| Time is running out! | | Make your year-end tax-deductible donation to Marketplace. Listener support is what keeps our reporting independent — free from paywalls, corporate influence, and accessible to all. |
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Hi there, This newsletter is on a break for the holidays, but we’re coming to you with a special issue looking back at our staff’s favorite interviews of 2025. Inside, you’ll find one great listen from each of our shows. It’s just a taste of all the great reporting our generous listeners helped power this year.
Federal funding for public media was eliminated this fall. Stations around the country are under strain, and Marketplace is not immune. We need your continued support to face the challenges ahead and deliver even more in 2026. Let’s build on this year’s momentum together. If you can, consider making a tax-deductible donation today. Thanks, and we’ll see you next year!
— Tony Wagner, newsletter editor |
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| Maria Hollenhorst/Marketplace | | “We are here because Cumberland County is the future.” |
| — ADP chief economist Nela Richardson |
Cumberland County is mostly rural, and sits about halfway between Nashville and Knoxville. Around a third of its residents are 65 years or older, compared to just 18% in the U.S. as a whole. So why is this place the future?
As baby boomers age and birth rates fall, an ever-larger chunk of the population is hitting retirement age. Prime-age workers, that’s people between 25 and 54 years old, helped drive the U.S. economy in the 20th century, but
now make up a shrinking share of the U.S. labor force. We traveled to Cumberland County and several other places around the country and across the pond in 2025 to learn how shifting demographics reshape economies as part of our series with ADP, “The Age of Work.”
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| Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images |
| “When we try to calculate the different cost options — yeah, it's virtually impossible. I think a lot about the impact of immigration and the ICE activity … When it comes time to hire a crew, I have no idea what that's going to look like.” |
| — Lucie Russo, development events manager at LAist | |
A year ago next week, the Eaton Fire in Southern California killed more than a dozen people and destroyed nearly 10,000 structures — most of them homes. The Los Angeles-area wildfires displaced tens of thousands of people, including Russo and “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio. Brancaccio wrote and spoke
about losing his home throughout the year, including a misadventure returning his destroyed internet router to AT&T to avoid a fee. Six months after the blaze, Russo and Brancaccio — not only neighbors but coworkers at American Public Media Group — compared notes about their uncertain path toward rebuilding. |
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| Courtesy Hannah Sanborn | | “I had to prove that I earned this job, that I can keep this job. Like, ‘I'm worthless if I can't keep a job. I failed. I failed my parents, I failed myself.’ I didn't want to have to face any of it.” |
| — Hanna Sanborn, a single mom to twins | |
Our podcast “This Is Uncomfortable” is going weekly this year (listen to the trailer and subscribe here) but we’re still thinking about this episode from last season, “Will you be my nanny?”
Sanborn’s children were born months before their due date; by the time they left the NICU, Sanborn had just one week of maternity leave left — and child care costs higher than her rent. Meanwhile her best friend and coworker, Bryer Rossi, was burnt out, desperate to quit but unable to afford it.
The coworkers used to joke about Rossi quitting to watch Sanborn’s kids, but soon the joke became real, and changed the way they saw each other, and themselves, forever. | | | |
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| Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images | | “There are some businesses that are all around just deciding not to hire and just bootstrap and stockpile as much as they can, because they don’t know what tomorrow really looks like.” |
| — Marlon Hyde, business reporter at WABE in Atlanta |
On our podcast “Make Me Smart,” host Kimberly Adams has been chatting with public radio journalists all around the country. One of our favorite chats was with Hyde, who gave us a glimpse into how immigration raids and tariffs have been affecting both big and small businesses in Georgia, from
a large Hyundai plant to Hyde’s mother’s food truck business. Have you seen the price of oxtail lately? |
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| Jonathan Blutinger |
| “I have to say, when it went into the pan it looked very chicken-y!” |
| — Francis Lam, host of American Public Media’s “The Splendid Table” | Speaking of food: We hear all the time that one of the best things we can do for the climate, as individuals, is eat less meat.
This season, our climate podcast “How We Survive” delved into food. We visited regenerative ranches, factory farms, and labs that are producing fake steak and chocolate
with a sort of 3D printer.
But is this meat too deep in the uncanny valley to stomach? Host (and longtime vegetarian) Amy Scott called up Lam to do a taste test with cultivated chicken. Lam, Scott, and chef Samin Nosrat also contributed climate-friendly cooking techniques and recipes into a mini cookbook you can get on our site. |
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| Getty Images | | “We’re getting more words, more quickly in a new way than before.” |
| — Adam Aleksic, linguist and author of "Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language." |
A classic example of so-called Algospeak: “Unalive,” coined by TikTok users because the platform suppresses content with the word “kill.” But censorship isn’t the only force driving online language, Aleksic told “Marketplace Tech.” Social media creates echo chambers that foster niche terminology, and incentivizes users to jump on trending terms and run them in to the ground. The result is a much faster |
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If Marketplace has helped you make smarter decisions this year, now is the moment to give. The deadline is December 31, and your support will determine what’s possible for Marketplace in the year ahead. | | | |
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| “Whether it's from social media, people you're following, there's this assumption that, ‘Oh, if they're not giving me gifts…’ It just is so based in money. But, like, what if they don't got it like that, but they're a great person, and they make you laugh and you're having fun?” |
| — Aja Evans, author and financial therapist |
When you go on a date, how do you decide who pays? When you have a conflict with your partner over money, what’s the best way to talk about it? No matter how old you are, mixing money and romance can get awkward real quick! Evans came on “Financially Inclined,”
our series for young people, host Yanely Espinal talked with Evans about why it’s important to be upfront with people you’re dating — and yourself — about expectations and circumstances around money. |
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| Binglin Hu | | “Before I started investing, my money wasn’t really doing anything. If I invest, I can make more interest than if I put my money in a bank.” |
| — Joshua, age 10, from California |
We have podcasts for even younger listeners too! This season “Million Bazillion” taught kids — and sometimes their adults — about government shutdowns, financial bubbles and
how people make money in the stock market.
We also heard from Joshua and his dad Michael, who gave the young investor a choice: Let the “bank of dad” hold on to his money for a year in exchange for a 6% return, or put his lunch money in the real market — with parental supervision. Joshua chose the latter. He told us watching his investment has been a little stressful. Michael said his son bought a valuable lesson is risk and reward, no matter the return. | | | |
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