Stories of the Week | PBS NewsHour Podcast | PBS

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson launched a broad platform to abolish American poverty. Fifty years later, Kwame Holman looks back on the historic legislation, while Jeffrey Brown talks to presidential historian Robert Dallek, Angela Glover Blackwell of PolicyLink and Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University about our progress.

The Education and Justice Departments released new guidelines on school discipline, urging schools to ensure that punishments comply with civil rights laws. Hari Sreenivasan gets debate on the recommendations from Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

As former defense secretary for both the Bush and Obama administrations, Robert Gates oversaw wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, testified before Congress and grieved the deaths of his troops. Judy Woodruff talks to Greg Jaffe of The Washington Post for a preview of Gates' new book, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War."

In our news wrap Tuesday, the Iraqi government attacked al-Qaida militants who have been holding the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah for days. Also, a first round of chemical weapons have left Syria. The UN announced that poison gas materials were put to sea to later be destroyed on a U.S. Navy ship.

The strong winds that normally keep the masses of very cold air contained near the North Pole weakened this week, allowing frigid temperatures to reach down into the United States. Judy Woodruff talks to Andrew Freedman of Climate Central about the science behind the polar vortex.

Emergency benefits for the long-term unemployed stopped for 1.3 million Americans at the end of December. Kwame Holman recaps the political debate over restarting those payments. Gwen Ifill gets perspectives from Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez and Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum on how to address unemployment.

In 2010, police in British Columbia began enforcing stricter drunk driving laws and ramped up penalties on drivers who tested at a lower blood alcohol level. The impact was immediate. In just two years there has been a 55 percent reduction in drunk-driving-related deaths. Correspondent William Brangham reports from Vancouver.

Take a look at these new technologies that allow people to keep track and quantify every detail of their daily lives. It's a growing movement called “quantified self.” The personal data gathered is often health-related, but there are applications to measure productivity and time spent in REM sleep. Is this data gone wild?

The percentage of students receiving music education has been in decline for decades. The Harmony Project, a music program for inner-city kids in Los Angeles partners with a neurobiologist to study the impact of music training on the learning skills of poor children.

The Iraq army shelled the city of Fallujah on Saturday in attempts to take back control from the Al-Qaida affiliated group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has also overrun the town of Ramadi. Liz Sly of the Washington Post reports from Beirut, Lebanon.

Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's top political news, including the inauguration of New York's new Mayor Bill de Blasio and his pledge to address economic inequality, plus how new laws on legal marijuana signal a U.S. cultural shift.

A new study published in "Science" found that low-income people who have Medicaid insurance go to the emergency room for care 40 percent more than their counterpoints without any insurance. Katherine Baicker of Harvard School of Public Health, a co-author of the study, joins Hari Sreenivasan

In Iraq's Anbar province, Sunni militants linked to al-Qaida have escalated a fight against Shiite-led government troops, blowing up official buildings. Judy Woodruff talks to author Bing West and Ryan Crocker, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, about the latest sectarian violence and how tribes from Anbar have joined in the fight.

Robotic devices are everywhere: in factories, law enforcement, caretaking. They even suck up dust bunnies. Today they are smarter than ever, but they only excel when the task is clearly defined. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on why it's hard to teach robots basic human things, like walking and problem solving.

When Congress reached a budget deal to fund the federal government, one of the controversial items they agreed to was a cut in military pensions. But does this break a promise to those who have served? Jeffrey Brown gets perspective from retired Vice Adm. Norbert Ryan and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb.