BONUS: Home heating costs to go up $1030 this winter

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1:01Hey, all right, almost here. Are you ready? Just grabbing my shoes. That's what you said 10 minutes ago. I just wrapped a video call, uploading this giant file on my tablet, looking at my watch goop and Nana's with the group chat, and of course, still lining up tonight's playlist on my phone. All at once? Yep. Story of my life. That's why I switched to T-Mobile. They have the fastest 5G network. Okay, multitasker. I see you. Honestly, I never imagined I could do all this at once. It's awesome. Say no more, I'm totally switching. My post is taking way too long to upload. That's a sign you've got to get T-Mobile. So many reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours at T-Mobile dot com. It's a space-down analysis by Uglos Speed Test Intelligence, the data of national speed score results incorporating 5G download and upload speeds for the first half of 2026.

2:01The day's biggest stories. The people behind the headlines. The conversations you won't hear anywhere else. I'm Christie Strasser. You're listening to Odyssey's on deadline. Fall isn't even officially here yet, and there's already bad news about winter utility bills. Here's Marty Griffith in Pittsburgh. Diesel is the highest ever right now, 631. It's an issue for Americans. A horrible mess for people. So with Diesel at 631, there's this blowback man across the marketplace. Truckers, farmers get spanked. You name it. So gas right now is 437 a gallon. The highest it ever was, 2,022 under Biden 501. Are we trying to break the record? Is that what we're here for? I don't give a damn who the president is. I give a damn about what's happening in the economy and what's going to do to heating oil, which is now screwing people big time. Guys, let me know it yesterday. Last year's heating oil was about 800 to year this year, it's going to be 1800. It's horrible. Chad Quinn from the Dollar Energy Fund.

3:02Good afternoon, brother. How are you? Good morning. How are you? Crazy confluence of pricing, heating oil, diesel fuel, all that stuff, and gasoline that's going to affect consumers and you're going to see this, aren't you, sir? Yeah, Marty, let's talk about just household budgets. When gasoline prices go up, household budgets are certainly impacted, right? Just by the fact that people are spending $150 extra on gasoline right now, then they were, let's even go back maybe three, four years ago. That's expensive when you take $150 extra on your budget. You know, the forecast the other day that's the National Energy Assistance Directors Association talked about, it's going to be $1,030 more this winter on average to heat our homes than it was last year. What? $1,030 more, Marty. That's unbelievable. Now, I'm going to talk about home heating oil. Home heating was up 31.3% year over year.

4:04So the number I saw on home heating oil was $2,297. So you get home with home heating oil this year. Those are big numbers. And when you add that to, this isn't just an energy thing. When you add it to everything else becoming more expensive, it's hard for people to make ends meet and to get by. And that's what I'm worried about. Oh, man, I'm kind of breathless here on that 1,000 more just this winter. Yeah, it's a home heating cost this year, 8.7% increase year over year from last year. And there was some, Marty, there's a lot of things going into that. You know, you could talk about geopolitical stuff around the world. We can talk about the Iran War. We could talk about regulation that happened in previous administrations that maybe afforded some natural gas exploration or growth of power plants. There's all kinds of things we could talk about. There's my thing, there's plenty of blame to go around. Whether it's on current administration, past administration, whoever you want. Those things to me aren't important.

5:05And there's a lot of people who love the blame game. But I honestly don't care what's going to matter, Marty, is the everyday average American who was able to get by last year has $1,000 less in their pocket just because of home energy costs. Take another, add another 100 bucks a month to their gas bill, their gasoline purchasing. So there's $1,100 in a cost more just because of energy related issues one year to the next. Chad has one of the coolest nonprofits I've ever seen, the dollar energy fund. They help thousands of people in conjunction with the big companies, the big utility companies. Across the country, we up to about 200,000 families last year. I'm like, and that numbers continue to grow. Every year in the past three years, we've done more. Like we share is going to be no different from what we just heard. Well, based on what you just said, it could be an all time record, right? It could be. You know, we was talking about it used to cost about $350 bucks for us to make a grant,

6:08pay someone to bill and get them through the wintertime, get them back in the good graces of their utility and keep their service on. We're budgeting a little over 400 this year that it could take to get someone back together. And would you multiply that difference of 60 or 70 bucks over 25,000 people that's real money that has to be spent, you know, while year over year. Taylor Riggs from Fox News weighs in on the Mark Cox show on how the war in Iran comes into play. Yeah, I mean, oil will fall when we get more supply when we start producing more and when the straight of hormones starts to open up. So I think my worry is in the last couple of days we saw that Iraqi drones have taken out portions of the East to West pipeline in Saudi Arabia. And the last time you and I tossed, I was so excited about the East to West pipeline because that's how we were going to reroute and get away from the straight of hormones.

7:09So we spoke with Energy Secretary Chris right this morning. He thinks it'll come back online soon. He believes that the Saudis are working on it. So again, all we need is to be opening up the straight and getting more oil. Now I will say that our U.S. companies are producing more than they have been. We need to increase refining capacity because we don't have enough refiners to refine all the oil that we're producing. They're thinking about maybe invoking the Defense Production Act to do that. That sort of TBD on if that would work or not. And we also spoke with the American Australian Institute CEO Mike Summers this morning. And he was great. He was adamant that you do not halt diesel exports. I get a lot of questions about that. Why can't we just keep the diesel here in the United States? But oil and diesel are global markets. If you halt exports, you're importing, you know, putting on basically a price control.

8:12You need that international market open so they can see how much diesel is available on the global supply. So that was a lot. But I think diesel and oil prices still are very much front and center right now. Taylor, I just saw a headline on Fox News that says Fed expected to hike rates amid inflation. You know, Kevin Warsh, obviously there was pressure when he took over as the Fed chair because Trump is saying you can't do this if anything you need to lower him. I can understand not lowering them, but I'll tell you what that really would surprise me if they if they did a rate hike. Are you in the same boat? So I agree. I don't know how hiking interest rates solves anything. It doesn't create more oil on the market. Hiking interest rates is to help cool the economy. Yes, the economy is good. Yes, retail sales this morning were good. But prices are high because there is a supply shock. Hiking rates does not fix supply. No.

9:13It's only halt demand. That being said, I cannot remember in recent memory where the federal reserve did something that the markets were not pricing in. I mean, so the market that a 92 94% chance. I mean, I don't think Kevin Warsh listens to the market, but the market is very clearly signaling what they are doing. So if he were to not hike, I actually think that would be a huge surprise. There is some good news though. If he hikes, there has been a lot of conversation that actually equities could rally and bond yields could fall. Why? Because if he hikes, he's reasserting independence, the market understands that he's taking inflation very seriously, and then everything's okay. Bond yields can fall again and the equity market can go up. Does that make sense? Yes. And what is the concern now? I think I understand it. I don't know if most people do. What's the concern about the bond market right now?

10:16Somebody said we have a crisis in bonds. Yeah. So the 10 year yield at 5% is the second time since 2007 that it hit that. It hit that level in 2023. But if yields are now the highest since 2007 that just signals the top. Right? So we have a lot of concerns here. If yields are rising because there's high growth on the horizon, that's wonderful. If yields are rising because we're worried about inflation, massive supply, there's competition now for our debt from the hyper-skillers that are issuing debt to fund AI, then that's a different story. If rates are rising because we're $40 trillion in debt and right now we're worried about a $1.2 trillion deficit, that's a worry. So I think the market's trying to figure out why yields are rising. And if it's high growth, great. We disagree with the President. You don't want the lowest interest rates in the world.

11:16If you're the lowest interest rates in the world, that means the economy is in the tank. But we don't yield at 5% could be bad if we're trying to borrow money. It's good if you're a saver. You're now maybe you don't want equities. Maybe you're interested in bonds at 5%. It's a very nuanced story. Good for savers, bad for borrowers, especially bad if you're trying to get a mortgage rate. Mortgage rates are almost 7% now. Yeah, I saw that the other day. What did you say the new statistics were out this morning? What was that on? Year over year, retail sales are up 6%. Big increase from where we were last month. Now I caution that retail sales are not inflation adjusted. These are nominal numbers. But still 6% year over year, inflation is 3.5. So real numbers are still climbing.

12:17This is not a consumer that is only paying higher prices. They are also spending more. And that's what the numbers told us this morning. Well, I'm not going to put a bet on this on polymarket, but I'd probably win if I did. My guess is Kevin Worsh is about to get removed from the Christmas card list at the White House. What do you think? You know, let's try to give him some space. Kevin has to did come out and say that whatever he does, we risk the White House risks tax him. And he has a long time to turn this ship around the way that knows that he does not fully that. It's just going to take him time to convince the other members of the Fed. If all of this has you longing for the return of simpler times, a trip to the mall for a pretzel and a new CD. You're not alone. Here's KCBS in the Bay Area. Running a business shouldn't feel like a juggling act. One app for accounting, another for inventory, one more for sales, and somehow they never work

13:19together. Or you can use ODO. One fully integrated platform with all the business applications you need. C-R-M, inventory accounting, marketing, and more. All working together seamlessly. Stop juggling software and get back to growing your business. Try ODO for free at ODO.com. That's ODO. O-O. New shoes, new clothes, brand new grade. Switch to Verizon to make sure their tech keeps up. This back to school season buy or bring any Android phone and get a Samsung Galaxy tablet on us. Get your kids ready for the school year without breaking the bank. Get Verizon.com or your local store today. Bring an Android phone or purchase a new phone with device payment on post-paid service plan required. 3.2999 tablet device payment purchase with new mine on $20 per month tablet plan for 36 months required. Less $330 tablet per month credit applied over 36 months additional taxes fees in terms apply. Hey, I ride almost here. Are you ready? Just grabbing my shoes. That's what you said 10 minutes ago. I just wrapped a video call, uploading this giant file on my tablet, looking at my watch

14:22goop and Nana's with the group chat and of course still lining up tonight's playlist on my phone. All at once? Yep, story of my life. That's why I switched to D-Mobile. They have the fastest 5G network. Okay, multi-tasker. I see you. Honestly, I never imagined I could do all this at once. It's awesome. Say no more, I'm totally switching. My post is taking way too long to upload. That's a sign you've got to get D-Mobile. So many reasons to join D-Mobile. Find yours at T-Mobile.com. Fastest based on analysis by Uclav Speed Test Intelligence, the data of National Speed School Results incorporating 5G download and upload speeds for the first half of 2026. Shopping malls. You thought they were dead, but they are clawing their way back from the brink of extinction. Dr. Curthy, Colley-Anum, executive director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa

15:23Clara University. So, I guess we could say that the death of shopping malls perhaps was a little premature or overstated, right? Well, the famous thing goes, rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated. And you see that this is coming back to play that way. So yes, that is correct. But you know, we talked a little bit about you had the pandemic had people staying home. And then of course, the rise of online shopping and it seemed like it kind of left brick and mortar malls in the dust. What is happening to keep the malls alive or perhaps maybe more accurately bring them back from the brink of extinction? The predictions of malls and shopping, physical shopping, getting extinct were grossly overrated. It was one of those kind of, you know, new cycle things that happened around the pandemic. Actually, the pandemic tremendously increased consumers appetite for real physical experiences.

16:30And what you're going to see going forward is the tension between the artificial and the real. You're in San Francisco, the epicenter of artificial everything. So as we create more and more artificial things, consumers really want more and more real things. It's cheaper to produce artificial things. It's much more difficult to produce real things. And there's a real appetite there. I can't remember, Professor, the last time I went to a shopping mall to do holiday shopping. Now it's almost exclusively online. That is correct. And I think for a lot of those kind of fairly routine shopping experiences, I use the word routine very carefully. Consumers really prefer the e-commerce type experience. At the same time, there is a lot of room for the right kind of physical experience. Even though, for example, grocery shopping is something many, many people don't want to go to the store. There's tremendous amounts of retailers, like different types of retailers, old foods,

17:32products markets that have created wonderful, in-store shopping experiences that consumers really enjoy. And they do go to the stores. So we say today's malls are not your parents shopping mall. What are the key differences? Are there more restaurants? Is it different type of retail outlets? And I think this is where retailers get a lot of credit. Retailing has always been about appealing to the consumers' five senses. This has always been important. And e-commerce doesn't do that very well. It only appeals to one or two of your five senses. So retailers forgot that they had to appeal to the five senses. And what the pandemic and all these events brought about was a revival in what I call retail as theater, retail that appeals to the five senses. And so you're going to see that's what's making these malls very successful. But if you just want to pick up an item from somewhere, you don't need to go to a physical store anymore. It's all about how can that physical location appeal to all of your five senses?

18:35And that's what's causing the revival of all of these malls. It's no longer a mall that's really important to understand. It's some kind of a living center or a lifestyle center. And if you see a lot of the places where you're seeing a comeback of these, they're no longer malls. They're really lifestyle centers. There are places where people go to get some food, they walk around, they hang out, they get engrossed with retail experiences. Boy. Very important on this. I like what you're saying about the five senses. I mean, think about it when you go to a mall, any kind of retail location. If you're walking through the halls and all of a sudden you smell chocolate chip cookies or there's Pesto coming from the Italian restaurant up ahead, that makes those places a destination, right? Exactly. And that's not something you can recreate with e-commerce. And it has never been something you could recreate with e-commerce.

19:35And even further, as AI makes it really easy and really cheap to create artificial experiences which are really not authentic, people are going to crave these real experiences. And by the way, AI is limited. It cannot appeal to all of your five senses yet. People are going to go increasingly crave these real experiences even more than you thought. Yeah. I'm not sure if you're not sure yet because who knows AI might be able to replicate the smell of chocolate chip cookies. We're getting some good questions in start with listener Leonard who asked, what do you make of what we're seeing at our shopping malls? Why are malls succeeding while others struggle? Yes. Because the great question, and I love it, because these malls that you're mentioning that are doing very well are all examples of this lifestyle, life experience malls. They're all generally somewhat open open air. You walk around in them and then they're like different physical locations and you go

20:36wander. They're built to help you wander around in an open space. That's fundamentally what's making them successful. Very old-style, closed indoor formats that are going to be much more challenged. How have malls changed their target audiences? So malls need to become one of the biggest problems in the malls of yesterday, while they didn't have a good way to build a frequency of your shopping trend. A mall will be successful if you have a consumer think of it as a place to go quite frequently. If you go to that mall four times a year, it is not going to be very successful. But if it's some place where you go because you have to do something every week, then it will be very successful. So building frequency is critical to malls. And if you look at what's happening, mall owners are experimenting with many different types of frequency building opportunities. One of them is food. Clearly people shop for grocery every week, experiential grocery shopping, like whole

21:39foods, great place to put it in the mall. People love going to high impact movies, have a movie theater in the mall. By the way, people are also thinking of many, many models are experimenting with putting in exercise centers, studios of those kinds in those kind of mall locations. That's another way to reinvent the mall. Lastly, malls are relying much more on these, what I would call as very powerful vertical brands. Apple is an example, the Lululemon is an example, Otto Vera is an example. And all of these products appeal to the lifestyle consumer, the consumers who is really active outside and it fits into that ethos. We talk about the vertical products. What about the big anchor tenants, the macy's, I'm old enough, I'll say sears, places like that that used to be the big anchor tenants, would take up maybe half the mall. Are those on their way out or already out? Those anchor retailers are the ones that I would say are having the most amount of work

22:46that they need to do to reinvent themselves. I'm not ready to say they are on the way out. But if you look at an example of what macy's is doing, I think reinventing the original traditional macy's model to appeal to this new customer is going to be extremely difficult. But what macy's can do is reinvent itself by creating new other formats of retailing, smaller stores that are focused on beauty and that can be a growth engine for macy's. So going 10 years down the road, you may see macy's no longer gets a lot of its sales from that big macy's store, but all of these smaller stores. Notstroms is going through such an experience right now. The notstrom rack model is phenomenally growing for them. I mean, they're opening lots of them everywhere. So that's the model. There is a big notstrom in the mall model. Who in places can you open that? There are some real limitations. It also doesn't appeal to many demographics. So you see both macy's notstroms reinventing themselves that way.

23:50All right. Dr. Callan, we have another question from a KCBS listener. Has the traditional big box retailer become extinct? I'm going to vote no on that because if you ever been to the Home Depot on a weekend, who boy? So I'm going to vote with you and I'm here. But it's a great question from the listener. I would say that certain types of big box retailers could have become extinct. Sears is a great example. We don't think of macy's as a big box retailer, but macy's is really a soft goods big box retailer. And you can see the downward measure on the mall. But you step away from these kind of companies and then look at the Home Depot. No issue there. The Home Depot is thriving. Home Depot is still an extraordinary well-run company. They're building their customer base even as we speak. Another big box, I don't know if people even consider a big box, but I'll go there. That's a big, big box.

24:52No. Very big, big, big, big box. I like that. And Costco, no slowdown or no slowdown. And their customer base is as loyal as ever. And they're about as e-commerce proof as anybody, no slowdown there whatsoever. We would think Walmart probably is another big, big box. The Walmart Super Center. Phenomenal growth there. Why? Because they have reinvented themselves in a very nice way. They allow consumers to now shop for the groceries online. And then they plug them to pick it up at the local Walmart on the way home. A lot of people do not want food left outside the house. So on the pick, they've made it super convenient. And then on the way there, they can also pick up other things. One thing to keep in mind with grocery retailers and other retailers like Target and Walmart is the big box. We still look at it as a big box and say, hey, why is it there? Inside it's being reinvented to fulfill e-commerce.

25:52A lot of these big box centers are actually now e-commerce fulfillment centers. And whether Walmart is now so good at this, if you order something by noon today, it turns up by something we're Walmart in your Walmart plus member or not. It turns up in four hours in your house. And why is that happening? Because they send it out of a local Walmart, not out of a distribution center in site menu. So what I want to tell the listeners is don't think of the big box retailers as only places where consumers go shop. They're also doubling now as fulfillment centers for orders that you're placing online. And that's the terrific use of that real estate. And by the way, they do a great job competing against Amazon using those physical locations for fulfillment. Ten years ago, the retail industry thought this would never work. Never work. In fact, I was at a conference where prominent retail executive from a company called Okara

26:53said store-based fulfillment. The kind we're talking about was the dumbest idea I've ever seen. Yes, what? Reality shows that that's absolutely. The idea that it's a dumbest idea is the dumb idea. Is it becoming harder for mom and pop stores to succeed? So yes, if they are undifferentiated. Again, let's go back to the original premise. Two things. Have artificial stuff, increases, people crave real experiences. Number one, that means authenticity. Number two, you appeal to the five senses you will do very well. Number three, and part of that five senses is the sense of relationship building. Mom and pop retailers, I think, have some advantages and some disadvantages. They tend to be, if they are very differentiated, they tend to be very authentic. Number one, number two, they do offer a good, in-store experience appealing to the five senses. If they have undifferentiated merchandise, I think they're going to be in trouble.

27:55If I can get the same thing that they sell online, it's not going to be much of an advantage. So I don't see an across the board threat to them, but I see that if they're undifferentiated, they're going to be in trouble. I also see in some locations rental issues, costs of real estate, etc. are going to put pressure on them and probably create some pressure on them. I live in a town here called Los Carros. I don't see, there are lots of small mom and pop stores here. They're doing extremely well. I haven't seen a big pressure on them in any way. We want to thank Dr. Curthy Calliana, Executive Director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University for coming on Ask an Expert. Dr. Calliana, if we learned anything today, it's that shopping malls are not dead. They are just reinventing themselves, right? Yeah, and please don't call them shopping malls, call them lifestyle centers or experience centers. That's really a term, shopping mall of a term of the past.

28:56You sound like you should be a brand manager. There you go. That's your new title. Thank you for listening to On Deadline, Your Radio News from Odyssey. On Deadline is written and produced by me, Christy Strosser, and by Lauren Berry. Subscribe wherever you get podcasts. Running a business shouldn't feel like a juggling act. One app for accounting, another for inventory, one more for sales, and somehow they never work together. Or you can use ODO. One fully integrated platform with all the business applications you need. PRM, inventory accounting, marketing, and more, all working together seamlessly. Stop juggling software and get back to growing your business. Try ODO for free at ODO.com. That's ODO.com. New Shoes, new clothes, brand new grade.

29:56Switch to Verizon to make sure their tech keeps up. This back to school season, buy or bring any Android phone and get a Samsung Galaxy tablet on us. Get your kids ready for the school year without breaking the bank. Visit Verizon.com or your local store today. Bring an Android phone or purchase a new phone with device payment on post-paid service plan required. 3.2999 tablet device payment purchased with new mine on $20 per month tablet plan for 36 months required. Less $330 tablet per month credit applied over 36 months additional taxes fees in terms apply. Hey, I ride almost here. Are you ready? Just grabbing my shoes. That's what you said 10 minutes ago. I just wrapped the video call, uploading this giant file on my tablet, looking at my watch goop and Nana's with the group chat. And of course, still lining up tonight's playlist on my phone. All at once? Yep, story of my life. That's why I switched to D-Mobile. They have the fastest 5G network. Okay, multi-tasker. I see you. Honestly, I never imagined I could do all this at once. It's awesome. Say no more, I'm totally switching.

30:58My post is taking way too long to upload. That's a sign you've got to get to mobile. So many reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours at T-Mobile.com. Fastest based on analysis by Uclav Speed Test Intelligence, the data of national speed score results in cooperating 5G download and upload speeds for the first half of 2026. What if the thing you're listening to right now never got interrupted? What if it could play uninterrupted from room to room on Sonos? What if you start with two Sonos speakers just to see how it feels? What if you really like how it feels and you become a Sonos person who can't stop saying to their friends? What if you start with two Sonos speakers just to see how it feels? Because it's not magic. But it's not not magic.