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Bytes: Week in Review — Apple unveils iPhone Air, researchers allege Meta suppressed child online safety research, and Waymo gets competition Sep 12, 2025

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Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Joanna Stern, senior personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal, to discuss all these topics and more. This episode was produced by Jesús Alvarado.

Bipartisan bill would help parents to monitor kids' social media for harmful activity Sep 11, 2025

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It’s challenging for parents to get access to their kids’ data to look out for online harms. In Congress, there's a bipartisan push to change that with a bill called Sammy's Law, named after a teen who died of fentanyl poisoning in 2021. He purchased drugs on social media.

Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Will Oremus, tech news analysis writer at The Washington Post, who’s been monitoring the bill's progress.

The latest iPad update comes with laptop functionality Sep 10, 2025

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Fifteen years ago, then-CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad. His vision was for a lean-back device used mostly to consume content. Now, with the latest iPadOS 26, the device is evolving into something different — and perhaps something more useful. Craig Grannell got early access to iPadOS 26 and wrote about the system's laptop-like qualities in Wired magazine.

Using AI to simplify criminal record expungement Sep 09, 2025

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A lot of people are eligible to have their criminal records expunged. And there are tens of millions of such files out there for things like misdemeanors, low-level felonies such as drug offenses and even just arrests. LegalEase, a justice-tech startup is streamlining the process through the use of artificial intelligence.

Have video games become unaffordable? Sep 08, 2025

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Video gaming can be an expensive hobby. Nintendo’s latest Mario Kart game, Mario Kart World, released in June, costs $80, and it’s widely expected that Grand Theft Audio VI, coming out next year, will top $100. So are games becoming unaffordable … or do gamers not know how good they’ve got it? The BBC’s Will Chalk breaks it down.

Bytes: Week in Review — Google antitrust verdict, Trump's crypto stake, and AI angst Sep 05, 2025

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The Trump family took their digital token public this week. Plus, artificial intelligence is generating angst in Silicon Valley.

But first, Google’s antitrust case over its search business ended this week with a punishment far short of what the government sought. Google could have been forced to sell off its Chrome browser or stop paying Apple and others to make it the default search engine. Instead, a federal judge said all the company has to do is share some of its search data with rivals.

Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, a reporter at The Information, to discuss all of this and more.

Police departments quietly disable AI-generated report safeguards Sep 04, 2025

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Axon, a company that makes policing equipment, developed new software called Draft One that takes recordings from police cameras and uses artificial intelligence to summarize them into incident reports.

Many police departments trying out the tool are not disclosing that they're using AI to write reports, according to a Mother Jones investigation. That potentially leaves both prosecutors and defense attorneys in the blind — despite safeguards Axon built into its software to prevent this very scenario, and to remove errors or AI hallucinations.

Marketplace’s Nova Safo spoke with investigative journalist Tekendra Parmar who reported the story for Mother Jones.

Can you buy wins in sports or the AI talent wars? Sep 03, 2025

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Big Tech companies have been in an all-out bidding war to capture top AI researchers and engineers. Companies like Meta have reportedly been offering compensation packages in the hundreds of millions of dollars. They're the kind of eye-watering sums you usually only hear about in pro sports. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino explores whether this strategy of collecting expensive superstars will pay off for Big Tech firms looking to win the AI race.

Is grieving with AI a healthy way to cope? Sep 02, 2025

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More and more people are using generative AI to “resurrect” deceased loved ones. There are tools that can turn an old photograph into a short animation or create entire "AI clones" trained on old audio, video or written diaries. These technological advancements are taking memorializing the dead to a whole new level, but is it healthy? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to psychologist Elaine Kasket, who specializes in mental health issues and technology, for some answers.

"Organs on a chip" help researchers better understand diseases like endometriosis Sep 01, 2025

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Endometriosis is a condition in which the tissue that typically lines the uterus grows outside of it instead, often causing intense pain and infertility. MIT researchers are studying that living tissue on plastic chips in the lab, with bioengineer Linda Griffith leading the effort.

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