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We couldn’t end the week without talking about the story we’ve (quietly) been avoiding: the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. Kimberly and guest host Meghan McCarty Carino explain how the story went from an investigation about classified documents to espionage. Plus, is polio making a comeback? Then, the hosts weigh in on Serena Williams’ retirement, Peloton getting pricier and splooting!



Here’s everything we talked about today:




“FBI search warrant shows Trump under investigation for potential obstruction of justice, Espionage Act violations” from Politico
“House passes Inflation Reduction Act, sending climate and health bill to Biden” from The Washington Post
“Who Sploots?” from Slate
“Did inflation just peak? The markets are acting like it.” from Marketplace
“Cringey LinkedIn posts like the crying CEO are inspiring a culture of backlash” from Fast Company
“Why Serena Williams’s Retirement Is Different” from The Atlantic
“Peloton slashing 780 jobs, closing stores and hiking prices in push to turn profit” from CNBC



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The economy is a mixed bag right now. Inflation remains high but may have peaked. There’s talk of recession, but the labor market is holding up and wage growth is strong. And though consumer sentiment is relatively low, optimism appears to be rebounding. Today, we’ll read the economic tea leaves. Also: The economic case for a four-day school week, and a summer vacation in the Greek islands.

Christopher Low measures market activity with us. A wrinkle in the ongoing saga of gas prices: The price of crude is rising. The BBC looks in on how new COVID restrictions in the East have affected local lives as well as the global supply chain.

People are still leaving jobs to find new ones at record level, and data shows that it’s generally working out for them. Speaking of records, the demand for vinyl remains high, so we talk to someone at a record-pressing plant to get a sense of how the industry is adapting to new challenges.

From the BBC World Service: Lee Jae-yong was convicted of embezzlement and bribery, but the Seoul government says he’s needed back in charge of the country’s biggest company to help the post-pandemic economic recovery. Plus, an armed man took hostages at a bank in Lebanon and demanded access to his frozen savings. And, the Swedish firm that’s developing a less environmentally intensive kind of steel.

Bruce Springsteen fans were appalled last month, when Ticketmaster sold some seats for his upcoming concert tour for as much as $5,000. The average price was actually around $262, according to Ticketmaster. But for a certain subset of tickets, when demand spiked, so did the prices. Ticketmaster uses “dynamic pricing algorithms,” which calculate the price of a seat based on real-time demand. Among other things, it’s an attempt to edge out ticket scalpers. There’s been backlash against this before. Ride-hailing apps like Uber use this kind of algorithm too; it’s called surge pricing. And it has kicked in during emergencies like a terrorist attack and a mass shooting — prices went through the roof as people were trying to flee. “Marketplace Tech’s” Marielle Segarra spoke with Vivek Farias, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, about the concept behind dynamic pricing and how to potentially avoid letting an algorithm create situations like this.