[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We're all feeling higher prices on various things in our lives right now. Inflation hit another 40 year high as announced yesterday. Did you hear that one? 7.5% higher prices on average for the things that they measure in the consumer price index for the month of January compared to January of last year. We're all deciding what we can still afford and what we can't. A healthy eating friend of mine told me yesterday, the breaking point for her on one of her favorite things was to see pea shoots jump by $5 in the pack that she usually buys them in. She couldn't do it anymore. Just couldn't justify five more dollars, just for a few servings of pea shoots.

As we're all making decisions about what we can or can't buy, the companies that sell us stuff are making decisions about what they can or can't charge. Here's Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren speaking on MSNBC, after acknowledging that some inflation is being caused by unavoidable pressures like the cost of supplies and kings in the supply chain, but--

Senator Elizabeth Warren: There's another part to what's going on too, and that is these giant corporations who say, "Wow, a lot of talk about high prices and inflation, this is a chance to get in there and not only pass along costs but to inflate prices beyond that and just engage in a little straightforward price gouging." We now live in a time when profit margins are higher than they have been in 70 years. Two-thirds of the publicly traded companies in this country are seeing higher profit margins than they did before the pandemic. Now, your profit margins don't go up just because your costs went up, they go up because you saw an opportunity and you said as the chair of the Federal Reserve said to me yesterday in testimony, "Why are they raising prices? Because they can."

Brian Lehrer: Why are they raising prices? Because they can. Elizabeth Warren on MSNBC. I know if there are any number of you Democrats hearing that right now thinking, "Why didn't we nominate her for president again?" Too late. Warren also argued we should remember the big picture, more jobs created last year than any other single year even as inflation is a problem. About that price gouging, there's a great Twitter thread by economics expert Lindsay Owens who used to work for Senator Warren that nail specific industries and specific companies for literally bragging about how they're hiding behind real inflation to increase prices more than their costs are going up, as Senator Warren said because they can. Let's dive in.

With me now is Lindsay Owens, PhD, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic advocacy group. She was previously an economic policy adviser in Senator Warren's office and teacher of a course on domestic poverty and inequality at Georgetown University and more, and she wrote that Twitter thread. Dr. Owens, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Lindsay Owens: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we're going to open up the phones right away. What's your breaking point on prices that you'll pay, and prices that you won't? What are your pea shoots? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Some things like your utilities bill, you have to pay when the price goes up. For other things, you're either willing to absorb the heat because you just want that item enough.

I heard a report yesterday that mentioned Chipotle as an example. They raised prices in the last year, a few percent, and found it didn't impact their sales according to the report. What are you shrugging and paying more for, and on what items are you drawing the line when you have a choice? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Dr. Owens, this Twitter thread of yours that last I looked had more than 12,000 likes. It begins with CEOs speaking more candidly on earnings calls sometimes. What's an earnings call and what's going on?

Lindsay Owens: Yes, thanks, Brian. Earnings calls are calls that CEOs and CFOs and other executives that companies have with shareholders after their quarterly earnings statements are released. Those are statements that include things like sales and profits and whether or not you beat expectations for the quarter or fall behind expectations for the quarter. They also talk about things like what they expect to see in the quarters and years ahead, how the company is going to perform on the horizon.

As you know, yesterday the inflation numbers came out, we're about 7.5% increase in prices year over year. That's really not great news, and a lot of families are really feeling the squeeze. I really wanted to make sure that an important part of the story that hadn't been told very frequently came to the fore. That is that CEOs, and the big Fortune 500 companies on Wall Street, are loving inflation.

You don't have to take my word for it. They're telling us, they're crowing and bragging to investors in these earnings calls. My organization, the Groundwork Collaborative, we combed through hundreds of the fourth-quarter earnings calls, and really pulled out all of these examples of CEOs talking about how great inflation is for the bottom line, talking about their "pricing strategies" and the profits that they're gaining from these pricing strategies. We felt like we should point some of them out. These are a lot of companies that are really household names for many Americans, and the companies that provide the necessities that Americans purchase at the supermarket every week.

Brian Lehrer: Let's name names. I know my engineer is going to talk to you off the air here for just a second and fix something in your audio feed. That's going to make it clear for all the listeners, but let's name names. My guest, Lindsay Owens, who created this great Twitter feed that does exactly that. Go one by one, we're going to do it now on the air, that name names of companies for which the CEO seems to be bragging about price gouging. I think you're back now. One example you give is of all things bragging about price gouging by 3M, as you point out a company that makes N95 masks. Really?

Lindsay Owens: Yes, that's exactly right. I will say we found dozens of examples from healthcare companies. 3M producer of N95 masks, a quote from the CFO on their earnings call. "The team has done a marvelous job in driving price. Price has gone up from 0.1% to 1.4% to 2.6%." He followed that up with, "We really see that to be a tailwind." He's talking about not only the price hikes from this past quarter but the price hikes on the horizon.

Another healthcare company that folks are quite familiar with Johnson & Johnson. Obviously, has raked in billions from COVID vaccine sales. They told investors-- the CEO of Johnson & Johnson told investors in their fourth-quarter report that the additional need from Americans for medical care to address "suffering and death" is part of Johnson & Johnson's "optimism" and "opportunity" for its future.

Brian Lehrer: I want to ask you to say that again because it's just so grotesque. I wonder what Johnson & Johnson's first-quarter 2022 earnings are going to look like because I think its vaccine isn't doing so well compared to the others now, but what was that quote?

Lindsay Owens: The CEO of Johnson & Johnson told investors that the need for medical care to address suffering and death is part of Johnson & Johnson's "optimism" and "opportunity" for its future.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I'm looking at your tweet, "Address suffering and death" was in quotes "an optimism and opportunity for its future." Obviously, quotes. Another example you give is Tyson Foods, which you call one of the big four meat monopolies that President Biden is targeting for price-fixing. What's happening allegedly at Tyson Foods?

Lindsay Owens: This is a really great example. A lot of folks when they hear something like this, say, "Oh, well, in perfectly competitive markets, we should see lower price and trends come in and undercut the success of pricing," but the problem is, the American economy looks a lot less like those competitive markets you see in your econ 101 textbook, and in many cases, a lot more like an episode of The Sopranos. The meatpackers are a great example of this.

There's four big guys, Tyson is one of them. They control about 85% of the market. Now again, the meatpackers are the middlemen. These are the guys that take the beef from the ranchers and then move it to the supermarkets. You have to go through these big four packers and what you've seen is Tyson saying, beef prices up 30%, chicken prices up 20%, and their quarterly profits went up 100%. They doubled their quarterly profits in the fourth quarter.

This was just a really, really stark example of the price hikes we're seeing and the profits that are coming as a result, and it's really hard to get those prices down if there's no competition. Which is why President Biden and Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack began training their sites on this issue in September. They've asked the FTC to investigate it, and they're really taking this on. It's really important given how aggressive these pricing actions have been from these big four meat Packers.

Brian Lehrer: We have a meat price caller on the phone, so let's go to him first. Peter in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi Peter.

Peter: Hi. On point walked into Key Food, I love rib lamb chops. They're my treat and I always thought they were pretty expensive like $15 to $20 a pound. Key Food is now $40 a pound I just can't do it.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Peter: Then there's a supermarket Stop & Shop and they're not as nice a neighborhood or not as economically-

Brian Lehrer: Prosperous.

Peter: -wealthy neighborhood as Riverdale where Key Food is. They don't carry them anymore, probably because nobody could afford them at the price that they would sell them. Like your guests said, I don't know whether it's from the supermarket or the meat packers or where along the chain everybody is getting a burden upon a cut. They're in a way they're pricing themselves out.

Brian Lehrer: Peter, thank you very much. That's the question is when do they price themselves out, and when do people just absorb the prices and they make more profits on the same items than before the current round of inflation. Let's hear a few more examples from some of you who are calling in on where you draw the line and what you're willing to absorb and then we'll go back to what this means and what the government could do about it with our guest economics expert, Lindsey Owens.

Oh, I was going to go, all right. A caller who said that they're canceling their Netflix subscription because it went up too much just dropped out. Danny in Chelsea has another food item, I think. Hi Danny, you're on WNYC.

Danny: Hey, there, I draw the line at blueberries. I eat them every morning with my yogurt and I know it's seasonal, I know it's winter. I know there's shipping costs, but something's going on because street vendors have blueberries for like $1.99, $2.99 and supermarkets now have them for $7.99, %8.99 and I don't know what's going on. They're a vital nutrients I feel, but fruit is getting ridiculous, but there's a lot of factors involved, I do know that.

Brian Lehrer: Danny, thank you very much. My producer says she saw a $7 pack of blueberries this week. Debbie in Sussex has another kind of food to shout out. Hi, Debbie, you're in WNYC.

Debbie: Hi, my problem is with cat food. I'm a pet owner and normally I have two older cats and sometimes you give them canned food as well as dry food, but canned food in New Jersey right now, at least in Sussex county is like toilet paper was in 2020. The shelves are bare. In Walmart, ShopRite, you name a store, there are no canned cat food and what there is is so ridiculously overpriced. It went from under 50¢ a can to 80¢, sometimes a dollar for a can of cat food.

I've taken to literally hunting for cat food where I can find it and then eagerly adding it to dry food for my cats. When you change an animal's diet, that can have real consequences. I would love to know where all the cat food is.

Brian Lehrer: Debbie, thank you very much. Well, let's pause there and ask our guests, Dr. Owens, do you know where all the cat food is?

Lindsay Owens: I don't know that I can speak to the cat food specifically, but I do think the listeners raising just a really great point about supply shortages. Inflation is a really complex issue and there are a number of factors that are driving these high prices and one of them is our supply chain is really broken. People love to blame the pandemic for that. Of course, the pandemic may have broken the supply chains back, but the osteoporosis really started setting in decades ago.

We built a supply chain that runs on razor-thin margins. We drove towards just-in-time logistics where we had no extra product on the shelves and we made everything to order. We offshored a lot of our domestic capacity to keep labor costs down. The result is we built an economy that couldn't really handle a little bit of an increase in demand. We could blame the pandemic for that, but that started decades ago. My view is that the American economy should be resilient, that we should have redundancy in the supply chain so that we can absorb shock.

COVID is really just the beginning. We're headed into a world where we're going to increasingly see climate and weather-related shock that are really going to disrupt the supply chain. I think we should use this moment as a wake up call to start engineering a supply chain that can meet the needs of consumers.

Brian Lehrer: Some of the ones coming in on Twitter, listener rights, I've gone back to my student days and I'm feeding my family dried beans, soak or lentils and pasta. Meat has always been low priority, but now it's out of my price range. Somebody else writes, rib lamb chops are my treat too, I can't imagine $40 a pound, reacting to the earlier caller. Somebody else writes price at a local market in Brooklyn for a jar of Hellman's mayonnaise, $8.59. Won't pay more than $4.75 for this condiment. Someone else, we had the blueberries caller. This listener says Driscoll's organic strawberries are now at $10.99 a package up from $7 or $8, I just can't do it. Trevor in Washington Heights you're on WNYC. Hi Trevor.

Trevor: Hi, Brian. Big fan. Listen to your show every day there. You're one of the few journalists that I trust.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Trevor: My main question is really, I think my political affiliations will be made clear by my question, but really what is price gouging in a capitalist system? Isn't the way there's not generalized reciprocity. The way we exchange goods is trying to get the better deal over the other guy.

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Owens, it's an existential question about capitalism. What is price gouging when it's legal and at the heart of the system that you're trying to make as much money as you can?

Lindsay Owens: Yes. This is such an important point. I would give two answers. The first is that the listener is absolutely right, that this is the system in some ways working properly. Now, I think we can set monopoly and concentration aside and I'll come back to that for a second. What we see on these earnings calls is shareholders are really rewarding this profiteering, and we know that not only are shareholders rewarding the profiteering, when Tyson announced that doubling of profits, they saw a lot of people flooding to the stock.

What we've also seen is disciplining by shareholders when companies don't really execute on pricing strategies. Folks who maybe wanted to drive on market share instead of on profits and prices have seen savage selloffs. We've seen shareholders disciplining companies who don't go as far as they can on prices. This is absolutely baked into the system. I think there's a separate question around the definition of price gouging and what constitutes, and some of the legal terminology here, like an unconscionably excessive price.

I think it's a question for policymakers. It's maybe a philosophical question, but there's a couple of ways that we can decide when things have gone up at a level that we're not comfortable with. We can look at prices like pre and post-pandemic. We can look at prices for seasonal goods, we can say, okay, what is the average price here of blueberries in a February and why are blueberries this much higher in February now? There's a couple of ways to cut the data to get at this.

I absolutely think this is baked into our system. Now, what's really exacerbating their ability to keep driving on price? That's another one of these euphemism that the CEOs love to use in the earnings calls. We're really having a lot of success driving on price, is again, this highly, highly concentrated system. When there's not competition, the biggest players are really able to recoup a lot in a moment like this, and are really well-positioned to seize the moment.

We see this with folks like Proctor & Gamble and Kimberly and Clark who are basically the only two games in town on diapers, which so many families need and which we've seen real price increases on, but we've also seen this throughout the supply chain. There are basically three large ocean shipping alliances. It's practically a cartel and they're seeing profits up that's like 100 and the highest profits they've had in 117 years, the profit margins.

Where you have concentration, competition of course is not a panacea, but competition would of course help drive some of this pricing down, and that isn't how markets are supposed to function. We want our markets to function in competitive ways where everybody can get in the game, bring their product to market and compete fair and square on a level playing field

Brian Lehrer: With Lindsay Owens who's the executive director of the, I'm going to find your exact title, forgive me, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic advocacy group. She was previously an economic policy advisor in Senator Elizabeth Warren's office, and teacher of a course on domestic poverty and inequality at Georgetown. Here are some more questionable examples that I saw on Twitter.

CNN has a business story that says-- the headline is UPS just posted record-breaking profits, plans to hike prices in 2022. This from the Daily News, Starbucks raising prices despite soaring profits. Another one, McDonald's now with higher prices, top 23 billion in revenue in 2021, and Exxon Mobil reports an $8.9 billion fourth-quarter profit as oil prices soar, and to source these are all headlines from mainstream news organizations and they all appear in or adjacent to Dr. Owens Twitter thread. What are the tools at the government's disposal, Dr. Owens, to fight price gouging?

Lindsay Owens: I think we have three categories of tools to take this on. The first is we can consider taxes. After World War I and World War II, we were in the midst of a real crisis, and companies were doing a lot of this profiteering. We imposed excess profits taxes, excess profits taxes are just taxes that take a higher rate of profits in excess of a certain amount. Things like excess profits tax may make a lot of sense right here, where we see so much aggressive profiteering. There are other types of taxes we could use, including getting the corporate tax rate back up to a real level, to try to encourage folks to spend more of their profit in productive investment rather than in things like share buybacks and CEO pay. The tax policy is an important tool that we can use to solve this problem.

Another piece I would recommend is aggressive antitrust enforcement. The Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Justice have a number of tools they can use to go after price fixing, price gouging collusion, and we should see the administration doubling down on that approach and forcefully taking this on. The final policy solution I would recommend is something like legislation prohibiting this behavior, particularly for egregious price gouging.

There's a bill in the house right now that Groundwork Collaborative testified in support of that I think would get at this and is pretty important. It's the COVID-19 Price Gouging Prevention Act. It's the House Bill 675, and I think that would go a long way. A lot of states, about 30 states, have laws like this on the books, but a federal standard makes a lot of sense here.

Brian Lehrer: What would that bill do, I'm curious? This is the first that a lot of our listeners would've heard of that bill. How does it identify? How would it have the federal government identify price gouging from allowable price hikes and how did it enforce?

Lindsay Owens: [unintelligible 00:24:06] 675 would really set a standard for what unconscionably excessive pricing is, and really not allow pricing above that unconscionably excessive level and give the FTC a lot more authority to take on pricing that comes in above that unconscionably excessive level.

Brian Lehrer: On the first item that you mentioned, price controls, or a windfall profits tax of some kind, when's the last time the US did that?

Lindsay Owens: The excess profits tax has been used several times throughout history. The times that I'm familiar with are post World War I and post World War II.

Brian Lehrer: Post World War I and post World War II. They're really relics. This is not something in the modern vocabulary of politicians or consumers.

Lindsay Owens: No, it's something that makes its way through progressive tax circles. You could get at some of this with a millionaire, billionaire surcharge as well.

Brian Lehrer: Let's see. I'm going to play a clip of President Biden yesterday. He was asked the question by Lester Holt from NBC News and he snapped at Lester Holt. I want to get at the underlying issue here. Here we go.

Lester Holt: I think it was back in July you said inflation was going to be temporary. I think a lot of Americans are wondering what your definition of temporary is.

President Biden: You're being a wise guy with me a little bit. I understand that's your job.

Brian Lehrer: I don't know if you saw that yesterday. President Biden did say that inflation would be temporary, the word that we often hear, or I feel like we heard it more six months ago than we hear today is transitory. From the point of view of your expertise, what is transitory inflation, and what can President Biden do about it? I know we just talked about some of the policy tools at the government's disposal. Here we are in an election year, and so much more of the media coverage of the economy is about inflation than it is about the record jobs growth in the last year.

Lindsay Owens: I think that's right. Look, inflation is a problem for consumers, it's also a political problem. There's a lot of political science research linking prices, particularly gas prices to things like presidential approval and vote share for the incumbent president. Inflation is also a complicated beast and there aren't a huge amount of tools that the president has to take this on overnight, but there are a few.

The first is we absolutely have to get the pandemic under control. Some of what we're seeing here with the supply shortages is really about changes in consumer spending patterns, spending a little bit less money on services like restaurant meals and spending a lot more money on goods like a new couch because you've been sitting in the same couch for three years during the pandemic and also cooking more meals at home.

The more we get the pandemic under control, the more we should start to see a settling out of that shift demand, shift for services and goods. That's going to be a key part of this. Another part of this is really doubling down on the investments that can build that more resilient supply chain. Things like what the Biden administration has already done by passing the infrastructure investment and jobs back that bipartisan bill that does allow for some of the investments we need in showing up our supply chain to try to build out more capacity to meet that excess demand.

I think what we don't want to see is the Federal Reserve overreacting. They have a very blunt instrument, it's interest rate hikes and interest rate hikes aggressively slow demand, but by making folks poor and by slowing wage growth and employment. We like the jobs growth that we're seeing. The jobs numbers last Friday, over 500,000 jobs revision from the prior month to again about 600,000.

That job growth is really good. Hopefully, that tightening labor market is some of that wage growth we're seeing, giving workers more power. We don't want to use interest rates and overcorrect because of political concerns. You've got to get those dials right. The last thing President Biden can do is really move forward to pass legislation that lowers costs on big ticket items. In that original Build Back Better Act proposal, there was a lot of money to juice housing supply. That is a pretty critical piece of bringing down rent prices.

There was money to bring down the cost of childcare which has been soaring and is a big ticket item for families with young children, money to bring down energy costs, tax credits for alternative energy sources. Those types of policies, while they won't obviously have an impact overnight, are going to be key to building that resilient economy and an economy where Americans can keep up with rising prices and also see real wage growth increase. That's wage growth over and above the cost of living increases.

Brian Lehrer: Let me take a few phone calls of pushback that are coming in on some of the things you said. Tammy in Livingston is calling in on the Johnson & Johnson CEO quote that you tweeted out that we talked about earlier where he told investors that the need for medical care "address suffering and death" is part of J&J's optimism and opportunity for the future. Tammy in Livingston, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Tammy: Hi, thanks for the chance to push back. Hope you guys are both well. The reality is that healthcare corporations sell more when people are sick. I used to work at J&J and it was always an awkward conversation during say, cold and flu season, when we would say, "We think it's going to be a good season," and then we'd go like, "Well, it's not good because we don't want people sick." This season flu is expected to start early, go late, which means we're going to sell more.

Johnson and Johnson makes Tylenol. They sold a ton of Tylenol during the pandemic. They weren't price gouging. They sold a ton of vaccine. I don't think they were price gouging. In fact, I think that they donated vaccine. I'm quite sure, knowing the mission statement of Johnson & Johnson and the flow of these quarterly calls, your broad statement is to look broadly and address suffering and needs. That is the mission of the company.

It's typical to use terms like optimistic, pessimistic when you're looking at the forecast for the next quarter or the next year. Please, I'm quite sure that the CEO didn't say, "Yay, yay, rah, rah. We're so glad people are dying and suffering and we're going to price-gouge them." I just think the reality is that if you're a healthcare company you sell more when people are sick. I did want to push back a little.

Brian Lehrer: Tammy, thank you very much. Dr. Owens, you want to say anything about that?

Lindsay Owens: Yes. It's absolutely the case that you're going to see profits increasing when demand is up. If you sell seven bottles of Tylenol you make 50¢ per bottle of Tylenol. Last year you sell 10 bottles of Tylenol, next year still making 50¢ a bottle, profits are up. What we're also seeing, though, is that profit margins are up. That's true in a lot of these companies as well.

That means it's not just that they're getting profits off that increase in demand. It's also that they're juicing profits a little bit more, padding a little bit more, to bring that home, that extra money home for the quarterly profits for CEOs and the shareholders. I think that's a really important point the caller makes about the increased demand is just going to result in more profits, but the increase in profit margin that's a more complicated story about the fact that folks are taking a little extra.

Brian Lehrer: One more. Sachen in Los Angeles. You're on WNYC. Hello from New York, Sachen.

Sachen: Hey. Hi, this is Sachen. Two comments. The first thing is the guest mentioned around the Build Back Better. We already know the third stimulus has caused a lot of inflation so I don't even know what would that Build Back Better do in terms of aggravation of this. My larger comment was the second point. We have limited ports and the ports are run by unions who have resisted automation and additional workforce to smooth the flow between the ships coming in and the fulfillment of the orders and the government is not doing anything. I would love your thoughts [unintelligible 00:33:32] on that.

Brian Lehrer: Sachen, thank you very much. Two points there, Dr. Owens. One, the last one about the union wages and union rules boxing up the ports. The first one about, have we passed the point where stimulus is just relief in a floundering economy when pandemic unemployment were so high and gotten to the point where it's overstimulating and therefore causing inflation? Both things.

Lindsay Owens: Let me take the question about excess demand and stimulus. Demand in the economy is a good thing. We want families to be able to afford basics, we want them to be able to even afford things that they need and want. Like that couch we talked about before, upgrading the couch you've been sitting on for three years in the pandemic. I don't think we want to be in a position where slowing demand is our goal. I think we want to be really building out increased capacity to meet that additional demand. That's where I am on this demand issue.

On the question of unions and labor, this is coming up a lot, and I think it's so critical to address it for our listeners. You talked earlier about Starbucks raising prices and seeing a lot of record profits. You talked about McDonald's as well. These are companies, Starbucks in particular right now, that are aggressively busting unions and are blaming workers' wages for the price increases and not profiteering.

The Economic Policy Institute just put out a really important paper about two weeks ago. What they did is they took, at the industry level, data on price acceleration and data on wage increases. What you would expect to see if workers' wages were driving these price hikes. Obviously, one thing that unions do is help boost wages. What you would see if this was a story of workers' wages or a union story, you would see a positive relationship between those two facts, the acceleration of prices and the acceleration of wages.

What the Economic Policy Institute discovered is that there's no relationship. It's really a flatline right now. That can give us a lot of confidence that wage increases are not driving price increases. Economists like to talk about something called a wage-price spiral, where wages feed into this need for price increases. I think what we're seeing right now is actually a profit price spiral, where the profiteering that we're seeing with the Fortune 500 is feeding in to these price increases.

Brian Lehrer: That is going to be the last word as we continue to cover the economy on the show and try to talk about it in a nuanced way. Not a tabloid headline way that leaves you with an oversimplified idea about what's going on. We thank today's guest, Lindsay Owens, PhD, executive director of a Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic advocacy group. She was previously an economic policy adviser in Senator Elizabeth Warren's office and teacher of a course on domestic poverty and inequality at Georgetown University. That Twitter thread that she's got going in the last day or two is gathering thousands and thousands of views and likes and we thought it was worth bringing it on the air. Thank you, Dr. Owens.

Lindsay Owens: Thanks for having me.

 

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.