I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Wednesday, June 16th.

We all know that throughout the pandemic, Amazon has achieved, quote, record growth and spectacular

profits, as the article says,

with people so dependent on deliveries while staying at home, obviously.

But the story puts their success in a different light.

Remember a few months ago when we were following the attempts at unionizing in one remote

Amazon fulfillment center in

Bessemer, Alabama. Well, if you missed that news, the union lost the vote around 1,800 to 700 workers,

so no union. But while most of us moved on from that news cycle, three journalists have been

digging deeper. Their new piece called the Amazon

Customers Don't See gives us all an even closer look into the giant corporation by honing in

on New York City's only Amazon fulfillment center in the middle of the COVID pandemic. And what

they learned may also give us a look into the future as more companies push

toward automation. With us now are New York Times correspondent Jody Cantor, prize-winning

investigative reporter and bestselling author, and Grace Ashford, researcher and reporter with the

Investigations Unit of the Times. Thank you both for being here. Hi, Jody. Hi, Grace. Good morning. Good morning. So good to be here. Let me start with you, Jody. For those who don't know, what is JFK8 and why was that specific Amazon fulfillment center of interest to you for this story? That is exactly the right question.

You know, Ryan, I've lived in New York.

My whole life, I'm from Staten Island,

and I had barely known what JFK8 is.

But in fact, it is the only Amazon fulfillment center in New York City.

It is the company's critical pipeline to this city. So it was built in

2018 with the specific goal of kind of conquering the New York market. And last year, as we were

...