The Indicator from Planet Money - SNAP strains, youth baseball's class divide, and Meta's bug bounty

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

This week our top indicators include changes to the funding model for SNAP, private equity’s influence on youth baseball and Meta’s attempt to find flaws in its brand new AI assistant. Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.Your Next Listen –Why Trump's spending bill could close your grocery store–Over 2,000 episodes in our archive on the NPR AppConnect with The Indicator from Planet Money–The Indicator newsletter — a weekly roundup of news, ideas and staff picks. –Instagram, TikTok and YouTube –Find the Planet Money book –Find the Planet Money game, Sell Me A Sasquatch, and other merch at the NPR Shop!Support public media by subscribing to NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong. I'm Ricky Mulvey. I'm Adrienne Ma and this is Indicators of the Week. It's the show where we share our favorite numbers from the news. Today we'll be covering food benefits, America's favorite pastime, and meta's war against bugs. That's coming up after the break.

So it's Indicators the Week. Up to bat first, we have Waylon Wong. No Joy in Mudville. my indicator has to do with a change to the funding model for SNAP, which is the government's food assistance program. The federal government is drastically scaling back how much of the administrative costs it will cover for states. The feds in the states used to split these costs 50-50. Now under a change that took effect this month, states will be on the hook for 75% of these costs. That is my indicator, 75%.

So how much money are we actually talking about here? The federal government estimates that I will save about $17 billion over the next five years. That works out to around $3 billion a year. So states have to come up with this money now. Yes, and this is the challenge. The Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown Law crunch the numbers, and it says some states with above-average poverty rates like Mississippi and West Virginia will see their snap cost quadruple or more. Jeez. I know.

These states are going to have to either cut other programs or raise taxes. And that might be tough on residents who are already struggling. Yeah, or states might have to reduce access to SNAP. I mean, lots of Americans have already lost their SNAP benefits because of changes of the program. Yeah. So under the so-called one big beautiful bill, the federal government expanded work requirements for SNAP last year. Then after that, you saw SNAP participation fall. There was one estimate from the center on budget and policy priorities that says participation is down,

13%. That's more than 5 million people who used to get these food benefits and don't anymore. I mean, just in the anxiety spiral, is there a possibility that some states will just not offer SNAP at all? I mean, that would be the most extreme option. But last year, more than 20 governors signed an open letter saying they could be forced to leave the SNAP program entirely because it's going to be so hard to replace this federal funding. Okay. Let's move to Adrian. Adrian, what is your indicator? So my indicator is $10,000 a year. That is how much some parents are spending to have one six-year-old child play in a youth travel baseball league. Oh, my gosh. I believe it, though.

I'm a parent in the suburbs. I believe this. We're not talking about your parents' little league baseball or softball team that's run by volunteers. We're talking about a for-profit league of the kind run by companies that are worth tens of millions of dollars. Oh, this shows getting darker and darker. That is right. This number actually came from a Wall Street Journal article about the growing industry around youth baseball, specifically leagues that are owned and operated by private equity firms. And private equity, sometimes they add debt, raise prices. That's kind of their thing. And they're showing up everywhere now because you think about there's all these restaurant chains and dry cleaners and car washes and now we're throwing youth baseball onto the pile.

Yeah, add America's pastime to the list. As we know, private equity is good at making money, and in this case, they are making it from the parents. So some of examples of the kinds of things they're paying for in these leagues, they often get charged an admission fee to attend a game, which could really add up if you're attending dozens of games. They also can easily spend a couple hundred dollars a year on a special app that tracks their kids' stats

or even a subscription service that live streams their games. And those costs are on top. of what they're already spending on equipment and travel. It's such a shame. It's America's pastime. I grew up playing it with families of all income ranges and it's a community game. I mean, there is a quote from the story that really sticks out to me. It's from a youth baseball coach who says, quote, it's really a white collar sport now.

There's a ton of kids that should be playing at a high level that can't play because they can't afford it. And the story goes on to provide a pretty telling stat, which is from a nonprofit trade group called the Sport Sports and Fitness Industry Association. They said over the past decade or so, frequent participation in baseball has fallen by 28% among families with income below $100,000 a year. But it's increased 21% among families making over $100,000 a year. So it's the K-shaped economy showing up in youth sports, which is maybe something we had seen intuitively, but now we've got some numbers to back it up.

Batting cleanup, Ricky Mulvey. steal for home. Let's go. My indicator is about Muse. This is the AI agent from the artist formerly known as Facebook. It's on fire right now. As I'm sure you know, Muse was the fastest AI app to reach 5 million downloads and hit that in about three weeks. Wow. Well, as someone who still uses Facebook, I feel like every time I logged on, I would just get a big blaring thing at the top of the screen asking me to check it out.

So I think they got enough people to do that. with their insistent messaging. It's a powerful marketing machine. And Muse is different because it can take actions on your behalf. It can respond to emails or even make purchases if you give it your credit card. Wayland, let it do its thing on whatnot for you. Oh, no, no, no. Meta launched this for free air quotes and put a heavy marketing push around it like you saw.

And I am somewhat ashamed to say. I have downloaded and used Muse. I've named my bot Medi. Oh, so you're one of the five million. What did you have Muse do for you? Did it shop for you? I've used it for, like, comparing car insurance quotes. It's been really useful for that.

It's less useful when it sees your calendar, and it's like having a random boss enter your life where they're like, hey, have you followed up on this email? It's like, no, stop bothering me about this bot. Like, I already have a boss. I don't need two. Get a second one from Muse's meta. Or meta's muse.

Anyway, the app's growth is not my indicator. Mine is a smaller number, and that is $300,000. This is the maximum amount of money that META will pay anyone for something called a bug bounty. Oh, I've heard of these. It's like software companies offer these, right? If anyone finds a bug and reports it, then you can be compensated for your trouble. Yeah, it's not new, but there are cybersecurity issues with Mews, the furry and friendly-looking AI agent. Turns out it was released with some serious cybersecurity holes.

That would be a big problem if you gave Muse a lot of control, like over your credit card info or whatever. Yeah, and you know what? Meta didn't spot this. It was a cybersecurity researcher named Patrick Wardle, who noticed and warned his followers on social media. He found something called a zero-day flaw. It's like a trap door that would allow a bad actor to invisibly control your muse agent directly. Oh, my goodness. Well, this would have been a perfect opportunity for Patrick Wardle to become like a new brand of supervillain. We should be grateful that the patch of wardels of the world are reporting these bugs instead of trying to exploit them for their own personal gain. Yeah, because in this case, anything you gave Mews access to, a hacker could have gotten access to. And that's a real problem if the agent has permission to, let's say, use your credit card to go shopping on whatnot, not naming any names here.

Or if they have your address and your calendar or what if they get access to, I don't know, like you're my chart or something with your doctor's office. Well, then it can just make health decisions on your behalf. Give it your power of attorney. Right. Oh, gosh. To Mehta's credit, Patrick says that Meta fixed the bug a couple of days later. I don't know if he got the $300,000. But that's not the only problem. 4-04 media reported that insiders at Meta were rushing to fix other vulnerabilities right before the app went live. And Patrick was not the only person to find a vulnerability after. Okay. So AI is gone from being our butler to our boss to potentially a big financial liability.

To a content machine. This episode was produced by Corey Bridges with engineering by Sina LaFredo. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kit Kinan is our editor and The Indicator is a production of NPR.