Jeff Liebman (4:15)

Yes.

Gloria Rivera (4:15)

Was it hard?

Jeff Liebman (4:17)

Yes.

Gloria Rivera (4:18)

For those on public assistance for child care, it's making all kinds of sacrifices to make sure you don't lose that benefit. The requirements to be on that is very stringent income requirements. You can't even live with the father of your child. Honestly, it's kind of crazy. So for the past few years I've been kind of taking a pay cut so that I can get her into a quality school at an affordable rate without really breaking our household. One mom from Minnesota called in and recounted the horror she faced looking for childcare when she was newly pregnant.

Unknown Mom (4:57)

I called some daycares when I was about two months pregnant, just finding out and wanted to get a sense of how much things would cost. Much to my horror, when I called the daycares, they all told me that there was a two year waiting list and that they would put my name on it, but that there was no way I was getting in when I needed it, which was when my child was four months and I had to go back to work.

Gloria Rivera (5:29)

She was in shock.

Unknown Mom (5:31)

I couldn't believe this that, you know, I asked them, I said, what did I need to call you before I got pregnant? And their response was basically, yeah, people do tell us when they're trying to get pregnant. I sat there in utter just disbelief like, how would I get childcare? How would I go back to work? How would I afford to live? How, how would I do anything if I didn't have childcare?

Gloria Rivera (5:55)

The ironic thing was she actually thought by making these calls she was ahead of the game. She was wrong.

Unknown Mom (6:02)

Here I was calling just trying to budget and be responsible and I already felt behind, like I didn't have a place for my child. It was the worst feeling. And I would love to live in a world where that didn't happen to anyone.

Gloria Rivera (6:18)

What's crazy is that a two year wait list isn't even uncommon. Childcare in America is scarce, expensive, and often out of reach. And especially these days, when everything's crumbling around us and under attack, families struggle to secure a spot, navigate options, and afford care if they can find that spot at all. But you know what? It doesn't have to be this way. I'm Gloria Rivera, and this is no One Is Coming to Save Us. A show about the childcare crisis in America. This season, we're talking about what the childcare system needs to look like. A system that we demand for to have. This week, we're zooming in on the demand that our child care system be accessible. No more wait lists. No more childcare deserts, no more trade offs.

Jeff Liebman (7:11)

Many children in America cannot find a place to get high quality child care. And given how important early education is to life prospects, the fact that we don't have a way to provide every child with a good start in life, you know, that's the crisis to me.

Gloria Rivera (7:26)

That's economist and public policy expert Jeff Liebman. This episode, he's helping us break down the root causes of the child care crisis and how to get ourselves out of it.

Jeff Liebman (7:37)

There is really no reason we need to sit around and wait for someone else to solve this problem. We're going to solve this problem.

Gloria Rivera (7:42)

Jeff charts a path, step by step, to a better system. A system that works for all families, not just the lucky few. I don't know what to call you. Do I call you Professor Liebman? Is that right?

Jeff Liebman (7:57)

You can call me Jeff, you can call me professor, whatever you prefer.

Gloria Rivera (8:01)

Jeff Liebman is a professor of public policy at Harvard University. And by all accounts, he should not be researching childcare.

Jeff Liebman (8:09)

When you look at the research agendas of economics professors, they follow the life course. You know, people at some point write about early education and then a little later, they write about retirement savings with.

Gloria Rivera (8:21)

Kids in their 20s. Jeff should be closer to the retirement side of the spectrum. But when a friend approached him with a problem, he couldn't resist. It wasn't just any friend. It was Amy Kershaw, the Massachusetts Commissioner of Early Education and Care. Jeff and amy actually met 22 years ago when, as luck would have it, both their kids were enrolled at the same childcare center.

Jeff Liebman (8:43)

Commissioner Kershaw posed a question to me. How could the state ensure that the incremental steps it is taking to make high quality childcare more affordable and more accessible, how could the state ensure that these incremental steps are building toward whatever the ultimate vision is for a system that truly makes high quality early education available to every child?

Gloria Rivera (9:06)

Instead of punting the question to another economist or faculty member, Jeff took the challenge on himself because the issues at hand sounded very familiar.

Jeff Liebman (9:16)

This problem looked just like a problem I'd worked on before. So I was one of the initial economic advisors to the first Obama presidential campaign, and there were five of us that put together the campaign version of what eventually became the Affordable Care Act. And if you look at the problem in early education, so many of the features look like the problem in, in health care. For example, if you look at the price of early education, high quality care, it's going to be at least 20,000, could easily be 25,000. If you're making $50,000 a year, there's just no way you can pay for that. The same thing with health care. You know, a good family health insurance plan costs actually a pretty similar amount to that 20 to $25,000. And if you're low income, without a government subsidy, you're not going to be able to pay for it. And so the same kind of solution we need in the healthcare system carries over.

Gloria Rivera (10:09)

And like healthcare, when it comes to childcare, the government needs to intervene. In fact, Jeff thinks there's no way this works unless the government gets involved. Because in a for profit system, the market just isn't going to correct itself.

Jeff Liebman (10:25)

It's clear that the market is not going to do that. And we're going to need a large government role if we're going to provide high quality childcare to every child.

Gloria Rivera (10:33)

There's simply no way that someone making 40 or $50,000 a year can budget 20 or 25,000 of that paycheck for childcare.

Jeff Liebman (10:42)

The same reason why we don't make people pay for K12 education themselves. Lots of people wouldn't be able to afford what it would cost. So that's the first reason. The second reason is economists have a fancy word for this, which is liquidity constraints. What it means is the inability to borrow against your future earnings. So imagine you're a toddler, you're two years old and you realize that if you get higher quality childcare right now you're going to earn a lot more. And so you crawl your way over to the bank and you say, give me a loan because I'll pay you back out of my higher future earnings. Well, obviously that's ridiculous. That's not going to happen. But economically it should happen. There should be a way to have someone be able to borrow against those future earnings. But that market basically doesn't work. And even if you look at the parents rather than the toddler, him or herself, often the parents are early in their careers. The 55 year old selves would be happy to have spent more money earlier to give their child better childcare, but they didn't have the money at that moment and so they sort of paid for whatever the most was that they could afford. But in a system like that, you're going to have too little childcare provided by the market and the childcare that's being provided is going to be too low quality because even people who can afford it will be affording basic care rather than the high quality care that is what is associated with all the benefits.

Gloria Rivera (12:08)

But while Jeff thinks the government should play an active role in childcare just like they did with health care, he's not holding his breath.

Jeff Liebman (12:16)

I don't want to sit around and wait for Washington D.C. to solve this problem. You know, in the health care context, Governor Romney in Massachusetts basically did the equivalent of the Affordable Care act just within the state. And then eventually that became a model that spread nationwide in this field. The same thing should happen. States should take the lead here and we need three or four states to go out and do this. They'll suddenly realize that they are now delivering higher quality care than anywhere else in the country and that they're getting all the labor market benefits of parents having good childcare. And I predict that Washington will then follow. There's no reason we need to sit around and wait for someone else to solve this problem. We're going to solve this problem.

Gloria Rivera (12:57)

In other words, no one is coming to save us. Especially when we're swimming in uncertainty about what our country stands for and prioritizes, when things that we thought were given are shifting by the day, by the minute. But no matter what's happening on the political stage, what we can all agree on is that we want our kids to have a good education. We want them to be able to read and write, to express themselves, to become confident and critical thinkers. And that begins with a child care system for all to make child care accessible as in affordable and in sufficient supply. There are certain steps we need to take, but Jeff says these steps have to be taken in a specific order. That's coming up after the break.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus (13:56)

Hey, Julia, Louis Dreyfus here. If you listen to me on my Wiser Than Me podcast, you probably already know that I'm an investor and an evangelist for the Mill Food Recycler. There are a lot of reasons to love mill, but for me it's all about the impact. Keeping food out of the garbage is one of the most powerful things we can do to help the planet. Every single day. We're talking banana peels, carrot tops, old takeout. When that stuff heads to the landfill, it becomes a huge driver of climate change. If you already compost, great. But of course there's the smell, the flies, the running to the curb every day with a little leaking compost bag made of cornstarch. That's where mill comes in. It makes keeping food out of the trash as easy as dropping it in. It can handle nearly anything from a turkey carcass to like 20 avocado pits. It works automatically while you sleep. You can keep filling it for weeks and it never ever smells. Mill makes dry, nutrient rich grounds that you can use in your garden and add to your compost feed to your chickens. Or mill can get them back to a small farm for you, but you kind of have to live with mill to really get it. And that's why they offer a risk free trial. Go to mill.com wiser for an exclusive offer.

Unknown Advertiser (15:11)

Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days? Do you think Discover isn't widely accepted? If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past. Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. And every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the now it pays to Discover. Learn more@discover.com credit card based on the February 2024 Nielsen report.

Gloria Rivera (15:49)

When Jeff started researching early childhood education, he came across an interesting data that really stuck with him.

Jeff Liebman (15:57)

We spend about $20,000 per child in America for each student enrolled in K12 public school. Government spending per child on early education is something like $3,000. And given that we know how important those early years are, it's just hard to understand why we would spend a fraction per child in the early years that we would once they get to kindergarten.

Gloria Rivera (16:23)

It makes no sense to Jeff and it makes no sense to me. But you get what you pay for and that bare minimum government spending just isn't cutting it, according to Jeff, to make high quality childcare affordable and available, we need to do a few things. One, increase wages to early childhood educators. Two, generate additional slots, and three, give people a way to pay for childcare. But, and this is a big but, Jeff says there's no need to even talk about increasing childcare accessibility if the child care itself isn't high quality.

Jeff Liebman (17:02)

We got to get the quality part right before we just go add more slots, because there's a risk that we actually could do harm if we add slots before we take care of the quality aspects of this.

Gloria Rivera (17:13)

That's right. Bad care actually hurts our kids. Meaning if you put a kid in low quality childcare, their outcomes are even worse than if you just left them at home. And we've learned this the hard way. There have been some places around the world that have gone for expanding availability without focusing on quality, like Quebec in 1997.

Jeff Liebman (17:36)

There's been research on that that's actually shown adverse effects for children. There's some interesting research out of Quebec where they did a tremendous job in making a slot available for almost all families. But when scholars studied those, they found that the children had increased hyperactivity, anxiety and aggression. They had worse health, higher crime rates later in life.

Gloria Rivera (18:00)

So it's not good enough to just provide access to childcare. You have to provide access to high quality child care. Longtime listeners might remember that we covered childcare in Quebec in season one in full transparency. I've often quoted that their data showed more women returning to the workforce, which meant increased tax revenue. But I certainly didn't dig deep on the quality of the care provided. As it turns out, as Jeff says, Quebec did a tremendous job creating slots and a questionable job, at minimum. On the quality aspect, which is key, focusing on quality first means increasing educator wages.

Jeff Liebman (18:44)

If you want there to be more childcare available, you can't get there without paying higher wages to providers because there are a lot of centers where the license capacity is above the enrolled capacity and they are keeping classrooms shut because they can't recruit staff. And so if you want more workers in this field, you got to pay them more. And if you want the quality, that I believe has to be the first step, you also have to pay more because as you've discussed in many of your earlier episodes, there was incredibly high turnover rates. And you can't have quality early education if the providers are not making careers out of this and investing in their own skills. And so that's going to require us to get somewhere in the direction of parity. With kindergarten teachers, basically, if we're going to have the kind of quality that will deliver the kind of results that we're hoping for from early education.

Gloria Rivera (19:37)

I know. I was so relieved to read that you believe that wage increases for staff and continued support in the workplace are the starting points to get to where we need to be. When we started doing this show, it drove me crazy because we will educate you. You can have lots of letters behind your name from very good universities. And then you talk to these people who are early educators, and they're amazing people, and they have to get out of the industry because they can't afford to be in it. So it's very affirming to speak to you because, yes, wage increases, that is where we need to start.

Jeff Liebman (20:17)

And it's just worth emphasizing, like, head teachers in these preschool classrooms are getting paid $19 an hour, you know, $38,000 a year, and we're somehow expecting them to make a career out of us. I mean, we're just not even. It's just not even close to being a labor market that can support quality in this field.

Gloria Rivera (20:36)

Now that we know that we need to pay teachers more, and that is our first step towards fixing this crisis. What is the most effective way for the government to get involved in the market to help build quality supply?

Jeff Liebman (20:53)

So what we've seen in a couple, actually now, three jurisdictions that I'm aware of in Washington, D.C. and in a pilot basis in Illinois, they have all tried an approach that I think is very promising, which is basically the government decides to raise wages and to pay for that increase. And so the government will say something like, we'll pay for $6 an hour worth of the wages of early educators. Okay. And you have to combine that with a floor on the wage so that the employers don't just pocket the $6 an hour and make more profits. So let's say the current wage, just to make it simple, is $20 an hour. So what has to happen is the government comes in and says, we'll pay $6 an hour. But now you have to pay $26 an hour if you want the $6 an hour so that you can't just say, we'll pay $6 an hour, and you reduce what you're paying to 14.

Unknown Advertiser (21:45)

Right.

Jeff Liebman (21:46)

So that system has now been piloted in Washington, D.C. in Illinois, and in all over Canada in various forms. Each province has a slightly different scheme, and it seems to be working. And I think that's probably the most direct and cost effective way to raise quality in the system. It's not the only thing. There's things you have to do on the training side and the credentialing side as well. But that seems like the most efficient way to, to get to quality fast.

Gloria Rivera (22:13)

Okay, so we know, we know the only way we're going to get to quality is to pay providers enough so that we can get people to enter this field. And here's the important part. Stay in it. Child care workers have some of the highest turnover rates, in part due to low wages. You just cannot have quality care unless people are incentivized and able to make careers out of this. So now that we've talked about quality.

Jeff Liebman (22:42)

And wages, then you add more slots. And then after you add more slots, then you give the people the ability to pay for those slots.

Gloria Rivera (22:49)

That's next. After this short break.

Unknown Advertiser (22:58)

Let's celebrate. Teachers join Teach for America, a bold group of change makers working to ensure all kids get the education they need to succeed. And Ripple, a tech company creating greater economic opportunity through transformative crypto and blockchain enterprise solutions in celebrating teachers. Because teachers don't just impact what children learn. It's the little things teachers do every day that create a chain of possibilities that go far beyond the classroom. That's the TFA Ripple effect. And we can't thank teachers enough. So celebrate that teacher who juggles lessons, laughter, and lost homework. When you donate to Teach for America today, Ripple will partner. To match your gift, visit teachforamerica.org/r I p p l e to give. That's teachforamerica.org ripple because for our teachers, a little thanks can add up to a lot.

Jeff Liebman (23:53)

I'm Hasan Minhaj and I have been lying to you. I only pretended to be a comedian so I could trick important people into coming on my podcast.

Gloria Rivera (24:00)

Hasan Minhaj doesn't know to ask them.

Jeff Liebman (24:02)

The tough questions that real journalists are way too afraid to ask.

Gloria Rivera (24:06)

People like Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Jeff Liebman (24:08)

Is America too dumb for democracy? Outrageous. Parenting expert Dr. Becky, how do you skip consequences without raising a psychopath?

Gloria Rivera (24:18)

That's a good question. Listen to Hasan Minhaj doesn't know from Lemonada Media.

Jeff Liebman (24:21)

Wherever you get your podcasts.

Gloria Rivera (24:28)

We'Re back. So to recap, when we talk about accessibility, what we mean is that everyone can find and afford to pay for high quality childcare. But we're not talking about starting a new system. We're talking about taking existing schools full of brilliant people who are great at what they do, and restructuring the system to make it work. Childcare is going to be there whether or not we prioritize it. So why not make it great? We've talked about how the first step to making the system accessible is raising wages. Now let's get to the supply part. How many more seats or slots do we need before it becomes readily available and easy to find? Jeff's research focused on Massachusetts, which has about 50% of below school age kids in formal care, like a child care center, a licensed family child care provider, or a school based preschool.

Jeff Liebman (25:26)

The question is, how far above 50% should we be targeting? Is 60% enough? 70%? And if you sort of ask, why has this country not solved this problem already? Part of the reason, I think, is a perception that people want such different things. There's not a one size fits all solution. And some people may want their grandparents to take care of their kids, some people may want a nanny, some may want a neighbor, some may want formal care. Someone obviously stay home with their child. And how can we solve this problem in a simple way given this mix of providers and preferences? So one of the first things I wanted to know was, well, what do people want and where should we be headed? And I read everything I could and I couldn't find an answer to this question. So I finally gave up and said, all right, I'm going to have to go collect data on this. And so I raised some money and commissioned A survey of 1,000 mothers in Massachusetts who have children below school age.

Gloria Rivera (26:25)

In the survey, Jeff asked them what kind of childcare they're using now and what kind of childcare they would use if child care were free, if money wasn't an issue.

Jeff Liebman (26:35)

And I was surprised. I thought there was going to be more heterogeneity in what people wanted. But in fact, 90% of people want to be in formal care.

Gloria Rivera (26:44)

Of that, more than half want to be using a child care center, another 20% want a school based program, and another 20% want their kid with a licensed family child care provider.

Jeff Liebman (26:55)

So 90% want to be in formal care. And what was interesting, when I asked the people who are not using any paid child care, would you use paid child care if it were free? 80% said yes. So the people who are not using it at all, it's not a preference thing, it's a they can't afford it thing. And when I asked people who were currently using paid child care, would they use more if it were free, 71% said yes. When I asked them how many hours additional hours they would use, the ones who weren't using it at all said that the Median answer was they wanted 25 hours a week, and the mean was 29 hours a week. And the ones who are already using it, who are already using about 25 hours a week on average, wanted another 10 hours. This paints a picture of almost everyone wanting a lot of formal child care. And it makes me think, as a policy matter, there's no risk we're going to overshoot. We can go as fast as we could afford to produce more quality slots, and we will be able to fill them. And we don't have to worry that we're going to suddenly provide too much childcare. We don't have to spend a second worrying about that problem.

Gloria Rivera (28:06)

Jeff's research makes it so abundantly clear. The vast majority of families want their kids in some kind of formal child care setting in this early stage of life. For families who don't currently use formal care, 80% said they would if it were free. And for families who do use formal care, 70% said they'd use more if it were free. You just can't argue with these numbers and what they demand more childcare at affordable rates. And why do we need it? Because it gives parents more time to work. That's a huge part of why Jeff remembers what the struggle was like.

Jeff Liebman (28:44)

You know, it is hard to have a career when you have instability in childcare. And certainly in my own life, there were a lot of times where we thought we had great childcare. And then the phone rings and all of a sudden, oops, there's a. What my wife and I called a child care catastrophe. Either it's a very minor one, which is simply your child just vomited and has a fever, and now you don't have any childcare for the next few days because they gotta stay home till their fever goes away. Or a major catastrophe like the time when we had childcare at my wife's employer on site, and then the employer decided to build a parking garage and not have child care anymore. And suddenly we went from having child to care to being back in the market again.

Gloria Rivera (29:24)

Wow.

Jeff Liebman (29:25)

So, you know, you're always one phone call away from, even when you do have good childcare. From having what feels like, to a parent, like a, you know, a complete crisis, especially if you have to go to work the next day.

Gloria Rivera (29:37)

It doesn't just feel like that. It is like that. It's so fragile. Right. Whatever we're able to sew together can go haywire with one phone call. It feels like a house of cards. Families don't just want accessible childcare. It's not just a preference, they need it.

Jeff Liebman (29:57)

Every child deserves a great start in life. And that's true whether they were fortunate enough to be born into a family where they can easily afford, you know, the gold plated childcare, or if they're born into a family that, you know, just paying for food and housing is a struggle and they can't afford even a dollar worth of childcare, that child still deserves to have a really excellent early education experience.

Gloria Rivera (30:20)

We've talked in this discussion about the government paying to raise wages because that's one of the first steps towards fixing this crisis. How did you make the numbers work for affordable care? And is that model the same one that we need to apply or how is it slightly different for early education and care for 0 to 5?

Jeff Liebman (30:42)

I guess there are two parts to that question, like how much is it going to cost?

Gloria Rivera (30:45)

Yes.

Jeff Liebman (30:46)

And then the secondly is where is one going to come up with the revenue to pay for it? On the cost side, it's certainly expensive because if you think of all the children who are 0 to 18, if you think about the four and a half years where we want to provide childcare, assume that for the first six months, maybe someone doesn't need formal childcare, they're going to be taken care of at home. And at some point, either at six months or a year, it's going to be time to start some kind of paid child care. That means we're going to be paying for about four, four and a half years of child care. And that's on top of the 13 years that we're paying for K to 12 now. And so if you just do the math, you'll convince yourself that that's about a 1/3 increase in the time that we're paying for. But it's not going to cause a 1/3 increase in our education budget because first of all, we're already paying for some of it so that the increment is not as big. And we're not going to get to 90% of kids enrolled anytime soon. We're going to be at 60 or 70. And so when I did the numbers for Massachusetts, it looked to me like to get to a system that I would consider really excellent in terms of quality and accessibility. It was going to cost something like $1.5 billion more in the state budget, which is, it's on the order of like a 3% increase in the state budget. You know, that's the amount we do annually for inflation. So it's a big number, but it's not like an impossible number. And put another way, it's about 10% of the state education budget. So it'd be a 10% increase in the overall education budget to get from where we are to a system that we would just recognize is by far the best in the country in terms of quality and accessibility. So that's the magnitude. It's a big number, but it's not a number that's so big that we should give up, I guess, is the way I think about it. And then the question is, how do you pay for it? And that's really a political question. And so I'm always very hesitant to lead with the ways to pay for it. But, you know, obviously state taxes tend to be some combination of sales taxes, income taxes, property taxes, and then there are things where we free up resources that could be rededicated. So there's a lot of creative things you can do on the revenue side, but every state's going to solve that differently. And that's really more of what's the politically feasible way to get the resources. And it's not so large in Canada. I asked the question, like, three times because I couldn't believe their answer. I said, when you did this big increase in this national commitment to childcare, how did you pay for it? And they're like, well, we just put it in the budget. And I'm like, no, no, no. But didn't you have some new revenue source to pay for it? And they're like, no, we had space. You know, the economy was growing. Well, we had some revenue. We prioritized it. And so it may be that there is some place where the state economy grows by 6% this year and they decide they want to spend 2% of that on having the best childcare system in America. I mean, that, you know, it's in the level where that could be a decision that someone makes at some point.

Gloria Rivera (33:49)

Right. It reminds me of what happened in New Mexico. Right. They found money that they had and they made early education a priority. That's why it is now on its way in the state of New Mexico. I will say that I am very grateful that there are people far with talents far different from mine in this field that I will rely on to figure this out. And for anyone listening to this episode, who's going to go out and demand accessibility, demand a better system, is it right to point to the government and demand that our tax dollars pay for this? Is that the argument people should be making?

Jeff Liebman (34:27)

Absolutely. I think there is really no reason we need to sit around and wait for someone else to solve this problem. We're gonna solve this problem.

Gloria Rivera (34:33)

We are. We need to figure out, state by state, how much high quality, accessible care will cost, and then show me the money, because it's there if we make it a priority. Too many of us are mired in a collective, painful despair when we hear over and over, it's really hard to pay for. Jeff says the numbers are big but not impossible. Not impossible. Implausible, maybe because we've lived in this crisis for decades. But change is not impossible. The good news is that we know what good care looks like. We know how radically it can take the tiniest babies and set them on a path to superstardom. And I'm going to go out on a limb and decorate. Claire we need superstars going forward, now more than ever. There's more no One Is Coming to Save Us With Lemonada Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like unheard clips from our interviews. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts. No One Is Coming to Save Us As a Lemonada original, this is this series is created and produced with Neighborhood Villages, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming child care through innovative program building and policy design. Visit www.NeighborhoodVillages.org to learn more. I'm your host, Gloria Rivera. Lisa Fu and Hannah Boomershine are our producers. Ivan Koraev is our audio engineer. Our music is by Hannis Brown. Jackie Danziger is our VP of Partnerships and Production. Executive Producers are Stephanie Whittles Wax and Jessica Cordova Kramer, along with me, Gloria Rivera. If you like this show and you believe what we're doing is important, please help others find us by leaving us a rating and writing a review. And most importantly, tell your friends. Follow no One Is Coming to Save Us. Wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership. Thank you for listening and we'll be back next week. Until then, hang in there. You can do this.

Unknown Advertiser (36:54)

Let's Celebrate Teachers join Teach for America, a group of change makers working toward educational excellence for all kids, and Ripple, a tech company creating greater economic opportunity through transformative crypto and blockchain enterprise solutions. In celebrating teachers for the little things they do that create possibilities that go far beyond the classroom, you can celebrate your favorite teachers with a gift that helps them create their biggest ripple effect for America's kids. Give today@teachforamerica.org ripple and ripple will partner to match your gift. That's teachforamerica.org ripple.

David Duchovny (37:33)

Hey everyone, it's David Duchovny do you ever feel like a failure? Trust me, I get it. Hell, I've spent my whole life almost feeling like a failure. It's appropriate, though, because on Fail Better, my new podcast with Lemonada Media, exploring the world of failure, how it holds us back, propels us forward, and ultimately shapes our lives is the whole point. Each week, I'll chat with artists, athletes, actors and experts about how our perceived failures have actually been our biggest catalysts for growth, revelation, and even healing. Through these conversations, I hope we can learn how to embrace the opportunity of failure and Fail Better together. Fail Better is out now. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.