What happens when billions of dollars in research funding goes away

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  NPR.

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  There is this building going up in downtown Birmingham, Alabama.

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  And in a way,

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  it's a symbol of how much this city and really the country's entire economy has changed.

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  But because while Birmingham was founded on the steel industry,

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  today it's all about health research.

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  Federal funding from the National Institutes of Health has been the rocket

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  behind the biomedical research industry.

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

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  It's why the University of Alabama

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  at Birmingham is not only the largest single employer in the city,

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  it's the largest in the entire state.

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

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  Birmingham and cities like it are worried about what happens

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  if billions of dollars for the industry disappears overnight.

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  This is the indicator from Planet Money.

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  I'm Darren Woods.

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  And I'm Stephen Misaha from the Gulf States Newsroom.

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  On today's show,

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  we're pulling out our microscopes for a close look into how these research grants actually work

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