The Supreme Court heard a case Tuesday that threatened the existence of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports on the legal arguments in a case brought by payday lenders against the watchdog agency. And NPR's Scott Horsley walks through the track record of the CFPB since its founding in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Email us at considerthis@npr.org . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Oct 03, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had a tenure marked by a relentless series of challenges. He served through the U.S. withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and rising tensions with China. He also served under an American president with little regard for the norms that have historically separated politics from the U.S. military: Donald Trump. In an interview shortly before his retirement last weekend, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly asked Mill...
Oct 02, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Not too long ago, crypto was being trumpeted as the next big thing. Celebrities were getting in on it, including Kim Kardashian, Matt Damon and Tom Brady. Now the former face of crypto, Sam Bankman-Fried, who ran the FTX exchange, is going on trial. He's accused of orchestrating one of the largest frauds in history. As his case gets underway it's as if the whole crypto industry is on trial. NPR's David Gura speaks with Bloomberg reporter Zeke Faux who wrote the book "Number Go Up: Inside Crypto'...
Oct 01, 2023•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast When the video game Mortal Kombat released in 1992, it took arcades — and later the American home — by storm. Thirty years on, the franchise is still going strong. NPR's Scott Detrow faces off against co-host Juana Summers in the latest version of the game, Mortal Kombat 1, and speaks with co-creator Ed Boon. Email us at considerthis@npr.org . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Sep 29, 2023•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast The federal government will shut down on October 1st if Congress doesn't pass funding legislation for the next fiscal year before then. That looks increasingly likely as House Republicans continue to hold out for deep spending cuts before agreeing to any deal to keep the government running. A shutdown could potentially affect millions of Americans, among them some of the country's most vulnerable people. Host Ari Shapiro speaks with a trio of NPR correspondents about the potential impact of a go...
Sep 28, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast The U.S. government and 17 states sued Amazon on Tuesday in a landmark case that could take down the tech giant. The Federal Trade Commission and a bipartisan group of state attorneys general say that Amazon is a monopolist that chokes competitors and raises costs for both sellers and shoppers. Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, has spent years arguing that a few big companies have too much control over corporate America. The new lawsuit against Amazon is the biggest test of th...
Sep 27, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast President Biden made history on Tuesday when he joined members of the United Auto Workers union on a picket line outside Detroit as they strike for better pay and benefits from the Big Three automakers. Biden is walking a political tightrope. He wants a better contract for workers–and to win union members' votes in battleground states. He also wants to support carmakers as they transition to a future of electric vehicles. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Micheline Maynard, the author of The E...
Sep 26, 2023•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast 146 days. That's how long it took for the WGA to reach a tentative agreement with major Hollywood studios. WGA leadership is scheduled to vote Tuesday on accepting the new three-year deal. They'll pass it on to the guild's entire membership for ratification. It will take longer for the WGA membership to learn the details and vote. While this is happening, actors are still on the picket line. SAG-AFTRA hasn't reached an agreement yet. Until then, writers say they will stand in solidarity with act...
Sep 25, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast As president Joe Biden's campaign for a second term gets underway, a slew of recent polls show that voters have concerns about his age. At the end of a second term, he would be 86 years old. The Republican frontrunner, former president Donald Trump, is just a few years younger. We wanted to check in with some voters who have first-hand experience with aging: seniors. So we headed to Pittsburgh and the surrounding suburbs, a pivotal region in a pivotal state in the 2024 race, and spoke with older...
Sep 24, 2023•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Close to five thousand people have died in federal prison since 2009. There are 100 federal prisons across the U.S. An NPR investigation found that a quarter of those deaths happened at one federal prison. Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina. Inmates have a constitutional right to health care. Being denied care is considered cruel and unusual punishment. But many of the sick inmates who wind up at Butner don't get the healthcare they are entitled to – and some end up dying. NPR...
Sep 22, 2023•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast New York City has become an unlikely battleground for migrant rights. The city, like others, has struggled to deal with the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants - bussed in from Republican-led states like Texas and Florida. Amid rising pressure to do something to alleviate this problem, the Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it was granting Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, to nearly a half million Venezuelans - thousands of whom are in New York City. TPS protects them from d...
Sep 21, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Tuesday, five Americans detained for years in Iran stepped off a plane back onto US soil. They were released in the US-Iran prisoner swap that also saw five Iranians freed and the US agreeing to 6 billion dollars of Iranian oil money being unfrozen. Per the deal, Iran is supposed to spend the money only on humanitarian goods like food and medicine. Among the five freed Americans: Siamak Namazi. The longest-held US citizen in Iran, detained since 2015. When he stepped off that plane yesterday,...
Sep 20, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast The state of California has filed a massive lawsuit against oil companies. The charge is that oil companies knew they were causing climate change, and lied to cover it up. And now, California is suing for damages. The state is suing to force fossil fuel companies to help fund recovery efforts related to California's extreme weather related events — floods, fire, dangerous heat --which have been made more common and intense by climate change. Back in the 1990s, states across the country sued toba...
Sep 19, 2023•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Monday, five Americans who were imprisoned in Iran, stepped off a plane in Doha, Qatar. They were freed as part of a prisoner exchange deal between the U.S. and Iran. Despite the happy news, the Biden administration is facing a lot of criticism for this deal, which also gave Iran access to about $6 billion of its oil revenue - money that had been frozen under sanctions targeting the government in Tehran. The deal also comes just a little over a year after the death of a young Kurdish-Iranian ...
Sep 18, 2023•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Since becoming Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy has faced the constant threat that members of the right wing of his own Republican Party could move to oust him from power. And now, many view his launch of an impeachment inquiry into President Biden as a political move to protect his flank. Host Scott Detrow speaks with former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich about McCarthy's political dilemma and with NPR's Congressional Correspondent Deirdre Walsh . Email us at considert...
Sep 17, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you're over a certain age and you love movies, when you think "movie critic", you probably picture Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert and their popular TV shows. Their iconic "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" move made it clear what each of them thought about a film. In some ways, the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes is the opposite of Siskel and Ebert. Their viewers depended on the insights of two individuals that they trusted, and felt they knew. Rotten Tomatoes aggregates and averages reviews from...
Sep 15, 2023•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast It can be hard to see how big government policies have a direct effect on an individual's experience. But it was easy to measure the difference made by the expanded child tax credit. Giving more money to low-income families with children had a big impact. After the expanded child tax credit took effect, child poverty hit a record low of 5.2% a year ago. But less than a year later, Congress let it expire. New census data shows that child poverty has more than doubled. Host Ari Shapiro speaks with...
Sep 14, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast The president of the United Auto Workers says the union is planning to carry out sudden, strategic and partial strikes at plants should contract talks with Detroit's Big Three automakers fail ahead of a contract deadline on Thursday night. UAW President Shawn Fain also held out the possibility of an all-out strike in the future of the nearly 150,000 union members. In addition to concerns over pay, workers are worried about what electric vehicles mean for their future. NPR's Camila Domonoske repo...
Sep 13, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Right now it seems like people all around us are testing positive for COVID. But for the most part, they are not getting seriously ill. The Food and Drug Administration just approved a new booster. And on Tuesday advisers to the CDC recommended it for everyone six months and older. With a new variant and a new booster, how should we think about the pandemic in this moment? Email us at considerthis@npr.org . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Sep 12, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast When North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2019, both countries were in a different position. Russia had yet to invade Ukraine. Four years later, Russia is trying to secure weapons from North Korea. The two leaders are expected to meet this month to discuss a deal. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Jean Lee, the former Pyongyang bureau chief for the Associated Press, and Georgetown University's Angela Stent, about the upcoming meeting between Kim Jong Un and Puti...
Sep 11, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast The National Football League's regular season is finally underway. And for loyal fans who have been devouring all the news of their favorite teams, it couldn't have come soon enough. But even if you're just a casual viewer of football, or really any network television program, you've probably seen the star-studded ads for a related business: sports betting. The league's partnership with major sports betting sites continues to draw criticism. Ten NFL players have been suspended for gambling viola...
Sep 10, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Endangered Species Act turns 50 this year. The landmark law has been successful for decades at stopping extinctions of several plants and animals. Recovering endangered or threatened species to the point where they no longer need federal protection has been more difficult because of climate change. NPR's Nathan Rott speaks with Martha Williams, Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about the agency's plans to mitigate threats of extinction caused by climate change. Learn more about ...
Sep 08, 2023•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast The writers and actors strikes have been grinding on for months with no end in sight. Many on the picket lines are struggling to pay for basics. NPR's Ailsa Chang talks to Fran Drescher about what it's going to take to end the strikes. Drescher's the president of SAG-AFTRA, which represents the actors on strike. Email us at considerthis@npr.org . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Sep 07, 2023•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Giant machines sucking carbon dioxide out of the air to fight climate change sounds like science fiction, but it's close to becoming a reality, with billions of dollars of support from the U.S. government. And a key player in this growing industry is a U.S. oil company, Occidental Petroleum. With a major petroleum company deploying this technology, it begs the question, is it meant to save the planet or the oil industry? NPR's Camila Domonoske reports. Email us at considerthis@npr.org . Learn mo...
Sep 06, 2023•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Google was founded 25 years ago by two Stanford PhD students, Larry Page and Sergei Brin. The company went on to shape the internet and now, after a quarter century, finds itself at a turning point. With the rise of AI and social media platforms like TikTok, its continued dominance is not assured. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks to Nilay Patel , editor-in-chief of The Verge, about Google's legacy and what the future holds for the company. Email us at considerthis@npr.org . Learn more about sponsor messa...
Sep 05, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's been over three years since the pandemic started and changed the way millions of Americans work. The possibilities of remote work gave a new kind of freedom to many workers. But as more and more companies demand employees return to the office, is the work from home era coming to an end? Host Scott Detrow speaks with Anne Helen Petersen, culture writer and the author of Out of Office, about the future of remote work. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR ...
Sep 04, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast After three and a half years, the pause on federal student loan payments is coming to an end. Getting more than 40 million borrowers back into repayment will be an enormous challenge, especially because many students who graduated when the pause was already in place have never made a payment. We put borrowers' questions to two experts: NPR Education correspondent Cory Turner , and Carolina Rodriguez, director of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program , a non-profit funded by New York Sta...
Sep 03, 2023•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hundreds of towns, cities and counties across the country impose curfews on young people. On September 1st a curfew went into effect in seven neighborhoods across the District of Columbia that will affect those aged 17 and under. Like many other cities, the nation's capital has seen an increase in violent crime. And some of the most shocking crimes have been committed by young people. Teens as young as thirteen as well as pre-teens have been suspected of, or charged with carjacking. In the past ...
Sep 01, 2023•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast For the second time this summer the top Republican in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, abruptly went silent at a news conference. He was about to answer a question from a reporter when he suddenly froze up. He seemed unable to speak. An aide then stepped in, trying to keep things moving along. The senator's silences have raised concerns about his mental fitness – and larger questions about an aging Congress. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Dr. Ann Murray, the Movement Disorders d...
Aug 31, 2023•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast When people find themselves in the path of a hurricane they are faced with the question: should they evacuate or not? Who makes that call and how? NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate about the decision-making process behind evacuation orders and why people should heed them ahead of hurricanes making landfall. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Aug 30, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
