Marketplace All-in-One

The Trump administration has reportedly been in talks to bail out Spirit Airlines, either with a big loan or by buying it. The budget airline had already been struggling, and now faces even tougher times with higher fuel costs. But does that justify bailing it out? Plus, an upstate New York toy and doll shop owner reflects on the stop-start jolts of U.S. trade policy and the challenges of the tariff refund process.

We've talked a lot about the rollercoaster of tariffs. But behind every economic story is a human one, too. This morning, we check in with Joann Cartiglia, who runs a toy and doll shop in upstate New York. She's looking at around $15,000 in tariff refunds. Still, uncertainty, precarity, and debt have put her in "the scariest financial situation" of her life and mean that retirement has “been kind of taken off the table.” But before that conversation: a Federal Reserve meeting and a royal visit with the president.

“Million Bazillion” listeners and brothers John and Peter want to know where game shows get their prize money. It’s the perfect opportunity to answer this question as Ryan and Bridget find themselves competing on a chaotic game show with a chance to win $1 million on the line. While they take on one challenge after another, the duo uncover the surprising ways game shows get the cash for those big prizes.

If your family is interested in learning even more about today’s question, check out our website. We’ve got conversation starters and a tip sheet!

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The International Math Olympiad is a yearly competition for students, most of them high school age, who compete to solve six difficult math problems. They're chosen from a pool of math problems submitted by different countries that participate in the competition.

The problems that don't make the cut previously have mostly just been lost; there was no one place you could go to find them.

But now a team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab has gathered over 30,000 of those problems together in one dataset so both humans and AI models can look through and study them.

Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Mark Hamilton, a visiting researcher at MIT CSAIL who has been part of the work to gather problems. He’s also a Research Scientist at Google's DeepMind laboratory.

It’s been a trend for a year now — home prices are up even though demand is sluggish. As Americans face growing economic uncertainty and rising costs, many are staying put. So why won’t home prices cool off? We’ll explain. Also in this episode: Tighter budgets mean fewer orders at Domino’s, air taxis take to the sky in New York City, and banks fret over new stablecoin legislation.

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