Unemployment, Spillover, Tree Gold

Unemployment Claims Are Mindboggling. Where Will the Money Come From? (0:31) Guest: Heidi Shierholz, Director of Policy, Economic Policy Institute, Former Chief Economist, US Department of Labor More than 24 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since mid-March. That’s 20 times the number of people who were applying for unemployment before the pandemic hit. If every man, woman and child living in the state of Florida filed for unemployment over the last month, you still wouldn’t reach that 24 million number. And it’s getting bigger. Where is all the money to pay those unemployment benefits coming from – and how long will it last? When the Messenger Matters More Than the Message (16:22) Guest: Cindy Kam, Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University  When you read the news or scroll through your social media, how does the source of the information shape what you think about it? Cindy Kam has found that in some cases, the messenger matters even more than the message itself.  Why Some Aren’t Surprised by COVID-19 (30:19) Guest: David Quammen, a Science Writer and Author of "Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic." For some people, the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to come out of nowhere. But with the increasing number of viruses starting in animals and moving to humans, other people saw this pandemic coming. David Quammen, and the scientists he interviewed, predicted a pandemic like this in his 2012 book called, “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.” There’s Gold in Them Trees: Leaves Show Where to Mine for Gold (50:40) Guest: Melvyn Lintern, Geochemist, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Portable PPB, Former Scientist CSIRO, Australia’s National Science Agency Money might actually grow on trees after all. Researchers in Australia found trace amounts of gold in the leaves of eucalyptus trees. A hundred feet below ground, under layers of dirt and clay and sand, they found – you guessed it – gold. So instead of drilling randomly to find ne