The Indicator from Planet Money - What we're reading on the beach this summer

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

It's time for our annual beach reading recs. Today we bring you three books, with a little economic learning to boot. Our recs: Who is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service by Michael Lewis El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic Related episodes: Beach reading with a side of economics How to beach on a budget How to beach on a budget For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. Ah, got to love late summer on the beach. Stretching out underneath an umbrella, headphones in, my favorite books in a cute indicator tote. SPF 500 slathered over my alabaster legs. Only 500. I think you've got to go. Four digits. I brought my ice cold beverage, my little umbrella hat,

and I also brought a book to read. What did you guys bring for beach? reads. Today on the show, our summer reading racks. We'll talk about some books we've loved reading this summer. We've got the secret, intriguing lives of government workers, really? Ooh, we've got a get-rich-quick scheme gone very wrong. And how algorithms are changing the way we talk.

That's all after the break. Okay, economic beach reads. Who is up first? My econ Beach Read is called Who is Government? It's an essay collection curated by Michael Lewis. You might remember him from The Big Short. And I know this is a beach read because I have test read this on several beaches. Okay, jet setter.

So what is this book about? The whole premise of this book is that there are thousands of unsung heroes in the government. They're doing amazing things. But because of bureaucracies being bureaucracies, we rarely hear those stories. Oh, so what were some of your favorites? One example is the mine safety official Christopher Mark. at the Department of Labor. Several decades ago,

nearly 100 coal miners would die every year because of roof falls. And this was seen as an unfortunate reality, really the cost of doing business. But then in the late 1980s, Chris came along. He actually was a coal miner once himself. He analysed the layouts of mines that had collapsed. He looked at their geography

and figured out a system to test how much roof support to use. He also recommended new ways of designing mines that would make them safer. And in 2016, there were zero deaths in cold mines from roof falls in the U.S. And that's in large part thanks to Chris. Wow, one guy. One humble guy who doesn't really catch the headlines until now. And for indicator listeners, there is plenty of economics. One of the unsung heroes is actually an indicator, not a person. The consumer price index, how we measure inflation. Frequently cited on this show.

Yeah. But I also think because the boundaries between market, markets and governments have been blurring for some time now. It's also an important read, since the first Trump term, really, economics and politics are becoming more entwined. And so to truly understand the economy, you need to understand government workers and their motivations, their frustrations and their achievements. That is a solid, nerdy econ read for the beach. Thank you, Daryan. Waylon, you want to go next? Yes, I would. My summer read is fiction. It's a new novel called El Dorado Drive by the author Megan Abbott. She is known for her crime novels. I like her writing style a lot. And this book is set in the suburbs of Detroit. There are three sisters who are

from the area and they grew up really comfortably because their father was an executive at General Motors. But in adulthood, each sister has fallen into hard times. Then they find what they think is the answer to their money problems. I have seen some YouTube videos that promise exactly that. Yeah, so these sisters join something called The Wheel. It's pitched as a women's social club, but it's just a literal pyramid scheme. But often they're kind of disguised, aren't they? You don't know exactly.

Then you realize, wait, this is just a pyramid scheme. Exactly. And in the novel, this is how it works. New members have to bring $5,000 in cash to their first meeting. So that's like the price of admission. That money gets pooled. And at each meeting, there's one woman who gets $25,000. She gets to take home the big.

pot. So they take turns being the big prize winner, and the only way to get that 25K is to recruit new members. I don't know. What could go wrong? Yeah, well, in this novel, plenty goes wrong in a very dark and twisted way that will be familiar to anyone who's read a Megan Abbott novel. And I'm recommending it as an econ read because really the backdrop for this novel is American economic decay. The novel describes how the decline of the auto industry in Detroit has hollowed out the middle class. And so the sisters in the story have fallen down the social ladder. They have debt problems. They have medical bills. And one of the sisters has this deadbeat ex-husband who looted their kids' college funds. And that's kind of a narrative engine for the story, too. Yeah. So you can see why

joining a pyramid scheme is tempting. Yeah. And what's interesting also about this novel is the pyramid scheme is couched in terms of female empowerment. They use the language of, you know, like rah-rah girl boss type stuff. So I think the novel captures that kind of toxic thinking. really well and how alluring it is. And it also lays out the lengths people will go to in order to keep up appearances, you know, to keep performing to the outside world that there's still of a certain social class, even if they're really just like falling down the class ladder. That sounds like quite a griffing novel. Yeah, it is like a great, pulpy, fast-paced read. And I don't know, there's like this kind of great sense of dread throughout the start of it when you're like,

oh, all these women are going to be in trouble. And then, oh, boy, howdy, do they get into a ton of trouble? Well, my beach read, the book that I read is called AlgoSpeak, how social media is transforming the future of language. And just for a bit of background, it's written by Adam Alexic, who is a linguist who also posts on social media under the name Etymology Nerd. Not to be confused with Entomology nerd. Yes. Entomize. That would be the bug.

channel, right? It really bugs them when they get confused, Waylon. So this book makes the argument that language is changing at a faster pace than ever before thanks to social media algorithms. Well, I've passed the age of 30, so my language is fixed in amber.

I am not using the word Riz, for example. I mean, as the parent of a tween on the cusp of adolescence, who does have, you know, unfettered access to social media, thanks to I bang up parenting skills.

I feel this. I think this is true. There's, you know, words like preppy, which it means something different. It just basically means anything that is cool and anything that is kind of mainstream cool. It doesn't have to be polo shirts. I mean, those are all great examples, right? Preppy, Riz of how lesser-known slang words can catch on or be reinvented through social media. But the book also interestingly goes into examples of like how algorithms can actually

help create entirely new words, right? They gave an example in the book of the word unalive, which I hadn't heard of before, but the idea here is that some algorithms might suppress posts that have the word kill in them. So to get around it, users on social media, instead of using the word kill, would use the word unalive. I see this everywhere on social media. Yeah. This is one way that algorithms are shaping the way we can.

communicate. But another that he talks about is how algorithms actually shape the way that we talk, not just the words, but like the tone and the pace of our speech. So, for example, influencers on TikTok might speak really fast because if they speak slowly, people are more likely to swipe away, right? They're trying to get good with the algorithm. Other people, they'll, like, end every sentence with a rising tone, which makes it sound like the sentences aren't quite finished. And so you keep watching to see what comes next. It's a cliffhanger, not an upspeak. What everybody's doing at the end of the day is trying to get engagement in the algorithm. And these algorithms are ultimately shaped by the companies who own them. And so in a way, these tech

companies are really shaping how people talk and communicate and the words that we use. I know there's a lot of people who imitated Ira Glass after this American Life became famous, including having a nasly voice when they didn't naturally have one, but they talk about that. The book doesn't really talk about podcasters, but I think in one sense, the medium shapes how the message gets communicated, like the time restrictions of radio

or the sort of the lack of visuals on podcasts make us talk in a certain way. And then when you have influential voices in the space, people imitate them too to try and get more attention. Podcasts have been doing this for years. Well, thank you very much, Adrian. We're going to have more Econ Beach reads in a year. Like and subscribe for more.

This episode of The Indicator was produced by the preppy Julia Ritchie with engineering by Rizmaster Quasi Lee. Any wrong facts were unaligned by Sierra Juana's. Kicking Cannon is our elite editor and The Indicator is a production of NPR.