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Along the main thoroughfare of Arlington, Massachusetts, is a tiny typewriter repair and retail shop: Cambridge Typewriter. The place has been around so long that the phone number on the big sign above the front door doesn’t even have the area code.

On a Saturday morning, amidst towers of typewriters, customers were edging around each other to look at what’s in stock.

Customers abound these days at Cambridge Typewriter. (Sarah Leeson/Marketplace)

Typewriters and vintage media have seen a real resurgence in recent years, but that’s only part of the reason that the store is packed — Tom Furrier, the shop’s owner of 45 years, announced that he’s closing the shop at the end of March.

“As soon as I posted that we’re closing March 31, it went crazy, and it’s been like this every single day, all day,” Furrier said. “I haven’t got anything done at my bench, which is fine because I love meeting people and talking typewriters. But I need to fix some of these machines before I go.”

Furrier is turning 70 this year and he said he’s ready to retire. Over the last year, he had tried to find a buyer for the shop, but it didn’t work out.

“I just said, ‘That’s it. I’m not putting off retirement anymore,'” Furrier said. “‘We’re just gonna have to close the shop, and people will have to find other means.’”

Although Furrier calls his store a “break-even kind of business,” there are more than 50 typewriter shops still operating across the U.S., and the demand for these services exists — particularly in the last two decades as vintage came back into style.

Emre Gucum, 5, has been “asking for a typewriter for weeks,” according to his dad, Ahmet Gucum. (Sarah Leeson/Marketplace)

More recently, however, there might be another reason for the interest in typewriters and all things vintage: Taylor Swift.

Meghan Miraglia, a 23-year-old studying for her MFA at Boston University, was in the shop for the first time Saturday, hoping to get her family’s typewriter fixed up. Miraglia, a self-described Swifty, said that she would credit Swift with the resurgence.

“[Taylor Swift] is really one to take retro aesthetics and revisit them and consider how they can be applied to the contemporary,” Miraglia said.

Tom estimates about a third of his customers these days are young adults like Meghan, but not all first-timers fit that category. Charles Gilroy was there from Hingham, Massachusetts. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s back in 2008 and he was there to find a typewriter that will help with tasks like writing checks.

“My handwriting is so bad, some things come back to me where they can’t read it in the post office,” Gilroy said. “I’ve been trying to find a program for my computer that would be able to write out a check. I haven’t been able to find one that you could just take an envelope, stick it in and just, you know, line up the lines and write the check.”

The electric Corona Smith that Furrier dug out and sold to Gilroy is going to add to Furrier’s repair backlog, which he figures is about four months long now.

“Best part of my day is when I get to leave my workbench, come out here and geek out over typewriters with someone that I just met,” Furrier said. “You know, it’s beautiful.”

He still has about a month to make those memories, and fix all those typewriters.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, over 9% of properties in the United States are at risk of flooding. When disaster strikes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is in charge of the response. And FEMA has a rule for how communities rebuild. It’s called the 50 Percent Rule and it’s designed to stop the cycle of flood damage by requiring houses to be elevated in certain circumstances. But whether FEMA’s 50 Percent Rule hurts or helps your town often comes down to money.

Ninety percent of the historic town of Mandeville, Louisiana, is in the FEMA flood zone. I got a tour from Rod Scott. All the houses we passed were lifted up on pilings 12 feet in the air.

“This is the new one that’s going up now. Look at that,” he said. Scott’s a contractor who specializes in elevating buildings. He’s raised 1,500 all over the country. “ Better breeze, better view. You don’t have to flood.” 

Scott told me Mandeville has flooded 17 times in the last 18 years during storms and hurricanes. And when houses are significantly damaged, homeowners have to elevate because of FEMA’s 50 Percent Rule. The rule says if your house is damaged and repair costs are over half of your house’s market value, you can’t simply repair your house to how it was before. 

Now, almost all the buildings in historic Mandeville are perched high up on pilings. Houses, restaurants, stores — all up with the birds. “Mandeville is the most flood-adapted, retrofitted community on the planet right now,” Scott said.

But elevation is expensive. Just a small house costs $150,000 to raise. And most of the houses in Mandeville are not small; some homeowners here have shelled out $1 million to raise their house. 

Homeowners insurance doesn’t cover it, so almost everyone in Mandeville has paid out of pocket. “So, in this community, there was enough wealth to write a check and do that,” said Scott.

But 80 miles south of Mandeville, it’s a different story. Rev. Tyronne Edwards is the council member in Pointe à la Hache, a majority Black town right on the banks of the Mississippi River. “Because the law that FEMA created with forced elevation,” said Edwards, “people can’t afford it.”

“Forced elevation” — that’s how a lot of people refer to the 50 Percent Rule. And, Pointe à la Hache is at severe risk of flooding. “I’m afraid because I know if a hurricane comes today, this community can’t rebuild,” Edwards said.

In this community, most residents don’t have over $100,000 to elevate if their homes are severely damaged. There are FEMA grants available to help cover elevation costs, but demand is high, and these grants are hard to get.

Chadwick Encalade is one of two residents in Pointe à la Hache who received a FEMA elevation grant after his house was damaged in Hurricane Katrina.

Chadwick Encalade and his mom, Vergie, stand outside her home in Pointe à la Hache, Louisiana. They live next door to each other, but Chadwick’s house is elevated 23 feet in the air, while Vergie’s is barely off the ground. (Carlyle Calhoun)

“I’m like one of the few in the area that got the grant,” he said. Now, his home sits 23 feet in the air. “I see over the levee. I can see the ships. I see everything — it’s a beautiful view.”

Chadwick Encalade knows that when the next storm hits, his elevated house will probably make it through. But his mom, Vergie Encalade, lives next door, and her house is barely off the ground. “What’s going to happen if something happens to my home?” Vergie wondered. “I don’t have the funds to elevate, you know, some — I don’t have the funds to elevate anything.”

It’s easy to imagine Chadwick’s house as one of the few that survive the next storm. He’s worried, though, about his mom — and his neighbors. This is a tight-knit community. And, he said, people don’t want to leave.

“It’s part of you. It’s part of your being. So, it’s like losing a part of yourself if you leave, you know,” said Chadwick.

The goal of FEMA’s 50 Percent Rule is to create safer communities. But what that often looks like on the ground is that residents have pay to go up or find a new place to live.

One of the few houses in Pointe à la Hache that has been elevated 18 feet, FEMA’s base flood elevation here. Residents say FEMA’s 50 Percent Rule is causing stress and even forcing people out because they can’t afford to raise their houses. (Carlyle Calhoun)

This story was produced by our colleagues at the BBC.

Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago high above the Arctic Circle — isolated and far away. It’s home to a vault that aims to be the ultimate backup for our data.

There, based in a former coal mine that closed down three decades ago, is the Arctic World Archive. Rune Bjerkestrand is its founder.

“It’s a remote destination, far away from wars, crisis, terrorism, disasters, and it’s regulated by an international treaty. It’s a demilitarized zone,” he said. “So what could be safer?”

The Svalbard archipelago, north of mainland Norway, is home to the Arctic World Archive. (Viken Kantarci/AFP via Getty Images)

Using head lamps, visitors descend a dark passageway, 300 meters deep into the permafrost, where temperatures are subzero. There, behind heavy doors, is the vault. Inside are stacks of silver packets containing reels of film.

“Now, we have more than 100 deposits from 30-plus countries across the world,” Bjerkestrand explained. “So it’s a wide selection of cultural heritage, history, literature, art, music — you name it.”

Inside one large box is a copy of the world’s open source code, the building blocks of most of the software and websites that we use. Kyle Daigle is chief operating officer of GitHub, which is behind this code vault. 

“It’s incredibly important for humanity to secure the future of software,” he said. “It’s become so critical to our day-to-day lives. We’re essentially building another wonder of the world every day by working together to write software.”

The Arctic World Archive is a commercial operation run by data preservation company Piql. At its Norwegian offices in Drammen — an hour from Oslo — all those files are printed onto film. 

“We convert the sequence of the bits which come from our clients’ data into images,” said Alexey Matantsev, a senior product developer at Piql. “We are sending those raw images onto film. After that, we develop the film. We can scan it back, and we can decode the data just the same way a user could see reading data from a hard drive.”

No one knows how long this archive will last, but plans are being made to preserve the digital memories we have today — considering the uncertainty of the future.

If you’ve listened to public radio, tuned in to television news or scrolled through news feeds at any point in the last few years, you may have noted one commonplace term: “uncertainty.”

It’s a key theme in American life right now, whether that has to do with the rising cost of living, the flurry of actions by the Trump administration or even costly natural disasters. All of this adds up to uncertainty, and it has Americans on edge.

In fact, the latest University of Michigan Survey of Consumers finds sentiment down significantly. Alissa Quart, executive director at the nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project, says pervasive uncertainty can pave the way for deeper inequality. She has a new piece in Time magazine titled “How Insecurity Became the New Inequality.”

She spoke with “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: People in, for instance, North Carolina or California out searching for rentals because their house was destroyed in a disaster, they don’t feel less secure; they are — in terrible ways — actually less secure. When policies change with this new presidential administration, some may feel more secure, others less. But you, Alissa, you think insecurity like this leads to inequality, widening the gap between rich and poor.

Alissa Quart: It’s not just a gap between haves and have-nots, but it’s those who can’t absorb the blows of things like the LA fires or the mudslides in Kentucky, and so on and so forth, and middle-class people who can’t keep up with inflation or the tariffs that will raise our prices. So, this is insecurity as much as it is inequality, and they’re inextricably linked.

Brancaccio: I think there’s a lot of logic in this. Insecurity can be seen as like a reverse indicator for well-being, right? You can track insecurity, and when it goes up, it’s not something that you want or that society wants.

Quart: Right. Insecurity has become an indicator that scholars now [use to] assess societal well-being. There’s the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index. They talk about “uncertainty shocks” that create economic disorders. So, the example they used was Brexit, so this preceded our current period.

Brancaccio: When the lowest-income people feel insecurity, it is a terrible thing, but part of the point that you’re trying to make is that this — I mean, I don’t ever like the word “precarity” — but this insecurity is being felt not just among the lowest-income people.

Quart: Yeah, it was an abrupt precarity in relation to the pandemic for a lot of the poorer Americans. Remember that we had the American Rescue Plan, expanded child tax credit that reduced child poverty tremendously. Then, you also had this growing middle-class precarity, which I actually have been writing about since 2018. You know, I wrote a book called “Squeezed,” where I called it the “middle precariat.” That’s “middle class” plus “precarious” plus “proletariat.” So, I see this as kind of a form, potentially, of solidarity between people who are upper-middle class, middle class and lower income, this insecurity. And it’s something that was mentioned by Astra Taylor in a great book called “Age of Insecurity,” where she saw that not just as a bane, but a potential way forward, if we could start thinking of ourselves in those terms.

One of the most famous bets in the past half-century — at least among economists — wasn’t about the Super Bowl or a presidential election. No, it was about the price of metals. That is, whether five critical metals would be worth more or less in 1990 than they were in 1980.

Really, though, this was about how we consume natural resources and whether we would just gobble up more and more as the human population grew or figure out a better way to manage what the planet provides.

Researchers are now looking at this question all over again, and Marketplace’s senior economics contributor, Chris Farrell, went back to the future along with “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio.

The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: What’s the full story on this crazy bet?

Chris Farrell: So it’s famed biologist and environmentalist Paul Ehrlich, and he predicted population growth would deplete the planet’s resources, and the increasing scarcity of resources would drive commodity prices higher. Now, this iconoclastic economist Julian Simon, he just didn’t buy this forecast. He believed human innovation and ingenuity would overcome commodity shortages; prices would fall over time rather than rise. So, Simon, being an economist, challenged Ehrlich to put some money on the line.

Brancaccio: All right, real money. Challenge accepted. Exactly what were they betting on?

Farrell: OK, so they wagered on the decadelong price of five metals: copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten. Ehrlich would win the so-called scholarly wager of the decade if the inflation-adjusted prices of these metals were higher in September 1990 compared to September 1980. Simon, of course, would win if prices were lower.

Brancaccio: And I vaguely remember this: Simon wins the bet, right?

Farrell: He does. So at the end of the decade, the world’s population had risen by 800 million people, while nominal prices and inflation-adjusted prices of each of the five commodities were down. Ehrlich wrote Simon a check. The bet, by the way, David — I mean, obviously it’s long over — but its meaning, its significance and its symbolism are still being debated 35 years later.

Brancaccio: Enter some new research on this. What did you see?

Farrell: Hannah Ritchie is a senior researcher at Oxford University and deputy editor of “Our World in Data.” And she looked at the price trend of the five metals starting in 1900. Prices didn’t change much over the past century, even though the economy is dramatically different today. Studies going back as far as 1840 show that a broader basket of mineral prices has been essentially trendless, she says.

Brancaccio: All right, but what’s the big conclusion here?

Farrell: So, looking at price trends over the long haul, she finds herself closer to Simon’s perspective about the impact of human innovation. For instance, she notes that the world produces 40 times as much copper annually and 250 times as much nickel as it did in 1900, yet prices aren’t that different from 1900, she says. The lesson in the price message: When resources become scarce, the price signal unleashes human ingenuity, and new supplies bring prices back down.

Brancaccio: If past performance gives us some indication of the future, I guess. Marketplace’s senior economics contributor Chris Farrell. Thank you.

Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden have both made it a priority to secure a sufficient supply of critical minerals from the ground. But some in the current Trump administration have called for mining a new source: the ocean floor. 

Deep-sea mining remains controversial and has yet to be approved in either federal waters or internationally. But the industry is seeing opportunity.

As president, Biden pushed the U.S. to get minerals from places other than China. But when it came to the bottom of the ocean?

“The Biden administration was officially on the fence, but really not wanting to do anything with deep-sea mining,” said Oliver Gunasekara, CEO of Impossible Metals, which hopes to harvest potato-shaped hunks of metal from the Pacific.

He said the Trump administration views the Department of the Interior like a balance sheet. “An opportunity to extract oil and gas and critical minerals. And they’ve been talking very much about the seabed.”

The shift in policy is a welcome one for the fledgling industry, which aims to start mining the seafloor in the coming years. 

“For us, America First is good news,” said Gerard Barron, CEO of the Metals Co., which is also eyeing the Pacific. “As America became energy independent with the advent of shale, it can become mineral independent with this resource 1,000 miles southwest of San Diego.”

But that could pose a risk to the health of the ocean, said Beth Orcutt, vice president of research at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.

While mining companies have developed some ways to clean up after themselves on land, like reforestation or water treatment, Orcutt said there’s no evidence that it’s possible to do that in the deep sea.

“The disruption may be permanent, at least on human life scales,” she said.

There are also financial concerns. Two of the main metals available on the ocean floor are nickel and cobalt. Those have been key parts of electric car batteries, said Victor Vescovo, CEO of Caladan Capital. But today?

“There has been some major advancements in battery technology, the biggest being lithium iron phosphate,” he said.

Most EV batteries sold in China, the world’s largest market, use those materials. Vescovo said you can’t really find them on the ocean floor.

“So deep-sea mining is an extremely difficult solution to a battery metal problem that existed 10 years ago,” he said.

Still, the U.S. Geological Survey deems nickel, cobalt and other potential seabed resources as critical to the economy and national security. And the mining industry sees the next four years as its chance to go to sea and get them.

“My Economy” tells the story of the new economic normal through the eyes of people trying to make it, because we know the only numbers that really matter are the ones in your economy.

Mindy Kuhn and Shonali Thomas are co-owners of CCB Bistro & Vine, a wine bar, restaurant and bookstore in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

Kuhn and Thomas were introduced through a mutual friend. Kuhn, who also works as a book publisher, helped Thomas publish her cookbook prior to starting a business together. At the time, Thomas was working as a caterer. The pair became fast friends. With the shared goal of expanding their businesses, the two decided to open CCB Bistro & Vine.

The two parts of the business, the bookstore and restaurant, are complementary. “When you walk into the restaurant, the books are around the edge,” Kuhn said, describing the setup of the shop. “So oftentimes people come in, they’ll get drinks or food, and then they’ll shop for books.”

Shonali Thomas (left) and Mindy Kuhn started their relationship as author and publisher. Now, they’re business partners and close friends. (Courtesy Kuhn)

To hear more from Thomas and Kuhn about their business, click the audio player above.

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On Friday, the Census Bureau gave us retail sales data for January, which fell 0.9% from December. That’s a much bigger drop than economists were expecting.

Now, we usually see a drop in retail sales at the start of the year as people and their bank accounts try to recover from their holiday spending sprees.

With those swings, plus the snowstorms and fires that have hit the country, a number that indicates how much people are shopping doesn’t necessarily indicate how much people want to be shopping.

Tracking retail sales is a way to measure consumer demand in this economy. But the overall tally, almost $724 billion in January, can obscure a lot of nuance.

“If what you’re trying to look at is some measure of consumer confidence, then you don’t want the number that you’re looking at to be driven by whether or not the harvest for avocados was good,” said Erica Groshen, former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and a current senior economic adviser at Cornell.

So there are a few different breakdowns of the data in the census report. Isolating a control group, sometimes called “core retail sales,” strips out more volatile categories like automobiles, gasoline and building materials.

Plus, different groups and companies have their own versions of “core retail sales” depending on their view of the economy, said Brian McCarthy, retail strategy lead at Deloitte.

“So you can see one core group being your typical grocery, soft goods, hard goods, and then another group being your grocery, soft goods, hard goods, including gas and restaurants,” said McCarthy.

Changing those inputs can make a big difference in the headline number. For example, in January’s report, said Bea Chiem, a managing director at S&P Global Ratings, “if you stripped out, you know, autos, the decline was actually a little bit less to the overall retail sales number. So that was down 0.4% versus down 0.9% with everything in.”

Same data, same economy, just a slightly different view.

Sales of meat sticks — think Slim Jims or Chomps — were up significantly last year and became the fastest-growing category in snacks. In total, the Wall Street Journal reported that sales of dried meat sticks hit more than $3 billion last year.

“Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with the Journal’s Jennifer Williams about her story on the popularity of meat sticks. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: Three billion dollars worth of meat sticks in this country. Are you kidding me?

Jennifer Williams: People love their meat sticks. Some love the protein. Some like the convenience of that versus reaching into a bag for, say, jerky. And some just really think is healthier than, say, a bag of potato chips.

Ryssdal: Can you define meat stick for me please?

Williams: I can. And I think there’s some debate even in what I’ll say. I would say it’s any meat offering packaged as a stick. It’s all in the name. But people I spoke with would say some mass produced options shouldn’t be called a meat stick, they should be called a snack stick, because who knows whether it’s meat or not.

Ryssdal: Those who are familiar with meat sticks in the listening audience here will probably recognize Slim Jims. But my, oh, my has this industry grown well beyond a Slim Jim.

Williams: Yes. The $3.29 billion in sales through the end of last year, that’s up 10.4% and it’s the fastest growing category in snacks.

Ryssdal: My kids probably will chime in here at some point after this interview airs. They would always say, Dad, can I have a Slim Jim or whatever? And I’m like, nah, that’s just salt and garbage, and it’s bad for you. But there are, like, grass fed versions, and stuff with fewer preservatives. There’s a wide range of of approaches here, shall we say?

Williams: Yes, that’s true. I think brands are realizing the opportunity here. And there are, as you pointed out, sugar free options, and ones that claim to use only grass fed meat. And I think for those who are eating a meat stick with health in mind, they’re gravitating towards those. Some I don’t think care so much about what’s on the label, they just like the convenience. And then there are those, you know, meat stick purists, who would only buy from a butcher or make their own, which I think is a whole interesting community.

Ryssdal: I flipped through your biography on the Journal site, as I do when I talk to people, and you usually write about like, you know, financial news and audits and pensions and corporate finance. Did you just see all these meat sticks in your local Piggly Wiggly and say, there’s a story there?

Williams: No, I cover ConAgra brands, and usually read through their earnings. And shortly after their latest meat stick acquisition, they had some really fun commentary on the earnings call about sort of appealing to a more sophisticated meat stick eater. And so I thought there’s prime ground there for a funnier story.

Ryssdal: Okay, so you do this story. Did you try a bunch of meat sticks, and do you have a favorite?

Williams: I did. I tried several. I would say I’m brand agnostic, but I do love a spicy flavor, whatever the brand may be.

About a quarter of all trade value between the U.S. and Canada happens over one bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit. 

The key driver of the relationship is the auto industry. It’s estimated that every vehicle that comes off the line here passes over the international crossing about eight times.

“So from an economic perspective we’re integrated very tightly,” said Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens. His office at Windsor City Hall overlooks the downtowns of both his city and Detroit. He’s lived in Windsor his whole life, but he went to grad school in Detroit and spent some of his professional life there. 

“And so Detroit for me and my family has just been an extension of my back yard,” he said.

But the threat of a trade war between the two countries has rattled some business and political leaders, like Dilkens.

President Donald Trump has said tariffs are an important tool for the U.S., and he that he wants to push our neighbors to the north and south on border security.

Drew Dilkens in the mayor of Windsor, Ontario. (Laura Weber Davis/Marketplace)

But some economists say if President Trump follows through with 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports, the automotive sector could suffer. And that could send a chill through a region that shares warm economic and cultural ties.

“You know, we’re brothers from another mother,” said Sandy Baruah, president and CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber, of the relationship between Detroit and Windsor. Baruah said he hears the outrage coming from Canadians over President Trump’s tariff threats. “Frankly, I think outrage is deserved. Canada is our dear friend both culturally and economically.”

The Detroit Regional Chamber recently polled Michigan voters and found 68% of Michiganders view Canada as an economic friend, and a majority also view tariffs as detrimental to that relationship.

“Sixty-eight percent for anything — I mean even apple pie, motherhood and Chevrolet — is an odd development these days,” said Baruah. “So to have 68% of Michiganders agree on this point … is a big deal.”

The city skylines of Detroit and Windsor face each other across the Detroit River. Folks on the Canadian side grew up listening to Motown and root for the Detroit Lions. Southeast Michiganders grew up watching kids’ television programs on CBC, and know the lyrics to “O Canada.” 

“There’s a lot of cultural touch points, from sports to food. We’re always going to be connected,” said Travis Wright, a Metro Detroiter. He was born in Ontario and moved to Michigan as a child. He said he likes spending time on the Detroit riverfront so he can see Canada and absorb he two homelands.

“There’s just a sense of home,” he said. “As much as I’m Americanized — and I became a citizen — I’m Canadian to the bone.”

Travis Wright was born in Ontario but lives in Michigan. (Laura Weber Davis/Marketplace)

Thousands of people on either side of the river have family and friends in the other country. People cross the border for work every day. Many own property on the other side of the bridge.

Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens said that closeness is what makes the threat of a trade war so jarring.

“Let me make no bones about this — this economic threat, it hurts,” he said. “The thought that there’s going to be an economic assault by the United States on Canada, I mean we’re shaking our heads saying ‘How did we get here? How does this happen?’”

Dilkens said he is considering what economic levers he has to pull if President Trump’s broad tariffs go into effect. But he said something else is happening at the street level; Canadians are beginning to shy away from buying any U.S.-made products because they feel burned.

“The U.S. is picking on their closest neighbor, largest trading partner and, what I would argue to be, best friend. But clearly friendship doesn’t mean anything.”

Dilkens said Detroit and Windsor will remain close no matter what. But if a trade war breaks out, these two cities will be on the front line.