Hello, everybody. Nick here. It is Thursday, October 16th, 2025. So every year, round about

Christmas time, NPR's morning edition plays something called the Santa Land Diaries, which is David

Sedaris reading about his experience working as an elf in the Macy's department store. It's sort of a

holiday tradition. And we got's sort of a holiday tradition.

And we got our own Civics 101 tradition going on today.

It's basically shutdown land diaries where every time we have a government shutdown, we share our episode on government shutdowns, what shutdowns are, how they happen, why they happen, etc.

So before we play that for you today, I just wanted to give you a quick update on the current

shutdown, the one that we're in as of now. So we are currently in the 16th day of a government

shutdown. This is the 11th shutdown since 1980, where

government employees were furloughed, and lots have been furloughed so far on this one, about 700,000

people. So what is causing this government shutdown? Well, like most government shutdowns, the two parties are at an impasse.

It's a standoff. The Democratic Party refuses to sign a seven-week stopgap funding bill

until language is written into that bill to extend the very soon to expire government subsidies for the

Affordable Care Act. And what does that mean? Well, in brief, if those subsidies expire,

millions of Americans will pay up to twice as much for their health care premiums.

Now, the Republican Party says that it is willing to negotiate the extension of those subsidies,

but not until the government is reopened.

So like I said, it's a standoff.

There have been some notable twists in this shutdown, by the way, most recently that the

very conservative representative of Georgia,

Marjorie Taylor Green, has called for Speaker Mike Johnson to reopen the House and to extend

the health care subsidies. She said, quote, look Democrats, you created this mess. Republicans,

...