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Just when you thought that you could book to go back in the water. As if sorting a holiday, ensuring the country you want to go to is okay for long enough to get there, or dodging quarantine roulette wasn't enough, now car hire inflation is biting. In a sign of the inflationary times, the cost of renting a car has rocketed to about three times the price of last year and it's being blamed on the semiconductor shortage. How can a lack of computer chips drive up costs so substantially at the car hire desk? And what on earth has this got to do with the price of a bag of crisps? Georgie Frost, Grace Gausden and Simon Lambert look at holidays and inflation and the points where supply and demand are intersecting to create very odd scenarios, plus Simon expands on his crisp-based inflation explanation. Also, Grace investigates unpaid Dartford Crossing charges that spiralled into a £3,000 bill and Simon looks at what happens if you want to give your house to your child and whether that's an inheritance tax risk.

Prices rise as inflation concerns grow. Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Wells Fargo report earnings. Delta reports its first profit since 2019. And McCormick hires a taco czar. Motley Fool analysts Andy Cross and Jason Moser discuss those stories and weigh in on the latest from Disney, Netflix, Pepsi, and UnitedHealthcare. Plus, our analysts share two stocks on their radar: AppHarvest and Intuitive Surgical. And we revisit our interview with NYU Professor of Psychology Emily Balcetis, author of Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World.

Adam Cox is joined by Natasha Chetty, from London-based tuition service inTuition Clubs, to look at the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 on education. Natasha explains how tuition can be used to supplement lost classroom learning and gives some tips to parents who are worried about the amount of lost classroom time their children have had.

Alison Southwick and personal finance expert Robert Brokamp challenge the conventional wisdom on life's biggest financial issues to reveal what you really need to know to make smart money moves. Ron Lieber with the New York Times is back to talk about some of the most common scams in current circulation and why younger people are more susceptible to falling for them.

Professor Tim Evans of Middlesex University asks if we are going back to the future, with users of Britain's roads paying as they go as they used to with turnpikes in the Georgian era. If so, why can't our politicians admit that's where we are headed? As United States forces leave Afghanistan, he points out that a new regional "Great Game" is looming. And, as unrest erupts in Cuba, he wonders if the regime there knows that its days are numbered.

James Cameron-Wilson on the latest UK box office where Black Widow, starring Scarlett Johansson, has not quite topped the opening weekend success of Fast & Furious 9. He feels it to be, however, one of the better Marvel films for some time. Online, he reviews fantasy adventure The Water Man, with Rosario Dawson, the only film to be directed by actor David Oyelowo. He enthuses over Pixar's latest animated feature Luca, which doesn't underestimate its audience's intelligence, finding it sad, though, that it is released not in cinemas but on Disney+.

Share Radio tech whizz Steve Caplin explains why Sainsbury's has decided to stop selling CDs and DVDs and why the Japanese government hasn't been able to scrap its fax machines. He gasps at the $1.5m auction for a Super Mario 64 game and even more being spent on Isaac Newton's handwritten notes. He discusses 3D police mugshots, the proposal to shoot containers at 760 mph down a mag-lev tube, at robot sculptors at Carrara, Italy's famed marble centre and at dynamic focus sunglasses and a table lamp controlled by a hovering steel ball - until it gets lost.

Have you seen what's happening to second-hand car prices? Tim Price, director of Price Value Partners, is convinced that inflation is returning and feels he has the most compelling investment opportunity of his entire life. He argues that investors should be inflation-proofing their portfolios and he discusses types of shares, sectors and countries that should fare better than others. He suggests value rather than growth stocks with an emphasis on companies extracting or highly-linked to commodities (at their cheapest in 60 years) while he favours Asia (though not China) and, in particular Vietnam and Japan. If the market falls out of bed, wise investors will have ensured they have available funds to take advantage of the fact that quality investments will be even cheaper than now.

The triple lock has always been a hot potato but things have stepped up another gear as it could deliver a bumper 8% state pension increase due to a statistical quirk. The state pension pledge means that payouts rise by the greatest of inflation, wage growth or 2.5%. Yet, wage growth numbers are being skewed this year because the Covid crash a year ago saw millions put on furlough on a maximum of 80% of earnings, workers suffer temporary pay cuts, and many lose their jobs. Job cuts disproportionately hit the low paid and continue to do so, taking them out of the figures and bumping up the average wage, workers coming back from furlough are seeing pay go back up to their full amount, and short-term pay cuts have been reversed. All this makes average wage growth look artificially high, despite many public and private sector workers suffering pay freezes or negligible rises. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that distortion could lead to an 8% wage growth figure in the month the triple lock reading is taken from, delivering a £14 weekly increase to the state pension and £3billion bill. Is it fair for pensioners to get a bumper increase based on a distortion caused by the pay pain suffered by workers in lockdown? Some say ‘no’, others say ‘stick to the deal’. Tanya Jefferies, Georgie Frost and Simon Lambert look at what is causing the triple lock anomaly and what the Government might do. Will they pay up or fudge it? Also this week, the painful cases of those who cannot afford funerals for loved ones, the return of gazumping to the property market, and finally, the crazy NatWest banking rule that has forced a reader to have their employer’s bank accounts mixed with theirs in online banking

Google is sued over its app store, Wells Fargo cuts its personal lines of credit, the Chinese government slows down ride-hailing app Didi, Stamps.com gets taken private, Levi Strauss expands its bottom line, Philip Morris buys a pharmaceutical company, and college students have food delivery robots to look forward to this fall. Jason Moser and Emily Flippen analyse those stories and share two stocks on their radar: Itron and Chewy. Plus, Motley Fool analyst Tim Beyers discusses the current state of the streaming wars with Netflix, Disney+, Peacock, etc., and what to expect from Apple’s event this fall