Hello! Hope you’re having a great Friday.

Marketplace can tell you about the economic news of the week and how it connects it to your household budget. But often, our news shows and podcasts don’t have time for the thornier, more emotional side of personal finance. Deep questions like, “How much money is ‘enough’? Is there such a thing?”

That’s where our podcast “This Is Uncomfortable” comes in. Host Reema Khrais starts with stories about everyday life, and explores the weird ways money can mess with it. The show has genuinely changed the way I see my money, my career and myself, so I’m thrilled it’s back with new episodes every single week, indefinitely.

It’s a familiar thought: “I would be happier if I just had a little more…” Everyone has a different number (we know because we asked, a lot). But can economists actually pinpoint a dollar amount for optimal happiness? To find out, Reema asked Wharton assistant professor Wendy De La Rosa, who has studied the psychology of “enough money” as she lived out those anxieties herself. Here are some highlights from that conversation:

The “hedonic treadmill” is the idea that no matter how much we have, we still feel the need for more. This doesn’t just have to be about money. Our brains are really good at adjusting to the “new normal,” De La Rosa said, then looking ahead for the next target. 

Objective vs. subjective wealth: Your objective net worth is a simple equation of all your assets minus all your debts. But that’s not the only way to measure wealth. 

“Our subjective wealth is all about, how do you feel about your objective wealth?” De La Rosa said. “Do you feel like you have enough money? Do you feel like you lack money? Do you feel like you have enough resources? And it's all subjective.”

Your feelings impact your financial behaviors more than your actual wealth: “In our lab we've shown that over and above your objective financial situation, how you feel is more indicative and predictive of your financial behaviors than where you are,” De La Rosa said.

Researchers have also found people who feel less wealthy not only spend less but also save less, regardless of the amount of money they actually have. In that way, dissatisfaction with our money can beget more dissatisfaction.

So that’s the academic side. But Reema also spoke with an Australian woman who has lived a decade “without money,” but not without enormous sacrifice and help from her community.

My husband, John, and I decided to try a little experiment the other day. We’d just finished shopping at a supermarket in Queens and wondered: How much would an Uber cost to get home?

We each typed in our address and on the count of three, confirmed the ride. John’s price was $8.91. I was given $9.96.

“I don’t really use Uber, so maybe it’s trying to get me to use it more?” John guessed.

That’s one theory. But the company said it does not personalize fares. In a statement, Uber said variations in prices reflect things like how many drivers are active and how many customers are requesting similar trips. 

In general though, companies now know more than ever about our habits. That’s powerful information — not just for advertising, but to understand how much any given person might pay for something beyond the realities of dynamic pricing. It’s called “surveillance pricing,” when companies set different prices for different customers. After much backlash, Instacart recently ended a pilot that allowed retailers to charge different prices for people living in the same city. 

Personalized pricing isn’t new. In fact, it’s been around in some form as long as commerce has.

“People think that personalization is a 21st-century phenomenon due to the internet. It goes back to peddlers and before,” said Joseph Turow, author of “The Voice Catchers: How Marketers Listen In to Exploit Your Emotions, Your Privacy, and Your Wallet.”

Shopkeepers would game out what customers were willing to pay. 

“They would actually keep notebooks on the people they spoke to and would write down specific characteristics,” like what kind of clothes you wore or who your friends and family were, said Turow.

The difference is before, a business owner had to guess if a woman’s baby bump was indeed a baby bump. Now, a retailer knows the instant she adds prenatal vitamins to her cart. 

“It’s legal to do it, and some economists would say that price differentiation is just part of the way that economics works,” said Turow, adding that a lot of consumers have no idea surveillance pricing is happening. “But to me that’s problematic.” 

No one really knows how common surveillance pricing is. But what is clear is that retailers are watching us closely. 

The crude oil relationship between the U.S. and Canada has a lot going for it: proximity, friendship, and — crucially — timing.

There’s been a long-standing synergy between the two countries around oil. But experts said the American takeover of Venezuelan oil could change all that.

In the 2000s, U.S. refiners were able to replace missing Venezuelan heavy crude oil with Canada’s, said Kevin Birn, head of carbon research at S&P Global Energy.

Canadian crude exports to the U.S. have increased for years since that oil is heavy and perfect for the specialized refineries needed to process it. Venezuelan oil is also heavy.

“Around the same time that Latin American crude was beginning to soften, Canadian production was beginning to accelerate,” Birn said.

But now, if some of that Venezuelan crude oil comes back, Energy Intelligence research director Abhi Rajendran said it will likely have to come out from other sources.

“Canadian crude is going to be your number one source of being substituted away from,” he said.

That will play out on the U.S. Gulf Coast, where refineries were built for heavy Venezuelan oil. Birn said more than a million barrels of Canadian heavy crude are currently used per day on the Gulf Coast. If it has to compete with more Venezuelan crude, he said it will “come down to price.”

But Canada can sell to other countries, said Ryan Kellogg, a professor of climate and energy policy at the University of Chicago.

“This is sort of yet another reason to think hard about diversifying their market and try to find markets that are not the U.S.,” Kellogg said.

What about China?

Tribute bands are nearly as old as the acts they cover.

Almost as soon as Elvis Presley exploded to fame in the 1950s, the first Elvis impersonators hit the scene. A decade later, The Buggs were performing songs by their contemporaries, The Beatles. The new movie “Song Sung Blue” is based on the true story of a husband-and-wife Neil Diamond tribute band that formed in 1989 (don’t click that link if you want to go into the movie spoiler-free). 

These tribute acts have become more popular as live performance has become increasingly important to the health of the music industry, and concert tickets have become more expensive for the typical fan. Cover bands can fill a variety of venues, they’re cost-effective, and their setlist has a great hit ratio.

”The problem is, they start them [based on] whatever their favorite band was in high school, not what the market needs,” said Michael Twombly, who runs a booking agency for about 1,700 tribute acts. Twombly got his start with The Cured, but now he’s looking for tributes to more modern acts like Bruno Mars and Taylor Swift.

After you listen to this cover-of-a-cover from “Song Sung Blue,”check our whole feature on the tribute band industry. My colleague Maria Hollenhorst spent hours at LA’s Whisky A Go Go to get audio for it.