The Brief

A scorching Alabama day isn't so bad — if there's a pool party. Meghan Clopton invited dozens of guests to a summer birthday celebration for one of her kids last year, complete with water guns, a twisting slide and plenty of inflatables.

The guests had just one shared question: Whose pool was this?

Her answer? She rented it.

"It's part of the culture now, right? Just, like, take over someone else's house or pool for the day or the weekend," Clopton said.

"For a fee," her husband, Taylor Clopton, added.

They rented the backyard pool through Swimply, one of a small but growing number of Airbnb-style companies that lets you rent pools, along with other private spaces, including tennis and basketball courts. These listings are a growing side of the sharing economy that have made it common, and often near-frictionless, to rent someone else's property, from cars to guest bedrooms.

Clopton paid $381 for that birthday party, which allowed her to invite up to 30 guests for three hours of pool time.

The pool's owner, Jasmine Lawson, said she's had bookings for graduation parties, book clubs and photo shoots. Overall, she's hosted over 1,000 guests a year at her Birmingham property. "And it grows every single year," Lawson added.

Along with a hot tub and an 8-foot-deep pool, Lawson's guests get access to an air-conditioned room in her home with a table for laying out a party spread, plus a private bathroom. They also get to choose from a catalog of 50 different pool floats. (The white, human-sized inflatable unicorn that sprays water from its horn is a favorite.)

A unicorn inflatable sprinkler sprays water across Jasmine Lawson's pool in Birmingham, Ala., on June 24.

(

Stephan Bisaha

/

NPR

)

Lawson gives all her guests a walk-through when they arrive, before going upstairs to work. "But if they ever need anything, I'm right down here helping them as soon as I can," she said. Swimply users can use a filter on the platform for more privacy — that can include factors like whether or not the pool is within view of the home or if the owners will be around.

Lawson originally started renting out her pool to help cover the end-of-life veterinary costs for one of her dogs, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Now, Lawson uses the bookings to boost her income and cover the pool's maintenance.

"When you own a pool, every time you turn around something happens and it's $1,000," Lawson said.

Swimply founder and CEO Bunim Laskin said covering those expenses was the original idea for the company. He started Swimply in 2019, inspired by his experience of offering to pay a pool-owning neighbor to borrow it for a party with his 11 siblings.

Today, according to a company spokesperson, Swimply has listings in 150 cities, and so far has had more than 275,000 reservations this year, about 50% more than last year.

While homes listed on Airbnb, the best-known sharing platform, are often used by out-of-towners, such as for business trips or vacations, Swimply's rental pools are more often used locally. Guests book pools near home, often for staycations.

Laskin said the company has done well during tough economic times. "We really became big for the first time during the pandemic," Laskin said. "Travel was impossible, and people more than ever needed a way to supplement their income."

Jasmine Lawson skims her pool in Birmingham, Ala., on June 24.

(

Stephan Bisaha

/

NPR

)

Renting out a swimming pool comes with an important, and possibly expensive, question: Who's responsible if someone gets hurt? After all, pools can be dangerous, especially for young swimmers.

Swimply covers up to $1 million in liability for hosts, similar to Airbnb's policy for home rentals.

Courts have been wrestling with this kind of question when it comes to gig and sharing economy companies, according to Lindsey Cameron, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. For example: Who's liable if a rideshare driver harms a passenger — the driver or the company? "Because there is not an employer, as one typically thinks of, that you can say, 'You have responsibility for the products that you are putting out into the world,'" she said.

Some state governments are trying to hash out these kinds of issues, too. This week, Minnesota's Supreme Court agreed to hear a case about whether pools on the Swimply app should be considered public facilities — and therefore subject to government licensing regulations, possibly including state inspections. (A lower court ruled in favor of the regulations earlier this year.)

Saša Pekeč, a professor of business administration at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, compares it to the early days of ridesharing apps, which were banned in some cities while regulations were still being worked out.

"Some local communities might just say that 'No, you cannot rent your pool because there's too much liability,'" said Pekeč.

The prospect of a pool being used as a rental has even given at least one private company pause. Lawson said her pool maintenance company dropped her as a client, citing worries that they'd be held responsible if a guest had a bad reaction to pool chemicals. Now she maintains the pool on her own. ("It's been crystal clear," she said.)

But other than having to offer the occasional Band-Aid, Lawson said, she's never had an incident. And that's with weekends with three or four bookings back-to-back. This weekend she's got an all-day Fourth of July birthday party booked.

After renting Lawson's pool, Meghan Clopton got quotes for building one in her own backyard. She was shocked when they came back ranging from $60,000 to $110,000. While Clopton works out the budget and savings, she plans on sticking with renting. She's also dreamed about paying down that future pool by listing it on Swimply.

"It's absolutely a great business plan and I would not say no," Clopton said.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Twenty years ago, a Los Angeles DJ put out an album that asked a question nobody had quite answered yet: Could the turntable be a lead instrument?

Not just a tool, but the thing carrying the whole record?

Lucas McFadden, also known as Cut Chemist, said “yes.”

His debut solo album, The Audience’s Listening, dropped in 2006 after years of work, sample clearances and a clean break from the group that made him famous. He was a founding member of Jurassic 5, and before that, Ozomatli.

Two decades later, he's been revisiting that record in a series called Expert of None. It’s an intimate show at Only the Wild Ones in Venice, where he traces the records that shaped him right up to this album. The final installment of the series is scheduled for August 2.

“It's a record that I periodically revisit throughout my life just to kind of see where I've been and to know where I need to go next,” McFadden said. “I always like to do something different from what I've done before. This is the year where I really go back and trace the steps of the building blocks that made that record and who I was as an artist leading up to that.”

The art of mixing

Few fans know the behind-the-scenes work it takes for DJs and producers to track down sounds and then get the permission to use them. McFadden said finding and presenting music are two very different processes.

“I feel like a matchmaker, so to speak, because no one else would take things which are from completely opposite ends of the globe and put them together in the same composition,” McFadden said. “Then, you have to track down the artist to ask their permission. It's very interesting and rewarding when they say yes.”

McFadden walked away from the success of Jurassic 5 to devote his time to a solo career. He said the change gave him increased freedom but also increased pressure.

“It was very scary to leave something so successful and really at its peak to do something where I was responsible for both the failures and the successes on my own,” McFadden said. “I couldn't share that blame with anybody. It was all on me. So, I remember putting a lot of pressure on myself, because I was the one in the spotlight. Then the successes were twice as sweet in that regard as well.”

The result was his debut, The Audience’s Listening, which McFadden says is very much an L.A. record.

“I was raised on L.A. radio,” McFadden said.  "Being from here and being in groups like Ozomatli and Jurassic 5, I feel like those two groups couldn't exist anywhere else. They are such a byproduct of the city, coming from places like The Good Life in South Central. L.A. is such a melting pot, and I feel like my life in music is the same reflection of that as well.”

Revisiting the past to create the present

McFadden has been tracing the records that led to The Audience’s Listening during his "Expert of None" events at Only the Wild Ones in Venice. The immersive listening residency explores musical discovery and crate digging culture, revealing the records and influences that shaped the album.

“It's been incredible,” McFadden said. “There's so many things about my life that I didn't realize until I sat down and thought about them in the context of discovering music.”

McFadden says his younger self would be very pleased with the legacy of The Audience’s Listening.

“People still regard it as an album that’s important to them for the DJ culture,” McFadden said. “When it came out in the mid-2000s, DJs were kind of fading away, at least turntablists were. Another type of DJ was emerging, which was a laptop DJ. That opened the door for a lot of people that in some cases probably shouldn't be DJs, but wouldn't if this technology didn't exist. So, it was a very confusing time to put out a DJ turntablist record. I feel like I did well, and after 20 years of thinking about it and living in that world, I'm happy where it stands.”

Tickets for Cut Chemist’s Aug. 2 event at Only the Wild Ones are currently sold out, but fans can join a waiting list.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge ruled Monday that there is enough evidence to put singer D4vd on trial in the killing and dismemberment of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez after, authorities said, she had threatened to expose their relationship and crater his career.

Los Angeles Judge Charlaine Olmedo decided the evidence prosecutors presented at a preliminary hearing that spanned five days provided probable cause for a trial on charges of murder, continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14 and unlawful mutilation of human remains.

“The people have met their burden on all counts,” Olmedo said. She ordered that Burke continue to be held without bail.

D4vd, the 21-year-old singer born David Burke whose career was steeply rising before the allegations emerged, has pleaded not guilty. He showed no emotion when the judge issued her ruling. Defense lawyers declined to comment outside court after the ruling.

Olmedo emphasized that the probable cause standard for a preliminary hearing like this is much lower than the threshold at trial. However, prosecutors asserted the evidence was overwhelming.

“Based on the mountains of evidence presented,” Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman said, “all of the allegations have been proved way beyond the standard required.”

Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman said outside court that prosecutors are still weighing whether to seek the death penalty. Burke is to be arraigned Aug. 31.

Prosecutors on Monday wrapped up their case by giving a moment-by-moment account of Rivas Hernandez’s last night, showing that after a stream of text messages with Burke, her phone went permanently silent when she arrived at his home.

As she neared his Hollywood home shortly after 10 a.m. on April 23, 2025, in an Uber he had sent to pick her up, she sent her final text: “girly pop i’m almost there open ur door if ur home.”

Prosecutors allege Burke stabbed her to death when she came through the door.

The night before, the two argued via text about his relationship with a woman. She sent him an angry and profane text saying she will tell her dad so many lies about him and “i will end ur career and ur life.”

Prosecutors said that Burke met Rivas Hernandez when she was 11, began sexually abusing her when she was 13 and he was 18, stabbed her to death when she threatened to report him and ruin his career, and cut up her body in his garage with chain saws.

Prosecutors said they have records showing Burke ordered chain saws and wading pools that he used to dismember her body in his garage, and that her DNA was found there on blood stains discovered when police served a search warrant.

They said he then drove around for weeks and even months with the body in the trunk. Her decomposing body was found in the Tesla registered to Burke that was towed from the Hollywood Hills in September, a little more than four months later.

Prosecutors said the car was parked around the corner from his house, and surveillance video will show he was the last person to drive it.

Defense argues there’s insufficient evidence for murder

After the final witness on Monday, the defense argued that the evidence was insufficient and the murder charge should be dismissed.

“There’s no evidence that Mr. Burke harbored a deliberate intent to kill Miss Hernandez,” said Burke’s attorney, Marilyn Bednarski.

She said the communications between Burke and Rivas Hernandez showed “no threat, no evidence of a history of violence” and that he had “the opposite of homicidal malice” toward her.

She argued that a medical examiner ruling that her death was a homicide from two puncture wounds was too vague and inconclusive to be evidence of murder. The defense did not directly give an alternative theory on how she died and isn’t required to.

The defense showed several other texts from Rivas Hernandez threatening him about their relationship, and saying she would go to Burke’s mother, talk to his friends and “leak” information about them.

Under questioning from defense attorney Blair Berk, Farrell said he saw no indication that she ever threatened to go to police or pursue any legal action against him.

The defense also established that she had asked seven times to come to see him in the days before her death, and he reluctantly agreed only after she demanded it, and that she had threatened to kill Burke and to mutilate him.

The defense argued that all of the malice had come from her.

Silverman told the judge that “the defense tried numerous times throughout these proceedings to dirty up the victim” despite her being a child.

The detective also said under questioning from Berk that the parents of both Burke and Rivas Hernandez knew about their relationship, that he had attended church with members of her family and that her parents had given their consent for her to go to London with him for a week.

Prosecution alleges D4vd immediately began covering up the killing

After her phone went silent, Burke sent her several other messages that night asking where she was, and expressing concern. Prosecutors allege those messages were sent as cover after he had killed her.

Prosecutors allege Burke dismembered the body in his garage. A police analyst testified earlier in the hearing that samples pulled from apparent blood stains there matched her DNA.

Her body was found in a Tesla registered to him nearly five months later.

Detective documents sexual abuse

In earlier testimony, Farrell recounted dozens of sexually explicit photos of Burke and Rivas Hernandez and years of text messages that described the same things, along with conversations that indicated she had gotten an abortion in 2024 at 13 after he got her pregnant.

Farrell described the photos that could not be shown in court, material so graphic that it left Rivas Hernandez’s mother in tears and prompted both parents to leave the courtroom on Friday. They were back in court Monday.

D4vd’s career was reaching new heights at time of killing

D4vd (pronounced “David”) became an online musical phenomenon as a teen with a blend of indie rock, R&B and lo-fi pop. He had huge followings on TikTok, Soundcloud and Spotify, where his top songs, including his 2022 breakthrough “Romantic Homicide,” have more than a billion plays.

In 2024 he played the Coachella music festival and released his first full-length album, “Withered,” two days after authorities say Rivas Hernandez was killed.