompson here to explain his latest article. you might have to win me over. a lot of times i walk into these stores, there's 100 different pairs and types of jeans or 100 different types of stereos or whatever. i feel overwhelmed. i like a more curated experience. >> right. there's this concept of the paradox of choice. when there are too many options, it can overwhelm consumers like yourself and discourage them from making a purchase.

but it makes you wonder. you go about your shopping life. there are 80,000 varieties of drinks at starbucks. there are 100 different televisions at best buy. there isn't just a milk shelf. there's an entire milk aisle with 1%, 2%, 3%, soy, and whatever they just invented. economists looked at this issue and said is more really less? he looked at it from the opposite perspective. what happens when we offer consumers only one choice? when you give consumers a take it or leave it option, they're much more likely to leave it than take it. maybe there's a good reason why all these stores are offering so many choices. >> you know, derek, my grandparents would probably say, what happened to thursday's meat loaf night and friday is fried chicken night? you simply don't have a choice. we live in a world with a lot of choices today. we like choices, but sometimes those choices can be quite overwhe overwhelming. you think about walking into a starbucks or the cheesecake factory, for example. i myself have to know what i'm

ordering, or i get very overwhelmed with the options. you used an example in your article. william sonoma had a bread maker that cost $279. it wasn't selling, so they introduced a second bread maker at $429. sales of the original $279 bread maker doubled. so is it that we like choices or isn't there something still to simplicity? those are only two options there. >> right. i love the williams sonoma story. there's another lesson you can draw from it. when we're shopping, we don't know what anything should cost. we don't know the real value of bread makers, certainly i don't. so we use clues that the stores offer us in order to determine, okay, what is a fair price and what's a good story i can tell? with the breadmaker story, why i love that so much is obviously no one knows what it should cost. so by framing it, by framing the $280 bread maker as seeming like a deal, it gave people a reason. that's what choices do. they can frame the metrics we're shopping for.

if you're in the best buy and looking at a television, what are you looking for? size, clarity, maybe brand. having options heightens distinctions between these choices can and can make can ma more good that you make the final purchase. >> book "the art of choosing," they talk about the fact that often we perceive we're making a choice between 10 or 20 things but our brain is already sorted it out into a bucket of one or two or three. and so we misperceive what we're doing. when we speak of choice, what we mean is the ability to exercise control over ourselves and our environment. in order to choose, we must first perceive that control is possible. it seems like some of that research is consistent or similar to some of what you wrote except that they talk about us making buckets that we don't even realize. if you get a sample at a store and you eat the nutella compared to some other product, there

might be ten alternatives but your pran perceives it as two buckets. >> i think her point is very well taken. i think when we do see 100 different television on the wall at best buy, we're not actually choosing between all 100. the first thing we think is okay, what matters to me? that i want a television between 50 and 70 inches that say it's made by some company based ot of japan. and so we slice down our metrics very quickly and then we choose between maybe five or six. the study found the single option aversion study found when you only offer people one thing in each category, it makes them feel anxious. it makes them feel like they haven't done due diligence, like there's more out there to see. >> one exception to thatting is toure's book. you find overwhelmingly feedback if it's only a book by toure. >> right. of course. that is the only exception. >> the toure exception. >> go on. >> i mean, derek, you're not

totally winning me over yet here. obviously, one choice is not enough. and a thousand choices is too much. isn't there a middle ground where the store can say, hey, we've given you four pairs an of shoes to choose from or that sort of thing and then i like a small number of choices. >> yes, i would absolutely say that. i mean, i think it's situations where, hello, it's good to see you both. it's situations where these studies can live together at the same time. right? you can have the fact ta one choice is too little and inevent choices is too much. but it gives people reason to think that maybe the starbucks and best byes and supermarkets of the world aren't crazy. they're doing this for a reason. >> all right, derek. i'm being rudely interrupted by some woman. i don't know what's going on here. derek thompson, thank you very much. up next, my thoughts on tomorrow's march on washington. and the next steps in the struggle.

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my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. i have a dream. >> the reasons why we needed a march on washington 50 years ago are still with us. it's called the major on washington for jobs and freedom, and the jobs part remains elusive. over the past 350 years, the

black unemployment rate has been consistently double the white unemployment rate. the economic policy institute says black america is nearly always facing an employment situation that would be labels a particular little severe recession if it characterized the entire live force. that decades long recession is the bedrock problem. the reason why the gap in household income is not their rowed and the disparity in home ownership has grown wider. in part fueled by disparities in the criminal justice system which professor michelle alexander has labeled the new jim crow because the war on drugs has only deepened the sense that there's two americas and the black one is under occupation by a laws and policing procedures that lead us to be treated far more harshly even though whites and blacks use and sell drugs at very similar rates. our right to vote is being attacked in myriad ways. we need not just a march but a new civil rights movement to deal with the challenges, jobs

is, inequality, voting rights. north carolina's moral mondays and florida's dream defenders and the dream nine immigration protesters but this has to be a multiracial movement as the civil rights movement was because the assault on hispanic rights, gay rights and women's rights is all an attempt to push back toward a world where straight white men held 100e% o all power. we must make the movement into activist work as well as personal and political day-to-day work. so many of us are doing that, be advancing the dream in our daily lives, using opportunities to advance our families, our race our world with quiet dignity. some of us are doing the best we can with a poverty of options, living right but stuck at the bottom because intergenerational class mobility is nearly impossible in modern america. a few of us, sadly are lost. to kill an elderly veteran or a

young ferner like chris lane is obviously sub human behavior proving nothing but that a fringe of the black community has the potential to be as sub human as james holmes and michael hill who this week walked into a georgia school with an ak-47 and 500 rounds stopped by an unarmed sister. her courage and fortitude in the fate of death and winning personality are qualities that helped propel the original civil rights movement. now we need a new one, an charismatic brilliant leader who can be speak truth to power in just the rightway, that can speak in the back rooms to get things done and who can take over from the civil rights movement leaders who still people the national stage. maybe an it sounds like i'm talking about a moses who will led lead us to the promised land about we need people to lead us

out of this of structural racism. we were told the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice and lord knows, we're still waiting for it to come around. that does it for "the cycle." joy reid is in the chair for martin once again. >> well said, toure. thanks. good afternoon. i'm joy reid. it's friday, august 23rd. for the president, it's not sleep till scranton. ♪ >> president obama set off on a two-day bus tour. >> i can mag big news. >> the bottom line is higher education cannot be a luxury. >> it's astonishing to the watch the self-destruction of the republican party. >> there is no more important regulatory reform. >> 40 votes to try to. >> repeal every single word. >> of obama care. >> here you have the speaker of the house saying let's put that fight off. >> i can't force these folks to do what's right. >> i think we're going to