We hear the word “outsourcing” tossed around a lot these days, but what does it really mean? Roy Cordato, John Locke Foundation Vice President for Research, explains what it is, why businesses engage in it, and how it benefits consumers. Then we turn to the ongoing debate over the Republican-drawn election maps. North Carolina’s new election maps recently took their first trip to the state Supreme Court. Justices are not planning to rule on whether the maps are constitutional. Instead they’ll decide whether lawyers who worked with the Republican-led General Assembly will be forced to share more information with the maps’ critics. You’ll hear highlights from both sides of the case. Next we turn to work that continues at the General Assembly, even though state legislators left Raleigh about a month ago. John Turcotte, head of the General Assembly’s Program Evaluation Division, recently spelled out his evaluators’ upcoming work plan, including reports involving the N.C. Railroad, public workers’ compensation, and oversight of some state-funded health care services. That’s followed by a debate over economic and political history. As candidates for public office debate the best way to boost American recovery from the Great Recession, experts are still debating the causes of the Great Depression that rocked the United States more than 80 years ago. Economists Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth and Lawrence H. White of George Mason recently debated the topic at Duke University. You’ll hear key points from their presentations. And finally, with the economy teetering on another recession and the state’s unemployment rate a staggering 9.4 percent, even those with college degrees are having a difficult time finding a job. Conventional wisdom has long said that a degree is the ticket to prosperity, but does that argument hold water? George Leef, research director for the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, discusses how and why the four-year degree has become a screening tool for employers rather than a ticket to a career, as well as other alternatives for securing a marketable skill in the changing economy.