Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Wired's executive editor, Brian Barrett, filling in today for Zoe Schiffer.

Today on the show, we're bringing you five stories that you need to know about this week,

including why the promise of a tech forward school in Texas with software instead of teachers fell apart.

I'm joined by our senior politics editor, Leah Figer. Hey, Leah.

Hey, Brian. Thanks for having me.

So, Leah, our first story today, today is a consequential and unfortunate moment. It is the 30th day of the federal government shutdown.

Our reporters, Victoria Elliott and McKenna Kelly Kelly spoke with more than a dozen workers who are struggling

pay the bills, working side gigs. Some of them are even relying on free food programs to get by.

As of this, recording, around 750,000 federal workers had been furloughed with no end in sight.

One of the people that Tori McKenna spoke with was a federal worker, was working abroad, and a month ago, learned that her husband, who's also a federal worker, had an aggressive form of cancer. Doctors told the couple that they needed to move quickly to remove it, so they did. But now with the government shut down, their health care claims aren't being paid out. They're out tens of thousands of dollars at least, and they're not sure when that's going to change. It's horrible.

This was a really devastating story. I mean, there really is no end in sight here, and so to have

everyone dealing with medical bills and dealing with mortgages and, like, day-to-day life,

federal workers were not paid very much already. Many like day-to-day life, federal workers were not paid very

much already. Many are paycheck to paycheck. It's pretty horrifying that we've gotten to this

point already. And it makes it even worse that SNAP benefits, food stamps are slated to end

the Saturday on November 1st. A pretty devastating turn of events for already what's been

a really hard year for federal workers. Yeah, it's the kind of story that you start out reporting

you know it's going to be bad and that comes back even worse than you thought somehow. Yeah.

And it could still get worse from here is the other thing, right? Like back pay for federal

workers, supposed to kick in when the government shutdown ends,

but who knows when that's going to be?

The longest government shutdown on the books

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