How the government wastes our time

A cowboy image, you know, we tend to think that was just a white man, you know,

“on a horse with a cowboy hat, but you know, one in every four cowboys were black.”

On the Sunday story from up first, Shibuzi talks about his latest album and the Black Roots of

Country music. Listen to the Sunday story and the MPR app or wherever you get your podcast. This is fresh air. I'm Tonya Mosley. Think about how much of your life you spend on hold. Villing out the same information on government forms over and over, maybe waiting at the DMV, the pharmacy or the polls, sometimes for hours, even as technology has made nearly everything else faster. My guest, journalist Annie Lowry, has a name for what all of this waiting means.

She calls it the time tax. The hours we lose to paperwork, phone calls, appointments, and lines, trying to obtain benefits we qualify for and exercise rights guaranteed to us. Annie argues in her new book that this isn't simply bureaucratic dysfunction. Sometimes, making a system difficult is the point. And the people charged the most are often those with the least amount of time and the fewest resources to spare. Poor people, the sick,

and the disabled. And right now, this tax is climbing. New paperwork and work requirements

have already cut more than 3.5 million Americans from food assistance and the numbers are still

growing. Annie Lowry is a staff writer at the Atlantic where she covers economic policy. Her first book, "Give People Money" is about universal basic income. Her new book is the time tax, how the government wastes our time and how to fix it. Annie Lowry, welcome back to fresh air. I am so excited to be back. And I'm excited to talk with you and we're going to try to get through this conversation without you or I becoming enraged because what you lay out here

is completely frustrating and it's more than frustrating. It impacts people's daily lives. You have spent nearly two decades reporting on economic policy. So you also understand how these

systems work. But when did all of this stop looking like an unavoidable fact of life and really

“started looking like a tax? I remember shortly after I had moved to Washington, D.C. I was a”

young reporter meeting a group of homeless veterans and they were not only unhoused but they were unsheltered, right? And I'm not saying that the benefits that we provide to veterans who have obviously sacrificed so much for our country or sufficient. However, they are there. The VA has its own programs. We have an entire government department, a huge government department. And these folks they just couldn't manage to make it work. They couldn't get to the VA. They couldn't get the

paperwork together. They just had so many stresses and strains in their life. They were so focused on where am I going to sleep, where is my next meal coming from, that psychiatric issues and some cases. And I've just thought about that experience so many times because since then, I've met so many people when dealing with the government, when dealing with the DMV, when dealing with

“the IRS, when dealing with any other alphabet soup agency. And I think that once you start thinking”

about these administrative burdens, you start to see it everywhere. You are actually seriously ill for a significant time during your reporting and writing of this book. You actually were on the show to talk a little bit about it, your condition on the show before. And anyone who has had to navigate doctors and hospitals and assurance that kind of stuff, they understand what you are talking about, but how much of this book was written from inside of that machine for you personally?

A tremendous amount of it. So it took me about five years of near-constant physical discomfort to get diagnosed. I have a rare degenerative disease that normally doesn't occur in people as young as I was when I was diagnosed with it. So it's only like 50,000 people across the country have it. And dealing with doctors through the process of getting diagnosed, dealing with all of the insurance forms, the short-term disability, the workplace accommodations. At the same time

as I had a job, I was working on a book, I had kids, I had life. It was excruciating. And I really think that whether it's dealing with the government or dealing with the insurance system, the health system, which I think is so government-regulated. And government is such a big player that we should

to be able to do it. And I know that that luck came in part because I have a supportive partner.

I have parents who are healthy, who are willing to help. I had a really flexible employer that wanted me to figure things out. A lot of people don't have that. I was very well-resourced. I'm very interested in you talking a little bit more about why all of this is particularly a tax. Define time tax the way you would maybe someone at a barbecue. Absolutely. So this is called administrative burden. And what administrative burden is is the

experience of bureaucracy, not in terms of the system or the paperwork or the bureaucrats,

but the end user. So how much time? How much effort? How much emotional strain?

You know, how do I have to give up to, you know, receive something that you're trying to either purchase or obtain or write that you're supposed to have? And I really saw this as a tax because there's this understanding that, you know, with the government, we should be getting what's ours.

“And maybe it shouldn't always be really easy to get what's ours, but, you know, you should”

have to go through the steps. And I think that we don't see these things as being purposeful, modifiable, rooted in things like sexism and racism in some cases. And so yeah, the time tax, what is it taking from you to get that thing? Which government programs do you see as having the worst time tax issues? I would highlight two. So the IRS, we actually have a good calculation of how much time it takes people to do their federal taxes each year. Because the government

collects data on it where it doesn't really collect data on time taxes and administrative burdens and other programs, because it's not required to. So the average Americans spends 12 to 13 hours doing their taxes and it costs them $290. That number in a lot of other countries is zero.

“Zero hours, zero dollars. And then I think that if you are looking at the programs that are targeted”

at the most at risk Americans, supplemental security income, which is used by very low-income seniors with disabilities. TANF, or cash welfare, which is used by very low-income primarily mothers of small children, WIC, which is a nutrition support program that is also used by quite low-income mothers and their kids, they tend to come with really significant time burdens. And there I think that there's this just tremendous needlessness. So as a Cy for instance,

it makes these folks comply with a asset test, right? So how much exact money is in your bank account or do you have any little pockets saved away somewhere and it has such strict income limits? That you're neighbor giving you some cash or your kid, putting a $100 bill in your Christmas stocking. It could mean that you end up getting kicked off of the program. It's just wild.

“And I think that everything that we know about being very sick, very at risk, very poor,”

homeless, vulnerable in some fashion, those programs should be easier or not harder. You open the book with several stories of people losing hours and sometimes days to these systems. And one of the folks you write about is Ginny Olsen 6. So in 2020, Ginny was working four jobs. She was an actor, a yoga teacher. She did some copywriting and she also was a researcher. And that spring of 2020 all four of her jobs disappeared at once. And so she went to apply

for the pandemic unemployment benefits that Congress hit just promised at the time workers like her, what happened next in her case? She had the experience that millions of Americans had where she heard nothing back. She had to collect all of these forms all of this paperwork, submit it to the state and then there's some error and she just doesn't really know what happens and this goes on for weeks. And if you call, there's nobody to answer your call in the state of

Wisconsin actually in that really critical horrible shut down part of COVID in the spring of 2020,

working in offices that everything was turned upside down, but why no one could get through.

They just didn't have enough people. So we've always known, since we've had the unemployment

insurance program, which we set up in the new deal in 1935, we've known that it's something that it needs to expand and contract really rapidly, which is something that, you know, for instance, the IRS doesn't have to do or Medicare doesn't have to do, right? Medicare has a pretty predictable number of beneficiaries. The IRS is managing pretty much the close to the same number of tax returns, urine and urine out even as other things change, but UI has to actually like an accordion, right?

So when the economy falls apart, which sometimes it does really quickly, which happen in COVID,

“all of a sudden you have to go from a relatively low caseload to a really high caseload.”

And the fact that UI is hard to apply for, it requires a lot of paperwork, the fact that

state agencies never have enough money to upgrade their digital systems, we have known every

single recession. We have a national conversation about how we should invest in these systems, make them better, make them automatic. And it never happens because then when the economy gets better, nobody's worried about it anymore. And so, you know, Jenny's kind of ends up being okay, it takes a long time, though. And it's enormously financially stressful at a time that people are dying, people are terrified. So here's this thing, right? Like unemployment and

insurance is a contributory benefit. You have to be paying in to a trust fund in order to get it. It doesn't just go to you if you haven't paid in, but you contribute and then it's not there for you. You can't get it, not through any fault of your own, but just, you know, because you can't figure out how to deal with all the paperwork that the state is giving you or the state. Frankly, you can't figure out how to deal with all the paperwork that it's receiving. This is bad.

Well, you know, I mean, right now, something that's happening, I mentioned in the introduction, there are these new work requirements and paper work rules for more than three million people who have been cut from food assistance because of what was passed in the big, beautiful bill. So a woman in Arizona told CNBC, she answered a mountain of documentation requests. She's done this since February and she still has not gotten benefits and her word for what she's experiencing

is just humiliating. And the state at reason for these rules is reducing waste and providing accountability, but what is really happening here? I see it in moral terms. Food assistance should not be a program for low-income at-risk Americans who might not be able

“to eat enough who are also good at paperwork. That's not what that program should be, right?”

And as you point out, we are dropping millions of people, including tens of thousands of children,

but then the people who are remaining on the program never the less have to comply with these work

requirements, these expanded work requirements. Notively, SNAP already had work requirements. We just extended them to more people such as older Americans. Do we want all of these programs to have this cut for okay? Yeah, sure this is assistance for lower-income Americans, provided that they have a smartphone and a Wi-Fi connection? That's not what these programs are about. And I am terrified that some states will just drop the SNAP program entirely because it shifts

costs to the states and I'm very worried about what is about to happen to Medicaid, which will have a national work requirement for the first time. You think it's a probability that SNAP

“payments could be cut on the state level? Where do we see that scene as a probability?”

One of the provisions of the bill is that it says that states that have an improper payment rate of more than 6% will have to shoulder part of the cost of the SNAP benefit itself. Can you just explain what you mean to say that? Yeah, so like a lot of programs in SNAP, each state gets something that is called an improper payment rate. And that's not a fraud rate doesn't have anything to do with fraud. It has to do with the state slightly hood of overpaying

or underpaying a benefit. And this is often by a small amount, $50 a hundred dollars a month, and it's often because the paperwork and the rules are so confusing. So somebody might just

really say, oh, this is how me and my house meets split up the cost of certain staples, which is

“part of the SNAP determination, or a civil servant might be working on a really rickety”

crummy computer, and they might have just heard something wrong. They put something in. And so the big beautiful bill, it says that if states have an overpayment or an underpayment rate, of greater than six percent, they are going to have to pay part of the cost of not just the

administration of SNAP, but the benefit itself. States have never had to do this before. This could

be hundreds of millions of dollars. It sounds catastrophic too to families. Oh, yes, and states are not actually obligated to have a SNAP program or a Medicaid program. And there's some concern that states will drop out of SNAP. They will say, we cannot afford to be paying part of the benefit cost. We literally do not have the money. What are we supposed to do? And states can't go bankrupt, right? Like they have to make these really hard choices. So when you look at why Arizona,

why it has had a 50 percent decline in its SNAP rules, it's because they have in an effort to drive their improper payment rate down, to avoid that fee from the Trump administration,

they've instituted excessive fraud checks, excessive paperwork requirements, because here's the

thing. A person being denied benefits, who should have gotten them, does not count as an improper payment. Wow, so it's not that in Arizona there are fewer people who need assistance. It's that more people are being cut from the program. Yeah, either they can't do the paperwork or, you know, the state gets the paperwork and nevertheless determines that they're not eligible,

“because they didn't do something correctly. That's why it's that people just can't get the”

paperwork done. And the state is, it would rather have a denial than an improper payment. I want you to lay out, though, because there are some people who don't have any touchpoint to this. And so they say, well, then how come you can't just fill out the paperwork correctly? But tell kind of describe what we're talking about here. What type of paperwork sometimes trips people up where they just don't have all of the answers to what's being asked of them, or they might check

the wrong thing on a document, like what are some of the things that you have encountered in your reporting? A lot of listeners to this program, they'll see a government forum and they're like, I have to be kind of annoying, but like, I get it done, right? Even something really complicated, like, your 1040, your tax return, you know, people manage, although I would note that's quite complicated. So when we're thinking about the tasks and the questions that states are asking,

specifically low-income Americans, because I really do think that the time tax hits everybody. So there could be just difficult questions to answer. So that thing I said about SNAP, asking you to figure out how you and your roommates split up the cost of groceries, staples. Right? Like, what is a grocery staple? What rice? Coffee beans? Like, we don't have a system for that, or I don't really know. It's just a hard question. Right? It's a judgment question. I mean,

because what you're actually having to lay out is how you live. And it's, you know, you're doing this under threat of, oh, don't defraud the government, right? Even something as simple as income states might ask for gross monthly income, or cash income. You might have to collect all of this paperwork. What are you getting from here and here and here and here? You might say to

“yourself something like, ooh, if I sold something on Facebook marketplace, does that count?”

Right? Does that? Do they know about that cash? It's just really complicated. Then there's argument though, is not so much that these questions are being asked. It's the convoluted way. Because I mean, the other side of this is you do want checks and balances. You do want to understand where the need is for the person who is asking for help. Sure. Absolutely. I think

that I always distinguish between means testing on the basis of income and other simple character

istics and testing in the basis of all of these other really complicated ones, right? We don't ask these hard questions in an easy and obvious way. And it's not that it's not important. I think that we don't do a cost benefit for all of these questions and say, okay, actually how many people are we looking at here? Or could we, you know, if we could take a peek at their tax return,

Is there another way to do it? Our guest today is journalist Annie Lowry, a staff writer at

the Atlantic. We'll be right back after our break. I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. This season on Planet Money Summer School, we have drilled for oil in Norway. We've smuggled products in the North Korea. And now we make it to our seventh continent at Harktaka. That's right. Big for me. Mr. Penguin, speak for me. Another sound of Antarctica. That's a reporter trying to interview a penguin. We'll explain on Planet Money Summer School. Listen on the

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the pulse available where you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air, I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest today is Annie Lowry, staff writer at the Atlantic. Her new book is The Time Tax, her name for the toll Americans pay in paperwork, waiting, and red tape to gain access to what is legally ours. Food assistance, health coverage, disability benefits, even the ballot. Lowry argues these

burdens aren't accidents, but choices that affect most the poor and the sick. Lowry's first book

was Give People Money, which examined how a guaranteed cash payment, universal basic income, could work in America and around the world. Okay Annie, I want to spend some time on voting,

“the midterms is coming up, and I think it may be the clearest example of your whole argument.”

I want to start with a small absurdity. Why do we vote on Tuesday? We vote on Tuesday because back when we were in a gerary and society, the days were limited that Congress wanted us to hold elections by the need for people to go to church on Sunday, and often they would have to travel for a day to get to their polling pace because they might be going on foot or they might be going by horse, and you might have to avoid market days also, and so it ended up being that Congress

in, I believe, the 1840s decided that Tuesday was the day, and this is not a holiday. Now, there's been legislation proposed to make Tuesday a holiday, but those have largely failed. Yes, if you speak to residents or citizens of some of our peer countries, this is one of these things about American life that they're like, "Wait, what?" Either the polls will be open for longer, or they hold them on Saturdays, or it's a holiday, and in a lot of places, at least in some places,

“voting is a obligatory, you have to do it. Who pays for the fact that our voting system is still”

organized around the lives of people who live nearly two centuries ago? We do not have high voter participation rates, and so that means that the voting public is not representative of the actual American public, and it would say that vote by mail has started to change this, but there's not now real attacks on vote by mail, and I think precisely for that purpose. What you are doing when you hold elections in a really complicated fashion is you allow politicians to pick their voters,

instead of allowing the American public as big as we can make it to pick their politicians. Leaving aside outcomes that is not good for small, de-democratic reasons. We know that this fall millions of people plan to vote by mail in the mid-terms, and President Trump has ordered that the postal service can only deliver your ballot if you're on a new federal list of eligible voters, and just recently the Supreme Court

allow parts of that order to move ahead, at least for now. And the stated reason is voting by non-citizens, which researchers have found to be rare. So run it through your test.

“Is this protection of our voting system or another time tax?”

voter fraud is extraordinarily rare. I'm not saying it doesn't happen because it certainly does. But as far as we can tell, it has not changed the results of a single election major election this century. It is a problem that you should have safeguards against, but again I think that there

so many voters? They are trying to shift the outcome of the election. What is the cost?

Democratic participation? The right that we have to vote. And the system is already hard enough as it is, in purpose we don't have a unified system. We have 10,000 voting jurisdictions. All of them have their own little practices and rules and budgets, and there are some strong regulations about this. But nevertheless, we know that it's already hard enough, and this is anathema to us as a country. And you know fundamentally, I mean, there is a belief that it should be hard.

There was this Florida State Senator who co-sponsored a bill to restrict voter registration

and he said out loud, "I don't have a problem making it harder. I want people in Florida to

vote as bad as a person in Africa who walks 200 miles across the desert. It should not be easy."

“Now that's on record. And so why do we keep pretending the burden is an accident?”

When you ask, nonpartisan experts, even experts coming from outside the US, "Okay, what could you do to fix this?" Things like early voting. Things like having better voting machines. Things like keeping the voter roles updated. Yeah, all of that's good. Less work for people, more work for the states, right? You know, one of the most heartbreaking parts of your book, honestly, had to do with children.

Of course, healthcare for children, schooling for children, but also the staggering number of black children in this country who will be subject to CPS, child protective services. You right, half of black children in this country will be subject to an investigation at some point in their childhood. CPS investigators, they have enormous authority to intervene in family's lives.

“And look, I think that we need a system of child protection, absolutely. But in most cases,”

CPS is investigating what I would describe as kind of the potential for harm or the reality of poverty as opposed to child abuse, which is a terrible problem that I wish that we could stop. And these are invasive. They're time-consuming. They're embarrassing for the parents. They're deeply traumatizing. You know? And I want to say, and I know this from personal experience, because my mother was a child welfare worker for the majority for career. One of the things she

complained about consistently was the amount of paperwork that she herself had to fill out. And so she couldn't spend as much time in the home because she had to fill out like double the amount of paperwork for every single person that she visited. Absolutely. One thing I've heard from people in all kinds of agencies is that they're like,

“I would love to actually help. I'm an expert. And nobody asks me what I think about reforming these”

systems or actually accomplishing my goal. We actually know one way to reduce the incidence of CPS involvement in a family's life, or even more importantly, the actual incidents of abuse is to get those families out of poverty. Give them snap benefits. Give them a bigger, earned income tax credit. Right. Something that we actually saw work during the pandemic when parents were actually given the money to be able to care for their families. You tell the story

about poverty dropping within families with children. What did you find? And why didn't we keep that up? Oh gosh. So the child tax credit has been around for a long time. And during the pandemic, Congress briefly, for two years, it made it much bigger. And it actually sent the money out. So it wasn't like a one time you're going to get this at tax time. They sent it the checks out for six months. And then they sent a lump sum which was really unusual. And it cut the child

poverty rate in half. And it prevented tons of kids from going hungry. It kept families housed at a time when that could have been really dangerous. But you know, the theory among the Democrats who had been pushing for this policy in Washington for such a long time was that once

people had it, you could never take it away. Which tends to be true. But it came during this moment

in the pandemic where people were also getting like a big unemployment insurance payments. They were getting stimulus checks. They just didn't really clock what was happening because the government

multiple things at once. And then, you know, because it was temporary, I think that families didn't

“really believe that it would always be there. And if it were, I think it would have changed their”

behavior and their wealth or in a much more profound way. My guest is Annie Lowry, staff writer at the Atlantic. Her new book is The Time Tax, how the government wastes our time and how to fix it. We'll be right back after a short break. This is fresh air. This week on shortwave, you are what you eat may not be afraid you associate with your mental health. But one in three people have insulin resistance in our country. And if you have insulin resistance, you are double the likelihood of

developing major depression. We explore the link between your body and your brain. Listen on shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Six months. That's how long it has been since the U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran. Where are we diplomatically, economically, militarily? There's a lot changing in the shadow of this uncertainty about what happens with Iran. Not in more the week's big national security news on sources and methods,

you can listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air. I'm Tanya Mosley and my guest is Atlantic staff writer, Anilaari. Her new book is The Time Tax, how the government wastes our time and how to fix it. Okay, so Elon Musk's diagnosis that the federal government is bloated. It's wasteful. It's drowning in paperwork and process. I mean, this is your book's diagnosis, too. So,

“was he on to something? You know what I think is so frustrating?”

Is that he identified a real issue and he misidentified the actual problem with the issue? He completely neglected many of the wonderful bipartisan solutions to solving that issue.

Doge basically said, "Well, the problem is bureaucrats in Washington."

The problem is the civil servants. Let's fire them at random. Right. I mean, it also, you know, Doge was sort of presented as a radical new idea, but you write in your book that presidents have been trying to make the federal government more efficient for more than a century. So, in a way, I mean, Doge misunderstood about the work that had already been done as well. Absolutely. This was a huge, Clinton thing. This was a huge, Reagan thing.

You can go back and there's so many blue ribbon commissions of like, "We're studying." And we're going to make the government as efficient as possible. There's never to my knowledge.

There's never been a serious root-to-stem effort to work on this in a way that would not be

about the government, but would be about the citizen, the end user. And I think that we could actually kind of use leaving aside Zora and Mom Dodney's specific politics, but his attitude of like, "I like you." And I want the government to work for you. I think it's really refreshing. It's part of the reason he's so popular, I think. You shouldn't have to deal with potholes. You shouldn't have to deal with unnecessary regulations. And I think that politicians could have more of that

orientation. Doge didn't really. They weren't saying they were like, "We're going to save you money by firing civil servants. That to me doesn't strike me as the same thing." You devoted a significant amount of time in the book to some solutions, some ideas, some thoughts. One of your big solutions is not simply to make the government smaller, but in some ways you

“want to make it bigger and more capable. So make the case to someone who believes that the only way”

to reduce bureaucracy is to reduce government. There's a really big difference in my mind. Between the size of government in terms of overhead and the time tax that it's putting on people and the size of government in terms of budget. Social security in the retirement program. Biggest government program that we have, pretty much a huge, it's overhead cost, 1%. And it works really well. The payment error rate is extremely low. I think there's this idea of,

oh, it's easy to calculate somebody's social security benefit. No, it isn't. They have to monitor your income and whether you're employed, right, you're whole life. So yeah, it's pretty easy for them to get you your benefits when you elect them. They've already done all of the work, but that was a lot of work in the background. They just don't impose it on people. And I'm not saying social security is perfect, right? Like there are absolutely

problems with it, but nevertheless, people really like it. It works really well.

We have unnecessary programs. Programs that people have never even heard about. One of these

“ones that I think about a lot is there's a weatherization credit that some people can get for”

like kind of like updating your windows and your house that type of thing to save save you some money and like people haven't even heard of it. So the way I see it is you can make the government smaller by making the rules easier, giving the government a little more budget to update these systems and giving it the express goal of reducing burden on citizens and taxpayers. You know, Annie, I mean, going back to the top of our conversation with you and your personal

experience and having your husband be able to fill out the school forms and make calls to the pediatrician and your medical appointments and blood work, all that stuff that goes into being a person who's living with an illness. I just couldn't help but think about all the people and the mental physical emotional toll that it takes on them. And the people who don't have a

husband like you who can actually do it for them, what do we ultimately lose aside from time

“that tax is seems to be much greater. The more that you need the services that you have to fill”

out paperwork for. I think when the government tells all of us, but especially people who are not born here, people with a criminal record, even after they've served their time, people who are black, Latino, members of other racial and ethnic groups. And everybody from rich to poor, when the government treats us like this, we don't trust it. And if we don't trust it, we're not going to trust it to do more and better things for our life. And I think that it leads us not to

trust each other. And so if living in a low trust society, which we all do already, you then have

this government that despite, again, $8 trillion a year that we're giving it is taking that money and just disrespecting us by doing this to us. I think that that's not good for democracy.

“And I do think that there could be unusual benefits than democratic benefits that could be unlocked here.”

In terms of being an American and being proud to be an American and feeling like the government's going to be there for you. Any Lowery, thank you so much for your reporting on this book. We actually believe it or not just scratch the surface, but I really appreciate this conversation in this book. Thank you. Thank you. Any Lowery is a staff writer at the Atlantic. Her new book is The Time Tax. After the break, rock critic Ken Tucker reviews two new albums

by The Woolmax Sisters and Margaret Glassby. This is Fresh Air. How do products end up on big box shelves? Well, we have plenty of money. Pitch, deep line at money, board game. We're trying not to think how much of a big deal it is and how much work has gone into it. It's really big. Is it helpful if I remind you how big it is? It's sort of the whole thing. We go inside the minds of the people who decide what goes on store shelves.

Listen to plenty of money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. You've got a lot of ways to get news and a lot of podcasts in your feed that take a long time to get to the point. Here and now any time gets to the heart of the day's big story, all in about 20 minutes every afternoon. Get smarter and expand your world fast. Listen to here and now any time on the NPR app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This is Fresh Air. The Woolmax Sisters are trio with illustrious family ties. Their uncle was R&B Great Bobby Woolmack and their grandfather was Sam Cook. The sisters have just released a new album of tight harmonies. By contrast, Margaret Glassby, who also has a new album, seeing starkly about living a solitary life. Rock Critic Can Tucker discusses these contrasting sounds in his review. Let's start with the Woolmax Sisters.

Much of the Woolmax Sisters' self titled new album is filled with music that harks back to the days of classic soul and R&B. It's in their blood. Their parents are

Their uncle, Bobby Woolmack, possessed the gravely voice that powered hits like

“looking for a love and across a hundred and tenth street. Their grandfather was the gospel and”

soul-grade Sam Cook. Now these three sisters, B. G. Kucha and Zamani are looking to shape the kind of music they grew up hearing for a contemporary audience that doesn't know or care about their illustrious roots.

That's a song called Shofur, whose title works as a job description

“and a metaphor. Apparently, the Woolmax Sisters took a number of jobs over the years to”

finance their recording, including doing some Uber driving. The lyric is about taking control of one's career, no longer being a passenger, getting behind the wheel. While this new release is

being positioned as the Sisters' debut, I've been aware of various songs and EP's they've

released over the past decade, and what strikes me about this album is that it's got their best

“songwriting, and for the first time they transcend nostalgia. Yes, the music is rooted in 1960's”

soul, but their crisp tight harmonies possess an urgency and immediacy that speaks to the world we're living in right now. In contrast to the Woolmax Sisters' impeccable harmonies, I give you Margaret Glassby's voice, ringingly alone, as her pieces interrupted by a former lover who suddenly appears at the end of her driveway.

Out here in the middle, I'm on solid ground with the friends I found, nobody makes me feel it all. You said you didn't want me. Then why did you come all this way? You said you didn't need me. Who's standing in his driveway?

That song called Michigan leads off Margaret Glassby's new album called I Am Both. On it, Glassby acts as a chronicler of doubt, hesitation, misgiving, of the emotions that can grind a relationship to a halt. She keeps circling back to the word nothing, doing nothing is something I do too well. She sings on one song. In another, she describes a couple stuck in a rut. James and Marie, they don't want to say the wrong thing, so they say nothing.

Discrete keyboards and drums slip in here and there.

Working with producer Joe Henry, Glassby sounds as though she's walking through the rooms of an empty house, taking in memories good and bad, assigning blame, and taking responsibility. To empty words, a requirement for love. So I roam my eyes thinking that you're well acquainted with body language.

“I didn't know I had to speak her. That's why I'm folding your laundry and I'm making a meal of it.”

I'm slamming doors, you evil man, and I'm hoping you're feeling it.

I thought we were on the same page, I apparently not. I'm sorry for being so petty. That line I'm slamming doors you leave open, and I'm hoping you're feeling it. Oh boy, that really kills me. Both Glassby and the Womax sisters are women who've been put to the test by men who resist understanding their pain and their power. They know the

“relationships are a lot more complicated than victim and victimizer, and you use their work”

to untangle these snarled dynamics to better understand and explain themselves to us.

Can Tucker reviewed new music from the Womax sisters and Margaret Glassby. You rather put me on a pedestal, and then knock me down than meet me on the ground. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we get a slightly early start celebrating the Centennial of John Coltrane's birth. We'll talk with his son, Ravi Coltrane, who was also a tenor saxophonist. Ravi was too when his father died. He'll describe how John Coltrane's music and his absence shaped his life.

I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NVR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigher. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Stanishewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers and Marie Baldonato, Lauren Krimzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, they a challenger, Susan Yacundi, Anabalman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler.

Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nespar, Roberta Shorock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley. History is intriguing, but unlike the present, it can feel far off. On NPR's through line, we bring it back to life and put you in the middle of it. Go inside the stories from then that shape the world we live in now. Find NPR's through line, wherever you get your podcasts. On NPR's wildcard podcast, Musician Brittany Howard says

when she's writing music she's really just trying to impress her bandmates. This whole time in

“Alabama shakes. I think when I bring something to the table and I see Zach and Heath light up,”

I feel like I really feel validated. Watch or listen to that wildcard conversation on the NPR app, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.