$17.8 trillion: That’s how much Americans owe in consumer debt. The biggest driver of that debt? Misunderstanding about how to use money. In a survey by the credit monitoring agency Experian, 3 in 5 American adults made financial mistakes because they weren’t money savvy. Experts are urging education for young people, including making financial literacy a graduation requirement. Will mandated financial literacy become part of the Massachusetts school curriculum?

Mfoniso Udofia’s play “Sojourners” is the first in a series of nine plays that make up the Ufot Family Cycle. The plays are based on the real-life experiences of Nigerian-American immigrants and spans three generations. “Sojourners,” which starts at the end of October at the Huntington Theatre, kicks off a two-year presentation of all the plays in a unique city-wide and Greater Boston festival – the first time all nine plays have ever been performed as a cycle. Udofia tells us the inspiration behind her work and how it feels to finally have her vision made reality.

Our regional news roundtable is back with headlines from New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Cape Cod. This week: A new voter ID law in New Hampshire is causing confusion before Election Day, Rhode Island’s Washington Bridge saga, an offshore wind farm auction on the Cape and more!

In her new book, “Locker Room: A Woman’s Struggle To Get Inside,” Melissa Ludtke recounts the story of her groundbreaking legal case against officials in Major League Baseball, who denied women access to teams’ locker rooms. She won her case, and the ruling opened doors for the hundreds of female sports journalists who came after her.

The NBA started its pre-season games this week, and its regular season tips off on October 22. You've probably already seen NBA players dazzle on the basketball court. But what about on red carpets … walking backstage before games… or even on the catwalk? Author Mitchell S. Jackson has captured the NBA fashion evolution in his book "Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion." Mitchell Jackson joined “Under the Radar with Callie Crossley” from Phoenix back in March 2024.

The 2024 presidential and statewide elections have brought renewed attention to voting issues – particularly challenges or limitations to certain citizens’ right to vote. For more than 4.6 million people living in the U.S., the right to vote has been taken away due to a felony conviction, with some states even placing lifetime bans on the formerly incarcerated. And with former President Donald Trump’s numerous felony convictions, the question of who gets to keep their voting rights and who loses them has been placed into an even brighter spotlight. We speak with three experts and advocates about the importance of restoring full voting rights for all Massachusetts residents.

The Mass Politics Profs are back! This week: JD Vance and Tim Walz will face off for the only vice-presidential debate of the election season. Is this year’s VP debate more significant than past ones? Also, is anti-immigration, nativist narratives working for Trump, or are they pushing more voters toward Vice President Kamala Harris? And locally, John Deaton takes on sitting Senator Elizabeth Warren, and the latest news regarding ballot questions facing voters this November. It’s an hour of national, state, and local analysis with our political scientists roundtable.

Our pop culture experts are back! After two Emmy ceremonies just this year, could the excellence in television award show be leading the charge on Hollywood’s diversity efforts? Meanwhile, the Country Music Awards have snubbed Beyonce, who received zero nominations for her critically acclaimed and record-breaking country album, “Cowboy Carter.” Plus, Kendrick Lamar scores the Super Bowl halftime show, the shocking charges behind Sean “Diddy” Combs’s arrest and bidding farewell to three titans of entertainment: James Earl Jones, Tito Jackson and Frankie Beverly.

Author Kate Feiffer’s first adult novel “Morning Pages” is a play within a play: the main character is a playwright and much of her internal dialogue is on the page as scenes from a play. Moreover, she’s turned to a popular daily artist’s exercise to jumpstart her imagination. It’s fair to say that “Morning Pages” is pretty meta. All that as the fictional Elise Hellman is caught in a life’s passage tending to the needs of an aging mother and a teenage son. “Morning Pages” is our September selection for “Bookmarked: The Under the Radar Book Club.”

In 1964, Wendell Arthur Garrity was United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts – not yet a judge on the District Court of Massachusetts. Ruth Batson was a frustrated parent and civil rights activist – not yet director of Boston’s Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, or Metco, the voluntary desegregation program. Louise Day Hicks was a member of Boston’s School Board – not yet the leader of ROAR: Restore Our Alienated Rights – and the face of white opposition to the integration of Boston Public Schools. Ten years later, they would all be major players in the battle to desegregate Boston Public Schools. As the city marks 50 years since Judge Garrity’s ruling on busing, we consider the importance of the period before busing – a time expert Zebulon Miletsky refers to as Boston’s ‘true civil rights movement.’

In September, 1974 – two days after her 14th birthday – Leola Hampton boarded a school bus that would launch her into the heart of one of the most divisive and defining moments in Boston history: court-ordered school desegregation. She and her older sister, Linda Stark, were bused from their home in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Roxbury into the white, working-class neighborhood of South Boston. They navigated a violent and virulently racist high school experience so scarring that a half-century later, they are only now beginning to discuss it with each other. In a new documentary called “‘Never Cried’: Boston’s Busing Legacy,” produced by GBH News’ Emily Judem and Stephanie Leydon, Leola and Linda, along with their family and experts in local history and trauma, share their story.

Wednesday, September 11, 2024, marks the 23rd anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in history – 9/11. In the wake of the four coordinated attacks carried out by the Islamist extremist group, al-Qaeda, America went after the attackers and moved to reshape its strategy for national security. More than two decades after 9/11, do Americans feel terrorism is still the greatest threat? And what is the state of national security in the United States today? Three experts tell us how national security is much more than border walls, cyber safety … or taking off our shoes at the airport.