Anthropic is taking a big step towards a blockbuster stock listing that would rank among the biggest IPOs ever. Patrick Sison/AP Photo hide caption
October 26, 2026 • The AI company, which makes the popular Claude chatbot, has filed for an initial public offering that could be one of the biggest ever.
Ad campaign from World ID featuring life-sized captchas that surprised pedestrians on the streets of Berlin, Singapore and Buenos Aires in March 2025. Marcos Brindicci/Getty Images hide caption
October 26, 2026 • There are now more bots than humans online. What does that mean for how we experience the internet? Can bots and humans peacefully coexist online?
Is private equity changing our food culture? Getty Images/Tetra/Winslow Productions/Photo Illustration by NPR hide caption
October 26, 2026 • Does private equity turn restaurants into zombified husks of their former selves?
Pedestrians walk beneath security cameras in Brooklyn. Mario Tama/Getty Images hide caption
October 23, 2026 • For years, police have spent billions of tax dollars on watching us, tracking us, and recording us. In the largest police department in the country, these surveillance systems were paid for and adopted without the kind of public oversight cities usually require.
Consumers shop for meat on May 22, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. High demand and shrinking herds have driven prices for beef to near-record highs. Scott Olson/Getty Images hide caption
October 23, 2026 • According to the latest government data, inflation is up 3.7 percent since last September. People are struggling to pay for things like rent, gas, electricity, and groceries. We talk to a personal finance expert about how to handle tough and uncertain economic times.
Meta has limited how many hyperlinks Facebook Pages can post through a subscription Tony Avelar/AP Photo hide caption
October 23, 2026 • Social media sites aren't the biggest fans of people leaving via hyperlinks. In fact, Meta has made it subscription-worthy for a Facebook Page to post more than two hyperlinks per month. What's the rationale for companies want to keep you on their site?
Left: Democrat Olaleye Onikuyide, 28, is running for state representative in Connecticut. Right: Republican Lukas Schubert, 21, is campaigning for reelection as a state representative in Montana. Both candidates are focusing on a lack of affordable housing in their states. Raquel C. Zaldívar and Sarah Mosquera for NPR hide caption
October 23, 2026 • Young candidates who rent or live with parents say their generation is "in the thick" of the country's housing affordability crisis. They argue this gives them new energy to solve it for everyone.
October 23, 2026 • This week’s notable indicators: A distressing credit warning for CoreWeave, a Pokémon heist, and depleted maple syrup reserves in Canada.
A worker in a mahjong workshop in Taixing, China, inspects each tile to ensure there are no imperfections before they're shipped off to the U.S. and sold for hundreds of dollars a set. Jasmine Ling/NPR hide caption
October 22, 2026 • Shoppers in the U.S. are willing to spend hundreds of dollars for a mahjong set. In the eastern Chinese city of Taixing, manufacturers can barely keep up with the demand.
The mahjong sets trending in the U.S. are smaller and more colorful than traditional mahjong sold in China. American-style mahjong tiles are made from acrylic — a material that requires different production techniques and machinery. Jasmine Ling/NPR hide caption
October 22, 2026 • Chinese manufacturers have not had it easy these past few years, with U.S. tariffs as well as the wars in Ukraine and Iran pushing up their costs and shrinking profits.
October 22, 2026 • Sitting at a desk all day hurts. And it isn't good for us. Strategies to make it a little more comfortable, from eye muscle exercises to alleviate eye strain to a back pain-fighting body movement.
PLACEHOLDER FOR DRONE VIDEO An Amazon data center, currently under construction, is seen in Cuarte, Spain on September 29, 2026. The Spanish region of Aragon is seeing a huge surge in data center construction which has alarmed many local residents due to their high energy use, noise pollution and heat generation. Amazon alone is building 30 data center buildings, according to papers the company filed with the regional government. The Aragon regional government has offered Amazon, Microsoft, and other tech companies tax breaks to build there. Local residents say that the government has appropriate land agains the will of the owners to pave the way for the centers and their infrastructure to be built. (Photo by Michael Robinson Chávez for National Public Radio) Michael Robinson Chávez for NPR/for NPR hide caption
October 22, 2026 • A drought-stricken region of northeast Spain has become a focus for American companies searching for locations to place their data centers.
For-sale signs are posted in front of condominiums for sale in July in Los Angeles. A new analysis from the Center for Responsible Lending finds that the average renter household now needs 16 years to save for a down payment and closing costs. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption
October 22, 2026 • A new analysis finds that the average renter household now needs 16 years to save for a down payment and closing costs. Rising rents and other costs have consumed a growing share of household budgets.
October 22, 2026 • Elections are more expensive than ever, but are campaign donations going to the races where they’ll make the most impact? Today, we talk to the startup co-founder of Oath who believes there’s a smarter way to allocate individual donations.
Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are by Mona Chalabi Random House hide caption
October 21, 2026 • Should money and class figure more prominently in how we identify ourselves? Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist Mona Chalabi thinks yes. Today on the show, a conversation with Mona, author of the forthcoming book Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are.
October 21, 2026 • Polling is facing an existential crisis. People aren't picking up the phone. Nobody wants to talk to pollsters. Trust is on the line. We pluck a solution from the economics canon and convince a polling firm to let us test it.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, center, reacts while presenting the certification of Boeing's 737 Max 10 aircraft to Jim Williams, Boeing 737 Development Program chief engineer, at left, and Chris Payne, Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president and program manager, 737 Development Programs, right, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, at Boeing's factory in Everett, Wash. Lindsey Wasson/AP hide caption
October 21, 2026 • Nearly a decade after Boeing unveiled its largest 737 Max jet, the company has cleared a major hurdle in its effort to bring the plane to airlines.
October 20, 2026 • Research on past recessions suggests downturns can accelerate automation. That raises the specter of a double whammy for workers.
October 20, 2026 • Here's what's behind the fluctuating costs of everyday grocery items such as ground beef, eggs and chocolate chip cookies.
Employees raised the alarm about minors appearing in sexual content on the app, which viewers could pay to access and the company would profit from — a potential financial crime. They also flagged that users under 18 were using loopholes to bypass age-restricted content and to block parents and guardians from reviewing their activity on the app. Imen Ben Youssef/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
October 20, 2026 • The warnings surfaced in a trove of unreported court records. "I have been fighting about fixing this for months with people who didn't think the harms are severe enough," wrote one executive.
October 20, 2026 • The United States national debt is running at more than $40 trillion dollars. It’s a potential crisis in the making, but President Donald Trump suggested it can all be solved just by inflating the debt away. Today, we dig into the nitty gritty on how and when inflating the national debt could work.
October 19, 2026 • Oracle, the multinational tech giant has taken on a lot of loans to build up its AI capacity. But Oracle’s investors are not happy with this piling debt load. We explain why Oracle is such a pivotal player — and potentially weak link — in the AI-fueled economy.
Noah Adams hosted NPR's All Things Considered for 18 years. His soft voice and vivid writing helped define the network's sound for a generation of Americans. Antony Nagelmann/NPR hide caption
October 18, 2026 • One of NPR's most gifted storytellers, his soft voice and vivid writing helped define the network's sound for a generation of Americans.
A flight of wedding cake samples at a Publix supermarket in Vestavia Hills, Ala., on Sept. 23. Cake flavors from left to right are red velvet, carrot cake, chocolate and vanilla. Filling flavors from left to right are raspberry, vanilla custard, cookies-and-cream mousse and strawberry. Stephan Bisaha hide caption
October 17, 2026 • About a third of couples are willing to save money on cake and dessert, according to the wedding-planning site Zola.
