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It’s a well-used cliché that Americans love their cars.

But as gas prices have hit all-time highs, commuters have been finding alternatives to sitting behind the wheel.

And that’s been good news for the van leasing business – not to mention the environment.

NHPR Correspondent Sheryl Rich-Kern reports.

Survival guides are swift sellers in the worst of times. Remember the Y2K scare, or the run on gas masks after 9/11? While often dismissed as required reading for doomsdayers storing up canned goods in the cellar, I found myself leafing through one recently that got me thinking.

If you followed the news this summer, you saw headlines of massive food shortages, failed banks, power grids buckling, wildfires sweeping through homes, floods and droughts creating havoc in the Midwest, and this week, the heart-wrenching memories of the devastation by Hurricane Katrina. Who can help but wonder what it’s like for people holed up in their houses, surrounded by the elements, fearful, rationing food, waiting for the rescue that may or may not come?

Matthew Stein says he is not a survivalist, but he’s prepared for a range of catastrophes if the infrastructure we take for granted should fail. Really prepared. He’s just out with a revised edition of When Technology Fails, a manual for self-reliance, sustainability, and surviving the long emergency, and he joins Word of Mouth with advice on calculating a year’s food supply, storing fluids in animal skins, discerning poisonous from edible plants, and other information you didn't know you needed.

Test your own level of readiness with this preparedness checklist

Find what you'll need for your 72-hour emergency kit

Earlier this summer, we asked Word of Mouth listeners how the economy is changing their daily habits. We received a lot of responses from people who found themselves driving, shopping, and even washing their clothes differently.

No one referred to dying differently. But – no joke – the sluggish economy is changing what people are choosing their final resting place. A growing number is bucking the high-end funeral for simpler, cost-saving measures for laying themselves and loved ones to rest. The traditional American funeral, with wakes, services, expensive coffins, processions, limos and graveside ceremonies, can cost over $6,000, with many reaching much higher numbers.

Some families are choosing the old pine box casket over lavish services. Cremations are also on a sharp rise around the country, from 2 percent of all burials in 1960, to 33 percent today. The cost for a simple cremation can be as low as $250. They are less expensive than traditional burials, and less-land intensive. Joining Word of Mouth with more about this trend is Garen Daly, host of the Frugal Yankee website and radio show, which can be heard live on WNTN in Newton, Mass.

(Photo by Esther Simpson)

President Bush introduced No Child Left Behind in 2001. And since then the federal law has been controversial, to put it mildly. Its goal is to increase accountability and student proficiency in the classroom. And it does so by tying federal funding to how schools perform on standardized tests.

Critics say the so-called “teach to the test” system leaves students foundering. Test prep companies, like Kaplan and Princeton Review, however, have done remarkably well. Kaplan’s revenues went from $354 million in 2000 to more than $2 billion today.

Jeremy Miller is a high school science teacher in Denver. He worked on-and-off for Kaplan for nine years, most recently as an in-school “coach” for its SAT and Regents’ Advantage program and branded K12 lesson plans. He earned $295 a day, more than all but the most senior teachers, and he came away with some valuable lessons on American’s broken public school system. His article "Tyranny of the Test" is in the September issue of Harper’s Magazine.

Read Harper's interview with Jeremy Miller here.

(Photo by Dave Scelfo)