The real horror of ‘Alien’ and how it explains why we’re not paid enough

6:30Kelsey Snell:20th Century Fox presents...

6:33Natalie Kitroeff:Exterior shot. Spaceship from a company called the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.

6:38Kelsey Snell:This is a space truck, essentially. It's hauling a bunch of ore from a mining planet back to Earth.

6:44Natalie Kitroeff:But interior shot.

6:46Kelsey Snell:Computer screen. The space truck's computer picks up a mysterious signal, then wakes the entire crew from cryosleep. I am cold. Give some cornbread.

6:56Natalie Kitroeff:Now, this crew, they're rough, they're tumble, they're blue-collar space truckers. They wear tattered clothes and headbands. They work for Weyland-Yutani and clearly would rather still be a cryosleep. Right. Yeah.

7:09Kelsey Snell:I feel dead. So, yeah, that's the basic setup.

7:13Natalie Kitroeff:Yeah, yeah, that's right. What about that setup gets your labor economist senses tingling? So, first of all, these are not great jobs.

7:24Kelsey Snell:These are tough jobs, yeah. There's some serious negative amenities, as we say. Is that the term? That's the term. Yeah, that's the term. When you watch Alien with Aaron Dubé, it's like the nerdiest DVD commentary ever. He spots all of these hugely important real-world ideas from labor economics.

7:44Natalie Kitroeff:And so we are going to watch Alien with Aaron Dubé and learn about our world from his commentary.

7:52Kelsey Snell:So negative amenities, those are things that make a job less desirable. An emergency room job, it may require overnight shifts. A construction job, it may come with the risk of injury.

8:03Natalie Kitroeff:A space trucker job on a beat-up old mining ship? Yeah. Aaron immediately sees some likely negative amenities here.

8:11Kelsey Snell:I know there's a few, but risk of death is probably like a pretty big one.

8:15Natalie Kitroeff:Yes. I think that's fair to say.

8:17Kelsey Snell:Could be fun, though, if life-threatening, but definitely not good. I mean, they have to go into cryogenic sleep for many years. So, you know, they're away from home for a long time.

8:27Natalie Kitroeff:So negative, away from home for a long time. Positive, get to sleep on the job. for a lot of the jobs. A job with lots of negative amenities is what Aaron calls a bad job. Like, that's a real term. And being a space trucker for the company Weyland-Yutani, bad job, high risk.

8:47Kelsey Snell:When you have a job where there's a big risk, you get something that's called compensating differential, meaning you get paid more because to compensate for the risk. Now, that's if the labor market's working pretty well. Yeah, Aaron has some questions about how well the labor market is functioning in the year 21-22.

9:05Natalie Kitroeff:Mm-hmm. You don't have to watch for very long to see the problems. Basically, the first scene of the movie Alien is all about work and pay and contracts, and we cue that scene up to watch with Aaron. All right, everyone ready? Yeah. Okay.

9:20Kelsey Snell:Sounds good.

9:21Natalie Kitroeff:Here we go.

9:22Kelsey Snell:Okay, so in this scene, the crew, they gather around this table. Their captain tells them about this mysterious transmission, and they've been woken up because their company, Weyland-Yutani, it needs them to go investigate that transmission. A transmission? Out here? Yeah. SOS? I don't know. Human? Unknown.

9:43Natalie Kitroeff:I hate to bring this up, but this is a commercial ship, not a rescue ship. Right. And it's not in my contract to do this kind of duty. If you want to give me some money to do it, I'd be happy to do it. Yeah, let me pause there. Not in the contract. What's your reaction to that line?

9:55Kelsey Snell:Well, you know, it's not in the contract. So if they are told they have to do something, it's not their contract. They should just quit and get another job.

10:03Natalie Kitroeff:You're being facetious because they're on a spaceship.

10:05Kelsey Snell:Oh, no. How is that going to work?

10:09Natalie Kitroeff:Yes. Here is a giant clue that the true monster of Alien may be hiding in the labor dynamics, Greg. Yes?

10:17Kelsey Snell:Yeah. I mean, OK. So our crew, they live on a company ship. They sleep in a company cryo sleep chamber. They eat company cornbread, apparently. functionally, our space truckers live in a company town.

10:30Natalie Kitroeff:Now, what makes Alien a smarter econ movie than it needs to be is that it goes further than just saying like, oh, the crew's trapped, therefore they must do what their company says. Instead, this scene keeps going, and the crew is like, well, if we do this little side mission, we better get overtime or something. Can we just talk about the ball of the joint? Can I say something? Let's talk about the ball of the joint. There is a clause in the contract.

10:54Kelsey Snell:Okay, so that person who is, well, actually, there's a clause in the contract. He's an android. He represents the company, Weyland Yutani. He's a management shill.

11:04Natalie Kitroeff:Big narc energy. There is a clause in the contract which specifically states any systematized transmission indicating a possible intelligent origin must be investigated.

11:13Kelsey Snell:I will hear it.

11:13Natalie Kitroeff:Baku, will you just listen to the man? On penalty of total forfeiture of shares. No money.

11:19Kelsey Snell:That sounds bad. You got that?

11:21Natalie Kitroeff:No money, he said.

11:23Kelsey Snell:No money. All right, we're going in. Yeah, we're going in. And that shut him up. They're kind of forced into doing this mission because, surprise, the company Weyland-Yutani has hidden a clause in everyone's contract.

11:37Natalie Kitroeff:So just walk us through what a labor economist thinks watching that scene.

11:40Kelsey Snell:Yeah, so if the labor market's really competitive, the ability for companies to write contracts where there's sort of hidden risks, right? Like hidden risk, alien calls, do you have to go pick up? Those would get priced out properly. And so you would get a bonus of some sort or get a higher pay. But if the market's not particularly competitive, then that could easily be that there's shrouded, we call it shrouded attributes. People have the unpleasant finding out that actually your contract has things that you didn't fully factor in and you're kind of stuck with it.

12:19Natalie Kitroeff:I mean, they don't know they're about to go be infected by a man-eating super killer.

12:25Kelsey Snell:Yeah, I think the technical term is you're kind of screwed.

12:33Natalie Kitroeff:Now, I just want to say how wonderful it is that the inciting incident of alien is a shrouded attribute. It's this little clause about a wildly risky job responsibility that Weyland-Yutani did not need to price into its worker pay because they could just bury it in the contract.

12:54Kelsey Snell:And the fact that Weyland-Yutani could get away with this, that is the second big clue that our poor space truckers, they are not just dealing with a bad labor market.

13:04Natalie Kitroeff:No, no, no. They're dealing with an infamous economic concept.

13:08Kelsey Snell:A concept that could keep some labor economists up at night.

13:11Natalie Kitroeff:A concept that we are actively avoiding saying. Because, yeah, we wanted Aaron to say it. Yeah, he says it well. Would you say that the thing we have not yet said is scarier or less scary than the xenomorph, the alien?

13:24Kelsey Snell:You know, in eighth grade, not so much. But today, yeah, you know, like xenomorphs are not great, but monopsony. Ah, monopsony. Ah, monopsony. It's coming to get me. It bursted out of Kenny's chest. Help us.

13:40Natalie Kitroeff:Well, I will say we are bursting with enthusiasm to talk about monopsony, yes, because Planet Money Stands will know that we love talking monopsony when we can. So, of course, monopoly is where there's one big company selling in a market. Monopsony is when there is one company buying in a market. And, you know, the version we probably hear most often is about one company buying labor, hiring people. So only one company that people can go work for. And it certainly seems as if the corporation Weyland-Yutani is operating with the power of a monopsony in the dystopian sci-fi future of Alien.

14:18Kelsey Snell:Now, obviously, this is a crazy, fantastical world far off in space with aliens and xenomorphs and whatever. But these sort of all-powerful monopsonies have existed in the real world, like mining towns that were owned and run by one company. And when there's only one in... Or how did Aaron put it again? Kind of screwed.

14:42Natalie Kitroeff:Yes, one company real bad for workers.

14:45Kelsey Snell:Of course, in a company town or, you know, like there's going to be monopsony power. Well, a new tummy. But this is really a much more endemic feature of the labor market than people have really understood.

14:59Natalie Kitroeff:As in monopsony power is sneakily hiding all over our current labor market, even when there is more than one company to go work for. And this, this actually is the part that should land, like the economic version of a surprise alien bursting out of your colleague's chest. Greg, you want to go with that again?

15:18Kelsey Snell:Wait, am I the alien or the person?

15:21Natalie Kitroeff:I guess I was going to. The monopsony was hiding within us all along. That's the takeaway here. Yes.

15:27Kelsey Snell:For decades, economists assumed that labor markets were mostly competitive and that monopsonies, they could be treated like unicorns, you know, only found in rare circumstances. But Aaron and a growing number of economists, they're finding monopsonies, it's more kind of like a regular horse. Monopsony power, it's just like much more pervasive than previously thought.

15:48Natalie Kitroeff:Yes, sure. Pervasive. But the key here is that monopsony power that Aaron and other researchers are finding, it's not obvious like in old mining towns or future space mining companies. It's kind of with us now sneakily. So Aaron walks us through how to spot what today's monopsony power looks like for us.

16:08Kelsey Snell:I think that the key thing is to start with the, like, what is monopsony power? Monopsony power means that workers can't easily switch jobs and employers have some degree of choice of what kind of wages and what kind of working conditions to provide. Now, why do they have this choice? Why don't you have basically, I pay a little bit lower than the market wage. Everyone bolts and is gone to the next best alternative. Why does that not happen? It's not because we're stuck on spaceships.

16:37Natalie Kitroeff:That's not the reason.

16:38Kelsey Snell:That's not the reason. That's like the fifth reason. But first, because there may be concentrated markets. Concentrated markets. So maybe we don't yet have one giant Weyland-Yutani corporation running the world. But when you look at specific industries within specific geographies, some of those have been consolidating, offering fewer and fewer employers for people to work for.

17:01Natalie Kitroeff:As industries consolidate, employers tend to be able to reduce pay for workers. And And one example Aaron points to in his book, somebody who is working in the skiing industry.

17:12Kelsey Snell:Ski industry, you know, like 25 years ago, there was a lot of small family-owned hills. But over the last 25, 30 years, it's become very consolidated. Like, for example, in Vermont, you could maybe go to the next one over. And hey, that's also owned by the same employer. But, you know, that right there is sort of a classic source of monopsony power that there may be less employers around than you may think for the kinds of work that you're doing. This seems to be true more broadly. Aaron points to one study that found typical American workers only have about three equal sized employers within driving distance for their particular employment field.

17:52Natalie Kitroeff:But even when you move to big cities where people have way more job options, Aaron's work has found that people simply do not quit a job for better paying jobs in the way that classic labor market theories would predict.

18:06Kelsey Snell:Yeah, maybe they kind of like their commute or they're like, oh, I love my coworkers. I'll miss them if I leave or, you know, whatever. And then there's the fact that changing jobs is just a huge pain. what we call in economics search frictions, that employees actually have difficulty finding out about, applying for, quitting, and taking a new job. These are costly. It can be slow. It can be exhausting. And it can take a lot of effort, especially when you already have another job.

18:38Natalie Kitroeff:And it's not just that changing jobs is annoying, which it is. Aaron says companies intentionally also make it harder for workers to jump ship and change jobs.

18:48Kelsey Snell:I talk about this monopsony by artifice. Here's an example. Non-compete agreements. So a third or more of American workers end up signing these. A third? Yeah. Wow. And by the way, sometimes it's argued that it's because to protect trade secrets. But then like Jimmy John's sandwich chain, summer camp in Massachusetts. The examples go on, but it's basically a way to reduce competition for workers.

19:15Natalie Kitroeff:What you're saying about the ways in which monopsony shows up, like surely we're not all stuck on a spaceship with a single employer controlling our entire life. And what your research has shown is like, aren't we though? In just littler ways. That's right.

19:30Kelsey Snell:So jobs are sticky. Quitting is harder. And as a result, our working conditions and job quality are only partially determined by a well-functioning market force. So yes, there's aspects of exactly what doesn't work in a very dramatic way in Alien does afflict us in smaller but important ways. And the good news is we have ways of fixing or improving those more so than in the movie, perhaps. Yeah. Aaron says in the real world, we have ways to push back against monopsony power. Things like minimum wage laws, antitrust enforcement, and labor unions that fight for worker interests.

20:13Natalie Kitroeff:And this is basically what Aaron's book is about. He says the erosion of those counter forces is a big reason we've seen a stagnation of worker pay and a rise in inequality. That's in the real world, of course, but Aaron says he supposes those things would have helped in the movie Alien, too.

20:32Kelsey Snell:Yeah, like imagine if in the movie the employees of Weyland-Yutani were like in a really strong labor union or something. Like one that we see in a lot of other countries where they hammer out worker protections for a whole sector of the economy. So if we had, for example, the Sectoral Space Truckers Association. Yeah. The S-S-T-A. Yep, the S-S-T-A. The S-S-T-A. And so when they start having these debates about what they should do, there's a big volume of SSTA contract that lays out our collective bargaining. And in fact, if they found out something they didn't really like, they would say, you know what?

21:12Kelsey Snell:Let me talk to my shop steward.

21:14Natalie Kitroeff:That scene would probably play out a little different, wouldn't it?

21:17Kelsey Snell:It would sort of be a really boring scene. And then they would say, OK, fine, we're not going to do it. And then they're just going to go back to Earth. The end.

21:24Natalie Kitroeff:I don't know that that would be a boring scene. Sounds riveting to me, honestly. Agree. And so, Planet Money is proud to present the world premiere of Alien 1979, The Labor Economist's Cut.

21:37Kelsey Snell:And we hear from someone with first-hand knowledge of what it takes to make an actual alien movie and how to nail the perfect balance of labor economics and killer aliens.

21:48Natalie Kitroeff:All of that after the break.

21:56Kelsey Snell:Support for this podcast and the following message come from ActiveCampaign, the autonomous marketing platform. You know that feeling when you open your marketing tool and instead of marketing, you spend an hour wrestling with a drag-and-drop builder? ActiveCampaign built active intelligence for exactly that moment. Describe what you want to accomplish. It builds the campaign, writes the copy, and maps the automations across email, SMS, and WhatsApp. app. Customers save an average of 10 hours per week and make email campaigns eight times faster. Learn more at ActiveCampaign.com.

22:29Natalie Kitroeff:This message comes from Dell. Dell PCs with Intel inside are built for the moments that matter, like a big project that can't be interrupted by an update.

22:39Kelsey Snell:With a long-lasting battery life, you can stay focused on what matters. Built for you. Dell.com slash Dell PCs. This message comes from Ethos. It's easy to put off getting life insurance until something unexpected happens. That makes you realize your family needs you covered. Ethos makes it easy. It's 100 % online. No medical exam, just a few health questions. Apply in minutes and get same-day coverage up to 3 million. Get your free quote today at ethos.com slash money. That's ethos.com slash money. Application times and rates may vary.

23:15Natalie Kitroeff:The labor economist Aaron Dubé's cut of Alien 1979, it starts the same way. Spaceship. Computer.

23:24Kelsey Snell:Space truckers wake up.

23:26Natalie Kitroeff:Hey.

23:28Kelsey Snell:But we asked Aaron Dubé to tweak the labor conditions for a better worker outcome in Alien.

23:34Natalie Kitroeff:Aaron imagined instead a future where the space truckers were part of some sectoral bargaining agreement, where there was a strong union and, uh, here, he thinks, is how the opening of Alien would have played out instead.

23:50Kelsey Snell:Some of you may have figured out we're not home yet. You intercepted a transmission of unknown origins. A transmission? Out here? Yeah. You got us up to check it out.

24:00Natalie Kitroeff:This is a commercial ship, not a rescue ship. Right. And it's not my contract to do this kind of duty. Sorry, can I say something? No, sure. There is a clause in the contract which specifically states

24:09Kelsey Snell:Any systematized transmission indicating a possible intelligent origin must be investigated. No, no, hold on. I think somebody's trying to say something in the back. Yeah, remember our grievance procedure? So I'm going to file that. And while it's being investigated, we actually can't go. That's part of the rule. So, the end.

24:28Natalie Kitroeff:Back to the cryosleep, I guess.

24:31Kelsey Snell:Back to cryosleep we go. It's a YouTube short. Okay, okay.

24:37Natalie Kitroeff:Yes. Ultimately, you cannot have Alien without all these labor dynamics, the negative amenities, shrouded attributes, the monopsony. And I would contend that all of that rich texture is what makes this movie special and a huge part of what makes Alien more than just another good horror movie.

24:56Kelsey Snell:Yeah, there are now a bunch of Alien movies, and the best of those, they strike this delicate balance of space terror and smart economic themes. And we were unbelievably excited to get to talk to someone who has actually had to walk that econ horror tightrope.

25:13Natalie Kitroeff:I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit. Do you remember, off the top of your head, the first words that are spoken in your film Alien Romulus?

25:23Kelsey Snell:first word spoken uh well that is uh let me remember this is fede alvarez he co-wrote and directed the newest film in the alien franchise i can give you the answer if you want attention all workers attention all workers yeah attention all workers attention all workers they should starting in t-minus 15 minutes we had planet money we bring our economics

25:49Natalie Kitroeff:lends to everything. But surely we are not hallucinating that you also have chosen to put labor dynamics to some degree front and center here, yes?

25:58Kelsey Snell:Well, I think when you're going to make an alien movie, the first thing you do is trying to study what made the best iterations of this franchise. And I think, you know, if you look at the first one, you're like, given the second one and the third one, they're always talking about that. I mean, in a way, how powerless the individual can be, you know, in front of the machine. This is kind of a big deal for us. Fede Alvarez, he's a very accomplished horror thriller director. He made his first films in Uruguay. He co-wrote and directed a huge hit in the United States called Don't Breathe. He also directed a reboot of The Evil Dead, which was freaking awesome and supposedly set a record for gallons of fake blood used in a movie.

26:42Natalie Kitroeff:Indeed. Reigns fake blood. Lots of fake blood. And yeah, Greg and I, big Fede Alvarez fans. And clearly, Fede knows that great Alien movies need smart ideas about labor and work. He's not a labor economist, though. So we wanted to talk to Fede about how he went about finding and building those smart ideas into his movie.

27:02Kelsey Snell:And Fede told us he admittedly did not notice the econ in Alien at first. But later, when he was around age 20, he started to understand that this movie, it's saying something much bigger. You know, the movie starts, and as soon as they're at the table, they talk about the bonus situation.

27:20Natalie Kitroeff:It's like right away. It's like first thing. We're in a contract. It's wild.

27:25Kelsey Snell:It's the first thing they do, and talk about the rights as workers. But also, they're not just talking about that. They talk about inequality as well. They're talking about, why am I getting, you know, less money than you guys? And, you know, the captain goes, like, you know, you're going to get what you deserve. And obviously he's talking about when the monster comes, we're all going to be the same. We're all going to be equal. Actually, the Capitan stopped when he was one of the first ones to die. And that shows how death is that big an equalizer.

27:52Natalie Kitroeff:So I'm curious. We're going to get a little economics here with your permission. Yes? Of course. Okay, great. Have you ever heard the term monopsony? Does this come across your radar? Oh, no. Okay. Because you 1 ,000 % nail this perfectly in your movie.

28:10Weyland-Yutani slags.

28:13Kelsey Snell:The company pays us for fire and shelter and takes our lives in each game. Okay, let us set this up for you if you haven't seen Fede's movie, Alien Romulus. In his alien, we actually start on a mining and farming planet, a colony entirely controlled by the corporation Weyland-Yutani.

28:31Natalie Kitroeff:And it is, you know, bad. Workers are living some version of indentured servitude in a company town. And just like in the original Alien, one of Fede's first scenes is simple yet stuffed with all kinds of huge labor economics. Right.

28:49Kelsey Snell:Our protagonist, a young woman named Rain, she goes into Weyland-Yutani's Office of Colony Affairs and she tries to submit some paperwork to get off this planet. You know, basically, she's trying to quit her job. Full name and occupation, please. Maria Rain's charity, ma 'am. I'm at my quota and I should be free to go now. I'm sorry, but you're not eligible for contract release yet. Wait, what? No, no, I reached the required hours. Unfortunately, quotas have been raised to 24 ,000 hours, so you'll be released from contract in another five to six years. Thank you, and remember, the company is really grateful for your ongoing service.

29:25Kelsey Snell:This is a depiction of monopsony that could be taught in economics classes. The way that remote towns historically created this kind of trapped labor force. the way company towns infamously had so much control that workers had to use fake company money to buy things from their company stores using company script.

29:45Natalie Kitroeff:We asked Fede if he and his co-writer, Rodos Sayagues, had researched case studies to get this right. And he was like, yeah, but also, it's a bit more intuitive than that. And it's also about, early on in the movie, setting up what he thinks is the ultimate theme of a good alien movie. general powerlessness.

30:06Kelsey Snell:And in the case of Alien, it's always the Weyland-Yutani who represents the government. It can be literally that in the stories, but it's also how you feel powerless versus something that cannot be destroyed, that seems to you cannot negotiate with, that seems that it's relentless. So I think that's why I think the best ones, they always start there. They get the audience. They draw them in from a perspective of, you know, everybody knows how it feels to be in that place and feel powerless.

30:37Natalie Kitroeff:I've read a few quotes from you about this as an Uruguayan. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, you said things like growing up under a dictatorship in a developing country, that there is a feeling that may seem specific, but is universal about sort of a lack of options for you as a young person.

30:54Kelsey Snell:Yeah. I mean, ironically, at the same time, yes, Uruguay, by being born in a dictatorship, like my parents had a sort of mentality in a way of a survival instinct that came from being born in that environment where you didn't have a lot of choices. And if you grew a beard, you will get arrested. But at the same time, that being said, there's also the other side of it is when I moved to the United States, when I make Evil Dead, my first film, and I moved here, I was like, wait a second, you guys don't have like vacation salary? Like you don't have like guarantee 30 days of vacation every year. And people were like, what are you talking about?

31:31Kelsey Snell:You have to work. And I was like, what is this dystopian society? So, you know, Uruguay, we have healthcare, it's free healthcare. And, you know, particularly on the employer dynamics, if you get hired by a company and they want to fire you, it's okay, they can't fire you, but they will have to pay you. There's all this severance thing. They have to pay you at least a month of salary for each year that you work at the company. So the more you work, the harder it is to fire you. And I took for granted all my life living there. And then when I came here and every people were laughing at all this nonsense.

32:03Kelsey Snell:So for me, that also made me understand why in Alien, it was important if I was going to make one to really bring some of the subjects to the forefront.

32:13Natalie Kitroeff:A rumor on the street is that you and Roto have already written the sequel to Alien Romulus. Is that correct?

32:19Kelsey Snell:We did. We did. I didn't want to direct another one.

32:22Natalie Kitroeff:No questions about whether you're going to direct. I don't need spoilers. You don't need to spoil any plot. But can you, exclusively for our Planet Money audience, tell us, will we get more labor economics?

32:34Kelsey Snell:Definitely. That's what they're all about. Yeah, that's what they're all about. It's not a good alien movie if it doesn't, you know, deal with that. That's true.

32:42Natalie Kitroeff:Can we expect now that I've taught you the term monopsony? Is it too late to change your next script and sprinkle a little monopsony?

32:50Kelsey Snell:Don't you see it, guys? This is a monopsony. The whole theater is going to be like, what?

32:55Natalie Kitroeff:Yeah, that's right. They're going to know. They'll know. They'll know. Fede, thank you so much. This was awesome. I hope you enjoyed talking some of this. My pleasure.

33:03Kelsey Snell:My pleasure.

33:06Natalie Kitroeff:Don't fast forward. We've got a special event to tell you about that is just going to be for our NPR Plus supporters. If you couldn't make one of our book tour events back in April, we've got great news for you. We're doing one more. One more book tour event. This time it's a live virtual event. It's on Thursday, June 25th at 3 p.m. Eastern. My colleague Jeff Guo will be there. The main author of our book, Alex Mayasi, he will be there. We'll also have some special guests, TBD. If you've already joined NPR +, thank you. And listen to our most recent bonus episode to find out how to register for the event.

33:38Natalie Kitroeff:And if you have not joined NPR +, yet, well, make sure you're signed up by June 24th to get our invite. Just go to plus.npr.org. Again, that is plus.npr.org. Signing up is a great way to support the show, NPR, and independent nonprofit journalism. We'll see you there.

33:57Kelsey Snell:Today's episode of Planet Money was produced by the wonderful, the incomparable James Sneed. Go Knicks. It was edited by Jess Jang, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Robert Rodriguez. Our executive producer is Alex Goldmark.

34:13Natalie Kitroeff:Special thanks this week to Taylor Haber and to you, Greg Rozalski, you little xenomorph you. Greg, if you are not familiar, is our newsletter writer and wrote two excellent newsletters about monopsony, about the movie Alien, about Aaron Dubé. And those inspired this show. So you can find those. We're going to link to them in our show notes.

34:35Kelsey Snell:Yeah, thanks, Kenny. Really appreciate that. Yeah, I'm Kenny Malone. And I'm Greg Grzalski. This is NPR. Thanks for listening. The key is... 48 teams. We want to be one of the soccer powerhouses that people talk about. 16 cities. The joy of the World Cup is that it holds up a mirror to the society that surrounds it. One beautiful game.

34:56Natalie Kitroeff:I think everyone knows that nothing is like a World Cup game.

35:00Kelsey Snell:The World Cup is here, and we have you covered. Follow along on and off the pitch with the NPR app. This week on the NPR Politics Podcast,

35:11Natalie Kitroeff:new polling shows President Trump is more unpopular than ever. Trump turned 80 this week. One voter who voted for him in 2024 had this message. I would have said I would have bought you a cake, but I can't afford one. But happy birthday. The signals are getting louder for this year's midterms. Voters aren't happy. We'll talk about it on the NPR Politics podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

35:33Kelsey Snell:This message comes from Capital One with the Venture X card. Earn unlimited double miles, a$300 annual Capital One travel credit, and access to airport lounges. Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. Details at CapitalOne.com.