What is a government shutdown?
Million Bazillion
Marketplace
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Esmé noticed her dad suddenly staying home from work, she had questions! Her dad is one of the hundreds of thousands of workers sent home because of the government shutdown. But what is a government shutdown anyway? In today’s special bonus episode, we explain what’s going.
We’re working on future seasons and would love to hear your kid’s money questions! Record your Million Bazillionaire and send the audio using this online form and we just might include your kid in an upcoming episode!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | One, two, three, four. |
| 0:06.0 | Ryan, what are you doing? |
| 0:07.3 | I'm counting how many pennies it takes to equal the weight of a gold bar. |
| 0:11.7 | Why are we doing this again? |
| 0:13.3 | It's for an episode, Bridget, come on. |
| 0:15.6 | It's going to be a lot of pennies. |
| 0:18.3 | Hey, you two. |
| 0:19.5 | Oh, it's Marissa, our senior producer. Marissa, you're usually behind the scenes. You're making everything sound amazing. What brings you on mic? We just got a new question, and I think you're going to want to hear it. All right, thank goodness. Let's hear it. My name is Esme and I live in Denver. I'm five years old. I have a question and my question is, what is a government |
| 0:40.4 | shutdown? Esma's dad is a federal worker, and he's been sent home because of the government |
| 0:46.1 | shutdown. I've noticed that my dad hasn't been going to work, and I don't know when the government |
| 0:51.5 | shutdown will stop and my dad can go back to work. So we actually don't know when the government should have been. We'll stop and my dad can go back to work. |
| 0:55.9 | So we actually don't know when he's going to go back to work. |
| 0:59.5 | That's Esma's mom. |
| 1:00.6 | That depends on the elected officials in Washington and when they can come to an agreement to get the government reopened. |
| 1:09.7 | Oh, that sort of makes sense. |
| 1:11.6 | Not really. |
| 1:12.6 | Yeah, I'm with Esme on this one. |
| 1:15.1 | Okay, well, Esme's mom's right, though. |
| 1:16.8 | It all depends on these elected officials and what they do next. |
| 1:19.7 | But the real question is, how do we get into this mess in the first place? |
| 1:23.3 | What is a government shutdown? |
| 1:25.0 | Does it mean people can, like, get away with crimes right now? |
... |
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