Hannah Jaffe-Walt (Host)
Appearances
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
It's This American Life. I'm Hannah Jaffe-Walt sitting in for Ira Glass. I've been talking to someone here and there over the last couple of months about a situation she's in. And I think she typifies the thing we're going to try to do in this episode. So I'd like you to meet her. Her name is Annika Barber. She's a scientist, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, a runner.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
They were listed on an NIH website as scheduled, but Annika says they did not seem to be happening. The website showed they were, but scientists were saying they weren't. Scientists who had submitted grants literally had no idea if their grant had been reviewed and moved on to the next step of the funding process.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
But Annika learned there was a place you could get a way better picture of whether a meeting was going to happen or had already happened.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
And if they're not posted to the Federal Register, they cannot meet. It's a strange feeling knowing you're in the middle of an upending. knowing that something fundamental to the way that you live is changing. But you can't understand or see the scale of change as it's happening. You just can't. You have to wait. What I like about Annika is she rejects this. She is not waiting.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
Annika immediately began scraping data from federal websites, finding all the meetings that were supposed to happen, cross-referencing them with the Federal Register, reaching out to scientists to see if the supposedly scheduled meetings did in fact occur, compiled all that into a Google spreadsheet, and posted it online.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
Anxious and confused scientists all over America began consulting Annika's spreadsheet and passing it around to see, is my study section actually happening? Has my grant been reviewed? Is there any point in submitting my next grant? Will I be able to keep my lab open?
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
She's got purple hair. And a particular way of organizing the world around her. Her books, organized topically and then by height. Her lab, color-coded labels.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
Ike Streis-Conduraja is a producer on our show. Avi Vickner is the actor who read for M. Coming up, a woman discovers she is a central data point in a story she did not know was unfolding. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. It's This American Life. I'm Hannah Jaffe-Walt sitting in for Ira Glass. Today's show, Chaos Graph.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
People trying to make sense of things, trying to map what is happening around them and see the bigger picture. We've arrived at Act Two, Solve for Where. In this next story, the bigger picture has become very clear to the rest of us over the last couple weeks. It's in the news all the time. But the woman at the center of this story, she experienced it up close.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
She learned each fact in the most personal, direct way. And making sense of those facts, understanding how they all fit together, for her, was urgent.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
For five weeks, there were no NIH study sections, till it was 205 study sections that did not meet. All of those proposals sat waiting, and all the ones that came after, stacking up behind them. A long traffic jam of uncertainty and science not happening. And then, in March, a meeting appeared on the Federal Register, an NIH study section, and then another, and another,
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
Now, the meetings to assess new research grants seem to have mostly picked back up. Scientists are doing peer reviews, but it's not clear if the government will actually cough up the money. And a few of the grant proposals that were supposed to be reviewed at these meetings, they're being quietly disappeared from the lists. They're not being reviewed at all.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
They seem to be the grants with DEI words or other thought crimes in them that are no longer allowed. It's unclear if the scientists who submitted these grants even know that their proposals have been dropped. Annika went to a meeting herself. It was two months late, pulled together at the very last minute, but it did happen.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
Nadia Raymond is an editor on our show. Interpreting for this story by Anianci Diaz-Cortez.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
Our program was produced today by Valerie Kipnis. Our executive editor, Emanuel Berry, edited the show.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
The people who put together today's program include Fia Benen, Mike Kamate, Aviva de Kornfeld, Emanuel Jochi, Angela Gervasi, Cassie Howley, Seth Lind, Tobin Lo, Catherine Raimundo, Stone Nelson, Ryan Remery, Marisa Robertson-Textor, Alyssa Shipp, Lily Sullivan, Christopher Swatala, Lara Starczewski, Nancy Updike, James Williamson, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is Sara Abdurrahman.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive producer is Ira Glass. Special thanks today to Yael Evan Orr, Jeremy Ashkenaz, Aaron Reiklin Melnick, Mustafa Kishti, Stephen Yell Lair, Julie Turkowitz, Carolina Arias-Ipiz, Dara Lind, Yosbel Gonzalez-Meijas, Galia Waltz, Breaking the Silence, and The Chronicle for Higher Education. Casting help from Sabrina Hyman.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. If you become a This American Life partner, you will get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, and more. The latest bonus episode is an Ask Me Anything episode where Ira Glass answers questions sent in by subscribers.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
To hear it and get all the other perks, and most importantly, help us keep making the show, go to thisamericanlife.org slash lifepartners. That link is also in the show notes. Thanks, as always, to my boss, Ira Glass. He went to a Hugh Grant convention this year. Everyone dressed up. Four weddings and a funeral, Hugh. Notting Hill, Hugh. Love Actually, Hugh.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
So will that stuff that you reviewed get funded? I don't know. Was there a part of you that felt like, are we chumps? Yes, absolutely.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
The thing that is killing her is not knowing the shape of the new normal. How many grants will now be funded compared to before? Half? A quarter? Which scientists will get funding? What kind of research? There's no data she can turn to that will tell her that.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
Will she continue to try to graph the chaos? Yes, she will. Today's show is full of people who do not wait for the chaos to settle. People who run toward it, who will take whatever little data they have available to them and try to make it make sense. These are people who get answers. Stay with us.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
It's This American Life. The questions people are trying to answer in today's episode, they are basic. Where and why? Act one, solve for why. One of the hardest places to see through chaos in the middle of a war, fog of war, all that. This is especially true for the war in Gaza. There is very limited information moving in and out of Gaza.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
Israel has banned international press from entering the Strip for nearly 18 months, except for a few brief trips accompanied by and under the control of the Israeli military. One rare outside group has gotten a view on the ground of Gaza. Medical workers.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
Since the start of the war, over 100 American doctors and nurses have traveled to Gaza, treated patients there for weeks at a time, and come back out. Producer Aix-Riz Kandaraja talked to a dozen of them who volunteered there.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
Lately, Annika has been trying to get her mind around a new situation that is deeply confusing for her and lots of people. She's tracking scientific meetings that are not happening. When President Trump was inaugurated, he put a freeze on research grants.
This American Life
859: Chaos Graph
This meant the meetings where scientists like Annika get together at the National Institutes of Health to assess new research, they're called NIH study sections, those meetings were off. But then a judge said the administration couldn't pause all research grants, so the meetings were theoretically back on.