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The used car market is out of control and there doesn’t seem to be an easy fix for high prices. Today, three reasons why finding an affordable car is so difficult.
Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.
Your Next Listen
— Prepping for a rainy day and higher used car prices
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Whether it’s oil from Venezuela or somewhere else, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve needs to be refilled. The SPR is widely considered critical for energy security. On today’s show, the challenges to refilling the reserves at a time of high federal debt and climbing gas prices.
Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez.
Your Next Listen
— So… how long before these oil prices get REALLY bad?
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Follow us to Tennessee where hemp farmers are already pivoting in the face of a state ban and soon, a looming federal ban on basically all THC-derived hemp products. Will Congress step in to save this $28 billion industry?
Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.
Your Next Listen
— How would-be weed merchants hit a ‘grass ceiling’
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This week’s indicators: Tracking your pain at the gas pump in real-time; OpenAI’s IPO hard-launch tug-of-war; one unexpected ingredient is making fertilizer—and potentially your groceries—a whole lot more expensive.
Fact checking by Schuyler Swenson.
Your Next Listen
— What Iran teaches us about why wars start
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A vital artery for Saudi oil exports is under siege and it’s not the Strait of Hormuz. Today on the show, we explain what’s going on in the Bab el-Mandeb shipping lane connected to the Red Sea, why it’s important, and why the global oil crisis is poised to get even worse.
Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.
Your Next Listen
— Fixing the oil crisis might not fix the Persian Gulf
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Big tech companies are borrowing billions of dollars to finance the build-out of AI data centers, and your 401(k) might be helping to fuel that. Today on the show, what AI hyperscalers are doing to the bond market.
Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.
Your Next Listen
— Who's financing Meta's massive AI data center?
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Flock cameras promise to reduce crimes like car theft. But these automated license plate readers come with a trade-off: a wide-reaching surveillance network. Today on the show, does Flock actually make communities safer?
Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.
Your Next Listen
— Stuck In China’s Panopticon
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It’s time for another Indicator Quiz! For today’s quiz, we’re testing the Indicator knowledge of a brilliant mathematician. Will we stump his theoretician brain? Tune in and find out!
Interested in being a contestant on our next Indicator Quiz? Email us your name and phone number to indicator@npr.org and put "Indicator Quiz" in the subject.
Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.
Your Next Listen
— An urban planner, infinite scroll, and … what is a public good?
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This week’s indicators: Is The U.S. Treasury Department futzing with financial markets?; Is Patagonia’s pretty picturesque setting … for data centers?; Was the summer box office actually swell?
Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.
Your Next Listen
— A Treasury showdown with the bond market
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Our favorite entry on the regional economy from the latest Beige Book reveals a troubling development in higher education.
Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.
Your Next Listen
— Community colleges are kind of underrated
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