Much of the western United States dealt with scorching temperatures over the past week, with some parts of California reaching more than 110 degrees Fahrenheit. That state is in a multiyear drought, and some residents are allowed to water their gardens and lawns only one day per week. Texas, Nevada and New Mexico are also experiencing severe droughts, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So, farmers have to be especially careful about how they use precious resources like water. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Jill McCluskey, a professor of sustainability at Washington State University’s School of Economic Sciences, about how smart tech in agriculture can help.

The Federal Trade Commission is suing data analytics firm Kochava, alleging the company sold sensitive geolocation data from hundreds of millions of mobile devices. The FTC argues that the data could reveal users’ visits to sensitive places, like abortion providers or addiction recovery centers. It’s the latest step in FTC Chair Lina Khan’s mission to increase government oversight of companies that traffic in consumer data. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams recently spoke with Megan Gray, founder and CEO of GrayMatters Law & Policy to discuss the significance of this case.

Advanced computer programs influence, and can even dictate, meaningful parts of our lives. Think of streaming services, credit scores, facial recognition software. As this technology becomes more sophisticated and more pervasive, it’s important to understand the basic terminology. On this Labor Day, we’re revisiting an episode in which we explore the terms “algorithm,” “machine learning” and “artificial intelligence,” which are often used interchangeably. There is some overlap, but they’re not the same things. We decided to call up a few experts to help us get a firm grasp on these concepts.

California’s Legislature passed the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act this week. The bill would add website design and age verification requirements for apps and sites likely to be used by kids under the age of 18. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Jen King, a privacy and data policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

This week, NASA postponed a highly anticipated rocket launch after discovering an issue with one of the engines. It delayed a key stage of the space agency’s Artemis missions, which aim to eventually establish a long-term human presence on the moon’s surface and begin building a lunar economy. Part of that is extracting precious metals and minerals to bring back to Earth. NASA hopes to get the Artemis 1 rocket off the ground in the coming days, and speed is of the essence. The U.S. and China are in a new space race to get humans to the moon. “Marketplace’s” Kimberly Adams speaks with Peter Garretson, a senior fellow in defense studies at the American Foreign Policy Council.

If you’re listening to or have already listened to the beginning of this episode, you probably noticed that the voice introducing Kimberly Adams sounded a bit off, right? That’s because it’s an audio “deepfake,” and it was created by Yisroel Mirsky at the Offensive AI Research Lab through a process called voice cloning. It uses software to study a short sample of someone’s voice and create a deepfake, which in this case took only 15 seconds to generate, according to Mirsky. It’s far from a perfect replica, but it turns out that scammers recently started to use deepfake audio for phone scams and in some cases have even succeeded. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Kyle Alspach, a cybersecurity reporter with Protocol, about how the tech behind audio deepfakes works and how they’re being used in phone scams.

The pulp and paper industry is ranked the fourth-biggest contributor to global warming among manufacturing sectors in the United States. That’s not just because it destroys a large number of trees that would otherwise be capturing huge amounts of carbon. The whole cycle of felling trees, transporting them and using coal- and gas-fired processes to turn them into pulp is highly polluting. Marketplace’s European correspondent, Stephen Beard, has the story of the “deprinter” device that seeks to reduce the industry’s carbon emissions.

Online shopping can be full of pop-ups and distractions, as well as some traps and misdirection. If you can find the Unsubscribe or Cancel button, even that tool might not release you completely. And that’s intentional. “Marketplace’s” Kimberly Adams speaks with Harry Brignull, a user-experience specialist based in the United Kingdom. He calls these design strategies “dark patterns,” and he’s been documenting them for over a decade.

Bashing Big Tech has become something of a rare, unifying pastime in these divided times. But more nuanced views, in our world of thumbs up and crying emoji, can be harder to pin down. Researchers from the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University want to shed more light on the attitudes of Americans more broadly and how they view our biggest tech firms. The Center worked with YouGov on its latest poll, which found there’s plenty of distrust. But in the words of a Facebook relationship status — it’s complicated. Marketplace Tech received exclusive, advance access to the center’s latest poll results. Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Taylor Barkley, technology and innovation director at CGO to discuss which companies people trust or distrust and the various distinctions behind those trust issues.

As much as parents worry about children and screen time, there’s a growing market of video game-based apps designed to help kids work through their feelings. Now the Medicaid program in Wisconsin will cover the cost of at least one of those apps. We talked to a family in the state who tried it out.