I can still recite most of the Cities of Gold opening almost 40 years later. For whatever reason, I really fixated on the outfits of some of the characters and the show may have partially contributed to my interest in textiles and textile-adjacent things. l may or may not made myself a Zia paper doll so I could design many dresses for her (which all included quipu made out of embroidery floss...).

From my childhood and adolescence: a lesser-known show called The Mysterious Cities of Gold, Fresh Prince, X-Files

Anime choices: Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Hellsing

21st century: Sopranos, Game of Thrones (I almost didn't want to, but the music never let us down)

I'm oversimplifying here, but the news media generally uses terms like "government shutdown" or just "shutdown" to describe battles over proposed appropriations in the annual budget for the coming year and terms like "default" while talking about debt ceiling crises, which have to do with money that has already been appropriated/spent in previous budgets. The two year suspension is supposed to apply to the debt ceiling, which means that it should, in theory, stop potential default crises during that time, but that debt ceiling suspension is separate from negotiations over future appropriations, so it won't necessarily stop a shutdown.

A friend I hadn't talked to in a long time called me out of the blue and is doing well.

Really, a better question would be what didn't frighten me as a kid, but my most disruptive fear was of construction equipment (excavators, backhoes, etc). When I was in kindergarten, I refused to get out of the car to go to school for nearly a week because there was construction being finished on the school grounds.