What do Moo Deng the pygmy hippo, social media sensation Hawk Tuah, and the President of the United States all have in common? They've all inspired highly valuable, highly volatile memecoins. The memecoin began as a sort of joke cryptocurrency, but it soon became very real. On today's episode of The Sunday Story, we turn to our friends at NPR's Planet Money to help us understand the phenomenon of memecoins. What are they, and how did they go from a one-off joke to a speculative frenzy worth tens of billions of dollars? Who are the winners and losers in this brazen new market? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy

The Trump administration has revoked hundreds of visas of foreign students, including PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk who was detained on the street by ICE agents. The Trump administration plans to cut 20,000 jobs from the Department of Health and Human Services. President Trump pulls Elise Stefanik's nomination for UN Ambassador to keep her in the House, protecting the GOP's razor-thin majority. And, NPR looks at how U.S. tariffs are putting pressure on Chinese businesses, with some raising prices and others making trade-offs to stay competitive. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Eric Westervelt, Jane Greenhalgh, Jason Breslow, Reena Advani, Arezou Rezvani and Mohamad ElBardicy.It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Milton Guevara, Aowen Cao, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas.We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis, and our technical director is Carleigh Strange.Our Executive Producer is Jay Shaylor. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy