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If you haven’t heard about Caleb from West Elm, get ready for a mini-deep dive. His story is all over TikTok and Twitter, and it’s raising serious questions about internet culture and a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy. We’ll break it down. Plus, who knew what, when? That’s what House Democrats are asking of fossil fuel companies regarding climate change. Then, a round of our favorite game, Half Full/Half Empty!



Here’s everything we talked about today:




“Caleb From West Elm Is Bad At Dating But He Probably Didn’t Deserve Being Pushed Through The TikTok Meat Grinder” from BuzzFeed
New York Times’ Taylor Lorenz on West Elm Caleb
“House panel broadens probe into climate disinformation by Big Oil” from The Washington Post
“How the oil industry made us doubt climate change” from the BBC
“Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago” from Scientific American
Why Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard for $69 billion from Marketplace
“How to Order the Four Free Rapid Covid-19 Tests Announced by the White House” from The Wall Street Journal
“Amazon plans a new rival for retailers: a physical clothing store.” from The New York Times
And … the NFT Museum?



Have thoughts about the West Elm Caleb saga or any other story we mentioned today? Hit us up at makemesmart@marketplace.org or leave us a voice message at 508-827-6278 (or 508-U-B-SMART).

But are they riskier than a ground war in Europe? And what do they mean for the international economy? As President Joe Biden weighs imposing additional sanctions on Russia to deter an invasion of Ukraine, we look into what those measures would cost the U.S., our allies and Russia. Also on today’s episode: Hello from the other side of concert cancellations, the factors behind the price of natural gas and the Weekly Wrap.

Netflix stock is down almost 20 percent in futures trading, and according to the streaming giant’s latest quarterly report, we know that subscriber growth slowed dramatically last year from the blockbuster numbers in 2020, when so many of us where staying home and leaned on Netflix for entertainment. Christopher Low discusses mortgage rates and the bond buying program in our markets talk. The Sundance Film Festival is going virtual again – how does that work when it comes to networking?

From the BBC World Service: Two of the world’s biggest energy companies, Total Energies and Chevron, are leaving Myanmar amid concerns about human rights abuses following last year’s military coup. Plus: Toyota is hit with production delays. And, can insects become a bigger go-to food staple globally?

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have continued to rise. One sticking point is Russia’s crucial role in supplying natural gas to Europe through Ukraine and what a military conflict would mean for that gas. Another is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was built to carry natural gas from Russia to Europe – and circumvent Ukraine. The pipeline, which is not yet online, could mean economic problems for Ukraine. Arkady Ostrovsky, The Economist’s Russia and eastern Europe editor, spoke to us about what’s at stake. Also today, we take a look into Amazon’s plans to open an actual brick-and-mortar clothing store in Los Angeles.

Even before the pandemic, the economy was seeing a shift to automation as companies looked for cheaper, more efficient ways to build their products or serve more customers. Now, the pandemic has led to staffing shortages in multiple industries and has accelerated the trend, which means in the future you may be more likely to order your food with a QR code, interact with a chatbot instead of a person for customer service or use a self-operating kiosk at a business that may never go back to the old way of doing things. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Kristen Broady, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, about how the pandemic is speeding up this shift. For many businesses, it’s an economic decision, Broady says.