There's been a lot of attention on loneliness lately.

16% of Americans report feeling lonely all or most of the time.

The former Surgeon General even declared a loneliness epidemic.

On It's Been a Minute, we're launching a new series called All the Lonely People,

diving deep into how loneliness shows up in our lives and how our culture shapes it.

That's on the It's Been a Minute podcast on NPR.

You're listening to the 1A podcast. I'm Jen White.

And this is in case you missed it, where we bring you some of the week's most important conversations you might have missed.

Last Thursday, the Trump administration suddenly fired federal employees at the agency that manages the U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Then the next morning, some of those firings were reversed, and employees were told they should come back to work.

CNN's senior climate reporter, Ellen Nilsen, reports that the Trump administration has struggled to reach some of the employees it fired to tell them they still have their jobs.

After a quick break, Ella joins us to explain what this latest firing of federal employees means for our security.

Stay with us. More in a moment.

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Joining us now from Washington, D.C. is Alan Nilsson. She's a senior climate reporter for CNN.

Ella, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. So first, just walk us through what the National

Nuclear Security Administration does for the U.S. the role they play in national security.

Yeah, absolutely. The NNSA is housed within the Department of Energy,

but they have a really important job. I mean, they basically oversee the nation's nuclear

stockpile. And they're also tasked with monitoring and safeguarding, you know, nuclear materials

...