David Brancaccio

But look.

Dr. Krugman essentially clobbers my point using his Nobel Prize in economics.

Final score, Krugman won, Brancaccio zero.

The only Swedish thingy I got is a packet of meatballs from Ikea.

Another moment reminds us of the importance of local journalism.

I was working on a series about news deserts in America, places essentially devoid of local news coverage now.

I was along the border in Del Rio, Texas, site of a big story a few years earlier when thousands of refugees from Haiti were detained under a bridge across the Rio Grande.

Border Patrol wasn't talking, and to get the story, it took an experienced local reporter.

One of that reporter, Karen Gleason's longtime connections, was Del Rio's mayor, an official who had permission to enter the camp of migrants where news media had been excluded.

Gleason told it like this.

Gleason then got her firsthand account to residents on a fledgling local news website that had sprung up to try to fill the void in a town that now had no daily paper.

And you get to meet childhood heroes, including the day I'm in the Marketplace New York bureau.

And who walks through but James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise himself.

William Shatner, then 87, was in the house.

on his way to a gig at Canadian Broadcasting down the hall.

I grabbed him for us because Shatner, the actor, is also Mr. Shatner Entrepreneur, who talked to me of the resilience needed for both the acting and the business game.

Shatner told us how he was paid very little and saved nothing from the first Star Trek series, but got passionate about nest egging after that experience.

Anyway, I'll still be around here, but not getting up every day at 2 a.m.

to go live.

Thank you for being there for Public Media, especially this year.