NPR.

There is this building going up in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, and in a way it's a symbol

of how much this city, and really the country's entire economy, has changed. Because while Birmingham was founded on the steel industry, today it's all about health research.

Federal funding from the National Institutes of Health has been the rocket behind the biomedical research industry.

NIH funds have helped transform, not just Birmingham, but other cities like Pittsburgh and Baltimore.

It's why the University of Alabama at Birmingham is not only the largest single employer in the city.

It's the largest in the entire state.

And now with the Trump administration trying to make deep cuts to research funding,

Birmingham and cities like it are worried about what happens if billions of dollars for the industry disappears overnight.

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darren Woods.

And I'm Stephen Massaha from the Gulf

States Newsroom. On today's show, we're pulling out our microscopes for a close look into how

these research grants actually work and why the Trump administration says the NIH is getting

ripped off. And we talk about what deep cuts to funding would mean in a deep red state.

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