All Things Considered

Now that the Olympics are over, what's there to watch on TV? Eric Deggans of the Tampa Bay Times says there is more fun programming than anything else. He tells Audie Cornish that he'll be watching HBO's Hard Knocks series on the Miami Dolphins training camp, TNT's Major Crimes, Discovery's Shark Week and others.

Mitt Romney's new running mate has authored some provocative policy proposals to cut budget deficits and overhaul Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But Rep. Paul Ryan has also been an advocate for a different course for the central banking system of the United States, the Federal Reserve.

For the past 35 years, the Fed has had a dual mandate from Congress: to set interest rates at levels that will both foster maximum employment and keep prices stable. Put another way, the Fed's goals are to get unemployment as low as possible while keeping inflation in check.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigned in Ohio on Tuesday, where his focus was on coal and energy policy.

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Now, that Mitt Romney has chosen his running mate, Vice President Joe Biden knows who the competition is. And Biden has been talking about Paul Ryan on the campaign trail.

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The very plans the congressman voted for and promoted for 12 years and the governor supported put America's greatness in jeopardy. How do they think we got in this spot in the first place? What do they think happened? As my little youngest granddaughter would say, was it Casper the Ghost, Pop?

As part of the NPR Cities Project, we're exploring some "gee-whiz" questions about how cities work. Melissa Block talks to Gideon Berger, Fellowship Director for the Urban Land Institute, on the street in Washington, D.C.'s Chinatown. They talk about the trickiness of timing traffic lights