Marketplace All-in-One

By Election Day, campaigns and PACs will spend an estimated $9.7 billion on ads. One of our listeners wants to know: Does flooding the airwaves even move the needle? Where’s the saturation point? We’ll do our best to answer on this Whaddaya Wanna Know Wednesday. Plus, your questions about student loan forgiveness, the poverty line and regional Halloween traditions.

Here are links to what we talked about today:

If you’ve got a question about the economy, business or technology, let us know. We’re at [email protected] or leave us a message at 508-U-B-SMART.

It’s been a rough year for the stock market. But the stock market doesn’t always provide a clear roadmap of where the economy is headed. Today, the factors behind stock market volatility and how much we can read into the ups and downs. Also in the program: Europe turns to coal to avoid an energy crisis and a look at natural disaster modeling following Hurricane Ian.

Because of the size of inflation these days, the IRS has had to make bigger adjustments than usual – which could be helpful. We talk bank runs with Philip Dybvig, one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

Tesla’s entries into tribal lands also means entry into a different legal sphere as well. A reporter from The Markup helps shed some light on inequitable pricing on broadband internet around the country. We talk Miami real estate with Amy Scott as the second season of “How We Survive” debuts.

From the BBC World Service: Hong Kong’s new leader John Lee says he wants to rebuild the economy and attract potential new employees from around the globe. The economy has been undermined by an ongoing political crackdown following the national security law introduced in 2020 and coronavirus restrictions. Plus, while many countries have severed ties with Russia, India is pinning its defense export hopes on a joint venture. And, how can South Africa make its energy system more robust after years of blackouts?

They have our Social Security numbers and probably our Amazon shopping lists. But should employers be collecting data on, say, our fingerprints, voices or retinas? After all, these things are unique physical identifiers. And if they were somehow stolen in a data breach, they’re not easily changed like a password. A legal case in Illinois provided one of the first tests to a state law that protects this type of data — the Biometric Information Privacy Act, or BIPA. Last week 45,000 truck drivers won their suit against BNSF Railway for collecting their fingerprints without consent. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino recently spoke with Alan Butler, executive director and president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit research organization. He said Illinois is at the forefront of a growing movement to regulate biometric data.

Whether you live on the coast or not, sea-level rise will have profound impacts on all of us. So we packed up our bags and headed to Miami, a city that is considered one of the most vulnerable coastal cities in the world. How Miami responds will serve as a test case for how other places around the country survive the effects of climate change. Experts say seas here could rise by 5 feet or more by 2100, eventually leaving whole parts of the city underwater. So if the city is doomed, why isn’t the housing market acting like it? From multimillion-dollar waterfront mansions to a flood-prone block miles from the beach, we went on the hunt for answers.

A powerful hurricane was churning toward the southwest coast of Florida. It looked like it was going to be bad. So we hopped on a plane and headed first to Boston where we embedded with a team of catastrophe modelers who were tracking the disaster and calculating the potential losses.

The number they came up with is staggering high: $100 billion. And only $63 billion of that is insured.

We then visited Gasparilla Mobile Home Estates in Placida, Florida to see what these data points looked like on the ground, and talk to people who lost everything.

Telemedicine exploded at the start of the pandemic, for all the obvious reasons. Doctor visits went virtual and lots of companies, including Walmart, started going all-in on telehealth.

But usage has slowed and remained flat over the last year as some patients go back to in-person appointments. Some waivers that allowed physicians to practice across state lines have expired too.

So is telehealth at a crossroads?

Not exactly, said Dr. Aditi Joshi, who has been in the telehealth industry for more than a decade and is the chair of the telehealth committee for the American College of Emergency Physicians. She said while there will be some aspects of virtual health care that may go away in the short term, telehealth is still here to stay.

“I see it as just part of our health care in the future. We’re having this conversation about telemedicine, but in 10 years, we’re not going to say this is a telemedicine visit or an in-person visit. It’s just ‘I saw my doctor.’ It’s going to be just a normal part of our everyday care,” she said.

On the show today, Joshi makes us smart on the future of telehealth and why it’ll look less like online banking and more like the hybrid workplace.

In the Newsfix, homebuyers are flocking to … Florida? We’ll continue our ongoing conversation about the state’s housing market in the wake of Hurricane Ian.

Plus, remember The Onion’s SCOTUS brief in defense of parody? The guy who wrote it answers the Make Me Smart question.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

There’s still time to submit your questions for Whaddya Wanna Know Wednesday. Call 508-U-B-SMART and leave us a voicemail. You can also email [email protected].

Across the economy, companies are bracing for a cold economic winter. While banks are stockpiling cash to cover defaulted loans, tech companies like Microsoft are slimming staff and scaling back recruitment. In today’s episode, a look at how companies are prepping for an economic downturn. Plus, a silver lining for supply chains, second lives for school buildings and a nationalized green energy company proposal in the U.K.