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The debt ceiling debate is full of contradictions. It’s real but it’s not real. It’s a problem but it’s not a problem. Congress missed the deadline to raise the federal borrowing limit before it went back into effect at over the weekend. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has moved some money around as a short-term fix, but Congress needs to raise the limit, and soon. But America’s debt isn’t like other kinds of debt, or even other countries’ debts. On today’s show, Harvard economist Megan Greene explains it all as we prepare for that perennial partisan fight. Plus: “spiritual opium,” “Pokémon Go” and, oh yeah, that infrastructure spending bill.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

• “Debt Ceiling Deadline: What It Means and How Congress Can Act” from The Wall Street Journal
• “U.S. deficit to hit $3 trillion in 2021, then fade as stimulus relief expires, CBO says” from The Washington Post
• “Yellen Warns Congress About Failure to Act on Debt Limit” from The New York Times
• “Tencent Sinks After China Denounces Online Gaming” from The Wall Street Journal
• “Crypto ‘Wild West’ requires new laws, SEC chair says” from Politico
• “The infrastructure deal could create pipelines for captured CO2” from The Verge
• “Drunk-Driver Detectors for Cars Part of Infrastructure Bill” from Bloomberg
• “Industry groups, equity advocates laud infrastructure broadband provisions” from Roll Call
• “Augmented reality may change how we see the world. Until then, we have Pokémon.” from “Marketplace Tech”

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