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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Let's consider now, those vehicles that offer something really cheap - the food trucks that have become so popular. At the L.A. Auto Show, Nissan has on display a new truck specially designed for mobile restaurateurs. Our last word in business today is: culinary concept car.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

NPR's Nina Gregory was also looking around the L.A. Auto Show searching for new extremes. She wanted to see some of the biggest offerings automakers had on display this year and also the littlest.

NINA GREGORY, BYLINE: The newest entry to the teeny tiny market is the Chevrolet Spark, a 144-inch four-door.

BRANDY SCHAFFELS: You might like the sound...

(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR SLAMMING)

Newt Gingrich served as speaker of the House of Representatives for four turbulent and productive years.

From 1995 through 1998, Congress forced a government shutdown, overhauled the welfare system, balanced the budget for the first time in decades and impeached a president for the second time in history.

Gingrich was in the middle of those debates, fiery in his rhetoric, yet willing to compromise and work with a Democratic president.

The 104th Congress

With Wednesday's deadline looming, the congressional supercommittee still seems far from an agreement, causing concern that failure could send financial markets into a spiral.

The bipartisan panel, charged with finding budget cuts or new revenues to reduce the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, is a child of the summer's debt-ceiling debate. It was an escape hatch for Congress and the president when they couldn't reach agreement on big deficit-reduction measures. That game of chicken helped to send the stock market sliding.

When Sarah Littman took her son, Joshua, to college this fall, it was hard.

"I thought I was gonna cry the whole way back from college," she says during a visit to StoryCorps in New York City. "But I managed to make it until I got home. And then I walked upstairs and I saw your door shut and I just lost it."

The state's jobless rate inched down a bit last month.