Category: 4-FrequentNewsStreams

Bridget and Ryan get a question from listener Deji - who wants to know, how much debt is too much debt? Before they can answer, the pair run into Ghost Pirate Blackbeard, who has the same question! Together, they learn more about debt, and what everyone, even a ghost pirate, needs to know before borrowing money.

If your family is interested in learning more about the questions we answered in this episode, check out our website. We’ve got discussion questions and tips!

This episode is sponsored by Greenlight. Sign up for Greenlight today at greenlight.com/million.

You might have heard Meta has been on a bit of a hiring spree recently as it tries to build out its new AI Superintelligence team. The company has reportedly been offering hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to attract leading AI researchers from rivals like OpenAI, Google and Apple.

And it's not just Meta doing the poaching. Tech companies big and small are jumping into the AI Wars.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, a reporter at The Information, about the AI talent wars happening behind the scenes of Silicon Valley.

More on this

“Meta hires two Apple AI researchers for Superintelligence push, Bloomberg News reports” - from Reuters

“Anthropic Revenue Hits $4 Billion Annual Pace as Competition With Cursor Intensifies” - from The Information

It is a pivotal moment in Ukraine as Kyiv announced it will hold another round of peace talks with Russia on Wednesday. It's the first such meeting in seven weeks and comes as NATO leaders try to answer Ukraine’s desperate call for more weapons after Moscow launched one of its largest-ever aerial assaults. Nick Schifrin reports. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

We like to say it a lot here at Marketplace: the stock market is not the economy. But it can help tell us how the economy is doing — if people and businesses are spending or saving, investing or hunkering down. This week, some major companies will report their second quarter earnings, giving us insight into where this economy is headed. Also in this episode: how summer roadwork is hurting businesses in one Vermont town, and why health insurance premiums are going up next year.

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Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

An ongoing Sun-Times investigation tracking items at Jewel, Mariano’s, Target and Walmart shows most common grocery purchases cost more today in the Chicago area than they did when President Trump came into office promising lower prices. And local shoppers are struggling to keep up. Reset learns more about how Chicago residents and business owners are adapting to higher prices and what comes next. Our guests: Stephanie Zimmermann, Chicago Sun-Times consumer investigations reporter; Amanda Lai, director of food industry practice, McMillanDoolittle; Errol Schweizer, publisher of The Checkout Grocery Update; and Sana Syed, senior director of strategic initiatives at IMAN, which runs the Go Green Community Fresh Market. For a full archive of Reset interviews, head over to wbez.org/reset.

Acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons said his agency’s crackdown on unauthorized immigration will extend to employers as well. Industries that rely heavily on undocumented workers are pushing back. We’ll get into it. And, American consumers are spending in the face of tariff-fueled inflation fears. (For now, at least.) Plus, Korean beauty loyalists and summer camps for sewing make us smile.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

• "ICE head says agency to crack down on American companies hiring unauthorized workers" from The Hill
• "Transcript: Acting ICE director Todd Lyons on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," July 20, 2025" from CBS News
• "The U.S. Economy Is Regaining Its Swagger Despite Trump’s Tariffs" from The Wall Street Journal  
• "Teens Learn the Lost Arts of Sewing and Ironing at New Summer Camp Taught By Local Grandmas Staving off Loneliness" from Good News Network
• "A Year’s Worth of Mascara? Fans of Korean Beauty Stock Up as Tariffs Loom." from The New York Times 

• "After Pledging to Keep Prices Low, Amazon Hiked Them on Hundreds of Essentials" from The Wall Street Journal   

  
  

  We love hearing from you. Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email makemesmart@marketplace.org.

While the new spending and tax law boosted the Child Tax Credit by $200, child care costs have risen 30% since before COVID. The U.S. spends less of its GDP on child care and pre-kindergarten than other industrialized nations, and many families face tough choices when confronting the cost of child care. Also on the program: a calm start to the week for financial markets despite political instability in Japan and a trade war.

President Donald Trump wants to bring additional drug manufacturing to the United States and has threatened tariffs on imported medicine. The U.S. relies heavily on imports for low-cost generics, and building up domestic supply chain capacity could be tricky. We'll map out drug manufacturing and explore what it'd take to reshore drug supplies. But first: oil giants are eager to drill off the coast of Guyana, and the boss of an obscure regulatory agency is stepping down.

From the BBC World Service: Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's governing coalition lost its majority in the upper house of parliament, but Ishiba said, with the threat of additional U.S. tariffs and rising inflation, he's not going anywhere. Plus, the European Union is ramping up efforts to avoid President Donald Trump's tariffs. An Aug. 1 deadline is looming, and retaliatory tariffs could be in the pipeline. And later, we'll examine the cost of child care in the U.S.

With the passage of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, numerous Biden-era clean energy incentives will begin to phase out. Many of those incentives were aimed at onshoring energy and battery manufacturing. 

Energy demand is only expected to rise as more data centers are built to service AI and electric and autonomous vehicles become more widespread. And storage for that energy has to come from somewhere. 

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Jeremy Michalek, a professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, about the impacts of the Big Beautiful Bill clean energy rollbacks.