What was the purpose of USAID?

Stuff You Should Know

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.6 • 79.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

USAID has saved tens of millions of lives across the globe since its inception. But those days are over. Learn all about this soon-to-be-gone program.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:05.6	Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio.
0:15.4	Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too, and this is Stuff You Should Know,
0:21.3	another timely topical edition of stuff you should know, like I just said.
0:26.7	That's right. As it turns out, weirdly super timely, because as of this recording date,
0:34.8	yesterday, this is July 1st, yesterday,une 30th um will have been the kind of the
0:41.5	final day for most u.s aid employees uh i saw a headline yesterday in the new york times where
0:48.7	bono cries yeah bono kind of probably did cry but people like president uh george w W. Bush and President Obama and Bono all got together and said, hey, you know, USA did so much good work.
1:02.8	We're very proud of the work we did.
1:05.2	George W. Bush in particular was proud of the program that started under his watch, the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief that he initiated that saved 25 million people's lives.
1:18.6	President Obama said, I wish I could do a good Obama.
1:22.8	He said ending USAID would go down as a colossal mistake, ending your presence and your programs out in
1:28.7	the world. And this was directly two employees. They did like video messages. That's why it's in
1:32.3	that, you know, person. Yeah, I think they actually had a video call too for them. Yeah.
1:36.8	Ending your presence and your programs out in the world hurts the most vulnerable and it hurts
1:40.3	the United States. To many people around the world, U.S.Aid is the United States.
1:46.8	And then I got to read Vano's quote because, you know, why not?
1:49.5	Before you do, I just want to say, like, you nailed the Obama in the middle of it.
1:55.9	Bono said, it's not left-wing rhetoric to feel hungry, heal the sick. If this isn't murder, I don't know what
2:03.2	is. That was a pretty good bono. Yeah, it was more of a Larry Mullen Jr. But we say all that
2:08.9	because, you know, I'm not really sure whether or not we should speak in the past tense on this
2:13.0	with a lot of the stuff. Well, today's the day. So like you said, yesterday was the last day that
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