Hey, it's Latif.

One of the reasons I love working at this show so much is that at the end of the year,

I can look back through the episodes that we made in the last month, and I'll, like,

find surprising patterns.

I was like, oh, I guess we were really obsessed with the human voice this year?

We did at least three episodes about it, one about the biological evolution of the voice, one about the technological history of text to speech.

And then probably the one we're proudest of. In September, we did an episode featuring the Genius Grant winning writer and activist Alice Wong.

And she specifically was talking about this valve attached to her tracheotomy

tube that allowed her to speak. Sadly, Alice passed away two months later in November, monumental loss.

We feel so honored that one of the last things she did with her voice was to do a story with us.

One of the other things we were not so secretly thinking about all year were the cuts to public media.

For our station, WNYC, that meant a nearly $3 million a year hole.

If we want to keep going, we got to fill that hole.

So if you've heard and been moved by what we put out in the last year, maybe it was

the story of the quantum physicist Kossum trying to survive in Gaza or the Dr. David in

Philly trying to use AI to repurpose generic medicines or the astronomer, charity, studying how galaxies die

as she's mourning her own family. We have laughed and cried and had our minds blown together.

If you want us to keep doing that and to help keep it free for everyone, please chip in.

If you make a year-end donation now, we have three new thank you gifts you can

choose from, all of which were designed by the great Jared Bartman, a laptop slash bumper sticker,

which will send you if you contribute any amount, a t-shirt, I got to say, it's like the most

audio nerd t-shirt. People will think you cut radio live episodes in Pro Tools. Lastly, a jigsaw puzzle

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