diff --git a/lectures/polars.md b/lectures/polars.md
index 3b082d4e..741528f0 100644
--- a/lectures/polars.md
+++ b/lectures/polars.md
@@ -544,7 +544,8 @@ As in {doc}`pandas`, Python makes it straightforward to query online databases.
 
 An important database for economists is [FRED](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/) --- a vast collection of time series data maintained by the St. Louis Fed.
 
-Polars' `read_csv` can fetch data from a URL directly.
+We download the CSV file with [requests](https://requests.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)
+and pass its contents to Polars' `read_csv`.
 
 We use `try_parse_dates=True` to parse the date column automatically
 
@@ -564,7 +565,10 @@ fred_url = ('https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?'
             'fgst=lin&fgsnd=2020-02-01&line_index=1&'
             'transformation=lin&vintage_date=2024-07-29&'
             'revision_date=2024-07-29&nd=1948-01-01')
-data = pl.read_csv(fred_url, try_parse_dates=True)
+import requests
+
+r = requests.get(fred_url)
+data = pl.read_csv(r.content, try_parse_dates=True)
 ```
 
 Let's inspect the first few rows