Marketplace All-in-One

The House of Representatives might’ve voted on a short-term spending solution on the debt ceiling, but one of our listeners is still wondering where the debt limit came from and why it’s a thing. We’ll get into the history, which goes back to World War I. Plus, we’ll answer your questions about retirement, carbon capture and the landscape services industry.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

Read the transcript here.

Our show needs your voice! Tell us what you think of the show or ask a question for our hosts to answer! Send a voice memo or give us a call at 508-82-SMART (508-827-6278).

The child care industry was struggling even before the pandemic. Costs are high for parents who need the service to enable them to work, yet employee wages rank low among professions. Now, some 80% of day care centers are short-staffed. Experts say the $39 billion in relief outlined in the American Rescue Plan may only be a crutch for the problems that plague the field. Also on the program: Consumers are adapting to inflation, what the bump in Social Security payments means for recipients and we hear from a Black entrepreneur who’s operating a brewery and building community.

Companies are going to start sharing their earning for the third quarter, which gives us a window into how the economy is looking. Joining us for that discussion is Susan Schmidt. We look into how child care centers are chipping away at the labor shortage with each hire they make. Felicia Wong of the Roosevelt Institute chats with us about economic resilience among the nations in the G7.

The Biden administration is set to announce today that the port of Los Angeles will expand to around-the-clock operations in an effort to help untangle the supply chain. Thousands of Kaiser Permanente health care workers in California and Oregon are poised to strike over pay and working conditions. Dozens of countries around the globe pledge to cut down on methane emissions, which have steadily emerged as a climate threat.

From the BBC World Service: The International Energy Agency is warning that the world needs to spend trillions of dollars more on new sources of clean energy if it is to hit agreed targets on climate change.

Mining is a complicated business. It’s destructive, it’s dangerous. But in order to get the lithium we need to power the energy transition, mining could be a necessary evil.

In this episode, we go from protests in South America to a gold mine in Nevada, where we take a ride on what looks like a massive Tonka truck, all in the hopes of finding out if there’s a better way to do things while getting the metal we need to survive.

After talking to mining experts, environmental justice advocates and a very vocal CEO, we get some answers.

During the pandemic, a lot of school districts loaned laptops, tablets or other devices to students who didn’t have their own. And many of those schools installed software on the devices that can track what a student is searching for and looking at. School administrators say they need to monitor students this way so they can flag a kid who is in trouble. But do students and their parents actually know they’re being tracked and in what ways? Marketplace’s Marielle Segarra speaks with Elizabeth Laird, the director of the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Equity in Civic Technology Project, who has recently done research on this.

We’ve gone from lead-acid batteries in our cars to the lithium-ion batteries that power our phones and devices in a relatively short amount of time.

The next generation of batteries will need to be big enough to power homes, cities and our electrical grid because experts believe that’ll be key to our transition away from fossil fuels.

“Batteries have really been called the glue of the clean-energy economy because … the wind doesn’t always blow, the sun doesn’t always shine … and so we need to have not only enough storage for the few minutes or the few hours between uses, but we need to be able to provide that super-high-reliability storage for hours, days, weeks and seasons,” said Dan Kammen, an energy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and adviser for innovative energy solutions at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Our current go-to battery technology is lithium ion. But there are so many other technologies coming online that will become the core of our clean energy economy.

On today’s show: one of the most hopeful climate-related deep dives we’ve had in a while. We’ll talk with Kammen about some of the latest battery technology and what it’s going to take to make it cheaper, greener and accessible to all.

Side note: Molly Wood is doing a whole podcast on lithium batteries called “How We Survive.” Don’t forget to subscribe!

In the news fix, we get hard numbers on how climate change is affecting people all over the world and explain the latest fight over vaccine mandates in Texas.

Plus, a listener gives us a firsthand account of the oil spill off the coast of Southern California, and an answer to the Make Me Smart question that will get you thinking about your toothbrush.

When you’re done listening, tell your Echo device to “make me smart” for our daily explainers. This week we’ll explain the global supply chain mess, a new form of advertising in the NBA, and the cult success of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter! You can find the latest issue here.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

Read the transcript here.

Though unemployment levels are dipping, some 4.3 million people left their jobs in August, according to a new Bureau of Labor Statistics report. The “quits rate” is up to 2.9% — the highest it’s been since the BLS started tracking it. This employee exodus is partially fueling the worker shortage in industries like food services, health care, manufacturing and public education. We’ll also discuss how China’s tutoring regulations have impacted some Americans who teach English as a second language, how index funds revolutionized investing, and what Wendy’s and Google’s partnership could mean for a drive-thru near you.

Thousands of people have died from COVID, and many of them didn’t leave behind a will. That leaves the probate court to figure out what to do with a person’s money, debt and property. Also today: Michael Schumacher joins us to discuss how the markets are dealing with the question of inflation. In Texas, the governor has issued an order that bans private companies from issuing vaccine mandates.