FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LOS ANGELES / BOSTON — December 15, 2025 — Marketplace and This Old House Radio Hour today announced the upcoming broadcast of Building Tomorrow, a one-hour national radio special and multimedia collaboration that explores how American homes are being reimagined for the next century.
Co-hosted by Marketplace’s David Brancaccio and This Old House Radio Hour’s Jenn Largesse, and produced by Ember20, Building Tomorrow blends personal narrative, design reporting, and economic insight into a sweeping look at what the next hundred years of American housing might hold.
For Brancaccio, the story is personal. When his family’s home in Altadena, California, was destroyed in the Eaton Fire, his wife, Mary, reframed their loss—and the country’s larger challenge—with one sentence: “The house that burned was built for the last hundred years. The one we’re building should last for the next hundred.”
That moment becomes the heartbeat of Building Tomorrow—a local rebuild that opens into a national story about how America built its housing system, what it has become, and how it’s evolving to meet the needs of a changing world.
Inside the Special
Building Tomorrow takes listeners across America in search of home:
- Los Angeles, California – Where families rebuilding after wildfire confront a new era of extreme weather.
- Detroit, Michigan – Where local innovators are using 3D printing and robotics to reinvent affordable homeownership.
- Richburg, South Carolina – At the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), researchers create hurricanes, hailstorms, and wildfires inside a 90-acre test facility to study how homes can withstand them.
- East Texas – At The Bird’s Nest, a tiny-home village of single women redefining affordability, aging, and community.
The special explores the breakthroughs transforming how we build. We’ll visit factories producing cross-laminated timber (CLT)—a material making wood a viable option for large-scale construction—alongside other advances in building science now being implemented across the country. We’ll also examine what “home” means in an era of shifting cultural
norms, profound demographic change, and a changing climate that will shape how and where we live in the future. Throughout the hour, listeners meet the architects, builders, and homeowners redefining the American dream from the ground up. Each act of construction becomes an act of imagination—proof that resilience begins not with what we can build, but with what we can envision.
The episode will be released by This Old House Radio Hour for national broadcast on February 12, 2026, and made available as a special distributed by American Public Media (APM). In addition, Marketplace will feature selected segments from Building Tomorrow across its flagship programs, including Marketplace Morning Report, bringing the voices and stories from the special to millions of listeners nationwide.
The Building Tomorrow experience extends far beyond the radio dial, with digital features, a podcast edition, short-form video storytelling, and a live event series launching at Palm Springs Modernism Week (February 12–22, 2026)—the nation’s largest consumer-facing home design festival.
There, Marketplace and This Old House Radio Hour will co-host a series of pop-up salons inside an architecturally significant home, bringing together architects, policymakers, builders, and innovators featured in the special. Attendees will include VIPs, underwriters, and thought leaders exploring what comes next for the American home.’’
“Building Tomorrow shows how public radio is evolving — creating innovative, 360° tentpole experiences that start with the audience and expand across broadcast, digital, social, and live experiences, says Jimmy Jellinek This Old House Radio Hour’s Executive Producer. “By bringing together two iconic public media brands, we’re not just telling new stories — we’re creating new forms of IP that meet listeners where they are and give underwriters meaningful ways to connect beyond the airwaves.”
About This Old House Radio Hour
This Old House Radio Hour is the flagship public-radio adaptation of the iconic television brand. Blending storytelling, expert advice, and service journalism, the show now airs on more than 240 radio stations, reaching millions of listeners.[1] The radio program joins a slate of This Old House programming that includes the television series This Old House, Ask This Old House, and Dime Cómo Hacerlo. This Old House television programs are available on many platforms, including PBS, The Roku Channel, Samsung TV Plus, Pluto TV, Tubi, Peacock, Amazon, Xumo, GoogleTV, and Vizio. Carolina Comeback, a special This Old House series about the efforts to rebuild Asheville, NC after the devastation of Hurricane Helene, is currently airing on PBS and The Roku Channel. This First House, a new series for first-time homeowners, will air on The Roku Channel in 2026.
About Marketplace
Marketplace® is on a mission to raise the economic intelligence of the country. Its core programs—Marketplace®, Marketplace Morning Report®, and Marketplace Tech®—are broadcast nationwide on more than 800 public radio stations and heard by over 10 million weekly listeners. Marketplace podcasts, including Make Me Smart, This Is Uncomfortable, and Million Bazillion, are available at marketplace.org or wherever you listen. The Marketplace portfolio of programs is produced and distributed by American Public Media® (APM), one of the largest producers and distributors of public radio programming in the world.
[1] Carriage and audience estimates provided by American Public Media.
