Sarah Gonzalez
Appearances
Fresh Air
The Real-Life Russian Spies Who Inspired 'The Americans'
Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long. That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
Fresh Air
How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America
Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long. That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
It was actually just a podcast I was recording, but I was planning on... I had written something I really wanted to talk about that was stressful. And it was a Sunday night, and I was laying with my boyfriend. We were watching our favorite show, whatever it was at the time. And it just came over me and just consumed me. And I was able to go, hold on a second. am I okay in this moment?
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Not only was I okay, it was like my favorite thing to do of all time, Sunday, snuggling in bed, watching TV. And what a waste. Why would I ruin it with worrying about the next day? I was prepared for the next day. I had mitigated anything that I could wake up the next day and not be prepared. I was prepared. It felt
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
like a great relief to go like, oh yeah, no, I can just be in this, be in my body right now and enjoy this. And it's so often that we dread and we waste all this time dreading. And then even the thing we're dreading, if we say, am I okay in this very moment? We tend to be okay.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Well, I mean, one, it was just necessity, you know. But two, yes, the awkwardness. He was completely conscious and has his marbles totally and his humor. And I just asked him, you know, Dad, is this horrifying for you? And he goes, no. As soon as he said no, he was like, I don't care. Then I was able to, you know, to just do it.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And not everyone in the family could do it, but, you know, there were a few of us that were fine doing it. And, you know, it very quickly becomes – I think – I don't know. I'm not worldly enough, but my guess is this is a very American kind of cultural thing that we – sexualize, you know, nudity and all this stuff so much that it becomes taboo to just care for a loved one in necessary ways.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Oh, my dad and my stepmom Janice both died last May, nine days apart. And, oh, that one needs work. Um... But they really did, and I was really close with both of them, and my dad was my best friend, and they both gave me so much, and most recently about an hour of new material, so let's do this.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And as soon as you start doing it, it really just feels like care. And that's, you know, great. All that stuff I tried to explain to the audience towards the end, I go, you're thinking I could never do this. You will. A lot of you have, and I promise you will. And it It won't be horrible because you will be taking care of, hopefully, the people that took care of you.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And it's, you know, to say it's an honor sounds corny, but it kind of is. And I guess that depends on... the care they gave you and what that relationship was. But in this case, I was very grateful to be able to care for him, to keep him clean, to, uh, we learned how to, you know, move him up with the sheets and the towels and, you know, the whole family, we all showed up and, um,
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Just kind of bunked in the, you know, slept on couches and air mattresses and just did it. And it was a team effort. And it was hard, but it wasn't horrifying. It was something I was really happy that I was able to do.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
You know, he said to Susie, my one sister who has children, she has five children, and she recalled him saying, you know, I'm a better person. parent than my father was and you will be a better parent than I am. And hopefully that's always true. You know, he really struggled with rage, not physical rage, but you never knew what mood he was going to be in.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
who he was going to like scream at in public. You know, this was in our young years. He wasn't an alcoholic. He didn't drink. But from friends who had alcoholic parents, it feels similar where the mood is going to depend on what, how he is when he comes home. My parents got divorced when I was young, when he would come to pick us up. Boy, if we weren't out the second he honked,
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
It was like an unhinged, like, Sarah! You know, like screaming. And where did it come from? I think a bunch of things. One, he was horribly physically abused by his father. Just beat up all the time. And my dad actually said that their neighbor and best friend once asked him, you know, Max, why do you beat... Donald so and that my grandfather said, I can't help it, which is just so haunting.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And, you know, listen, I'm sure it's generational trauma. But also, like with my dad's rage, he was, again, a much better parent. You know, my dad's dad made him call him Mr. Silverman.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
To give you an example. He was a great dad. He just got much, much better as he got older. And he really grew. Zoloft didn't hurt. But he was a man in a lot of pain. You know, I mean, he married my mom. I mean, they couldn't have been less alike. But I think trauma brought them... You're talking about your biological mother here. Bethann O'Hara, my mother, who was abused by her mother and...
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
you know, I don't think they ever talked about it, but I think subconsciously that drew them together. And my mother was an artist and she was creative and she was kind of free. And I think my dad was drawn to that because that was everything he wanted.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
But once she became a part of him, they were married, you know, when she was 19 and he was 23 or something, and she was part of his identity, then he no longer could admire that.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
He had to have disdain for it because it was a part of him and he had disdain for his own self and the shame around having creative desires but feeling he must be pragmatic and take over his father's business of being in sales. And I think that made him awful to her. You know, oh, you're an artist? Is that what you would call yourself, an artist?
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And I've seen that repeat in my own life to a degree, you know, and When I wrote my book, The Bedwetter, I was really—and I suggest, you know, not that everyone write a book, but that everyone become like a detective in their own lives and their childhoods, looking back, because I realized a lot of things. I saw a lot of patterns.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
But he—right around the time I graduated high school, he was in a great relationship. He was on anti-anxiety meds, and he became really close with my mom. They became almost army buddies. They had been through so much together and shared this family and just went from when they were married. I don't remember them even sharing a smile, truly, but becoming just best friends, you know.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Yes, I was afraid of him. I was terrified he'd be mad at me. And I didn't really get any of that from him. But I was witness to it. Listen, he was amazing and hilarious and he was always funny. But there was always like this side of him that we were scared of. You know, a lot of this is actually more expressed in...
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
which has become almost a companion piece in my mind, the musical, The Bedwetter, where he really saw, you know, my mother was in bed a lot, and of course we saw that as lazy, and now we understand that it was depression. And so he was terrified that we'd become, quote-unquote, lazy. So if the phone rang, we rushed to turn the TV off.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
God forbid it was him and he could hear that we were watching TV.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
He actually originally had a store that was his father's called Junior Deb and Varsity Shop. And he took that over. He actually made it a chain. And it had like Levi's and, you know, kind of cool clothes at the time. But it originated, it was more like sold brownie and Cub Scout uniforms and all the stuff that you might need for school and clothes.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Oh, well, it wasn't something that I sat and thought about and decided. It was my last special was coming out as they were dying. And so. After they passed and I started doing stand-up again, I was at zero again, which is where I'm at right now.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
That store closed, and he opened Crazy Sophie's Factory Outlet, and that was his store. And it had a little more off-brand. He had some designer stuff. He would list all the brands, like in a garbled New England accent, you know, radio ad, like, you know, Unicorn, Jabozzi, Cavaricci, you know, like, I don't know. Yeah. He didn't have like kind of the big brands like Levi's.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And it was, you know, just kind of discount women's clothing.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
No, we wore it. We wore whatever. We weren't big clothes people. I mean, yeah, I had the—when he had the other store, it was like he had great clothes. I remember all the fads, the, like, eyes odd over another eyes odd. It was a big thing at one point. Or knickers. I had, like, gray corduroy knickers and a coral sweater. And I remember saying to my mom, take a picture of this.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
This is what I'm going to wear at my first New York City audition. You know, I was in eighth grade, like— Like I was going to be an adult and wear that. Did he expect you to work in the store? I didn't work in the store. My older sisters did. My sisters, Susan and Laura, did. And Jodine and I did not. We were younger.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
But I do remember we went to—Jodine and I, they had us go to Hebrew school for one year in third grade. I was in third grade. She was in fourth grade. And we didn't know from this, you know, we were not very Jewish.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
You know, we—as Susie said, who's a rabbi now, you know, we just thought being Jewish meant being a Democrat because that's how we were different in New Hampshire, you know, but— Yeah, you were the only Jewish family where you grew up. Yeah, pretty much, in Bedford, in Manchester, the big city. There were a couple temples, and we went to—we hated it.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
We went to Hebrew school for one year, and it was in Manchester where my dad's store at the time was. And we would have to walk from Hebrew school after school to my dad's store, and we were instructed not to eat anything. You know, we'll ruin our dinner. And one day we pooled our money together and we bought a large McDonald's fries and wolfed it down and got to the store.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
This is, I swear to God, a true story. And he looks at us and he goes, you had French fries. And we were just couldn't believe it. We were like, what? How do you know? And you're not going to believe this, Terry, how he knew. Salt in our mustaches. Yeah. It could have been a soft pretzel. True. We probably had that unmistakable McDonald's smell. Oh, I know. I know the smell you mean.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
So the only material was what was going on in my life, which was, you know, I remember going to Largo, the club out here that I work at, and I had just, I had come straight from cleaning out their apartment with my sisters. And so that was just what I was talking about. And, you know, I had spoken at my dad's eulogy.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
oh, I feel so guilty. I started reading a few of them. He had a few self-published novels. And bless my niece, Aliza, who read every single one of them. And it meant the world to him. And, you know, my other sister is the same. I don't know what that block was, because, of course, we'd do anything for him. And we wanted to support him. And we wanted him to
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
feel loved all the time, but it was really hard for us to read them. And this is, I'm such a hypocrite as the person that I am and the shows he sat through of mine. But, you know, there was like sex scenes and sexuality. And, you know, he was a sexual being, but it was just gross. We just thought it was gross and we just couldn't. And I feel so guilty about it.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
There's one thing I feel pretty guilty about, but I didn't.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
That could be it, maybe. You know, I will say as a rare story for a comic, my parents totally believed in me. You know, I was a good student kid anyway. I did my homework in, you know, literal and figurative ways. So they weren't, I wasn't a slacker, you know. I wanted to be a comic. I was out every night. And so my first year of college, I had all my classes and I was a drama major at NYU.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And well, one, I went to class all day and then I worked passing out flyers for a comedy club from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. And then, you know, my first class would be in Midtown at like 8 a.m. And I was falling asleep during my classes and teachers were getting mad and I was horrified. This is not me at all.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
You know, the thought that I would be sleeping in class, I would, you know, it was very reminiscent of being at sleepovers as a bedwetter. I would pinch myself to stay awake. I just couldn't fight it. And I felt so guilty also because NYU was so expensive. I had a small scholarship bag. You know, at the time, it wasn't that small, but today it would sound very small. I had $1,500 per semester.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And of course, there were a lot of funny things in there because he was hilarious. And I, so I kind of, that was the starting point for starting over again with my standup. And it just grew and grew and built from there.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And my dad paid the rest, and I felt so guilty. And they gave me no guilt about it, but that I'm this drama major, that I, you know, I had academic classes, but mostly it was voice and movement and drama and everything. I just thought, geez, that's so much money. And I took a year off. And when I was returning, my dad called and said, you know, listen, if you, I believe in you.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
I believe that what you're going to do, you don't need a diploma. And if you want to drop out, I will pay your rent and utilities for the next three years as if it were your sophomore, junior, senior year. So that saves him a ton of money, right? My rent was $350. It moved up to $450 at one point. And he didn't have to pay for college anymore. It really worked out.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
You know, by the time I would have graduated college, I was a writer at Saturday Night Live and I never needed money from my parents. And, you know, I was independent, financially independent from then on.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
I mean, I think the whole year was such a boot camp. It prepared me for so much. You know, I remember thinking, and it was, I really enjoyed it being there. I was terrified, you know, but I did well in some areas. You know, I really am impressed that Lorne Michaels saw anything in me because I look back at me at 22 and I wasn't, you know, my brain hadn't fully developed yet.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
There are pieces of me there, but I was... Not a good writer. I wasn't, you know, and he saw something. And I think that he's good at that. It never crossed my mind that I'd get fired or not picked up or whatever. And so I was really in shock. And I remember just for months thinking, like, am I still in show business?
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
You know, and I had a lot of men around me, you know, in comedy who were like, you don't know what you want. You could end up being a nurse, you know. And, you know, of course, for them, that was their calling. And I just thought, f***.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
you you know there's nothing i'd ever wanted to be but this i it had always been the plan and um you know it was it was a lot more of a boys club back then and it's really grown and let me stop you there did you have to be a member of the boys club did you have to figure out how to be a member of the boys club when you started in comedy Yes. And I was great at it. And I was praised for it.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And, you know, you could see early articles about me. Oh, she's one of the boys. And, you know, and that was something to achieve. And it's so interesting looking back at how dated and sick and sad and wildly sexist and accepted all of that was.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Probably. Probably. Yeah. Would you tell all the funny stories about, oh, you know, people came to say goodbye as my dad was dying. And Jeff Ross, who's, of course, the hilarious roast master general. He was very close with my parents. And he came in, and he's comfortable with this stuff.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Well, you know, it was easy for me because it is my natural. I love poker. I love sports. You talk about sex. I swear I talk about sex. You know, so all these things conveniently fit into what was kind of acceptable in a way. But the female experience was not. I do remember comics who I loved and looked up to who were male.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
would say, Sarah, you can't talk about women's stuff because the audience might have women in it, but they're on dates, and they only laugh if the guy laughs. The only people to make laugh are the men. And I have to be honest, I accepted that as they were grown-ups to me.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
I mean, probably not much because I did end up talking very explicitly about... Sex, but it was because I was young, it was sexualized and probably accepted more because as one podcaster told me when I went on his podcast, you used to be so hot. He started it with that. I was like, oh, thank you. But, yeah, I was sexualized, and that was a part of my success, you know?
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
But then, you know, of course, I lost my virginity as a comedian at 19, and like most... young people, but acceptable for men, I fell in love with it. Ooh, I love sex. What is, what is, what would it be like with him? What would it be like with him? And I was very free and very sexual. And I was, you know, at the time, very, extremely penalized for it. And all these grownups, you
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
You know, I can't fault them for sexualizing me when I was having sex with, you know, a lot of men that were comics because that's who I was around. But it was obviously an insane double standard. I don't blame myself and I'm not ashamed for being extremely experimental and sexual, especially the year I was 20. Like, you know...
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
But the guy comics could sleep with waitresses, servers, and women in the audience. And it's just very interesting to look back on it from the world we're in now.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Yeah, well, I mean, it wasn't a conscious thing to not look. sexual or anything. It's just really more of, one, a reflection of just what I'm comfortable in and who I am. And it's so funny. I don't know why this is, but all of this came together while I was on the road. So the sweatshirt I bought at a used clothing store on the road.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
I was thinking about what I wanted to wear, and I just had this inspiration that I wanted to look like a single woman wearing Maybe in the late 70s on moving day. She's moving from one apartment to the other. And it was just like, I don't know, that was the aesthetic that I was inspired by for reasons I don't know. You know, there was something kind of Rhoda about it, you know, something.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And I love a kind of late 70s feel tends to be my aesthetic. And I suppose I could draw connections to that it's about transition, you know.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
He's very comfortable with... There was no awkwardness with him walking into my dad's bedroom as he was dying, you know. And he said, Schleppi, you know, everyone called my dad Schleppi since before I was born, you know. And he said, Schleppi, I got bad news for you. I don't think you can be my emergency contact anymore. Yeah. He laughed, you know, and it was so sweet.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Yeah. You know, I didn't put a lot of thought into it in terms of, like, that was just my inspiration for it. I didn't, you know, the special before that, I ended up wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and an old cardigan that I bought, again, at, like, a used store. And... For that special, I got a suit and I got it tailored and it was like a three-piece brown corduroy suit.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And I just at the last minute just said, this is – it's not comfortable and I don't feel like me in it. There are times when I dress up and I really love it, but it's really something that I like as a treat more than anything and that I feel the most myself when I'm dressed down. And I think when you're doing a stand-up special, it's the most important thing is to feel comfortable.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
It's funny. I was sitting with her, and, you know, we were in New Hampshire. That's where I'm from. And, you know, I did not know it was going to be the last time I would see her, but I knew this was towards the end, you know. And I was saying goodbye to her. I was heading to Logan Airport in Boston. And I was holding her hand, and we were just—she was looking up at me, and she smiled.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
I love it. I wouldn't change it for the world. It was the ultimate mother-daughter encapsulation, I think. I think Susie, my oldest sister, had a similar... She said something to Susie the last thing. It was something like, sweetheart, do you even own a brush? These are the things she's focusing on in her last moments. But yeah, she was something else.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And I tell that story in the special and miraculously, because it's not like I was shooting video a lot on my phone, but I had videoed it from my phone when he walked in just, you know, because I knew he'd be excited to see Jeff. And captured that. So, you know, the thing I love about the special one thing I love is the credits.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
I think eyeliner and lip liner. It actually aged very well. With no makeup, just a clean face, she looked gorgeous.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
She had that with Susie. When Susie was in college, she'd go, even if you go into the library, just put a little blush on your cheeks. You never know who you're going to meet, you know. But less with me. But in my career, she did not always like my outfits. And if I wore something she liked, if I wore a dress or I had, you know. A makeup-y, glam look. Oh, she loved it. She loved it.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
But she accepted that I had the aesthetic I have. You know, she was married to my dad.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
You know, if you keep the sound on and watch through the credits, there's a lot of Easter eggs. And you see that video and he even says a joke beyond that, you know, that they are talking and laughing. And it's so sweet. You know, it's just so sweet.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Yeah. Yeah. There was so much time for sobbing and tears while they were dying. It was just so hard. And I have three sisters and nieces and nephews. We really shared the burden of it all. And were able to go through it together. So many people as I toured the country would say, I'm the only child and I realize how lucky I am.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And of course, speaking at a funeral is tough, but I always find funerals so joyful because, well, I mean, first of all, most of them are for comedians. But my parents were so funny and such characters and loved to laugh. It was On their tombstone, you know, they were kind of buried together, and they have one tombstone.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And my sister Susan, who's a rabbi, thought of what we wrote at the top, which was, you know, Janice and Donald who love to laugh, you know. And so it's, you know, I feel like funerals and shivas can be so joyful, you know, and sharing all those stories. It's that—it's when you realize those stories are finite, you know, that— it gets sad again.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And you, you know, like this whole tour was so cathartic, you know, in that way. But I remember crying at my mom's when my mom died 10 years ago. Because Janice is your stepmother.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Yeah. It's, you know, I mean, all that stuff. And we were talking before this a little bit, just, you know, there's, there's kind of so much joy and relief in the funeral and thereafter because you're, all together with the people who love this person and you're sharing stories.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And then it's when you get back into normal life and you're like in line at the grocery store that you just kind of crumble into tears, you know, like just saying the words like, well, my mom died, you know, like it's hard to say. The tour was interesting because the first half of it was – I dreaded going on stage. I dreaded sledging through all of this because I hadn't figured it out totally yet.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
I hadn't found all the laughs. There was a lot of kind of – I mean, just this is kind of – story jargon, but like laying pipe to be able to tell the whole picture, but not knowing what goes where. And it was hard, you know, and it hurt more. And then as I figured it out, how to tell the story and how to digress and how to keep it funny and moving, I mean, moving along, you know, but it became...
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
really a joy to go out like where I couldn't wait to tell this new crowd about these people.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Well, let me just say we weren't with them. They were in Florida at the time. But what we would do is whenever they would go to the doctor once they got older, we would have them record it on their voice memo app on their phone and post it to our family WhatsApp chain. so that we could listen to it and make sure everything was being taken care of.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And that's how we heard the appointment where she was diagnosed.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Their individual reactions to this news, I'm still listening, you know, and Janice is just... Her reaction is so Janice, you know, she just goes, well, I'll just do everything you tell me and I'll just do every single thing you say and I'll fight it. And it was just so her. And then my dad's reaction was the craziest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. I'm not kidding. You just hear him go.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Then he goes, I'm a widow! I know my mother Beth Ann is out there somewhere going, it's widower, but mom. It was so crazy. I'm the designated dad whisperer and I was tasked with calling him. And I had to say, dad, you cannot talk that way in front of your alive wife. You have to pull your together, okay? This isn't about you. This is about Janice. You have to take care of Janice.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
You have to focus. You can't like fall down right now. And he said, I know, I know. And then he started sobbing, and I've really never heard him do that, you know? And he goes, I just, I don't want to be in a world without my Janice. I just don't want to be here without her.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
And I just, I wanted to console him, and I looked for something to say, and I said, well, you know, statistically, you won't. And, I mean... I didn't know that was going to come true. Obviously, this is not a time to say, I told you so.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
By the way, all true. I mean, it's like the truest special. And I don't even find that appealing to say, like, everything I say is completely true. And obviously, there are some just pure jokes in there, but... My family, you know, they always know to take everything with a grain of salt, but they were just like, everything you said really happened. It's so crazy.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Well, he was never diagnosed. He just, like, he wouldn't go back to the hospital, and we respected it. And without that, his body just got worse and worse. He was always the sick one, you know. I mean, he had his marbles 100%, but he was always in and out, and that was always our family plan. I mean, we'd joke about it. Dad goes first.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Janice has a whole second, you know, next chapter, and, you know, in many years she would go. And this threw us all for a loop, you know. And I think his ultimate decline was when she passed. It was—he just was done. And he had gotten some blood work. And the doctor said, you know, you need to be in the hospital. And we just—he just wouldn't go. And we—even the doctor said, I get it.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
You know, like, just let him go in peace. And, you know, you're at the hospital. It's— If he can't charm the people around him, it makes him feel terrible. If he's not adored by every caretaker, he's miserable. And hospitals are filled with people who are really busy and overworked. And it's just the beeping and the noises and the alarms. There's nothing peaceful about it.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Surrounded by his family. I mean, at one point when he got out of the hospital, we basically broke him out and had to sign a thing that said, we understand you think he should stay, but we're going to take him. And because we knew Janice had limited time and we brought him and put him into bed next to her and they held hands until... She was gone. They were still holding hands.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
I mean, how do you prepare for suffering? You worry. You pack a bag.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Yeah. I have all the worry I need and really my biggest challenge is shedding that because it's one, I think worry can make you sick. And, you know, that's why we say I'm worried sick. And I don't know what it accomplishes. If there is anything to do to prepare, yeah, I'm on board with that.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
But the dread and worry are punishments we seem to give ourselves for time where we could be not doing that. We could be doing anything else but that. And You got to like be as healthy as you can. Take care of yourself. Floss. Death creeps in through the gums, Terry. And, you know, this is such wasted, precious time to fill it with dread of death and sickness, you know.
Fresh Air
Sarah Silverman Finds The Funny In Grief
Listen, I haven't mastered it. But I'm absolutely in practice for hopefully the rest of my life. You know, I mean, I'm always learning, trying to figure out techniques to mitigate dread, worry, obsession, you know... I remember one night being just dreading the next day of stuff I had to do.
Fresh Air
Having A Child In The Digital Age
Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long. That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
Hey, it's Sarah Gonzalez. The economy has been in the news a lot lately. It's kind of always in the news. And Planet Money is always here to explain it. Each episode, we tell a sometimes quirky, sometimes surprising, always interesting story that helps you better understand the economy. So when you hear something about cryptocurrency or where exactly your taxes go, ya sabes.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Education & A.I. / Having A Child In The Digital Age
Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Hey, it's Sarah Gonzalez. The economy has been in the news a lot lately. It's kind of always in the news. And Planet Money is always here to explain it. Each episode, we tell a sometimes quirky, sometimes surprising, always interesting story that helps you better understand the economy. So when you hear something about cryptocurrency or where exactly your taxes go, ya sabes.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
It's Been a Minute
Can doctors test embryos for autism? And should they?
Politics is a lot these days. I'm Sarah McCammon, a co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, and I'll be the first to tell you what happens in Washington definitely demands some decoding. That's why our show makes politics as easy as possible to wrap your head around. Join us as we make politics make sense on the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
It's Been a Minute
How "race-neutral" can universities really be?
Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long. That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
It's Been a Minute
Brittany needs a couch. Should she buy now, pay later?
Politics is a lot these days. I'm Sarah McCammon, a co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, and I'll be the first to tell you what happens in Washington definitely demands some decoding. That's why our show makes politics as easy as possible to wrap your head around. Join us as we make politics make sense on the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
It's Been a Minute
Sober-curious? Why your friends (and maybe you) are going dry.
Hey, it's Sarah Gonzalez. The economy has been in the news a lot lately. It's kind of always in the news, and Planet Money is always here to explain it. Each episode, we tell a sometimes quirky, sometimes surprising, always interesting story that helps you better understand the economy. So when you hear something about cryptocurrency or where exactly your taxes go, ya sabes.
It's Been a Minute
Sober-curious? Why your friends (and maybe you) are going dry.
It's not the norm of the group. Not everybody's drinking as much, you know, and I appreciate it because you have memories that you actually remember.
It's Been a Minute
Sober-curious? Why your friends (and maybe you) are going dry.
Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
It's Been a Minute
Artists vs. the White House
Hey, it's Sarah Gonzalez. The economy has been in the news a lot lately. It's kind of always in the news, and Planet Money is always here to explain it. Each episode, we tell a sometimes quirky, sometimes surprising, always interesting story that helps you better understand the economy. So when you hear something about cryptocurrency or where exactly your taxes go, ya sabes.
It's Been a Minute
Diddy, Cassie, & the anatomy of "mutual abuse"
Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long. That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
Planet Money
Planet Money complains. To learn.
I go to use the microwave and it just doesn't work. It doesn't turn on. The little digital clock doesn't tell you the time. I've got one of the ones that goes over the stove. The light underneath it doesn't work. Nothing. And it seems pretty, pretty obvious to me that like a fuse blew like that's just the way it broke. Right.
Planet Money
Planet Money complains. To learn.
So I'm being a little dramatic with my fuse panel, but it's a stand in for why don't we design things for repair? Like a appliance that is in your house made out of lots of metals and like like toxic parts. He doesn't want to throw it out. I want to try to fix it. Like, it's just a thing I believe in, and I'm so sure it's a fuse.
Planet Money
Planet Money complains. To learn.
And most of them are like, we don't repair microwaves. Like, they're too small. Like, it's too little. It's not even worth it.
Planet Money
Planet Money complains. To learn.
So he calls them up. And they're like, cool, we will send somebody. It will be $179 for them to show up. Then it will be $200 an hour billed every six minutes in increments as they do the repair plus the parts.
Planet Money
Planet Money complains. To learn.
Okay. The short version is my microwave broke. I'm now mad at, like, all appliance designers. I am sad for skilled labor in the U.S. Like, this took me on a journey.
Planet Money
Planet Money complains. To learn.
Okay. Well, here's what I'm thinking. I don't want to live in that world. I want to live in a world where we can like fix.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
OK, so now lab grown diamonds, though, they enter the mix.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Does that not bring the price of natural diamonds down? Yeah.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Because people who would have bought natural diamonds started buying the lab-grown ones.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
OK, I see a machine. I see like a big machine with like knobs all over it. Kind of looks like a big, giant, like ice machine.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Oh, so you can buy the thing to make your own diamond for just $158,000. Yeah, yeah. Steal. Do you want to buy one? No, I'd rather just buy $158,000 worth of diamonds.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Okay, so this is how you got our diamond for so cheap. You got it wholesale, direct from the supplier.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
And the normal wholesale price for a diamond is something like $137, I guess.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
So you overpaid for extra sparkly labrum badly made in a microwave diamond.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
I'm Sarah Gonzalez. And Jeff, this is the start of a real mystery here. Or a scam. Is it a diamond? Is it real? How is it $137?
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Okay, but there is this like disconnect for me because Paul is saying that the wholesale price for a lab-grown diamond like this one is $100-ish. But if you walk into like any diamond store right now, this exact kind of diamond is not going to cost you $100. At a store, it'll cost you like $1,000.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
I think we should buy one of these diamond making machines.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Okay, logically, this should not happen, right? Someone else should just open a store next door, sell the lab-grown diamond for a lot less than $1,000, like $500, $300. They would still make a huge profit. And then everyone else would cut their prices and all the prices would go down.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Right. People don't really know what the price of diamonds are until they're at the store buying it. And when you see, oh, this one is $3,000 less than a natural diamond, you think like, wow, what a steal. You don't know that it should actually be even cheaper than that.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
PSA, news you can use. You're paying too much for your lab-grown diamonds.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
I'm just going to say this would not matter to me personally. If it's as sparkly as the diamond I'm looking at right now, like I don't care if it's natural, lab made. Don't you just want something sparkly at the end of the day? Isn't that the only thing that really matters?
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Wait, what are we doing with our diamond? Did you try to sell our diamond?
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Yeah. No, I think it's just going to be a fake diamond. So, Jeff, when you sent me this diamond that you apparently bought sight unseen off of this website in China for $137, my first thought was, obviously it's not real, right?
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
I don't know. I don't know if you didn't want to so much as they were not going to let you.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
I'm glad they didn't let you sell it because I have actually grown kind of fond of our little Planet Money diamond. Jeff, how dare you try to sell it?
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
This episode was produced beautifully by one of the sparkliest producers in the business, James Sneed, Planet Money's true diamond. It was edited by Keith Romer with help from Jess Jing, fact-checked by Emma Peasley, and engineered by Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Well, I don't know. You should say it. No, you take it.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Like smash it? The first actual test that you had me try was to try to scratch something really hard with this diamond of ours.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
It literally created like a gash in my glass kombucha jar. Oh my God. Test number one, kind of promising. It's feeling real.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
All right, I'm dropping in the diamond. Let's see if it makes a clink. Okay. It sank straight down to the bottom.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Wow, it looks even sparklier in water. Test number three, you had me hold the diamond up against my cheek.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
It doesn't feel hot. Maybe warm. Okay, so the last test, I'm going to say not looking good for you, Jeff, but yes, the other two experiments are... We're leaning diamond. Obviously, these tests are not like super scientific.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Wouldn't it be a Jeff Guo story if cat hair wasn't involved?
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
I wasn't expecting this. But hold, okay, hold on. There are diamonds, right? And then there are You know, there's there's natural diamonds and then there's like the lab grown diamonds. So is this is this where we're headed?
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
I mean, tell that to the real diamond crowd. But okay, I will say the big difference between natural and lab-grown is still price.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Jeff, what is this? Is it a fake diamond or a real diamond?
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
So the planet money diamond is a real diamond just grown in a lab. And Ulrika is like 100% sure about this.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Yes. Yes. So it's not the perfect, perfectly imperfect lab-grown diamond.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Okay, but here's the thing that still doesn't make sense. If you were to walk into a diamond store today and try to buy a lab-grown diamond like this one, like our Planet Money lab-grown diamond, that would cost you like a thousand whole dollars. And yet you bought this lab-grown diamond for $137. Wow.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Wait, this is like creme de la creme, top of the top, like perfect cut, perfect clarity. Dude, it's...
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Yeah, like why do we even pay whatever amount of money for a rock, basically?
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
De Beers, the diamond company. They got us all to think diamonds are special.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
They convinced all of us that... If you love someone, you get them a diamond.
Planet Money
Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
Yeah. And of course, when you have high demand and you have a company that's like keeping the supply of diamonds low, that is... Obviously going to make the price of diamonds go up.
Planet Money
How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is coming
That idea of like if it's if it's a bad time and you're trading down and you're like watching what you spend your money on. There's that correlation. There's a story to that. Right.
Planet Money
How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is coming
And it was all about how do we fight the next recession? How do we do it better?
Planet Money
How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is coming
The theme of the book overall was how could we put a lot of the relief we do in recessions, like stimulus checks, unemployment benefits, food stamps, how could we put that on autopilot?
Planet Money
How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is coming
So I developed this indicator based on changes in the unemployment rate.
Planet Money
How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is coming
Yeah, I mean, in the chapter, it didn't have a name.
Planet Money
How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is coming
I showed up at the launch event for the book, and the organizers started calling it the Psalm Rule, and I was, like, panicking in the audience.
Planet Money
How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is coming
I don't know. It doesn't, well, it just, I was just expressing a pattern in the data. Like, I didn't make the unemployment rate have these fluctuations. I don't know.
Planet Money
How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is coming
So currently the SOM rule says we are not in a recession.
Planet Money
How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is coming
My phone blows up at the worst of times. I feel like I'm going to develop a recession indicator that's tracking my press calls. But it's a real privilege to be able to try and explain the data, what's going on in the economy, what are the risks we're facing.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
David Supra studies the Constitution, teaches legislation, and he actually had the Empowerment Control Act on his syllabus when all the funding freezes happened.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
So, OK, what about this constitutional claim that the Trump team is making? Is there a place in the Constitution that says like, yeah, you can't spend more, but like, yeah, you could spend less. Or is there a place in the Constitution that says like you cannot spend more and you also cannot spend less?
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Like, is there validity to their claims that like it doesn't say in the Constitution that there's a floor, which is like what the argument is, right? Like the ceiling is there. Don't spend more. But is the floor there?
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
And what do the judges and legal scholars who study the Constitution and impoundments in particular have to say about the legality of what the Trump administration is trying to do? When the Trump administration ordered all of the funding freezes, it upended thousands of contracts, including with U.S. businesses and nonprofits. For example, U.S. farmers grow a lot of the corn and soy and food that
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
David, and a long, long line of legal scholars and judges appointed by Republicans, by Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, have said that the Constitution does give Congress the power to set even a spending floor.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who Trump appointed back when he was an appellate judge, he wrote that, quote, even the president does not have unilateral authority to refuse to spend. But Trump's legal team has said that the Supreme Court hasn't provided the final word on whether a president has constitutional empowerment power, like inherent power
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
empowerment power just because he's the president. They say that even that one Nixon ruling was more specific to, like, the particulars of Nixon's case. And David Super agrees that the Supreme Court did not rule on overall empowerment power, but only because, again, Nixon's team wasn't making that argument in court. So... That's the legal stuff.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
In terms of the money stuff, like the money that the Trump administration has frozen or attempted to freeze, here's what's happening there. Several judges have at least temporarily blocked just about all of those actions. Some of these judges are Trump-appointed judges, at least one of the judges.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
These judges have said that the Trump administration needed to unfreeze the money, at least for now. So the money is supposed to be released. The White House even rescinded their initial memo declaring the pause on federal grants and loans. But there are a lot of reports that money is still being held up.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
One judge said that the Trump administration was still not releasing the funds, which violated a court order.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
State agencies in Pennsylvania still, as of today, have not been able to access $2.1 billion in grant funding that was suspended or restricted. This is according to the governor's office. Even though, as they pointed out, multiple federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze this funding.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Several nonprofits across the country also have tried to access their federal funding, only to find out it's not there.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
David Super says that these actions, for him, rise to the level of a constitutional crisis. We did reach out to the White House and to the Office of Management and Budget to ask why some federal funding is still not being released and to get their response to what David Super and Zachary Price had to say about the history of impoundments. The White House and OMB did not respond.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
But the White House press secretary has said that it's actually the courts and the judges stopping Trump's executive actions that are the ones causing the constitutional crisis. If you want even more history and legal arguments around impoundments, check out our latest newsletter. There's a link in our show notes and you can subscribe at npr.org slash planet money newsletter.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
This episode was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Meg Kramer. It was fact-checked by Sam Yellow Horse Kessler and engineered by Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. I'm Sarah Gonzalez. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
the agency USAID sends to other countries. Last week, the USAID Office of Inspector General released a report that said that half a billion dollars worth of food was at risk of just spoiling in warehouses, at ports, in transit. The USAID Inspector General was fired the day after that report came out. Now, the U.S. Constitution says that the president has a duty to take care of
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
that laws be faithfully executed. And when Congress debates and decides to fund something, that's a law. But before Trump was reelected, he was saying that he didn't think Congress had the final say here. In a campaign video, Trump said that as president, he should have the power to not spend money that Congress has appropriated.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Impoundment. Trump was saying that he should be able to impound the money.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
We should note that the system kind of already allows for this, according to a legal scholar we spoke to who said that, you know, if the government can get the job done with less money than Congress appropriates, that's totally OK sometimes. So, like, if Congress appropriates $15 billion to build a new building,
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
aircraft carrier, but the contractor can get it done for, I don't know, $14 billion, that's fine. The federal government is not going to be like, oh, no, no, no, you must charge us the full $15 billion, right? The important thing is that the aircraft carrier that Congress wanted just has to get built.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
A president cannot override Congress and say, well, you know, I as president don't think we should even have an aircraft carrier at all. At least, that is what the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 says. It's the law that controls the president's impoundment power. But Trump thinks that law is unconstitutional.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
President Trump and his team, including the person who is now general counsel at the Office of Management and Budget, which is the agency that oversees the release of federal funds, say that impoundment is an inherent power of the president. Because they say presidents have historically exercised this power.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
They have been pointing out what they call hundreds of years of examples of presidents impounding funds before Congress, like, reigned in the practice. Basically, they're saying that impoundment was, like, kind of chill in the early days.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
You sound like that's, like, definitely something you would say. Yeah. Zachary Price is a law professor at the University of California College of Law in San Francisco who has written about historical impoundment practices, including examples that Trump's team has been citing. So we will start with what is likely the most high profile instance of impoundment in 1803 with Thomas Jefferson.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
And now whether Trump has the power to cut off money that has been appropriated by Congress is being litigated by the courts. Several judges have blocked big parts of Trump's efforts, ordered the administration to release the funds they froze, though there have been many examples of funds not being released. And, you know, the Constitution says,
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Congress had appropriated up to $50,000 to build 15 gunboats in the Mississippi because the U.S. thought that it might have to fight France over the Mississippi River. But after Congress appropriated the gunboat money, things took a turn with France.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
was Congress just meeting a lot less often in the 1800s? And so they went away for like months and months. And he was like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, things are different and we don't need all these gunboats anymore.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Yeah, it's 1803. Congress was meeting once a year. And after Congress voted for the gunboats and then went home, this big thing happened. The U.S. bought Louisiana from France and a bunch of other land, the Louisiana Purchase. So France was no longer going to be near U.S. territory, no longer on the Mississippi. And we were cool with France now. We weren't going to go to war with them anymore.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
So Jefferson is like, OK, well, I'm not going to build those gunboats in the Mississippi then. Trump's team has specifically pointed to this gunboat funding example to say, OK, See, the president does have the power to not spend money. But here's the thing about this Thomas Jefferson gunboat example. Zachary says Congress never told the president he had to spend $50,000 on 15 gunboats.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Yeah, the actual law said Thomas Jefferson could order, quote, a number not exceeding 15 gunboats using, quote, a sum not exceeding $50,000. So baked into the law, it was always optional.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
So you're saying that all the examples of times that presidents used impoundment, there was always some little language that was like a little bit more like, you don't have to spend all this money, you just can spend up to this amount.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Historically, Zachary says, presidents weren't making the argument that they have the constitutional power to override Congress and impound funds.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Zachary says presidents would just kind of be like, come on, Congress, let me do this. And then Congress would give in. Like there was spending for rivers and harbors that Ulysses S. Grant thought was wasteful. There was money for a weapons program that John F. Kennedy didn't want to spend after World War II. But in both cases... After some controversy, Congress just gave in to the president.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
So in that way, yeah, Zachary says there was this like tacit approval by Congress to sometimes not spend money. But it's not like there was a place where all the rules were spelled out around this one way or another. That didn't happen until Richard Nixon became president, because Richard Nixon took impoundments to a whole new level.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
it's pretty clear that Congress has the power of the purse. Congress decides how much money the U.S. spends. So generally, it's been understood that the president cannot spend more money than Congress has agreed and voted to spend. But can the president spend less money than Congress wants? Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Sarah Gonzalez. And that is the thing being debated right now.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Rachel Snyderman is the managing director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. And Days before Trump's second inauguration, she published this big Impoundments 101 explainer.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
President Donald Trump has attempted to dismantle a federal agency, USAID, the Agency for International Development. He's attempted to freeze billions of dollars in grant money that goes to states for everything from new school buses to paying for the health benefits of child care workers, wildfire prevention. He's attempted to freeze federal funds for medical and public health research.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
The thing that made Richard Nixon's impoundment practice so distinct was really the scale and the scope. Nixon wasn't using impoundment like here and there. He was using impoundment to subvert Congress's will. Like Congress had approved billions of dollars to send to states to build sewage treatment plants. Nixon didn't want that. So he withheld the money.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Nixon impounded housing assistance money, community development money, disaster assistance. And eventually, The people and states who were entitled to the money that Nixon was withholding sued Nixon in a bunch of courts.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
The Supreme Court case was specifically about the sewage treatment plant money that states were supposed to receive from the federal government. The Supreme Court said that the total amount that Congress had appropriated for this had to be spent. Not just any amount, the total amount, because that was the language of the law. All nine justices agreed. Meanwhile, while all this is playing out,
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Congress is like, all right, I think we got to get some real ground rules for impoundment now. And they passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which, you know, controls how presidents can impound money. you can impound funds, right? It's not the like impoundment is not allowed act, right? It's just like it's allowed, but like in this controlled way.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Under the Impoundment Control Act post-Nixon, there are now two ways a president can withhold money that Congress has appropriated. Just two ways. The first way is called the deferral process. The president can temporarily defer payments, but with a catch.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
They just don't quite know when. One example of spending that can get deferred is disaster assistance money. So we know that hurricane season tends to be towards the end of the fiscal year in September. So maybe you want to hold off on spending too much disaster money early on so that you have some leftover around hurricane season when you might need it, right? That's a deferral.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
The second way a president can withhold funds post-Nixon is through something called the rescissions process. They're rescinding the money. Basically, a president goes to Congress and says, here's all the money I don't want to spend that you find people already approved. Congress then has 45 days to look over the president's proposal.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
And Trump knows how this process is supposed to work, says Rachel, because he followed this exact process. In 2018, when Trump wanted to rescind billions of dollars, he notified Congress. Congress reviewed it all, but then chose not to approve it. And many presidents have impounded funds this way through this process. President Trump is not alone in exercising this authority.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
This time around, though, Trump did not notify Congress. There was no rescissions proposal. So to some legal scholars, the fact that Trump is not following the normal process is about something bigger.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Whether a president can spend less than Congress wants comes down to something called impoundment and the Impoundment Control Act. Basically, when and how a president can impound funds like take money away that have already been appropriated. Today on the show, what is impoundment? How has it been used in the past?
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
After the break, how Trump is testing the limits of presidential power and what constitutional scholars and the courts are saying about it. You may remember that in 2019, President Trump withheld money meant for Ukraine without going through Congress. This was when Trump was trying to get the Ukrainian president to investigate the Biden family.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Trump was found to have violated the Impoundment Control Act back then, and the money was eventually released. Now, in his second term, Trump is saying, yeah, that whole Impoundment Control Act thing...
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Days into Trump's second term, his administration announced that they were temporarily going to not spend billions and billions and up to trillions of dollars on a bunch of stuff that, you know, Democrats and Republicans agreed together to fund. He announced the funding freeze without ever submitting a proposal to Congress. And a bunch of lawsuits followed. Nonprofits have sued. States have sued.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
States have sued specifically over just the medical research funding. Health organizations that receive funding for USAID programs sued. So to some, this was not like a Thomas Jefferson style saving money on some Mississippi gunboats kind of impoundment. This was more like what Nixon tried to do, using impoundments as a broader policy tool, withholding money,
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
Now, a lot of the Trump funding freezes have been paused while the courts sort everything out, just like how it went down when Nixon used impoundments this way. But what Trump's team is arguing that Nixon's team did not argue in court? is that the president should have this special power to not spend. They're saying, yes, there's a ceiling on spending.
Planet Money
Can the president override Congress on spending?
The president cannot spend more than Congress appropriates, but they don't think there's a floor. For this, I called up a law and economics professor. Do your students call you Professor Super? Yes. Nice. Wade, say your name and title.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
And also, Trump is just going about it totally differently than Clinton and Elaine.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Also, why Elaine is actually a little optimistic about the future of Trump's job cuts.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
After your 15 minute, which wasn't even 15 minute interview with Doge, did you have another interaction with anyone who worked on that side of things?
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Since leaving the White House, Elaine has focused on government operations. She's published these big studies on things like, is the size of the government too big? Are there too many employees?
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
And also, of course, the U.S. is not going to fire every single federal employee to get that full $271 billion in savings.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
For Atir, Doge seemed like a black box. And she was kind of like, I don't know if I want to be on this team. The stated goal of Doge is to cut government, and they're trying to achieve that by gutting agencies, backing out of contracts, cutting jobs.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Basically, the government can't do all the work it needs to do with just the official federal employees. So they hire contractors. And there are a lot of them.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Now, there are two kinds of federal contractors. There's the contract workers that get paid to make goods for the U.S.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Then there's contract workers we pay for services.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
So that's who makes up the official and unofficial federal workforce. And Elaine says both are actually difficult to fire.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees at another agency direct quote elaine expects more and more people will be hired back if not because of court orders and there are many then because elaine says congress will start to step in like let's take noah she says the national oceanic and atmospheric administration they track
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
hurricanes and tsunamis and things like that. They give us lots and lots of warning when something bad is going to happen. They've cut 1,300 jobs already and are planning to cut another 1,000.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Elaine actually thinks things may not be so messy going forward. And there's a big reason why. because the first rounds of firings were done before some cabinet secretaries were even confirmed.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
And Elaine wonders if the Trump administration might focus more on the area that she found so ripe for savings 32 years ago, regulations.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
By the way, Atir Kohl, the federal worker who found herself suddenly on the Doge team, she was not fired. She quit. She says she is not going to apply to any federal government jobs right now, but says she will in the future. The best way to support Planet Money and the work that we do is to become a member of Planet Money Plus or NPR Plus. You get sponsor free listening and bonus episodes.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
And it really means a lot to us. It is super helpful. You can learn more or sign up at plus.npr.org. And thank you to everyone who has already signed up.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
We don't know exactly how many people have been fired. The Trump administration has said it wants to cut up to 76,000 jobs from the Defense Department, 80,000 jobs from Veterans Affairs.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
The goal seems to be ultimately hundreds of thousands of job cuts.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
And I'm Amanda Aronchik. This is not the first time the U.S. has tried to massively shrink the federal workforce in a big, flashy way. It happened in the 1990s under a Democrat.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
For the past year and a half, a tear has been working on basically tracking biological things that can kill you.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Okay, the actual size of the federal government, like the number of federal employees, hasn't changed much in 50 years. 50 years ago, there were 2.1 million federal employees. Today, there are 2.3 million. This is not including the military. We are only talking about civilian jobs here. Also, this number doesn't include postal workers.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
30-plus years ago. That's what we did. Elaine Kamark studies the federal workforce and government operations at the Brookings Institution. And Elaine knows probably better than anyone about bloat in the federal government because back in the 90s, the number of federal jobs actually peaked at over 3 million. And Elaine's job was to bring that number way, way down. But she did more than just that.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Her job was to look at all government waste.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
When Bill Clinton became president, he and Al Gore in particular vowed to cut government waste.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Clinton and Gore called their big effort to find government inefficiencies and shrink the federal workforce the National Performance Review. And it was sometimes also called reinventing government or RIGO.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
They also wanted to improve customer service in the government, you know, like reduce wait times if you were to call up, say, the IRS.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Elaine and a team of government employees started by looking at all of the potential areas to cut.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
After six months of looking around, they found that cutting jobs wasn't really going to bring the big, big savings.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Behind Al Gore were these giant stacks of paper taller than him on forklifts.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Atir worked closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Technically, though, her job was at this government unit called the U.S. Digital Service. But on the day of President Trump's inauguration, Atiyah found out that was changing. By the way, there was an executive order.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Today, Elon Musk is waving around a chainsaw. Like, look at all these jobs we're slashing. Back then, their chainsaw was this hammer.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Elaine found 252,000 jobs that she said should be cut. So there was a while there where Elaine definitely knew that federal employees did not like her all that much.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Tell me again how to pronounce your name.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Yeah, Al Gore was giving out these awards to people and agencies that found the government the most savings, not just through job cuts.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
granular like they found all of these small programs and agencies that were kind of like little snapshots of history that maybe they made sense at one point in time but really really did not anymore you point to a couple which is the tea tasters board uh-huh what is the tea tasters board well obviously the tea tasters board was left over from the revolutionary war
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Her team cut 250 of these programs and agencies. No more tea tasting.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
So did anything change? Did your email change?
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
It's like wool. OK. A lot of wool and mohair were coming from sheep and goats in places like Wyoming.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
Everything took time. Clinton didn't just announce he wanted something and boom, it happened.
Planet Money
The last time we shrank the federal workforce
By the end of Clinton's second term, Elaine and her team had cut the equivalent of 640,000 pages of internal agency rules. They closed nearly 2,000 regional field offices, which they called obsolete because everyone could communicate by email now. They cut 78,000 managers and many more jobs, too.
Planet Money
After the fires
As an insurance adjuster. As an insurance adjuster. Working for the insurance company. Working for the insurance company.
Planet Money
After the fires
Hey, how are you? Press? Press. Can I see your name? Yes. Great, thank you. Thank you.
Planet Money
After the fires
Yeah, the color that really is just like gray to me. Like it's just monochrome. There's like no color left other than sometimes some brick.
Planet Money
Trade war dispatch from Canada
They saw their communities decline, and then the world changed very rapidly around them. Well, they kind of aged in place. Data doesn't speak in words, but it's a very dramatic story.
Short Wave
What's In Your Personal Care Products?
Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long. That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
What's In Your Personal Care Products?
Politics is a lot these days. I'm Sarah McCammon, a co-host of the NPR Politics podcast, and I'll be the first to tell you what happens in Washington definitely demands some decoding. That's why our show makes politics as easy as possible to wrap your head around. Join us as we make politics make sense on the NPR Politics podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Short Wave
How Nature Makes A Complex Brain
Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long. That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
Let's Talk About (Biological) Sex, Baby
Politics is a lot these days. I'm Sarah McCammon, a co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, and I'll be the first to tell you what happens in Washington definitely demands some decoding. That's why our show makes politics as easy as possible to wrap your head around. Join us as we make politics make sense on the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Short Wave
What's The Environmental Cost Of AI?
Politics is a lot these days. I'm Sarah McCammon, a co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, and I'll be the first to tell you what happens in Washington definitely demands some decoding. That's why our show makes politics as easy as possible to wrap your head around. Join us as we make politics make sense on the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Short Wave
Nature Quest: The Climate-Kid Question
Hey, it's Sarah Gonzalez. The economy has been in the news a lot lately. It's kind of always in the news. And Planet Money is always here to explain it. Each episode, we tell a sometimes quirky, sometimes surprising, always interesting story that helps you better understand the economy. So when you hear something about cryptocurrency or where exactly your taxes go, ya sabes.
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What to Know About The Measles Outbreak
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Short Wave
Learning A Second Language As An Adult
So bilingualism gets studied in... in at least three different fields, linguistics, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.
Short Wave
Learning A Second Language As An Adult
Learning Korean was very important to be able to communicate with my mom's side of the family in the same way that growing up speaking African-American English was. was very important in being able to communicate and be a part of my dad's other family.
Short Wave
Learning A Second Language As An Adult
Someone who is engaging in learning a second language, thereby uses another language on a pretty regular basis, That means you're a developing bilingual. So in essence, you are a bilingual. Oh. But, you know, we would probably qualify that. I'm a baby bilingual. Exactly. Baby bilingual. Maybe as an alternative to baby bilingual, maybe we should think of this as a developing bilingual.
Short Wave
Learning A Second Language As An Adult
Where this comes from actually starts really early on with work done with zebra finches and how zebra finches and maybe even other types of birds, but the literature that I'm familiar with points to zebra finches where early on in their development, they have to learn certain songs or calls that are particular to their kind. And
Short Wave
Learning A Second Language As An Adult
These calls are important for things like mating and, you know, detecting trouble. In essence, they're important for communicating certain things that are important for their communities.
Short Wave
Learning A Second Language As An Adult
Sarah agrees with that. when we think about the critical period, we really want to think about this period of time where our brains are going through an explosive amount of growth and change. And so it's easier and even optimal to then want to learn as many things, including languages, during that time period, because our brains are so quick and easy to soak up information.
Short Wave
Learning A Second Language As An Adult
If we think about language, like it's not just our brains involved, right? We also have to use our eyes to perceive what we see and we use our mouths. If we're oral producers of language, you know, we have to finagle our mouths to do the right things, right? And these are all habits that we've developed during our early childhood years.
Short Wave
Learning A Second Language As An Adult
So once you become an adult, now you have to learn how to break those habits to adopt a new way of speaking and doing. And so it's a little harder, but it's not impossible.
Short Wave
Learning A Second Language As An Adult
The sound system is really the first things we learn about our languages, right? So the rise and fall and intonation and pitch and those kinds of things, as well as the actual speech sounds of our language. Those are literally some of the first things that we learn about in our infancy.
Short Wave
Learning A Second Language As An Adult
I'm willing to bet that your lived experiences are going to be dynamically different from the person who you envision as your native speaker. And so you might not ever actually become native-like in your pronunciation, but I don't think that that should be something that people stress over. And the reason being is that the way that we use language fits our identity.
Short Wave
Learning A Second Language As An Adult
Are you saying it well enough to be understood? That should be really the threshold upon which you want to cross.
Short Wave
What Happens Inside A Top-Secret U.S. Nuclear Facility?
Politics is a lot these days. I'm Sarah McCammon, a co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, and I'll be the first to tell you what happens in Washington definitely demands some decoding. That's why our show makes politics as easy as possible to wrap your head around. Join us as we make politics make sense on the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Short Wave
Harnessing Spineless Sea Creatures' Superpowers
Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long. That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
Harnessing Spineless Sea Creatures' Superpowers
Politics is a lot these days. I'm Sarah McCammon, a co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, and I'll be the first to tell you what happens in Washington definitely demands some decoding. That's why our show makes politics as easy as possible to wrap your head around. Join us as we make politics make sense on the NPR Politics Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
When the virus jumps from person to person, it gets about two mutations a month. But sometimes when the virus finds someone who maybe their immune system is a little bit suppressed, they aren't able to fight off the virus. Instead of, you know, being sick for like a week or two weeks, they might be sick for weeks or weeks on end or even months.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
And in this process, it's almost like a training camp for the virus to figure out how to evade the human immune system. The virus, during a long, persistent infection, might find just the right combination of mutations that makes it really good at infecting lots and lots of people.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Yeah. So when a virus infects you, it's basically copying itself millions and billions of times over and over again. Right. So it can spread. Yeah. To different cells. Right. Because like, you know, it infects one cell and it makes like thousands of copies of itself. And then now you have thousands of copies to infect thousands more cells. It's basically a numbers game.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
The more of yourself you can make, the more of your progeny out there can continue to infect more people to continue to have more progeny out there. Most of these mutations, they don't really do anything. But in a really small number of cases, that mutation or maybe even the whole set of mutations might give the virus some advantage.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Maybe it makes it better at entering cells or maybe it makes it better at infecting the upper airway so you can cough it up and then infect someone else.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Exactly. The star pupil is going to be one that just has a slight edge. It's a little bit better at copying itself. It's going to keep doing it more and more and more.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Yeah, I sort of remember it happening, I think, just before Thanksgiving in 2021. And, you know, I think, you know, at that point, like, vaccines were pretty available. Things were maybe starting to settle back to normal. And then scientists made this big announcement that was really stunning, if you knew anything about viral evolution.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
And I think it was scientists in South Africa who first noticed it. They said, we have this new variant that we found. It has 50 mutations. Whoa, it racked up 50 mutations. Yeah, 50, five zero mutations. 30 of those mutations are all in the spike protein. And the spike protein, if you remember, is like kind of the key that viruses use to enter our cells. So it's really important.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
It's like also what's in our vaccines. So it's how our immune system, once we've been vaccinated, recognizes a virus. If you think of a vaccine as like giving your immune system a mugshot, lots of changes in the spike protein mean like, you know, the virus has like put on a hat and like changed its glasses and its clothes. So it's like not as recognizable to your immune system.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Yeah, exactly. And so clearly this was going to be a sign of trouble because our immune systems were not really good at recognizing Omicron. Like people, even people who had been vaccinated, even people who had gotten Omicron, COVID, you know, pre-Omicron, their immune system had this like outdated mugshot of what this virus now looked like.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
So it was pretty clear that we were probably going to get reinfected or even if you're vaccinated, you're probably going to get infected.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Yeah. So we don't like have, we haven't traced Omicron back to like one person. And I just want to be clear about that. There's been a lot of sort of indirect evidence to suggest like this is what happened. So, you know, I mentioned Omicron has 50 different mutations, but 30 of them are all in spike.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Over time, as scientists have been studying these persistent infractions in immunocompromised people, they see this very clear pattern that you not only get a lot of mutations, but you get them concentrated in spike.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
And the reason is probably because, you know, as the virus is infecting someone for weeks or months at a time, the immune system, even as someone who's immunocompromised, still like can do a little bit, right? Not enough to entirely clear the virus, but maybe enough to like suppress it a little bit. And it's still like recognizing the virus.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
But if the virus is able to change its spike, then it gets a little bit harder. They're kind of in this like back and forth cat and mouse game. It's really about the length of infection. You know, just like basically the more time you have, the more even random mutations you can accumulate. And some of these mutations will probably give it some sort of edge.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
And in most cases, it's not enough of an edge for the virus to then spread from that initial person. But in really rare cases, like probably Omicron, it does.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Yeah, that's a really good question. You know, the researchers I talked to who've studied this are really clear that these persistent infections aren't necessarily the same thing as long COVID. But for long COVID, it's not like necessary that you are shedding viruses the entire time you're sick. With someone with one of these persistent infections, like you are shedding virus.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
So it's not the same thing as long COVID. It's possible that some people who have long COVID actually have one of these persistent infections. But I don't want to say that they want to be pretty clear that they're not thought of as the same thing.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
That's such a good question. And I think really one of the open questions of what's going on here, right? It's definitely true. We have not seen this with any other virus. You know, is this dynamic something specific to SARS-CoV-2?
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Or is it just like when you have a new virus jumping into new species for the first time, it just has like so many opportunities to mutate that it's just had all these chances because it's new? Or is there something that gives it some sort of ability that other viruses don't? And I don't think we entirely know yet.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
It was thought that the coronavirus mutated pretty slowly, like half as fast as the flu or only a quarter as fast as HIV.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Yeah, we haven't seen this exact pattern in other viruses, but a few years ago, before COVID, one of the scientists I talked to had studied flu in patients who were immunocompromised and had the flu for weeks and weeks. And he did find that you could see some of the same mutations over weeks inside these immunocompromised patients as you would then see the seasonal flu next year.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Though the thing that's different is that he didn't find any evidence that the flu viruses from immunocompromised patients was actually seeding next year's seasonal flu. He just thought they were happening in parallel. With SARS-CoV-2, it seems like one actually is seeding the other. These persistent infections are seeding the viruses that then infect all of us over the next few years.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
So I think this is somewhat new. And that's why it was so surprising that this could happen.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Yeah, we've never sequenced any other virus to the extent that we sequence COVID. So there's probably a lot of stuff going on in the viral revolution that we are just entirely not aware of because we are not sequencing other viruses, right? There are like... At least dozens, maybe even hundreds of viruses that cause a common cold.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
We don't really have a great grasp of how they evolve from year to year or mutate from year to year.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Yeah, something really interesting is that when scientists, even back in 2020, were looking at how viruses change in persistent infections, they were seeing some of the same mutations that ended up showing up in these variants months and even sometimes years later. Oh!
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Yeah, exactly. What's happening inside one infection is basically like a sped up version of what might happen out in the world. So there's some thought that like, hey, if we could just keep a closer eye on these people persistent infections, maybe that will give us a sense of what the virus is going to look like, you know, a month from now or maybe a year from now.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
Unfortunately, I think we know what actually happened, which is that in the winter of 2020, we sort of got like this first big variant, what was known as Alpha. And then we just kept getting more and more variants.
Short Wave
What Scientists Got Wrong About COVID-19
And I think it's important to sort of keep an eye on these things to make sure we see them early enough that we can start to take action. But also, I think we have to keep an open mind and, you know, we might not know what's going to happen in the future.
Short Wave
Could 'Severance' Become Our Reality?
I'm Sarah McCammon, a co-host of the NPR Politics podcast, and I'll be the first to tell you what happens in Washington definitely demands some decoding. That's why our show makes politics as easy as possible to wrap your head around. Join us as we make politics make sense on the NPR Politics podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Short Wave
All Hail The Butt Flicker
Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long. That's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
Short Wave
The Great Space (Clock) Race
Hey, it's Sarah Gonzalez. The economy has been in the news a lot lately. It's kind of always in the news, and Planet Money is always here to explain it. Each episode, we tell a sometimes quirky, sometimes surprising, always interesting story that helps you better understand the economy. So when you hear something about cryptocurrency or where exactly your taxes go, ya sabes.
Short Wave
The Great Space (Clock) Race
Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
Short Wave
This Is Your Brain On Dessert
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Short Wave
All Of Life Has A Common Ancestor. What Was LUCA?
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This American Life
858: How to Tell a Dumb American Story
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This American Life
858: How to Tell a Dumb American Story
Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.