Hi again, it's Alexis. If you missed last week's drop, I am the producer of For Colored Nerds,

and I'm filling in for Brittany and Eric while they're on break. For Colored Nerds returns next Tuesday, May 10th,

with all new episodes. But until then, I want to introduce another clip from another one of our favorite

podcast, The Washington Posts, Post Reports. Post Reports is a daily podcast that covers everything

from Elon Must Find Twitter to dealing with mental health at work. But this clip in particular

talks about how the student loan freeze helped black women. On April 5th, the White House decided

that they would extend the federal student loan payment pause for several more months instead of everyone returning to repayment in May.

They'll now have until the end of August. So that's August 31st.

Danielle Douglas Gabriel covers the economics of higher education for the post.

So a big part of her beat is reporting on student debt.

Federal student loan debt repayment has been on pause for two years.

And now that's going to continue, at least through August.

So for a lot of people who have been dealing with this debt for their entire adult lives, this pause during

the pandemic has given them a glimpse of what life would be like debt-free.

So I'd seen a lot of research that show that black women held the most amount of student-loat

debt. So I really wondered what would their life be like if they didn't have to make those payments?

And the last two years presented the perfect opportunity to figure that out.

So Danielle started talking to black women to see what life was like for them without federal loans.

Talking to a lot of the women that were kind enough to share their stories,

the first thing that they all said is they felt relief.

They just felt like they could breathe and have a moment to themselves

and not worry about this looming burden.

...