and as jeffrey brown reports, there's uncertainty on whether there will be another round of discussions. >> this is a very modest beginning but it is a beginning on which we can build. >> brown: u.n. mediator lakhdar brahimi summed up the nine days of contentious talks, saying, in effect, progress needs to be measured in small steps. >> it was a very difficult start. but the sides have become used to sitting in the same room. they have presented positions and listened to one another. there have been moments when one side has even acknowledged the concerns and the difficulties and the point of view of the other side. >> brown: brahimi lamented that the two sides failed to agree on lifting the siege of homs, where civilians are trapped, with no access to food or medicine. there was also no movement on creating a transitional government. the syrian foreign minister rejected it out of hand, and complained the opposition won't face facts. >> ( translated ): i regret to tell you that we have not reached tangible results during first of all, the lack of maturity and seriousness on the other si

. >> ifill: plus, jeffrey brown and poet laureate natasha trethewey continue their travels to find "whereetry lives." tonight, how doctors are using verse to provide better care.

jeffrey brown has an appreciation. ♪ >> brown: pete seeger lived the life of performer, folklorist, andist for more than 60 years, with his trademark five- string banjo nearly always close at hand. over those decades, he wrote and co-wrote a long list of songs that became american standards, and left a lasting mark on several generations. ♪ if i had a hammer, i'd hammer in the morning ♪ i'd hammer in the evening all over this land ♪ i'd hammer out danger i'd hammer out a warning ♪ i'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters all over ♪ this land >> brown: seeger got his start in the late 1930's, and by 1940, he was performing with woody guthrie and others as the almanac singers >> i had a good ear and i could accompany him on anything. i didn't have to hear it once. the first time i heard it i could hear a chord change coming and i didn't play anything fancy. i just gave him a good solid backing. i didn't try and play fancy breaks or anything. ♪ irene goodnight >> brown: after world war two, seeger helped form the weavers, the group that gave rise to a folk music revival acros

. >> ifill: plus, jeffrey brown and poet laureate natasha trethewey continue their travels to find "where poetry lives." tonight, how doctors are using verse to provide better care. >> someone is dying alone in the night. if we do anything with patients we're really i think immersing ourselves in their stories, really hearing their voices in a profound way. and certainly that's what a poem, i think, does. >> ifill: those are just some of the stories we're covering on tonight's pbs newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> and by the alfred p. sloan foundation. supporting science, technology, and improved economic performance and financial literacy in the 21st century. >> and the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: there was talk of a

i mention them, by the way, thank you for jeffrey brown, but a real double take the greatest and examine the question in american politics today is to what degree the underpinning of targeting gridlocks racial. [applause] and she kind of dance around that a little bit. you mind if i asked president obama whether he thinks the underpinning of gridlock racial. of course not. i'm going to throw you under the boss. and obama dance all around. it is dangerous and delicate, but throughout american history it has been the gateway to the advancement of freedom and to the blockage of freedom to ways of looking at it. 1963. seriation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation to for ever. never mentioned race, never mentions segregation again. she turned out a dime. it made it obvious that when the future segregation and talking overly about race. swiss his message. the government by pointy headed bureaucrats tyrannical judges and legislators people want to believe it and that is the beginning amiss rendering history. what makes me safe and makes me free is not all of the painstaking ties and rebuil

i mention them by the way, thank you for jeffrey brown, but i mentioned them to gwen ifill on the "newshour" the other night and got a real double take. i said that the greatest unexamined question in american politics today is to what degree the underpinnings of partisan gridlock our racial. what -- [inaudible] [applause] >> and as we came out of this, she kind of danced around the old and we came out and she said, do you mind if i ask president obama if i did interview him whether he thinks the underpinnings of gridlock that he is suffering with so much, threatening to shut down our government and everything else, right now our racial? i said of course not. she says, i'm going to throw you under the bus, and sure enough the very next day she got an interview with president obama. [laughter] and said this historian says this, and obama against all around it. [laughter] but it is dangers. it is delicate, but race throughout american history has been the gateway to the basement of freedom and to the blockage of freedom. it's the gateway where we go through. two ways of looking at it. 1963, 5

jeffrey brown picks up the story. >> brown: the jailing of the women stemmed from what they termed a"punk prayer" they performed in 2012 at a russian orthodox cathedral in moscow. they were charged with hooliganism and two of the five women involved served time in prison camps, where they went on hunger strikes to protest conditions. their story is told in the new book, "words will break cement: the passion of pussy riot" by russian-american author and journalist masha gessen. her previous book is "the man without a face: the unlikely rise of vladimir putin." welcome to you. >> thank you. >> brown: we referred to pussy riot as a punk band or art collective, political activism, how should we think of them, what are they. >> they are art collectors with who created a character called pussy riot, a punk band. so they performed as this character. and they staged performances in moscow and a variety of locates to protest various expressions of the putin regime. >> brown: in your book you say they all came at this in different ways but is there a common thread that lead to this collective

jeffrey brown picks up the details about those connections. >> at the time that madoff's crimes wereeiled, jpmorgan's name was not publicly connected with the case in any significant way but federal prosecutors said today the bank new something was wrong well before the ponsy scheme collapsed. u.s. attorney spelled out some of that history at a press conference this afternoon. >> today's charges have been filed because in that regard, j.p. morgan as an institution failed and failed miserably. in part because of that failure, for decades, bernie madoff was able to launder billions of dollars in ponzi proceeds, essentially through a single set of accounts at jpmorgan, as far back as 1998, a bank fund manager concluded that the returns were possibly "too good to be true" and that there were too many red flags. >> patricia hurtado has been covering this for bloomberg news and was at the prosecutor's press conference today and joins me now. thank you for joining us. let's fill in the picture little bit. what exactly is jpmorgan admitting that it did? >> well, they're basically accused of

jeffrey brown recently spoke with screenwriter john ridley, and today seemed like a good moment to revisit that conversation. >> brown: when we first meet northup, he's a well-educated carpenter and musician living with his wife and children in saratoga springs, new york. the film follows as he's kidnapped and sold into slavery, experiencing all its brutality and forced to hide his identity and education for fear of punishment or death. in this scene, he encounters the wife of a cruel louisiana plantation owner. >> this is a list of goods and sundries. you will take it to be filled and return immediately. take the tag. tell bartholomew to add it to our debt. >> yes, missus. >> where you from? >> i told you. >> tell me again. >> washington. >> who were your masters? >> master name of freeman. >> was he a learned man? >> i suppose so. >> he learn you to read? >> a word here or there, but i have no understanding of the written text. >> well, don't trouble yourself with it. same as the rest, master brought you here to work. that's all. any more will earn you 100 lashes. >> brown: john ridley w

jeffrey brown picks it up from here. >> is it still possible to climb to the pop top in america.paper released this week a economists found the prospects for upward mobile, the american dream haven't changed in the last several decades. the ability to move up in the income ladder hasn't worserned but it also hasn't improved. raj chetty one of the authors, is professor of economics at harvard university and he joins me now. well, thanks for joining us. it might be hellful first to define what you mean by upward mobility? >> sure. what we mean by upward mobility in this study is a child's chances of moving up in the income distribution. one way to measure that is the chance that a child say from the bottom fifth of the income distribution reaches the top fifth of the income distribution. you could also measure in other ways what is the average outcome of children from low income families or what are their odds of reaching the middle class. no matter which way we define upward mobility the main finding of our most recent study is that your odds of climbing up the income ladder haven

jeffrey brown has our update. >> i just want to know, who do you trust? >> brown: that was a dominant question at wednesday's town hall meeting in charleston, west virginia. officials say a chemical spill that fouled the elk river has dissipated and they've rescinded the "do-not-use" orders for some 300,000 people. but three weeks later, shamaya lewis and others are still anxious. >> who do i trust? do i trust the water quality specialist that's been told to call me and i've been continually following up on-- i spoke to him again yesterday-- or do i trust you all to go ahead and let my children, you know, bathe and stuff in the water? i'm extremely frustrated. >> brown: testimony at a state legislative committee hearing also yesterday did nothing to ease the frustration. >> the biggest problem is-- and my biggest concern is-- we still don't have a good handle on what it is we're being exposed to or at what concentrations. >> brown: scott simonton co- chairs the state environmental quality board. he said traces of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, showed u

jeffrey brown has more. >> brown: and for that we're joined by his torian robert dalleking among his many books, flawed giant lynn don johnson 1961 to 1973. angela blackwell founder of c.e.o. and policy link, a poverty focused research organization and glen hubbard chairman of the council of economic advisors under president george w. bush and now dean of columbia university's school of business and welcome to off you. robert dahl , i want to start with you to set the scene. what drove lbj to undertake a war on poverty it. >> well, he wasn't the first one to want a war on poverty. in fact, what i find so interesting is herbert hoover in august 1928 said no country in the world was closer to abolishing poverty than the united states. and then of course we had the great depression. in 196 -- 1962 a man named michael harrington whos with a socialist, part of the democratic catholic workers movement published a book called the other america, poverty in the united states. it has had a great impact. >> well, what really gave it a great impact was the fact that dwight mcdonald, the critic,

jeffrey brown has been looking into what happened. >> brown: it was only a few inches of snow, but it triggered utter chaos. all around atlanta, thousands of people got stranded overnight in a mass exodus to get home early. countless wrecks, including jack-knifed trucks, ground traffic to a halt in icy gridlock. hundreds of students spent the night on school buses. ray henry of the associated press in atlanta says others faced their own, unique dilemmas. because of the weather conditions, we spoke via skype. >> one woman ended up giving birth, en route to a hospital basically got stuck on an interstate and delivered a healthy child, that's very good. other people were running out of gas after sitting in traffic stalled for six to seven hours. many people needed to be picked up by national guard humvees and taken to warming stations or shelters. it's pretty messy out there. >> brown: and some people took to social media, including this snowed out atlanta facebook page, to offer and request supplies and shelter. >> seems like a lot of useful info was communicated. people were able to ge

jeffrey brown has our conversation, starting with some background. >> brown: computers, smart phones or even accessories, tech products tied to the internet are becoming more and more pervasive. and they're giving rise to growing concerns about the ability of companies to gather, store and track personal information. the kinect camera on its new x- box one gaming system. the camera is always on, but the company insists personal data is not transmitted in any form without permission. auto-maker ford caused a stir at the consumer electronics show in las vegas this month. a top marketing executive was discussing new tracking technology, when he said this: >> by the way, we know everyone who breaks the law, we know exactly when you do it because we have a gps sensor in your car, we know where you are and we know how fast you're driving. but, um, but seriously-- uh oh. we don't supply that data to other people either. >> brown: later, ford insisted it does not track or transmit data from vehicles without a customer's consent. new a larms went off last week when google announced it is buyi

jeffrey brown recorded our end- of-the-year look yesterday. >> wall street was up in 2013, way up, by any and all major market measures. in the meantime, the outlook for main street, economic growth in jobs was better but hardly great. we discuss what is going on with hugh johnson, a market analyst who runs his own investment management firm, robin faz ed and harry holtzer from georgetown university and welcome to ail of you. hugh johnson, start us off. how good a year was this for stocks? >> there's no word that i think -- no superlative that is strong enough to really describe how good of a year it was. it was not only a good year. it's one of the better years we have had. if you go back and look at the records since 1890 but i would say the biggest thing was it was a big surprise. i don't know anybody that had been forecasting, a lot of people forecast and up year but nobody forecasted anything over 12 to 15 percent so a big year and big surprise. >> robin was it a surprise to you? >> you're going to have to toast mr. ben bernanke on new year's eve because when the federal reserve

jeffrey brown has the story. >> brown: while the midwest and east face a fierce winter and heavy snowfall, there's an entirely different climate concern in california-- a record-breaking dry spell that's been building for three years. >> i'm declaring a drought emergency. >> brown: last week, governor jerry brown formally announced the state may be facing its worst drought since record- keeping began some 100 years ago. he returned to the subject today in his "state of the state" address. >> among all of our uncertainties, weather is one of the most basic. we can't control it, we can only live with it. and now we have to live with a very serious drought of uncertain duration. >> brown: precipitation is below 20% of normal this winter, and as a result: river flows are low; snow packs are much smaller than normal and reservoirs are shrinking. >> water in l.a. is limited. every drop is precious. >> brown: the dry conditions are also feeding wildfires, as vegetation that typically re- hydrates during the winter, dries out instead. california's huge agriculture industry is likewise threatened,

jeffrey brown has the story. >> brown: in november, machinist union workers at boeing voted down a new contract extension. pensions were the most contested issue. after boeing offered several revisions, a new vote is taking place today, with results expected tonight. the stakes are high: thousands of jobs and the building of boeing's new 777x plane. if the union approves the contract, boeing says it will go ahead and build the plane in unionized factories in washington state, the company's historic manufacturing home. if there's another "no" vote, boeing says it may well go elsewhere. 22 other states responded to a solicitation from the company with proposals to build the new jet in their areas. joining us now: harley shaiken, a professor at the university of california berkeley who specializes in labor issues. and richard gritta, a professor of finance at the university of portland and expert on the airline industry. start us off, explain the pension and other issues here and the dilemma for the union members voting on this? well, it's a real dilemma. this was a very tough context for

jeffrey brown talked with her earlier this week. >> brown: kate dicamillo says she was the shyest child in the world, the kind of kid who wouldn't say boo to a goose. well, she found her voice as a writer of stories for young people, among her best selling books are because of win dixie, the-- and newberry award binning tale of des per auction. she will spend the neck two years as author and ambassador for stories and reading. she lives in minneapolis and joins us from there congratulations to you and it's nice to talk to you again. >> well, thank you very much for being willing to talk to me. let's talk books. >> brown: so the shyest child in the world becomes a national ambassador. how did that happen? >> well, i know there's a really rich irony in that, isn't there. and i am not exage-- well, i do tend to exaggerate, i'm a story teller, but really i was just like f hi a dime forevery time an adult said cat got your tongue, you know, and my mother was a very outgoing person. and she could never believe that i couldn't run into the store and ask somebody some kind of question. so how d

jeffrey brown updates the health care law's roll-out.lier this week the obama administration released official enrollment figures showing at 1.1 million people have signed up for health insurance using the federal exchange, with more than 975,000 of those coming during the month of december. another 900,000 people registered through the individual state exchanges for a total of 2.1 million. a quick surge but short of an early administration estimate of 3.3 million people would sign up by the start of 2014. julie appleby of kaiser health news joins me now for an update. welcome back. >> thank you. >> brown: first, after all that's happened it's probably useful just to remind people what actually happened when this all kicked in? what were the important changes? >> this is a key date because it was a milestone in a way. a lot of the key provision of the health care law kicked in so things like insurers can no longer reject people who have medical conditions. they can no longer charge men or women more than men. they can no longer set annua

jeffrey brown has the story. >> this is my father at a father/daughter dance in high school >> reporter: at age 48, jamie tyrone decided on a whim to sign up for a study that offered genetic testing for 22 diseases. this is my mother and my father at my wedding day. >> reporter: the results were shocking and life changing. >> my genetic status is that i have a 91% lifetime risk of getting alzheimer's disease. >> reporter: alzheimer's, a debilitating form of dementia, was not even on tyrone's radar screen-- she'd had no symptoms. and hearing the news sent her into an emotional tailspin. >> i was very, very lonely and very, very isolated. at one point, i was told it was probably best not to talk about it because you might be discriminated against, so i went into a really dark hole. >> reporter: all this began five years ago. ironically, just as her father began showing signs of mental confusion. tyrone watched as his health quickly declined. he was eventually diagnosed with alzheimer's. >> when my father was still alive, and i looked at him, all i saw was my destiny. and i was frightened

jeffrey toobin, and pamela brown, in the middle of a blizzard near buffalo.n minneapolis, stephanie elam. pame pamela, how cold is it? >> reporter: anderson, it's the kind of cold where your cheeks hurt, your teeth hurt. we're dealing with a trifecta of the cold and the whipping winds and of course, the snow. in fact, this blizzard warning has been effect here in buffalo since last night. it's expected to two through tomorrow morning. there hasn't been a blizzard warning here in buffalo since 1993. despite that, residents here, they're no strangers to winter weather. this is a lot, anderson, that it's a ghost town. you see here around me, there's no cars on the roads. all the businesses are closed. people are heeding those warnings and hunkering down, san diego inside. authorities are saying that's a big reason why they believe there haven't been any big injuries or they haven't seen many cases dealing with frostbite, hypothermia. so far, there haven't been any deaths. it is very dangerous. officials said on one highway, there were 50 stranded cars there, and

jeffrey toobin, and pamela brown, in the middle of a blizzard near buffalo.tephanie elam. pamela, how cold is it? >> reporter: anderson, it's the kind of cold where your cheeks hurt, your teeth hurt.