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An encouraging inflation report to end the week, plus the rise of concierge medicine, and AI comes to your weather forecast.

From American public media, this is Marketplace.

Thank you. In Denver, I'm Amy Scott in for Kai Rizdal. It's Friday, February 13th. Good to have you with us. It's been about five years now that we've been living with inflation higher than the Fed's target of 2% annually,

but we're getting closer to that target. Today's delayed consumer price index report from the

Labor Department shows prices rose just 2.4% on an annual basis in January, down from 2.7% the

previous month, and way down from the peak of more than 9% in 2022.

But as usual, the devil is in the details. And here to dive in with us are Catherine Rampel at the

Bullwork and MS Now. And also Greg Ipp at the Wall Street Journal. Hi, you two.

Hey, Amy. Hello.

All right, Greg, let's start with your takeaways from that inflation report. Good news?

Well, yeah, I'd say that it is a good report. The inflation rate of 2.4%. Certainly a lot lower,

as you were saying, than it was a few years ago.

And economists like to take out the energy and food portions, not because they don't actually think those are important, but because they're very volatile. And if you do that, you come

with an inflation rate of only around 2.5%, which is the lowest for that number since 2021,

just after the pandemic.

But as you said, the devil is in the details.

If you look below the surface, you do still see some signs of tariff inflation

in things like appliances and other imported goods.

And also, this may come to surprise to some people,

...