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Economists are forecasting that AI is likely to cause prices to rise over the course of the next year. On Thursday, both Microsoft and Apple said they’re raising prices some of their flagship products thanks to skyrocketing memory and storage costs. But AI could end up making a whole lot of things cheaper — eventually. Also in this episode: how one union negotiated huge savings on healthcare prices, a look at the garage sale culture in Alaska, and the return of the restaurant matchbook.

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Congress’ historic housing bill still hasn’t been signed by President Donald Trump. There’s a lot in the bill, and changes may take years. Some of the provisions are meant to help rural America, where about a quarter of Americans live. We'll dig into some of the impacts. Then, language in the current U.S.-Iran peace deal could help Iran develop its own economy and become more integrated in the global economic system.

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This morning, as part of our "What's that Like?" series, where we get firsthand accounts from people working unusual jobs, we hear from animal talent agent Dawn Wolfe. She's the owner of the agency Pawsitively Famous and has worked with dogs, cats, reptiles, and even tarantulas. But first, a week after a memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran, are ships able to transit the Strait of Hormuz?

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SpaceX stock prices fell back to earth this week after they skyrocketed in the wake of the IPO a couple weeks ago. Plus, why a Google AI subsidiary is investing in the film studio A24. And why Meta might be getting into the prediction markets. The New York Times reported this week the social media giant was working on its own prediction market app, sort of like Kalshi and Polymarket, which have been bringing in billions of dollars but also drawing lots of scrutiny and legal challenges. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Anita Ramaswamy, financial columnist at Th...

Inflation was up 4.1% in May, according to the BEA’s personal consumption expenditures index. We know hot energy prices, resulting from the war in Iran, were part of that spike. But cut out energy and food, and inflation still hit a three-year high, at 3.4%. So what else is driving the increase? Also in this episode: Q1 GDP is revised up, Wyoming navigates the consequences of property tax cuts, and Great Lakes cargo ships make up a vital branch of U.S. supply chains.

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Core inflation rose to 3.4% in May, according to this morning's PCE report out from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That's the highest since October 2023. Part of the rise is driven by service sector inflation, which should be more immune to shocks from tariffs and energy costs. We dig in. And later, now that Spirit Airlines has shut down, its bankruptcy estate is auctioning off its access to New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

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According to the ACLU, state lawmakers have introduced more than 500 bills targeting LGBTQ people in the 2026 legislative session. Those policies have economic consequences. Today, we explore what's at stake for states with anti-LGBTQ laws and how companies are navigating a climate unfriendly to DEI policies. But first, the dollar's recent strength is not about investors fleeing to safety, and hotter-than-hoped-for inflation means a higher chance of an interest rate hike.

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We here at Marketplace love indicators that give us insights into which direction the economy is moving. But AI is evolving fast and it can be hard for the data — and the people looking to it for clues about AI's effects — to keep up. So the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, with help from the payroll firm ADP, recently launched its own AI Economic Indicators. They track things like AI adoption, productivity, and of course, jobs. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Connacher Murphy, research manager at Stanford Digital Economy Lab, to learn more about the database and what resear...

Marriage brings with it a slew of state and federal privileges – when it comes to taxes, inheritance, and benefits – but what if that’s not the most important relationship to you? What legal and financial options are out there for chosen family? Reema talks to LGBTQ+ legal advocate Angela Giampolo and tax expert Brixton Carothers about everything from setting up a revocable living trust to forming an LLC with a polycule.

Plus, Reema and Alice respond to listener messages, including confessions about workplace mishaps and financial infidelity.

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When the U.S. launched a war against Iran, some Wall Street traders bet the ensuing energy shortages would push inflation up. Now that a ceasefire has brought down gas prices, the narrative has shifted: What if cheaper gas fires up the economy too much? In this episode, the markets are betting on inflation, whichever way you slice it. Plus: Prospective buyers struggle to secure mortgages on homes worth less than $100,000, local getaways anticipate healthy summer vacation demand, and direct-to-consumer brands reframe their environmental commitments.

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AI’s burgeoning influence on the field of healthcare is raising concern among nurses about the future of their profession. New AI tools are being developed to perform tasks ranging from notetaking to proposing diagnoses, but recent research found that those tools can make severely harmful errors. Now, unions representing nurses are fighting to keep their professional judgment front and center. But first, we spoke with Susan Schmidt at Exchange Capital Resources about how Micron Technology’s focus on memory has made it a central player in the tech stock scene.

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New limits on federal student loans for graduate programs, going into effect on July 1, will cap the amount students can borrow at $100,000. For professional programs, like medical school and law school, the cap is doubled. But that category doesn’t include physician assistant and nursing programs, and advocates say that could deter enrollment. Plus, a look into why mission-driven fashion brands are toning down their sustainability efforts.

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Big Tech is looking for land to build its AI data centers. HBCUs are looking for new funding after federal cuts.

And partnerships between them, like one announced by Fisk University, could be a mutually beneficial — or could end up being a form of "digital sharecropping," according to strategist Ashley Northington, who wrote about this for Tech Policy Press.

All season, we’ve been unpacking the controversial ways we’re messing with nature to save the planet. In this episode, we explore the wildest intervention to date: de-extinction. We take a tour of Colossal Labs, the $10 billion Dallas startup betting it can reverse-engineer extinction itself, to see how they plan to turn pigeons into dodos and Asian elephants into woolly mammoths.

But whether it’s bringing back the woolly mammoth from extinction or shooting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, just because we can mess with nature, does that mean we should? After the tour, host Amy Sc...

A typical starter home in nearly 250 U.S. cities is now worth $1 million or more, according to Zillow. Is that even a starter home anymore? In this episode, how rapid housing inflation has changed the game for first-time homebuyers and why more Americans are opting for a starter home in the suburbs. Plus: Manufacturing data reflects strong sector growth, U.S. trading partners bear the economic brunt of Trump’s war with Iran, and the 1973 oil crisis provides lessons for dealing with chaotic fuel costs today.

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Amazon Prime Day starts today and runs through Friday. Consumers are expected to spend $26 billion over those four days, and they’ll have plenty of help from AI. Today: a primer on Amazon’s big AI shopping experiment. Then, will a new U.K. prime minister mean an altered trade relationship with the EU? And later, Congress is pushing forward with homebuying restrictions for institutional investors, but the plan may not be foolproof.

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Last night, the Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bill aimed at making it easier to build housing and bring down the cost of both buying and renting. Home prices have jumped about 50% in the past six years, and rents are up nearly 30% nationally. Today, we’ll delve into why it seems impossible to construct new, low-cost housing. Then, we’ll check in on the economy of Northern Ireland 10 years after Brexit.

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In late May, Pope Leo XIV released Magnifica Humanitas. His first papal encyclical is an appeal for a more human-centered approach to artificial intelligence. Joining him at the Vatican for the unveiling was Anthropic co-founder, Chris Olah, and Father Brendan McGuire, pastor at St. Simon parish in Silicon Valley.

McGuire joined the priesthood after a career in tech and co-founded the Institute of Technology, Ethics and Culture — a joint initiative of the Vatican and Santa Clara University. He's one of a handful of religious leaders Anthropic has consulted on building ethics into AI.

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The last time Austan Goolsbee voted in an FOMC meeting, he was one of two policymakers opposed to cutting interest rates. Six months later, he doesn’t regret that dissent. In this episode, Kai catches up with the Chicago Fed president to discuss the central bank’s communication style, persistent inflation concerns, and former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s legacy. Plus: Beef prices are likely to keep climbing this year, it could take months to rebuild depleted oil reserves, and economists make a case that AI could drive more inflation.

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Former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan died today. He was 100. Greenspan served under four presidents in his five terms as central bank chair. This morning, we're joined by Julia Coronado — she’s the founder and president of MacroPolicy Perspectives and once worked alongside Greenspan — to discuss his economic legacy, his role in boosting Fed transparency, and his particular way of communicating. Then, from the latest season of Marketplace's "How We Survive," we dive into the ocean’s vast potential to store carbon.

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Congress is working on a bipartisan bill to address housing affordability by, among other things, making it easier to construct homes. One provision would place limits on the number of single-family homes that companies and institutional investors can purchase. The idea is to prevent deep-pocketed investors with all-cash offers from competing with regular buyers. Investors say they aren't the problem. So, who's right? This morning, we head to Las Vegas to find out. But first, businesses around the globe are pessimistic about how the war is affecting the economy.

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Nurses have a tough job. AI tools promise to take care of some of the more mundane and repetitive tasks that eat up so much time and, by extension, money in healthcare. But often these AI efficiency initiatives can be a bit top down without much consideration for how workers actually do their jobs. So, some nurses unions are bargaining over AI. Claire Keenan-Kurgan of Interlochen Public Radio has this story.

With midterm elections just months away, the top economic concern for voters is the cost of healthcare. That's according to a recent poll from the health policy nonprofit KFF.

With that in mind, the “Marketplace Morning Report” team traveled to southwest Alabama to learn more about how policy decisions at the national level lead to consequences for health care access in local communities across rural America.

Many of the people we met often have to travel hours for basic healthcare needs. And experts say that’s a fate that lies ahead for even more c...

“Marketplace Morning Report” host Kimberly Adams is back in the “Make Me Smart” podcast feed to share some reporting from a trip to southwest Alabama. It’s a deep dive on rural health care access — about 700 rural hospitals nationwide are at risk of closure, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.

Many of the headwinds are longstanding, but recent federal policy changes from the big Republican tax and spending law signed last year threaten to make the challenges more intense.

As those changes kick in, the “Marketplace Morning Report” wanted to better unders...

As high interest rates tamp down homebuying demand, more homebuilders are offering free appliances or upgraded hardware to sweeten the deal. Throwing in a free dishwasher is one thing, but how are they able to offer lower mortgage interest rates? In this episode, we check on the homebuilding sector. Plus: Hotel housekeepers say AI-driven app makes work more difficult, scientists design sunshades built for space, and a “talking book” nonprofit brings news and books to blind people.

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A planned summit in Switzerland between the U.S. and Iran was postponed due to a fresh round of Israeli strikes in Lebanon. Though Israel and Hezbollah have reportedly agreed to a ceasefire, the developments are leading to skepticism of a longer-term fix for the Middle East conflict. How are global markets taking this news, and how long might it take to get back to business as usual? Also: the EEOC eliminates federal workforce demographic-tracking requirements, and California buildings must limit "embodied carbon."

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This Juneteenth, we're checking in on the state of higher education among Black Americans. In 2024, the percentage of Black adults in the U.S. over the age of 25 who’d earned a bachelor's degree or a higher credential hit nearly 28%. That’s almost double what it was in the year 2000. Will the anti-DEI era change that trend? Then, brands have been spending big to reach U.S. Latino audiences during the World Cup.

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Meta responded to plummeting morale this week with a pledge to do better with company snacks. Plus, the new AI augmented reality smart glasses everyone's talking about, and not in a good way. But first, SpaceX is acquiring the AI coding startup Cursor a week after it's IPO took off like a rocket.

The company hit a $2.5 trillion valuation at one point, but has dropped since then. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Paresh Dace, senior writer at Wired, to learn more.

Kevin Warsh held his first press conference as Fed chair on Wednesday, and — unlike his precedessor — did not say what the central bank plans to do next. Despite his tight lips, markets read between the lines and predict a rate hike is coming soon. In this episode, why Warsh is rewriting the Fed’s communication style, and how it could alter the economy. Plus: Jobless claims tick down a bit, GPS shapes global infrastructure, and RV owners struggle to sell their vintage digs.

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While the Federal Reserve voted to keep interest rates steady yesterday, the path ahead for rates is far from certain. One big factor is artificial intelligence, which new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh thinks can help workers produce more, adding to the supply of whatever a company makes with the same resources. Today, we'll unpack the argument, then paint a picture of the labor market and dig into energy lessons from the 1970s.

The company behind the new electric Slate vehicle — which has a somewhat rudimentary, Tonka-truck-like frame — is highlighting its simplicity and affordability. Next week, we’re going to learn just how affordable it really is. And while some of Slate’s marketing is geared toward rural and working people, the reality is that driving EVs in those areas can still be a challenge. Then, Hollywood is backsliding on diversity, but that's not true for audiences.

AI has ushered in a golden age for scams. There are the deepfake kidnapping calls, the vibecoded ecommerce websites and one of the latest, according to a recent article in the Hollywood Reporter, is a casting scam targeting aspiring actors. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with labor and media reporter Katie Kilkenny who wrote about how this scheme typically unfolds.

Weddings are meant to be joyful milestones and a chance to show up for the people we love. But for many people today, being a part of a wedding can come with multi-day trips, expensive outfits, and financial pressure that leads to years of debt.

Reema is joined by cultural commentator Josh Lora and The Atlantic editor Annie Joy Williams to talk about the cost of being a wedding guest, why wedding culture is getting more expensive, and how to navigate the pressure to say yes.

Did you find a creative way to...

Retail sales were up 0.9% in May, which is a generally positive economic sign. But it doesn’t square with our reality, in which price inflation outpaces wage growth. That is, until you look at that pesky personal savings rate. In this episode, YOLO consumers in a grim economy. Plus: Fed Chair Warsh holds rates steady, the rate of new households is falling, and what would happen if the U.S. lost its global reserve currency status.

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What does the American Dream look like to you? Getting ahead? What about homeownership, raising a family, or financial security? This morning, we'll feature a discussion about generational differences in what success looks like and how the affordability crisis is forcing Americans to reevaluate what they're willing to sacrifice to get there. Also on the show: how retail sales data may factor into interest rate decisions and why Yum Brands is offloading Pizza Hut.

A recent report from the Social Security Board of Trustees finds that the fund that helps pay for retirement benefits will run out of money earlier than previously projected. This morning, we'll unpack when people's benefits will actually be hit, the Congressional inaction behind this bleak picture, and how immigration policy plays into all. But first, if the Straight of Hormuz reopens, there could be a glut of oil next year.

We can't avoid catastrophic warming without also capturing and storing carbon dioxide — both the carbon we've already emitted and the carbon we continue to emit through industries that are tough to decarbonize, like steel, petrochemicals, and cement.

Europe is a leader in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), with a goal of storing at least 50 million tons of captured CO2 a year by the end of this decade.

So this episode, we team up with Germany-based reporter Sam Baker from the DW podcast “Living Planet.” We follow carbon dioxide from its source at a cement...

Last week, the Trump Administration ordered Anthropic to cut off access to its most advanced AI models — Mythos 5 and the pared-down public version, Fable 5 — from foreign nationals due to reported security weaknesses in Fable's safeguards.

In response, Anthropic shut them down for everyone including the handful of companies that had been granted access to Mythos.

One of those companies is Mozilla, which said Mythos identified about 270 bugs in its Firefox browser that had slipped through previous reviews.

Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Mozilla chief technology officer Raffi Krikorian about...

Nvidia just joined the likes of Amazon and Alphabet in selling off billions of dollars in bonds. What do these tech giants need help financing? Data centers, of course, to support the buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure. For now, the cash is flowing, but when will these firms need to show some returns on those investments? Also in this episode: Commercial solar energy projects approach a deadline for federal tax credits, Fox enters the streaming wars by acquiring Roku, and Kai breaks down the history of post-FOMC press conferences.

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World leaders are meeting at the G7 in France, and one of the major topics is the diverse economic needs of Africa. The U.S. and Iran are also slated to sign a new peace deal on Friday. This morning, we'll discuss some headlines from the economic forum and how the war has affected African economies. Then, Corpus Christi’s water supply is reaching crisis levels, and one potential solution — a desalination plant — is sparking debate among area residents.