The Rest of the Story, 2023

SPEAKER_13: This message comes from NPR sponsor Doctors Without Borders. Around the world, Doctors Without Borders provides medical care wherever it's needed most. This Giving Week, make a life-saving impact. Learn more at doctorswithoutborders.org slash npr. This is Planet Money from NPR. SPEAKER_11: One of the best and worst things about our jobs here at Planet Money are the deadlines. SPEAKER_15: They're relentless, but they keep us honest. Because while we're being honest, without deadlines, we would work on stories forever. Reading that one last paper, doing that one last interview, checking that one last fact. That is, of course, if it weren't for the deadline. Because of deadlines, at a certain point we fade up the music, read the end credits, turn off our recorders, and go on to thinking about the next story. But it's not like that for the people we talk to for our stories. The music doesn't just fade up on their lives. No, they fight on another day, encounter new obstacles, learn new lessons. And so every once in a while around here, we like to check in on those people and their stories. Call them up and say, hey, how'd that work out for you? It's a show that we've been doing for over a decade here at Planet Money, an idea we kind of stole from a radio great, the legendary Paul Harvey. We've had a show called The Rest of the Story. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Nick Fountain. SPEAKER_01: That's our show today, The Rest of the Story. SPEAKER_15: Updates on the stories we've reported and from the people we've met along the way. SPEAKER_13: We're here to help you find the right way. We're here to help you find the right way. We're here to help you find the right way. We're here to help you find the right way. We're here to help you find the right way. We're here to help you find the right way. We're here to help you find the right way. We're here to help you find the right way. We're here to help you find the right way. I'm Amanda Aranchick, sponsor Total Wine & More. SPEAKER_09: This holiday season find the best gifts for everyone on your list when you shop at Total Wine & More. Discover standout gifts for everyone on your list from wines and tequilas to gift baskets and sets. Explore more in store, online, or on the Total Wine app. Spirits not available in Virginia or North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Be 21. Hey there, it's Amanda Aranchick. SPEAKER_10: back to the show, a bit of year-end reflection. In 2023, Planet Money followed the wild arc of inflation, of interest rates, we brought you a series about AI and an episode produced by AI, and we served up another extremely infotaining season of Planet Money summer school. Of course, we have big plans for lots more cool stuff like that in 2024. But that stuff will not be possible without your help. This is where we want to say a big thank you to our Planet Money Plus supporters and anyone listening who already donates to public media. And to anyone out there who isn't a supporter yet, right now is the time to get behind the NPR network, especially with a big election year coming up. So please join NPR Plus at plus.npr.org or make a tax-deductible donation now at donate.npr.org slash money. And thanks. One of our most popular episodes from this past year was SPEAKER_15: one about vacations, paid time off, and why Americans have less of it than pretty much the rest of the world. The reporter on that story was Sarah Gonzalez, who joins me now. Hi, Sarah. Hey, Nick. Remind us what prompted this episode because it's a fun story, actually. SPEAKER_15: Is it fun? Okay, I guess it started off as like a personal question that I had, which was that I SPEAKER_12: had all of this vacation accrued, so vacation that I had worked for, that I earned this paid time off. It was 200 hours of vacation. I never used it. I was going to lose it. And I didn't even like attempt to fight for it. I was just like, bye-bye vacation. And it is not just me. A lot of people in the US leave vacation on the table. And so the larger story became about like, why is that? And also, why does the US get such little vacation generally compared to a lot of other countries? Right. And you sort of go through some of the main theories for why this is. The one that I remember is the Protestant work ethic. SPEAKER_15: Yeah, we debunk that one pretty quickly. There's also a theory that other rich countries take more SPEAKER_12: vacation because their taxes are higher. So there's like less desire to work more when more of your wages are going to get taken, right? That one was also hard to prove. But then this one economist kind of pointed the finger at labor unions for never even fighting for vacation as a right in the US. The episode is great. And it ends in this amazing way, which is basically you saying, I'm out of SPEAKER_15: here. I'm about to go take a two week vacation. Yeah, the idea is we're never going to get more vacation as workers if we don't like ask for it SPEAKER_12: and take it. So I was just like, I'm gonna do my part. I'm gonna take vacation. So you go on vacation, you come back. And you told us something that I actually found kind of SPEAKER_15: hard to comprehend. I'm not gonna lie. I said it was too much vacation. It was too long. I was ready to come home. SPEAKER_12: Sarah, what happened? Such a tragedy. Okay, I mean, obviously, super, super fortunate to go on a two week vacation. SPEAKER_12: But like, I don't know, by day five, day six, it just it just felt like too much. It felt way too indulgent. It felt like really selfish. And I was just ready to be home doing things. I was like, I got things to do. Yeah, this was actually one of the themes of the show that people in the US really struggle with not being productive with all of their time. We don't know how to not be SPEAKER_15: productive. Right. So I actually tried to change my return flight home, tried to move the trip up. SPEAKER_12: We chose not to because it was going to be like ridiculously expensive. So yeah, the last few SPEAKER_12: days I just was feeling like, what a waste of my time. I don't know. I don't know how to say it. I do think that the right mix for me would be like a week of time off where you can like relax and be with your family, spend time together, all that. And then another week to like get stuff done, like deep clean my closet, organize my drawers, maybe like plant some flowers, you know? Well, Sarah, may you have many productive days off in 2020? SPEAKER_15: No, wish me the opposite. Wish me that I learned how to like chill out and take vacation where I SPEAKER_12: don't accomplish anything. That is what I want for myself. Of course, that too. Thank you. Thank you, Nick. All right. See you next year. Thanks. See you next year. SPEAKER_15: Next up, Planet Money producer, Dave Blanchard. Hey, Dave. Hey, Nick. You were out there covering one of the biggest stories of the year, one of the biggest labor actions of this very labor action a year, the Hollywood strikes. And specifically you were looking at how there are all these rules to follow for striking. And SPEAKER_15: there's this kind of gamesmanship over how to weaponize those rules. Right? Yeah. So it was kind of this back and forth. So in the Hollywood strike, we saw the classic legally protected labor action, the picket. And the picket line is a way to SPEAKER_03: basically pressure people not to go into work. And that helps inflict as much economic damage as the strikers possibly can, which in this case meant, you know, these unions were picketing at giant Hollywood lots. And so they were just trying to pick it at as many of the entrances onto the lots as they possibly could. But then the studios used another part of labor law, which says that picketers can't necessarily picket everywhere. The studios can designate certain entrances to their lots, certain gates for people who have nothing to do with a strike. So in these lots, that'd be like people working on commercials or things produced by companies the Hollywood unions weren't striking against. They call these unpickettable entrances, neutral gates. And your story, which was so much fun, was about this strike captain who was singularly obsessed SPEAKER_15: with proving that the studios were abusing this system, this neutral gate system. Yeah, his name is Bill Walkoff. And yeah, he was obsessed because on the very first day of the SPEAKER_03: strike, he had this moment where he was just watching cars stream onto the lot through this supposedly neutral gate. And he just had the sense that the studios were violating the system. It was a little bit like Ahab seeing the white whale for the first time. SPEAKER_04: It felt like a challenge immediately. Is that what you're saying? You're like, this is my quest now. Oh yeah. His quest was to prove they were abusing the system because SPEAKER_03: if they did that, the law said, then they could start to picket there. They could flip the gate, SPEAKER_03: to turn it from neutral to not neutral. And in our episode, he ends up succeeding. He flips the gate and expands his strikes reach. Right. So that was the story we heard during the strikes. I know that SPEAKER_15: the strikes have ended. Right. That's the big update, right? What other updates do you have for me? Well, I called Bill to just see what his experience of the end of the strike was because, SPEAKER_03: you know, he was so obsessed with this idea of flipping as many gates as he possibly could. And I was just curious to know if he had like one last job that he was able to pull off before the strike ended. Well, a lot of activity happened, uh, toward right at the end of the strike. SPEAKER_04: Bill says the writers had their eye on one particular show that they suspected of cheating, SPEAKER_03: of using the neutral gate when they weren't supposed to. And I could see that like strike captain fire light up in Bill's eyes as he began talking about it. We even had one very damning piece of evidence. Uh, we saw, um, all sorts of equipment that you need to create a stage. And SPEAKER_04: there was a big piece of duct tape across it, uh, with the letters D W T S dancing with the stars. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. I'm dancing with the stars was planning this huge SPEAKER_03: live extravaganza. It was this big deal. And for bill, this is the opportunity because if the strikers could create a delay here, it's not like the studio can just push back the live taping. It could hypothetically screw up the entire broadcast. So who were, who were the stars in this episode of SPEAKER_03: dancing with the stars? Who were you keeping an eye out for that was going in and out? Alison Hannigan was a big one. Uh, she played, she played Willow on Buffy the vampire Slayer SPEAKER_04: and, and there's others that I'm forgetting, but, uh, it was, I mean, I just want to look it up. So this was dancing with the stars. Let's see. I can't tell if looking at the cast of dancing, SPEAKER_03: the stars shows how out of touch I am or how out of touch they are, but you don't recognize any of these days. I can't tell if that's on me or on them. Look within Dave, it's you. That's almost certainly true, but either way, this broadcast was planned for a Tuesday night. SPEAKER_03: And then the weekend before they started hearing rumors of a deal being made, which, you know, is very exciting in the big picture of the writer's strike. But also like bill had been so obsessed with gate flipping for months. And I just wondered if maybe like the smallest part of him was a little bit conflicted with the news. Was there a part of you that was like, Oh, just let us get this done. And then, and then come to a deal. Uh, I mean, you know, I wanted a deal faster. I don't know. Yes. I kind of wished we had gone SPEAKER_04: through it cause we made a lot of plans, but I am really, really, really glad that we, we, we came to a deal. They came to a deal. The strike ended dancing with the stars went on as planned. SPEAKER_03: And you know, as much as bill did get obsessed with like this gate flipping work in the end, course he was more than happy to go back to the job. He spent his entire life working towards being a screenwriter. Ah, cool. So he's back to work. He's back in the writer's room. Exactly. Yeah. He was lucky enough to be working on a show before the strike. And so he just went SPEAKER_03: back to the same show. It's the latest star Trek series. It's called strange new worlds, but he didn't know what things would be like when he got back after this really acrimonious and long strike. And there's kind of one moment, the first time he was face to face with the network execs on a zoom call with some other writers. And it felt like the return to working together could still kind of go either way. The execs were going to give their notes on a script that bill had co written. And so the meeting started and there was a real pregnant pause. How is this going to go? Is it going to be awkward? So we're all waiting for somebody to say something. And then the SPEAKER_04: president of the production company smiled and said, the script was great. We're so glad to have SPEAKER_04: you back. And everybody reads this sigh of relief. It was a good icebreaker. He also said that the studio execs gave them free donuts and pastries on their first day back in the office. And you know, SPEAKER_03: there's no more classic olive branch from management than here's some free food works every SPEAKER_03: time. Dave Blanchard is still here. Dave, there is a very important reason for that. And it is that SPEAKER_15: I want to give my update to you. I don't want to do it alone. I'm here for you. Let me be your interlocutor. All right, so my update is about a show I worked on that was about behavioral SPEAKER_15: science or behavioral economics. And in particular, these two researchers who studied honesty, who it looked like had used fabricated data in some of their work. And the bigger idea here, of course, was that social science science in general, is shifting towards being more transparent about research practices more transparent with data. But as that happens, people, these newfangled data detectives, they're digging into some really significant research and calling into question. Sometimes they're finding outright fraud. And you talked to one of these data detectives who had looked into the honesty researchers work, and they found some real inconsistencies. Yeah, SPEAKER_03: Yuri Simonson, professor at Esada Business School in Barcelona. You may remember him for his SPEAKER_15: Microsoft Excel forensic skills. How could I forget? It's like a puzzle that nobody has a solution to. And then you solve it. It's like true crime. That is why true crime is so SPEAKER_02: interesting to people and trying to figure it out. Right. And it makes for good podcasts, too. Hopefully. All right. So the other day I got on the phone with Yuri. And yeah, he has a lot of SPEAKER_15: updates, starting from basically right after our episode came out. So we listened to your episode as a family because we were driving to get started on vacation and your episode dropped. And so we SPEAKER_02: listened to it in the highway. A couple nights later, still on vacation, he's playing cards, playing bridge with his family. And his phone starts blowing up. It's his collaborators from SPEAKER_15: Data Collada, the blog where he and others posted their investigations. And the reason his phone is blowing up was they got sued. How much money did you get sued for? Well, we and I were together 25 million. You have 25 million sitting around? Not in chains. I don't. And this is because of SPEAKER_02: the story you reported? Oh, I hope not. No, no, no. One of the researchers whose work they looked SPEAKER_15: at her name is Francesca Gino. She is suing Harvard for among other things, defamation and breach of contract. And she is suing Data Collada for defamation as well. And again, Yuri found this out while playing cards, while playing bridge. I mean, it sucks because they obviously completely take away your focus from anything. So we lost and I blame Francesca for SPEAKER_02: that. Okay, so he lost the card game, but then I guess like, how does he respond to the lawsuit? SPEAKER_03: I mean, he said he's going to fight it, but that if it drags on, it's going to be very expensive, SPEAKER_15: which brings us to the second Yuri update. Some of Yuri's friends and colleagues organized a fundraiser for Data Collada's legal defense. And the response was overwhelming. They've raised something like $375,000 from a bunch of famous academics, a Nobel Prize winner, even some people who they publicly called out or disagreed with. All in all, something like 3000 people have donated so far. 3000 people saying, I support this project. That was, it's one of the best things SPEAKER_02: that's happened to me, like seeing that kind of support. Because when you see, when you make a blog post, you know, you hear from the critics and then you hear from the people who praise you, but you don't know if they have a second motive or something. But when you see 3000 people like this, that feels very like real. So that would be pretty heartwarming. Yuri says they're not going to stop doing what they do. They're going to keep pushing the SPEAKER_15: discipline to work better with data. And when people don't, he's going to keep trying to uncover it. Okay, well, thanks for that update, Nick. No, thank you, Dave. My pleasure. Coming up, one final update. We saved it for last because it's an emotional one. It's about our inflation song project and its singer, Ernest Jackson. Support for NPR and the following message come from Edward Jones. You could go alone, SPEAKER_13: but when you have a partner, you could go farther. And when you want to navigate through all the complexities of retirement strategies, it can help to sync up with an Edward Jones financial advisor. They can help you figure it all out with an approach that puts your goals first, SPEAKER_00: not their products. And best of all, they're right around the corner. Let's figure it out together. Edward Jones. SPEAKER_09: And Oxfam advocates for long-term solutions to poverty and injustice. Join them this giving season. Donate at oxfamamerica.org slash npr. Support for NPR and the following message come from The Economist. Their award-winning podcasts make sense of what matters, from their special series on China's president to their weekly podcasts on business, technology, and American politics. In-depth and balanced reporting on events shaping the world from the journalists who write The Economist every day. Head to the App Store to download The Economist or search Economist Podcasts Plus and get your first month free. Now for some sad news. Friend of the show, Ernest Jackson, has passed away. He was 75. Longtime listeners will remember SPEAKER_15: Ernest and his iconic voice from the song Inflation, which Planet Money released last year when we started a record label. For more about his life and how we came to know him, I'm joined now by Erica Barris. Hey Erica. Hey Nick. Erica, you worked with Ernest a lot. Tell us how it all started. SPEAKER_15: Right. So it started when we got our hands on this song, this long-lost song from the 1970s SPEAKER_11: that had been recorded but never released. And this song was so good and it was also just so timely. It was about living under high inflation. And then we got to know more about the musicians behind the song. It was this band called Sugar SPEAKER_11: Daddy and the Gumbo Roo. We learned about the singer and songwriter, Ernest Jackson. A lot of people say I sound like Satchmo, Louis Armstrong. And then when we reached out to him and we talked to him, we were so charmed by him. SPEAKER_07: This is a guy who had been singing and performing from the time he was a teenager. SPEAKER_11: I started singing at first in nightclubs when I was 14. And I mean, I used to have him jumping SPEAKER_07: all on top of the tables, you know. He had a few brushes with fame, but he spent most of his career as a singing waiter in Baton Rouge. Excellent tips. I got double tips because SPEAKER_11: after I served my party, then I hit him with a beautiful song. SPEAKER_07: But he had also, you know, just raised a family and still was gigging around town. But everyone who had ever met him, who had ever talked to him was like, this is a guy that should SPEAKER_11: have made it, that would have made it, that could have made it if you'd just gotten a chance. Like, he had all this talent. I feel like I had the potential. And I, you know, I haven't given up my dream. I pray on it all the time. SPEAKER_07: So we set out to release the song. And there were all these complicated music industry things we SPEAKER_11: did. But really, we knew that once people heard inflation, once people heard Ernest Boyce, that the song would just take off. And it did. It has two million streams and counting. And it was even on Ernest's favorite radio station. Today we're shining a light on a song sung by one of Baton Rouge's own. Ernest Jackson, backed by Sugar Daddy and the Gumbo Roo. The song is called Inflation. It's 47 years old. SPEAKER_02: And Erica, I know Ernest had another big update that he was excited to talk to you about. SPEAKER_15: Right. Well, one of the people who heard Ernest on our show was a television writer and producer SPEAKER_11: named Scott Jacobson. Scott's show is called Bob's Burgers. It is a huge deal, animated show. And Scott had actually written a song for a future episode of Bob's Burgers. It was supposed to be sung by this made-up band called the Soul Breezers that had been huge in the 70s. And he needed to cast someone to sing it. I heard Ernest and it just seemed kind of serendipitous. We needed a voice SPEAKER_14: that, you know, had character that sounded like somebody who had been singing for a long time, but that also had just joy to it. You know, gravitas, gravelly gravitas. Scott says, just like us, as soon as he heard Ernest's voice, he could tell Ernest was special. And so he brought SPEAKER_11: Ernest onto the show. It was a rare kind of treat to be able to take something that I love and fit it into this world. Ernest's vocals, like he changed the song. He inhabited the song. The song is called SPEAKER_14: Gas in My Car. It's about the gas crisis back in the 70s. SPEAKER_06: Want to see you soon. If I can't get there. What am I gonna do now? You should be mine tonight. We should be sleeping tight. I'm gonna get there. Because you know, if there's gas in my car. I'm gonna get to you. No matter where you are. Gas in my car. I'm gonna roll to you baby. Yeah, baby. SPEAKER_11: Ernest was so excited. He called me after the show. He was just like so hopeful that this would open more doors for him. As we were putting together this update, though his son Corey, whom we'd gotten to know while working on this project, he called to tell me the news. I offered my condolences and then we just spent some time talking about his dad. You know, my dad was my best friend, man. You know, we went everywhere together. We did everything together. Yeah, SPEAKER_05: he was just a joy to be around. He just, he liked to crack jokes. Sing, of course. I mean, we'll be talking and then he'll just start singing. You know, the most, the most thing I'm gonna miss SPEAKER_05: about my dad is his smile. You know, he had a smile that could light up a room. Yep. What was all of this like for him this past year? Oh man, he was in such good spirits, man. He SPEAKER_11: was so happy about that, you know. And he would not stop playing inflation. He would not stop SPEAKER_05: playing inflation. You know, he looked at it as a big, it was a break form, you know. He was ecstatic, man. He was happy. Your father, Ernest Jackson, was like one of the most special people, I think, that I've ever met. And we were honored to be a record label for him. And we were, SPEAKER_11: we were honored to share his great talent with the world. So thank you. Oh, no problem, man. I mean, he's the type of person that need to be shared, you know. I'm glad I had him as my father, SPEAKER_05: you know. So yeah, this is definitely gonna be a real rough America. I'm not gonna lie to you. It is. The first time we met Ernest, producer James Sneed, Sara Gonzalez, and I spent hours SPEAKER_11: talking with Ernest about songs. There was one in particular that we all loved. Will you give me a little Sam Cooke? Let's see. I got, you know, like a change is gonna come. I wrote a song SPEAKER_07: on that. The same music, but I changed the lyrics. How does it go? It goes like, I was born by the river, oh Lord, in a little tent. Oh, and just like the river, I've been running. SPEAKER_07: I've been running ever since. Oh, it's been a long, a long time coming, but I knew a change had to come. Oh, yes it did. It's been too hard living, but I'm not afraid to die, because I think I knew what's up there beyond those skies. Oh, it's been a long, a long time coming, but I knew a change had to come. Oh, yes it did. It's a change in your life when you knew a change had to come, because life was dictating it to you, you know. It's a good tune. Yes, it's a good tune. SPEAKER_09: This message comes from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Thanks to partners like Best Buy, families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food. This holiday season, join Best Buy and help give St. Jude families a gift that could last a lifetime. Text the word GIFT to 626262 to donate now. SPEAKER_13: