Marketplace

Once upon a time, Deadspin was a go-to website for sports, culture and news. Then a private equity company bought it. After being told to “stick to sports,” staff protested by quitting en masse. The disaster says a lot about what happens when private equity and digital media collide. Plus: The economy is contracting, and the NCAA moves forward on student athletes making money.

Chrishelle Palay never expected to be living in Kashmere Gardens, a historically black neighborhood in Houston that’s still struggling with the legacy of segregation and neglect. Then her great-aunt died and left her house to the family. On today’s installment of “Adventures in Housing,” we hear from Palay about why she kept her aunt’s house. Plus: a look at how job wages are faring, and why the Fiat Chrysler-Peugeot merger is happening now.

Retail may be changing, but so are consumers. That’s why we’re launching “How We Shop,” a new series looking at how, what and why we buy. To kick it off, we follow a shopper who takes frugality to the next level. Plus: The streaming wars carry on, and the Fed cuts rates yet again.

Every earnings season, when companies announce how well a quarter went for them, you’ll see a pretty common headline: whether or not a given company beat or missed Wall Street’s expectations. But what exactly are “expectations,” and who makes them? Plus: The NCAA opens up to athletes making money, and the decline of coal.

The governor of California declared a state of emergency yesterday after wildfire forced nearly 200,000 people to evacuate. Wildfire season across the entire western part of the country is becoming more intense and more expensive every year — the federal government spent more than $2.4 billion on fire suppression in 2017. Today, a look at who pays after these disasters. Plus: scammed on the ‘Gram and a Brexit update.

How does a city of 24 million do its recycling? Shanghai began requiring its households, companies and public institutions to sort recyclables out of the 33,000 tons of refuse they generate each day. On today’s show, we’ll look at how much progress they’re making. Plus: Why Americans are spending less on home improvement, and a conversation with the CEO of US Foods.

The word “headwinds” showed up in no less than 18 companies’ quarterly earnings reports released today. So let’s talk about what that word, and “tailwinds” really means for companies. Plus: why the Boeing 737 Max is weighing down Southwest, and why self-driving trucks are so hard to figure out.

Many, many rural Americans lack access to affordable broadband internet access, and it’s a real drag on the economy. State and federal governments spend hundreds of millions every year to address the problem, but it’s not always clear where the money should go. Plus: What you need to know about SoftBank (it’s not a bank) and what it’s like to buy a house for your parents.

Have you received a Chinese-language robocall lately? Or a hundred of them? Federal authorities say these computer-generated scams, which began targeting American phone lines two years ago, are on the rise again. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to actually take one of these calls, we recorded a few and came away with some observations as to why the bad guys do it, how they succeed, and what happens to their victims. Plus: the trade war hits toys and why we do “The Numbers.”

Whether because they want to or because they need to, more Americans are working past 65 and even 75 years old, which means we now have the most age-diverse workforce we’ve ever had. There are four, sometimes even five distinct generations working side by side. That dynamic can foster a lot of intergenerational miscommunication, starting with punctuation and emoji. Plus: Boeing’s latest woes and the difference between the minimum wage and a “living wage.”