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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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It's setting up to be a big news week. We've got a preliminary deal to end the war in Iran, a Fed meeting, some economic data dumps. Where should we begin? From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kai Risdahl. It's Monday, June 15th, and it's great to be here with you.
I know the big news of the day is that we might be nearing the end of the war in the Middle East. The United States and Iran have signed a framework agreement. Details of the deal haven't been released. And listen, when it's all really, truly over, we'll pick apart the economic effects. But for now, let's focus on what in this economy is certain.
The Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee meets this Wednesday, and it's Kevin Warsh's big debut as the new chair. He's gotten a lot of pressure from President Trump to cut interest rates and make borrowing cheaper. But markets don't expect the Fed to touch rates for now because Warsh enters the Fed at a tricky time.
Even if the war does officially come to a close soon, the effects are still churning in the background, including its toll on inflation, now above 4%. Marketplace's Henry Epp looks at how the Fed might navigate this moment.
Here's why this current bout of inflation is tricky for the Fed.
It's driven by a spike in energy prices caused by the Iran war, and energy and food prices tend to be too volatile to inform the Fed's decisions, says Andrew Clinton, head of Clinton Investment Management.
That's why historically they've looked through headline inflation, that is, that include food and energy, to the core inflationary numbers.
Core inflation last month was a lot closer to the Fed's target of 2%.
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Chapter 2: How does the current inflation impact the Federal Reserve's decisions?
So If folks remember back in 2014, there was this challenge where to raise money for ALS, people would pour buckets of ice water on their head and tag a few friends to do it. It really took off and millions of people ended up participating. But it's something that we saw just kind of broadly on the Internet at the time because it was sort of an earnest place.
People were really kind of bragging about their charity to one another. Yeah, the Ice Bucket Challenge almost became a cool thing to be tagged in. I mean, it was regular people, it was celebrities. What were some other things you saw trend at that time? There were other very sort of short-lived, massive trends like the Ice Bucket Challenge.
We also saw Movember, if people remember, those kind of silly little mustaches that people would draw back in like 2012, 2013. That was also a charity trend to raise awareness for men's health every November. And then we also saw some more enduring movements pop up around that time. One was Giving Tuesday, which began as a hashtag and sort of like as a counterweight to Black Friday.
And that was a movement to get people to donate. This all happened in like a four-year time period where society just seemed to be kind of optimistic online in a way that feels a little bit distant now. Yeah, things have changed so much. I mean, hashtags aren't even in the conversation anymore.
Yeah.
Okay, so let's fast forward because the headline of your story is how generosity became cringe. When do you think it became cringe and what was the turning point that you saw? Yeah, that's a good question. I think something really important happened in 2014, and that was the killing of Michael Brown and sort of the Black Lives Matter movement.
There were people who in their feed or on their Twitter timelines were seeing, like, a lot of Black Lives Matter movement stuff, and there were other people who were just seeing the ice bucket challenge. We started to see social media platforms like Facebook really prioritize algorithms over those sort of person-to-person connections.
Fast forward to the pandemic, and by then, people are feeling a lot more cynical. One of the sort of, I think, good examples of that is, if you remember, Gal Gadot made that Imagine video, right? as sort of like a way to soothe society. And people hated it. And something I think about, and I think a big reason that they hated it was because it felt cringe. It felt tone deaf.
And I think that applies to a lot of the sort of performative earnestness that we used to see earlier in the internet. How has the cringe part of this impacted how much organizations have been able to raise? Yeah, I mean, we're seeing a real impact. Most people or most young people do prefer to give online these days.
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Chapter 3: How can nuclear energy help reduce electricity bills?
one of the better years that we've been having so far. Yes, I'm surprised. I drive a Ford Escape and I pay, it takes 50 bucks to fill it up, which, you know, I'm in Jackson, Mississippi. So that's a lot when I was paying like 30 bucks. So I'm like, dang, that's, that's going to hurt. But I have had customers like, you know, scale back on like, we have pool lists.
So they'll get like these comics a week. So I've had people scale back due to budgeting for other things.
Chapter 4: What are the costs associated with building new nuclear power plants?
I hate social media, but it's a necessary evil. It's the best thing for advertising. I always ask somebody I don't recognize or I'm very absent-minded and I'll be like, oh, how'd you hear about the store? And they'll be like, oh, I saw it on TikTok. And I'm like, well, I need to be on TikTok more. And the things that get the most hits is When my big face is on there.
So I had to put my big face out there and talk and do 20 takes until I like one and then edit it and put it out there.
Chapter 5: Who should bear the financial burden of new nuclear plants?
You're not going to catch me doing like a dance or anything. But, you know, highlighting the things that we got here, showing also that Jackson isn't just, you know, this perception of what the world thinks it is. It's like, no, we have cool stuff here.
Philip Rollins doing the socials for his store Offbeat in Jackson, Mississippi. This final note on the way out today saw this in Reuters. Reopening the Strait of Hormuz is not going to be like flipping a light switch. Maritime security experts say it could take weeks to make sure the waterway is safe from mines. Meanwhile, stateside, U.S. oil reserves have hit a 43-year low.
Amir Babawi, Caitlin Esch, John Gordon, Noya Karr, Steve Mullis, and Stephanie Seek are the Marketplace Editing staff. Kelly Silvera is the News Director. And I'm Kristen Schwab. We'll see you back here tomorrow. This is APM. Cloud seeding has been around since the 1940s. It involves releasing silver iodide particles into clouds, which cause water to freeze and fall out as snow or rain.
And while the jury's still out on its potential as a water management tool, it's become a global industry nonetheless. I'm Amy Scott, and this week on the How We Survive podcast, we're talking to Augustus Dorico, a 25-year-old former Teal Fellow and the founder of Rainmaker, a business that's racing to save the Great Salt Lake from collapse.
Cloud seeding is a tourniquet for our water supply situation. Maybe a damn good one, maybe more than a tourniquet.
So is cloud seeding at scale the godsend solution it seems to be? Find out this week on How We Survive, available on your favorite podcast app.
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