A brief history of NPR funding

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

Where does NPR get its funding? Today on the show, we open our books and share a brief history of public radio. And we learn what's at stake with President Trump's executive order to cut off federal funding to NPR.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR
0:02.0	Adrian Ma
0:12.6	Darian Woods
0:13.6	When you tell people that you work for NPR, do you ever get this response?
0:18.5	Have you got to meet the great Ira Glass?
0:20.1	Who's the name?
0:20.7	This is from when I was being interviewed this year by the New Zealand station, RNZ.
0:24.7	So Ira Glass, the founding host of this American life.
0:29.5	To be clear, he doesn't work at NPR.
0:32.4	Only all the time, Darien.
0:34.2	Right.
0:35.1	I also get asked about whether I run into Kyrisnall from Marketplace.
0:39.6	Tiny Desk is a big one? Yes, that one is us. Yes. Not to mention the war correspondence,
0:45.3	national, international, and investigative journalists that we are lucky to work with. And I guess
0:50.8	it makes sense. You know, we're all part of the same extended public radio Marvel universe.
0:57.7	Another question we get is, how are we funded?
1:00.9	That's coming up a lot these days.
1:03.0	President Trump just signed an executive order to stop all federal funding to PBS and National Public Radio.
1:10.0	This is the indicator from Planet Money.
1:11.7	I'm Daryan Woods.
1:12.8	And I'm Adrian Ma.
1:14.2	Today on the show, we open up our books.
	...

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