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Reese’s heir vs. chocolate skimpflation
Live event info and tickets here. When ingredient costs skyrocket, companies have three basic options: They can raise their prices (a sort of product-specific…
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Dark times for Cuba’s economic experiment
Live event info and tickets here. For more than 60 years, Cuba has survived on two seemingly contradictory economic strategies: leaning on friendly communist…
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The skyscrapers that NIMBYs and zoning couldn't stop
LIVE SHOW TOUR INFO HERE. New stories, live tapings, special guests, book signings and more. What would you build on a piece of land when all the normal rules…
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Our BOOK vs. the global supply chain
When you come across a book at a yard sale or a bookstore, you might pay more attention to the words between the covers than the physical form of the book…
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Inside a BOOK auction
In the age of TikTok and Polymarket, it can be easy to overlook the humble book. But books are one of the most influential technologies ever invented. From…
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The little pet fish that saved a town in the Amazon
The cardinal tetra is one of the most popular pet fish in the world. They look like little red and blue sequins. You've almost certainly seen them at the pet…
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Chef vs. Robot
Robby the chef has lots of endearing qualities. He can make over 5000 dishes, he’s a consistent cook, and he’s never late for work. But he’s not a human. It is…
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The laws of the office revisited
Live event info and tickets here. If something is going wrong in your workplace, there's probably a law that explains why. Meetings always seem long, and never…
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Planet Money vs. the NBA’s tanking problem
What do we want from sports? The very best athletes competing as hard as they know how, putting all their effort and training and natural ability to the test…
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The Business of Heated Rivalry
Heated Rivalry , the steamy hockey romance show, was made for about $2 million per episode. That is remarkably cheap for an hour-long drama. Today on the show,…
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Don't hate the replicator, hate the game
The world of science has been stuck in an existential crisis over whether we actually know the things we thought we knew. Re-running an old study today doesn't…
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The ICE hiring boom
Live event info and tickets here . ICE is scaling up, with rapid new hiring. So we ask, has training new officers changed? At what cost? Also, the Trump…
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The Supreme Court struck down a bunch of Trump's tariffs. Now what?
Live event info and tickets here. The Supreme Court has spoken. Those big, sweeping tariffs that President Trump imposed early last year? They’re illegal. On…
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How to get what Greenland has, with permission
Book tour and ticket info here. Greenland has said it is not for sale. Denmark has said it can’t even legally sell Greenland. And at a security conference in…
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Betty Boop, Excel Olympics, Penny-isms: Our 2026 Valentines
Book tour event details and ticket info here . An iconic cartoon character liberated from copyright, journalism from the world of competitive spreadsheeting, a…
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The Invention Invention
Book tour tickets and details here . Today, the story of three inventions. The first, the sewing machine, was created by a selfish and ambitious inventor who…
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Iran, protests, and sanctions
Book tour tickets and details here . The recent protests in Iran are about so many things. Human rights, corruption, freedom. But this time – they are also…
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Riding with the repo man (update)
Planet Money book tour ticket info and dates here . A record number of Americans with poor or just okay credit are behind on their car payments. And once last…
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Can Trump make buying a home more affordable?
Book tour dates and ticket info here . Housing is too expensive. Everyone knows this. Democrats know that talking about it plays well with voters. And now – in…
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Can transforming neighborhoods help kids escape poverty?
In the 1990s, Congress created HOPE VI, a program that demolished old public housing projects and replaced them with more up-to-date ones. But the program went…
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A trip to the magic mushroom megachurch
Book tour dates and ticket info here . Just as every market has its first movers, every religion has its martyrs — the people willing to risk everything for…
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BOARD GAMES 3: What’s in a name?
Planet Money has teamed up with the company Exploding Kittens to make a board game inspired by the legendary economics paper The Market for Lemons. We’ve…
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Chevron, Venezuela and the Paradox of Plenty
Venezuela and Chevron have perhaps one of the strangest partnerships … ever? Chevron, one of the world’s most famous and profitable oil corporations, has for…
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How much money President Trump and his family have made
Before President Donald Trump’s first term, he was in a “tight spot” financially, according to New Yorker writer David Kirkpatrick. At the start of his second…
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So are we in an AI bubble? Here are clues to look for.
Are we in an AI bubble? That’s the $35 trillion dollar question right now as the stock market soars higher and higher. The problem is that bubbles are famously…
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How Black hair care grew Black power
The Afro is one of the most iconic hairstyles of the last century. And one of its main ingredients was a hair product – Afro Sheen. But Afro Sheen did so much…
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Venezuela’s recent economic history (Update)
We’ve been checking in on the economic conditions in Venezuela for about a decade now. In response to the U.S. strike and the capture of Venezuelan president…
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Indicators of the Year, Past and Future
2025 is finally over. It was a wild year for the U.S. economy. Tariffs transformed global trading, consumer sentiment hit near-historic lows, and stocks hit…
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Why economists got free trade with China so wrong
With the year coming to a close, we're sharing our most popular Planet Money bonus episode of 2025! As U.S. trade with China exploded in the early 2000's,…
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The Rest of the Story, 2025
Most stories keep going even after we set down our microphones and the music fades up. That's why, at the end of each year, we look back and we take stock. We…
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The summer I turned binge-y
On the eve of Netflix shoveling a fourish-hour chunk of Stranger Things onto Christmas Day, we visit the past, present, and future of binge-dropped television…
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What AI data centers are doing to your electric bill
As a country, we are spending more to get data centers up and running than we spent to build the entire interstate highway system. (Yes, that’s…
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PM does a pop culture draft: 1999 edition
Welcome to the inaugural Planet Money Pop Culture Draft! In today's episode (a Planet Money+ episode we’re releasing into the main feed) we're gonna go back to…
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When Chicago pawned its parking meters
In 2008, Chicago’s budget was in a bad place. The city needed money. One way to raise money was to increase property taxes, but what politician wants to do…
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Strange threadfellows: How the U.S. military shaped what we all wear
From nuclear fission to GPS to the internet, it’s common knowledge that many of the most resource intensive technologies of the last century got their start as…
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How hurricanes became a hot investment
A few years ago, the Jamaican government started making an unusual financial bet. It went to investors around the world asking if they'd like to wager on the…
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Is AI slopifying the job market? (Two Indicators)
Vote for us in NPR’s People’s Choice Awards: npr.org/peopleschoice AI is already reshaping how people find work. Fewer entry-level jobs, robot recruiters, and…
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Capitalism (Taylor's Version) (25-minute Podcast Version)
Taylor Swift reaches new heights with her latest album, which is both divisive and record-breaking. And it’s fueled by an elaborate series of business choices…
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Saving lives with fewer dollars
Givewell is a nonprofit organization that gives money to “save or improve the most lives per dollar.” Part of their whole thing is a rigorous research process…
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The Consumer Sentiment vs. Consumer Spending Puzzle
Wherever consumer sentiment goes, consumer spending usually goes too. They’re like buddies that do everything together. Consumer sentiment wants a hair cut,…
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Days of our Tariffs
Tariffs. They’ve been announced, unannounced, re-announced, raised and lowered. It’s an on-going saga with billions at stake! On today’s episode, we run…
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The obscure pool of money the US used to bail out Argentina
Last month, during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the United States had offered to…
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Buy now, pay dearly? (update)
(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2022 .) Every time you shop online and make it to the checkout screen, you see those colorful pastel buttons…
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A new experiment in remote work … from the inside
When people in Maine prisons started getting laptops to use in their cells for online classes and homework, it sparked this new idea. Could they have laptops…
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Everything’s more expensive!! Pet care!! Concert tickets!! (Two Indicators)
People in the U.S. are feeling the financial squeeze, in part because of rising inflation, higher consumer prices and slowing job growth. The Indicator from…
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After the shutdown, SNAP will still be in trouble
This week’s SNAP crisis is just a preview. Tucked inside the giant tax-cut and spending bill signed by President Donald Trump this summer are enormous cuts to…
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The remittance mystery
For decades, the U.S. has been the single biggest source of remittances worldwide. A remittance is a transfer of money, typically from an immigrant to their…
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Should the fine have to fit the crime?
The U.S. Constitution famously outlaws “cruel and unusual punishments.” But there's another, far more obscure part of the Constitution called the Excessive…
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TikTok’s Trojan Horse Strategy
When TikTok videos started to go viral on Instagram and Reddit, TikTok turned to professional sound designers to protect their content. More and more companies…
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How Russia’s shadow fleet is sailing around oil sanctions
Bjarne Caesar Skinnerup works as a maritime pilot in the straits of Denmark. That means he’s used to seeing oil tankers. But after the start of the war in…
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The year NYC went broke
In 1975, New York City ran out of money. For a decade it had managed to pay for its hundreds of thousands of city employees and robust social services by…
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How the government got hedge funded
The U.S. government spends a ton of money, on everything from Medicare to roads to defense. In fact, it spends way more than it takes in. So…it borrows money,…
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Two ways AI is changing the business of crime (Two Indicators)
Pre-order the Planet Money book here for your free gift. Our sister show, The Indicator, is chronicling the evolving business of crime for its Vice Week…
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BOARD GAMES 2: Making our prototype
It’s here! It’s free to download and playtest! It’s the Planet Money game! ( Download here .) Download and playtest the game go here Sign up for the 11/1…
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BOARD GAMES 1: We're making a game
We want to make a board game. It must, of course, teach the world about economics. It must be fun. It’d be nice if it sold lots of copies! How hard could that…
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How refrigeration took over the world
The next time you open your fridge, take a second to behold the miracles inside of it: Raspberries from California, butter from New Zealand, steak from…
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How Jane Street’s secret billion-dollar trade unraveled
On Wall Street, fortunes are often won and lost with the tiniest advantages. And for the past few years, one trading firm has stood out from the rest for both…
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In Gaza, money is falling apart
Israel has been blocking the flow of physical money into Gaza since the start of the war. So whatever paper cash was in Gaza before the war, that’s all that’s…
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When CEO pay exploded (update)
(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2016 .) It’s no secret that CEOs get paid a ton – and a ton more than the average worker. More than a…
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The U.S. now owns a big chunk of Intel. That’s a huge deal.
Last month, President Donald Trump announced an unusual deal. Intel, the biggest microchip maker in America, had agreed to give the United States a 10 percent…
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Asking for a friend … which jobs are safe from AI?
There’s one question we seem to be hearing everywhere: “ Is my job safe from AI? ” Dozens of you, our listeners, have written to us about this. Saying things…
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What happens to central banks under pressure?
President Donald Trump has been pressuring the Federal Reserve from a few angles. So we wanted to look at other examples of political pressure on central…
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The million dollar mystery behind Milk.com
When we stumbled upon Milk.com , we were mystified. It appears to be someone’s personal website. But memorable domain names can be worth a million dollars or…
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Lisa Cook and the fight for the Fed
The Federal Reserve has been under intense pressure from President Donald Trump as he pushes for more control over the historically independent agency. The Fed…
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Summer School 8: Graduation LIVE!
Get your own personalized summer school diploma here . Today on our final episode of Summer School 2025, we will test your knowledge. We will salute the unsung…
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Buy discount Ozempic here now click this link
In the past couple years, demand has gone wild for drugs like Ozempic – and its cousins, Zepbound, Wegovy, and Mounjaro. For people who had never been able to…
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Summer School 7: Trade blocks and blockages
Tariffs are the favorite tool of our current president, but there are lots of other ways that governments insert themselves into the free exchange of goods and…
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When our inflation infeelings don’t match the CPI
For most Americans, we just lived through the highest period of inflation in our lives. And we are reminded of this every time we go grocery shopping. All over…
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What happens when governments cook the books
After President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, economists and statisticians across the board were horrified. Because the firing raises…
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Summer School 6: When the markets need a designer
LIVE SHOW: August 18th in Brooklyn. Tickets here. (PM+ supporters get a 10 percent discount off their tickets. Listen to the July 8th bonus episode to get the…
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Summer School 5: The many ways governments influence industry
LIVE SHOW: August 18th in Brooklyn. Tickets here . Traditional economics says the market is guided by the forces of supply and demand. Customers decide what…
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Would you trust an economist with your economy?
Trust in experts is down. In all kinds of institutions and professions - in government, in media, in medical science... and lately, economists are feeling the…
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Summer School 4: Who are all these regulations protecting?
LIVE SHOW: August 18th in Brooklyn. Tickets here . There are occasional incentives in business that make it very profitable to do bad things; maybe cheat at…
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The President's Golden Share in U.S. Steel
LIVE SHOW ALERT: August 18th, NYC. Get your tickets here. When news broke that a Japanese company, Nippon Steel, was buying the storied American steel company…
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Summer School 3: How government decides what to spend our money on
Although it seems like the government can spend an endless amount of money, it cannot actually do all the things it wants to do. So the big question in this…
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Why are we so obsessed with manufacturing?
It seems like politicians cannot agree on a lot. But many seem to agree on... manufacturing. Leaders of both political parties have been working to try and…
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Congress has voted to eliminate government funding for public media
Act now to ensure public media remains free and accessible to all. Your donation will help this essential American service survive and thrive. Visit…
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Summer School 2: How taxes change behavior and the economy
We all know the government uses taxes to pay for things. But what about using taxes to control behavior? This week on Summer School, Professor Darrick Hamilton…
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Made in America
What people might picture when they think of "Made in America" ... might not look like the "Made in America" we have today. The U.S. does have a domestic…
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Summer School 1: A government's role in the economy is to make us all richer
Government. The Big G. We like to imagine the free market and the invisible hand as being independent from political influence. But Nobel laureate, Simon…
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A thought experiment on how to fix the national debt problem
There's an economic fantasy you sometimes hear in D.C. It often gets trotted out when politicians are trying to add billions or trillions to the national debt.…
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When Trump met crypto
In 2019, President Trump tweeted: "I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies." Today, the Trumps are all over crypto. There are memecoins for Trump…
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Econ Battle Zone: Budget Showdown
Econ Battle Zone is back! On today's episode Mary Childs and Kenny Malone enter Econ Battle Stadium to throw down against reigning champion Erika Beras. Can…
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The U.S. is the world's bribery cop. Is that about to change?
The U.S. has been policing bribery all over the world for nearly half a century using a law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. But now, President Trump…
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Jay & Shai's debt ceiling adventure (Update)
Note: A version of this episode first ran in 2023 . Every year, the U.S. government spends more money than it takes in. In order to fund all that spending, the…
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Why I joined DOGE
What was it like to work inside Elon Musk's DOGE? The cost-cutting initiative promised transparency, but most of its actions have been shrouded in secrecy.For…
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Are Trump's tariffs legal?
When President Trump announced his sweeping new tariffs this year, many trade law experts were startled. Typically, presidents don't have the authority to…
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When Chinese manufacturing met Small Town, USA
Over the past decade, politicians from both parties have courted American voters with an enticing economic prospect – the dream of bringing manufacturing and…
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Trump's crypto interests (Two Indicators)
Today on the show – our crypto president. Just before President Donald Trump began his second administration in January, he and his business partners launched…
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The U.S.-China trade war, according to game theory
Over the last few months U.S.-China trade relations have been pretty hard to make sense of – unless you look at what's happening through the lens of game…
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Why does the government fund research at universities?
American universities are where people go to learn and teach. They're also where research and development happens. Over the past eight decades, universities…
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The secret world behind those scammy text messages
You might have seen these texts before. The scam starts innocently enough. Maybe it's a " Long time no see " or " Hello " or " How are you ." For investigative…
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How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is coming
Lately we've noticed that something we think about all the time here at Planet Money is having a viral moment: recession indicators! From the more practical…
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The 145% tariff already did its damage
Even though the 145% tariff on Chinese imports only lasted a month, it already inflicted its scars on the economy. Global trade is just not something you can…
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What happened to U.S. farmers during the last trade war
The U.S. exports billions of dollars worth of agricultural products each year — things like soybeans, corn and pork. And over the last month, these exports…
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Is the reign of the dollar over?
For decades, dollars have been the world's common financial language. Central banks everywhere hold dollars as a way to safely store their wealth. Countries,…
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What "Made in China" actually means
Virtually every product brought into the United States must have a so-called "country of origin." Think of it as the official place it comes from. And this is…
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Why it's so hard to find a public toilet
Why is it so hard to find a bathroom when you need one? In the U.S., we used to have lots of publicly accessible toilets. But many had locks on the doors and…
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Planet Money complains. To learn.
On today's show: we're ... venting. We at Planet Money are an ensemble show – each with different curiosities and styles. But we recently realized many of us…
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How 23andMe's bankruptcy led to a run on the gene bank
Reporter Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi's Aunt Vovi signed up for 23andMe back in 2017, hoping to learn more about the genetic makeup of her ancestors. Vovi was one of…
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A primer on the Federal Reserve's independence
President Donald Trump has been loudly critical of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for years now. Since January, the President has accused him of playing…
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How much for that egg
Recently, one of our NPR colleagues wrote a message to all of NPR saying he had extra eggs to sell for cheap, but needed a fair way to distribute them during a…
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OIRA: The tiny office that's about to remake the federal government
OIRA — the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — is an obscure, but powerful federal office around the corner from the White House. President Trump…
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Trade war dispatch from Canada
How do you run a business when a trade war is brewing? As President Trump's tariffs kick in - or are paused or are restarted - businesses around the world are…
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Do trade deficits matter?
At the heart of President Trump's tariffs is this idea that we should not be buying more from other countries than they are buying from us. Basically, he wants…
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How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries
Ever wondered why you can buy fresh Peruvian blueberries in the dead of winter? The answer, surprisingly, is tied to cocaine. Today on the show, we look at how…
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Tariffs: What are they good for?
What are tariffs good for? For years, mainstream economists have basically said: tariffs are not good. They are an import tax paid by consumers, they've said,…
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PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?
Earth can sustain life for another 100 million years, but can we? This episode, we partner with Radiolab to take stock of the essential raw materials that…
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Planet Money buys a mystery diamond
The deal seemed too good to be true. There's a website that's been selling top quality diamonds at bizarrely low prices. Prices we couldn't find at any retail…
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Can we just change how we measure GDP?
There's one statistic that rules them all when it comes to keeping track of the economy: gross domestic product (GDP). It's the sum of all final transactions,…
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Escheat show (Update)
Note: This original episode ran in 2020 . Walter Schramm did everything right as an investor — at least according to the philosophy of Warren Buffett. So how…
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How Tupperware took over our homes, with Decoder Ring
Tupperware is the stealthy star of our modern homes. These plastic storage containers are ubiquitous in our fridges, pantries, and closets. But the original…
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The last time we shrank the federal workforce
If you cut every single federal job President Donald Trump wants to cut, how much money would that save? A president has tried to massively shrink the size of…
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How to start a bank
In some ways, starting a bank is a lot like starting any other business. Who will you hire? Where will you be located? What color will the couches be? But it's…
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The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
Memecoins are having a moment. Everyone from Hawk Tuah to President Donald Trump to animal influencers like Moo Deng the pygmy hippo have been turned into…
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The Memecoin Casino
What do Moo Deng the pygmy hippo, social media sensation Hawk Tuah, and the President of the United States all have in common? They've all inspired highly…
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The controversy over Tyson Foods' hiring of asylum seekers
Last year, Tyson Foods shuttered a meat processing plant in Perry, Iowa. The company said it made the decision because the plant was old and inefficient. But…
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The rise and fall of Long Term Capital Management
There's this cautionary tale, in the finance world, that nearly any trader can tell you. It's about placing too much confidence in math and models. It's the…
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Can the president override Congress on spending?
So the president can't spend more money than Congress has agreed and voted to spend. But can the president spend less money than Congress wants? It all comes…
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The Big Government Money Pipe Freeze
There has been chaotic uncertainty around billions of dollars allocated by Congress. The Trump administration ordered a pause on — and review of — certain…
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The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria
The trip that changed Tigran Gambaryan's life forever was supposed to be short — just a few days. When he flew to Nigeria in February of 2024, he didn't even…
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The fight for a legendary shipwreck's treasure
The San Jose was a marvel of 17th century technology. The Spanish galleon weighed more than a thousand tons, was made of wood reinforced with iron, and…
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How the scratch off lottery changed America
Americans spend more on scratch lottery tickets per year than on pizza. More than all Coca-Cola products. Yet the scratch ticket as a consumer item has only…
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How DeepSeek changed the market's mind
On Monday, the stock market went into a tizzy over a new AI model from Chinese company DeepSeek. It seemed to be just as powerful as many of its American…
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Re-imagining the energy grid ... through batteries (Two Indicators)
When it comes to solar and wind power, renewable energy has always had a caveat: it can only run when the wind blows or the sun shines. The idea of a battery…
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The "chilling effect" of deportations
After being sworn into office, President Trump signed a whole host of executive actions and orders that affirm his campaign promise to crack down on…
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After the fires
The fires in Los Angeles are almost out. Residents are starting to trickle back into their burned-out neighborhoods. When they get to their houses, they face a…
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Tariffs, grocery prices and other listener questions
Donald Trump is just about to begin his second presidency. And it may be safe to say that every single person in America has at least one question about what's…
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The Land of the Duty Free (classic)
(Note: This episode originally ran in 2018 .) Is it really cheaper to shop at an airport Duty Free store? And why are so many of them alike? In the 1940s, if…
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The case for Fed independence in the Nixon tapes
You know Watergate, but do you know Fedgate? The more subtle scandal with more monetary policy and, arguably, much higher stakes. In today's episode, we listen…
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ZIP Codes!
The ZIP code is less like a cold, clinical, ordered list of numbers, and more like a weird overgrown number garden. It started as a way to organize mail after…
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If AI is so good, why are there still so many jobs for translators?
If you believe the hype, translators will all soon be out of work. Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of the language learning app Duolingo, doesn't think AI is…
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The Rest of the Story, 2024
After the gift exchange comes another great holiday tradition: returns season. Once again, we are joining the fun in our own Planet Money way. We are returning…
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The Indicators of this year and next
This year, there was some economic good news to go around. Inflation generally ticked down. Unemployment more or less held around 4-percent. Heck, the Fed even…
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The habitat banker
Our planet is in serious trouble. There are a million species of plants and animals in danger of extinction, and the biggest cause is companies destroying…
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How sports gambling blew up
Sports gambling isn't exactly a financial market, but it rhymes with financial markets. What happens on Wall Street somehow eventually also happens in sports…
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A Nobel prize for explaining why there's global inequality
Why do some nations fail and others succeed? In the late 1990s and early 2000s, three economists formed a partnership that would revolutionize how economists…
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Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)
The Smoot Hawley Tariffs were a debacle that helped plunge America into the Great Depression. What can we learn from them? Today on the show, we tell the…
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There Will Be Flood
Windell Curole spent decades working to protect his community in southern Louisiana from the destructive flooding caused by hurricanes. His local office in…
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George Soros vs. the Bank of England
As people learn more about Donald Trump's pick for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, one story comes up over and over: a legendary trade that he played a…
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How useful, really, are the steps you can take after a data breach?
The dreaded data breach notification... It tells you your personal data's been compromised and suggests steps you can take to minimize the potential harm. On…
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Why you bought your couch
You probably own a chair or a table or a sofa. And you probably think you know why you bought it. Because it was comfy. Or blue. Or the right price. But what…
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Title Pirates
A couple years ago, Gina Leto, a real estate developer, bought a property with her business partner. The process went like it usually did: Lots of paperwork; a…
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The long view of economics and immigration (Two Indicators)
Mass deportations. What would actually happen—economically—if the President-elect follows through on promises to deport millions of people from America. We…
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The great German land lottery
Every ten years, a group of German farmers gather in the communal farm fields of the Osing for the Osingverlosung , a ritual dating back centuries. Osing…
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The strange way the world's fastest microchips are made
This is the story behind one of the most valuable — and perhaps, most improbable — technologies humanity has ever created. It's a breakthrough called extreme…
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What markets bet President Trump will do
On the day after the election, Wall Street responded in a dramatic way. Some stocks went way up, others went way down. By reading those signals — by breaking…
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Moving to the American dream? (update)
Back in the 90s, the federal government ran a bold experiment, giving people vouchers to move out of high-poverty neighborhoods into low-poverty ones. They…
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The veteran loan calamity
Ray and Becky Queen live in rural Oklahoma with their kids (and chickens). The Queens were able to buy that home with a VA loan because of Ray's service in the…
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So your data was stolen in a data breach
If you... exist in the world, it's likely that you have gotten a letter or email at some point informing you that your data was stolen. This happened recently…
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Why do hospitals keep running out of generic drugs?
There's something strange going on in hospitals. Cheap, common drugs that nurses use every day seem to be constantly hit by shortages. These are often generic…
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Romance on the screen and on the page: Two Indicators
On today's show, we have two stories from The Indicator , Planet Money 's daily podcast. They just launched Love Week, a weeklong series exploring the business…
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The Subscription Trap
Over the past two decades, there's been a sort of tectonic economic shift happening under our feet. More and more companies have switched from selling goods…
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We asked 188 economists. And the survey says...
(For our story on this year's Nobel in Economics, check out our daily show, The Indicator !) Let's face it. Economics is filled with terms that don't always…
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So imPORTant: Bananas, frogs, and... Bob's??
Even in our modern world with planes and jets and drones, the vast majority of goods are moved around the planet in cargo ships. Which means our ports are the…
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Can cap and trade work in the US?
Recently, the state of Washington embarked on an ambitious new plan to combat climate change. Taking a page from economics textbooks, the state instituted a…
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What's up with all the ads for law firms?
The lawyer commercial is almost an art form unto itself. Learned practitioners of the law doing whatever it takes to get your attention, from impressive dirt…
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How Venezuela imploded (update)
(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2016 .) Back in 2016, things were pretty bad in Venezuela. Grocery stores didn't have enough food. Hospitals…
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What's THAT got to do with economics?
"Wanna see a trick? Give us any topic and we can tie it back to the economy." That is the bold promise in Planet Money 's tagline. And we believe the show does…
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Veep-onomics
Next week, JD Vance and Tim Walz will face off in the only confirmed vice presidential debate ahead of the election. As voters look ahead to what their…
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How to save 10,000 fingers
Table saws are extremely dangerous. The government estimates that injuries from table saws send something like 30,000 people to the emergency room every year.…
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Can money buy happiness?
People often say that money can't buy you happiness. Sometimes, if you ask them to tell you more about it, they'll mention a famous 2010 study by Nobel Prize…
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99 Percent Invisible: The White Castle System of Eating Houses
Today we have a guest episode from 99 Percent Invisible . It is about White Castle, the burger chain. Even if you haven't visited, you have tasted its…
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Rate Expectations
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates to get inflation under control. One side effect is that taking out a mortgage to buy a home has gotten very…
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Is AI overrated or underrated?
Are the promises made by AI boosters all hype, or are we actually under-appreciating the transformative potential of AI? Can artificial intelligence make…
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Summer camp capitalism
Summer camp is a classic rite of passage in the U.S. It's a place of self-discovery, where kids come to make new friends and take on new challenges. But what…
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Bingo! (Presidential debate edition)
Campaigns can be a jargony slog. And this year, we are seeing a lot of economic terms being thrown around, many of which... aren't entirely straightforward. In…
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How to fix a housing shortage
When Cody Fischer decided to get into real estate development, he had a vision. He wanted to build affordable, energy efficient apartments in Minneapolis, not…
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Summer School 8: Big ideas and life lessons from Marx, Keynes and Smith and more
Take the 2024 Planet Money Summer School Quiz here to earn your personalized diploma! Find all the episodes from this season of Summer School here . And past…
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The trade fraud detective
When David Rashid took over US autoparts maker Plews and Edelmann, the company was losing business to its Chinese rival, Qingdao Sunsong. Both companies make…
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Summer School 7: The Great Depression, the New Deal and how it changed our economy
Find all the episodes from this season here . And past seasons here . And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School . When we last left the United…
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The hidden world behind your new "banking" app
You might have seen ads for online banking services that seem to offer a lot of great stuff — accounts you can open in minutes and without a minimum balance or…
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Summer School 6: China, Taiwan and how nations grow rich
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here . And past seasons here . And follow along on TikTok here for video…
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Will the Olympics break breakdancing?
For some sports, picking the winner is simple: It's the athlete who crosses the finish line first, or the side that scores the most goals. But for the new…
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Summer School 5: 250 years of trade history in three chapters
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here . And past seasons here . And follow along on TikTok here for video…
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What to do when you're in a class action
Maybe you got a boring slip of paper in the mail. Maybe you got a spammy-looking email promising you money. Surprise! You're in a class action. If you've done…
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Summer School 4: Banker vs president and the birth of the dollar
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here . And past seasons here . And follow along on TikTok here for video…
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Summer School 3: The first stock and perpetual life
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here . And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video…
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What Kamala Harris' economic agenda might look like
Last weekend we were all thrown for a loop when President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris for the nomination. Just…
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The color monopoly
In 2022, artist Stuart Semple opened up his laptop to find that all his designs had turned black overnight. All the colors, across files on Adobe products like…
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Summer School 2: The golden ages of labor and looms
Who has the power? Workers or bosses? It changes through the ages, though it's usually the bosses. Today, we look at two key moments when the power of labor…
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Rooftop solar's dark side
4.5 million households in the U.S. have solar panels on their homes. Most of those customers are happy with it - their electricity bills have just about…
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Summer School 1: An Economic History of the World
Planet Money Summer School is back for eight weeks. Join as we travel back in time to find the origins of our economic way of life. Today we ask surprisingly…
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How flying got so bad (or did it?)
We often hear that air travel is worse than it's ever been. Gone are the days when airplanes touted piano bars and meat carving stations — or even free meals.…
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The two companies driving the modern economy
At the core of most of the electronics we use today are some very tiny, very powerful chips. Semiconductor chips. And they are mighty: they help power our…
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Do immigrants really take jobs and lower wages?
We wade into the heated debate over immigrants' impact on the labor market. When the number of workers in a city increases, does that take away jobs from the…
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The Carriage Tax (Update)
(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2019 .) In 1794, George Washington decided to raise money for the federal government by taxing the rich. He…
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The Vapes of Wrath
When the vape brand Juul first hit the market back in 2015, e-cigarettes were in a kind of regulatory limbo. At the time, the rules that governed tobacco…
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Why is everyone talking about Musk's money?
We've lived amongst Elon Musk headlines for so long now that it's easy to forget just how much he sounds like a sci-fi character. He runs a space company and…
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What's with all the tiny soda cans? And other grocery store mysteries, solved.
There's a behind the scenes industry that helps big brands decide questions like: How big should a bag of chips be? What's the right size for a bottle of…
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Bringing a tariff to a graphite fight
Graphite is sort of the one-hit wonder of minerals. And that hit? Pencils. Everyone loves to talk about pencils when it comes to graphite. If graphite were to…
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How much national debt is too much?
Most economic textbooks will tell you that there can be real dangers in running up a big national debt. A major concern is how the debt you add now could slow…
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The history of light (classic)
For thousands of years, getting light was a huge hassle. You had to make candles from scratch. This is not as romantic as it sounds. You had to get a cow,…
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How the FBI's fake cell phone company put criminals into real jail cells
There is a constant arms race between law enforcement and criminals, especially when it comes to technology. For years, law enforcement has been frustrated…
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So you've been scammed, now what?
We are living in a kind of golden age for online fraudsters. As the number of apps and services for storing and sending money has exploded – so too have the…
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The junkyard economist
On today's episode, we ride through the streets of San Francisco with a long-time junkman, Jon Rolston. Jon has spent the last two decades clearing out houses…
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Anatomy of a layoff
By one estimate, 40 percent of American workers get laid off at least once in their careers. And when that happens, companies will often say, "It's not…
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The hack that almost broke the internet
Last month, the world narrowly avoided a cyberattack of stunning ambition. The targets were some of the most important computers on the planet. Computers that…
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Why Gold? (Classic)
In the past few months, the price of gold has gone way up – even hitting a new high last month at just over $2,400 per troy ounce. Gold has long had a shiny…
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Zombie mortgages are coming back to life
Karen McDonough of Quincy, Mass., was enjoying her tea one morning in the dining room when she saw something odd outside her window: a group of people…
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Inside video game economics (Two Indicators)
Why do video game workers offer labor at a discount? How can you design a video game for blind and sighted players? Does that design have lessons for other…
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The birth of the modern consumer movement
Today on the show, the story of the modern consumer movement in the U.S. and the person who inspired it: Ralph Nader. How Ralph Nader's battle in the 1960s set…
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Hire Power (Update)
(Note: This episode originally ran in 2021 .) Millions of American workers in all sorts of industries have signed some form of noncompete agreement. Their…
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The case of the stolen masks
About thirty years ago, Yagya Kumar Pradhan woke up to the news that the temple he and his clan used had been broken into. The temple had been ransacked. And…
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How unions are stopped before they start (Update)
(Note: This episode originally ran in 2023 .) Union membership in the U.S. has been declining for decades. But, in 2022, support for unions among Americans was…
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FTX and the Serengeti of bankruptcy
For the last year and a half, the story of FTX has focused largely on the crimes and punishment of Sam Bankman-Fried. But in the background, the actual…
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Grocery prices, credit card debt, and your 401K (Two Indicators)
What's going on with consumers? This is one of the trickiest puzzles of this weird economic moment we're in. We've covered a version of this before under the…
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TikTok made me deduct it
TikTok, and other apps like it, are filled with financial advice. Some of it is reliable, some... less so. There are videos about running a business, having a…
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How much does this cow weigh? (Classic)
This episode originally ran in 2015. About one hundred years ago, a scientist and statistician named Francis Galston came upon an opportunity to test how well…
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Japan's Lost Decades
Last month, Japan's central bank raised interest rates for the first time in 17 years. That is a really big deal, because it means that one of the spookiest…
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The real estate industry on trial
In 2019, Mike Ketchmark got a call. Mike is a lawyer in Kansas City, Missouri, and his friend, Brandon Boulware, another lawyer, was calling about a case he…
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How much of your tax dollars are going to Israel and Ukraine
There's been a lot of disagreement in Congress and in the country about whether the U.S. should continue to financially support the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.…
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The trouble with Table 101 (Update)
(Note: This episode originally ran in 2020 .) In the restaurant game, you need to make the most of every table every minute you are open. And you need to make…
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What is Temu?
It is rare that a new e-commerce company has such a meteoric rise as Temu. The company, which launched in the fall of 2022, has been flooding the American…
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How Big Steel in the U.S. fell
Steel manufacturing was at one point the most important industry in the United States. It was one of the biggest employers, a driver of economic growth, and it…
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The billion dollar war behind U.S. rum
When you buy a bottle of rum in the United States, by law nearly all the federal taxes on that rum must be sent to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.…
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Wind boom, wind bust (Two Windicators)
The wind power business is a bit contradictory right now. It's showing signs of boom and bust seemingly all at once. The story of wind energy markets in two…
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On the Oscars campaign trail
When you sit down to watch the Oscars, what you are really watching is the final battle in a months-long war of financial engineering and campaign strategy.…
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Is dynamic pricing coming to a supermarket near you?
Dynamic pricing is an increasingly common phenomenon: You can see it when Uber prices surge during rainy weather , or when you're booking a flight at the last…
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Shopping for parental benefits around the world
It is so expensive to have a kid in the United States. The U.S. is one of just a handful of countries worldwide with no federal paid parental leave; it offers…
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The secret world behind school fundraisers
Fundraising is a staple of the school experience in the U.S. There's an assembly showing off all the prizes kids can win by selling enough wrapping paper or…
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A controversial idea at the heart of Bidenomics
Réka Juhász is a professor of economics at the University of British Columbia, and she studies what's known as industrial policy. That's the general term for…
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Two Indicators: Economics of the defense industry
The Department of Defense's proposed budget for 2024 is $842 billion. That is about 3.5% of the U.S.'s GDP. The military buys everything from pens and paper…
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How the Navy came to protect cargo ships
The Genco Picardy is not an American ship. It doesn't pay U.S. taxes, none of its crew are U.S. nationals, and when it sailed through the Red Sea last month,…
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It's giving ... Valentines
L, is for the way you Listen to Planet Money O, is for the Only podcast I hear V, is Very, very, fiduciary E, is for... ECONOMICS! Every February, we dedicate…
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A lawsuit for your broken heart
Keith King was upset when his marriage ended. His wife had cheated, and his family broke apart. And that's when he learned about a very old type of lawsuit,…
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Morally questionable, economically efficient
There are tons of markets that don't exist because people just don't want to allow a market – for whatever reason, people feel icky about putting a price on…
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Groundhog Day 2024: Trademark, bankruptcy, and the dollar that failed
It's Groundhog Day, and the eyes of the nation have turned to a small town in western Pennsylvania. And, just like last year, all anyone can talk about is…
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The Chicken Tax (Classic)
Note: This episode originally ran in 2015 . German families in the 60s loved tasty, cheap American-raised chicken that was suddenly coming in after the war.…
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Bonus: Janet Yellen on Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!
Our friends at NPR's news quiz Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! recently had a very Planet Money guest on their show: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. They asked her…
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Rescues at sea, and how to make a fortune
At around 1 a.m. on the morning of November 15, 1994, Captain Prentice "Skip" Strong III woke to a distress call. Skip was the new captain of an oil tanker…
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Hear us out: We ban left turns and other big ideas
On today's episode, we have three big economic ideas for your consideration – ideas that could potentially improve the economy and make us more efficient.…
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Econ Battle Zone: Disinflation Confrontation
After very high inflation, the United States is finally feeling some relief in the form of "disinflation." But, why exactly has inflation slowed down? Three…
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Mid-East conflict escalation, two indicators
On today's show, we look at two indicators of the economic disruptions of the war in Gaza and try to trace how far they will reach. We start in the Red Sea, a…
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The Maine Potato War of 1976
When you think of a potato, one state probably comes to mind: Idaho. But for much of American history, Maine was home to the nation's largest potato crop. That…
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The Universal Basic Income experiment in Kenya
There's this fundamental question in economics that has proven really hard to answer: What's a good way to help people out of poverty? The old-school way was…
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The case of the serial sinking Spanish ships
Picture the Pacific Ocean of the 16th century. Spanish Galleons sail the wide open seas, carrying precious cargo like silver, porcelain, and textiles. The…
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The Rest of the Story, 2023
It's that time of year again! Our annual year-end tradition of checking in on the stories we've reported and the people we met along the way. We'll hear from a…
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The Indicators of this year and next
Today on the show, hosts from Planet Money and The Indicator debate the economic indicators of this year and next year. First up, we try to identify the figure…
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We buy a lot of Christmas trees (Update)
*Note: This episode originally ran in 2020* 'Tis the season for Americans to head out in droves and bring home a freshly-cut Christmas tree. But decorative…
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Dollarizing Argentina
Argentina has been on a decades-long search for economic stability, but it always seems to be out of reach. High inflation has been plaguing the country and…
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How to be better at hybrid work, according to research
The research keeps coming in on remote work. New evidence suggests working from home, at least full-time, may not be as productive as we once thought.…
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What econ says in the shadows
Economics Job Market Rumors is a website that's half a job information Wiki, where people post about what's going on inside economics departments, and half a…
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Why '90s ads are unforgettable
Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's __________. The best part of waking up, is _______ in your cup! Got ____? If you can identify these brands based on…
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The U.S. economy's biggest superpower, explained
What if you could borrow money on the cheap and use it to pay for just about anything? The U.S. government can, and does, with U.S. Treasuries. But the market…
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Why do doctors still use pagers?
Remember pagers? They were huge in the 80s — these little devices that could receive short messages. Sir Mix-A-Lot even had a song about them! But then cell…
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Two food and drink indicators
Today on the show, we have two episodes from our daily podcast, The Indicator , about things we spend a lot of time thinking about this time of year: food and…
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Why are we so bummed about the economy?
Would you say that you and your family are better off or worse off, financially, than you were a year ago? Do you think in 12 months we'll have good times,…
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So you want to sell marijuana across state lines
In the state of Oregon, there is a glut of grass. A wealth of weed. A crisis of chronic. And, jokes aside, it's a real problem for people who work in the…
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A very Planet Money Thanksgiving
Here at Planet Money, Thanksgiving is not just a time to feast on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casseroles and pie(s). It's also a time to…
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Economic fact in literary fiction
Some of the most influential and beloved novels of the last few years have been about money, finance, and the global economy. Some overtly so, others more…
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China's real estate crisis, explained
China's economic growth for the past few decades has been extraordinary. And much of that growth was fueled by real estate – it was like this miraculous…
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The alleged theft at the heart of ChatGPT
When best-selling thriller writer Douglas Preston began playing around with OpenAI's new chatbot, ChatGPT, he was, at first, impressed. But then he realized…
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Never have I ever
The world of economics has these two different sides. One one side, there are the economists in their cozy armchairs and dusty libraries, high up in their…
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FTC Chair Lina Khan on Antitrust in the age of Amazon
When Lina Khan was in law school back in 2017, she wrote a law review article called 'Amazon's Antitrust Paradox,' that went kinda viral in policy circles. In…
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Antitrust in America (classic)
Earlier this fall, the Federal Trade Commission filed a high-stakes lawsuit against Amazon. In that suit, the FTC claims Amazon is a monopoly, and it accuses…
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All you can eat economics
You might expect to find economic concepts in the pages of an economics textbook. But you know where you can really see a lot of economic concepts in action?…
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Cutting school... by 20%
Right now, a lot of school districts across the country are making a pretty giant change to the way public education usually works. Facing teacher shortages…
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How unions are stopped before they start
Union membership in the U.S. has been declining for decades. But, in 2022, support for unions among Americans was the highest it's been in decades. This…
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Indicator exploder: jobs and inflation
When someone says "the economy is doing well"—what does that even mean? Like, for workers, for employers, for the country as a whole? According to what…
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Maria Bamford gets personal (about) finance
Note: There is swearing in this episode . In 2017, The University of Minnesota asked comedian Maria Bamford to give their commencement speech. But the…
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Why the price of Coke didn't change for 70 years (classic)
Prices go up. Occasionally, prices go down. But for 70 years, the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola didn't change. From 1886 until the late 1950s, a bottle of…
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A man, a plan, wind power, Uruguay
In 2007, Uruguay had a massive problem with no obvious fix. The economy of this country of 3.5 million people was growing, but there wasn't enough energy to…
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The flight attendants of CHAOS
When contract negotiations between Alaska Airlines and their flight attendants' union broke down in 1993, the union had a choice to make. The union — The…
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A trucker hat mystery, the curse of September and other listener questions
Ba-dee-yah! Say do you remember? Ba-dee-yah! Questions in September! That's right - it's time for Listener Questions! Every so often, we like to hear from…
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The natural disaster economist
There seems to be headlines about floods, wildfires, or hurricanes every week. Scientists say this might be the new normal — that climate change is making…
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A black market, a currency crisis, and a tango competition in Argentina
The Nobel-prize winning economist Simon Kuznets once analyzed the world's economies this way — he said there are four kinds of countries: developed,…
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"Based on a true story"
When a group of amateur investors rallied around the stock for GameStop back in 2021, the story blew up the internet. News outlets around the world, including…
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How to launder $600 million on the internet
Erin Plante is a private detective who specializes in chasing down stolen cryptocurrency. In March of 2022, she got the biggest assignment of her career:…
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China's weakening economy in two Indicators
In China, data on the economy is sometimes difficult to come by. The Chinese government has put a pause on releasing some of its official economic data. But…
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Is economists' favorite tool to crush inflation broken?
When economists and policymakers talk about getting inflation under control, there's an assumption they often make: bringing inflation down will probably…
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The prince of prints and his prints of Prince
In 1981, photographer Lynn Goldsmith took a portrait of the musician Prince. It's a pretty standard headshot — it's in black-and-white, and Prince is staring…
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How to fight a patent pirate
Back in the 1990s, Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar was in his office in New Delhi when he came across a puzzling story in the newspaper. Some university scientists in…
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Summer School 8: Graduation and the Guppy Tank
Congratulations to the Planet Money Summer School Class of 2023! Today, you become masters of business administration... spelled with lower-case letters for…
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The secret entrance that sidesteps Hollywood picket lines
Across Hollywood right now, writers and actors are picketing in front of studio lots. They're walking back and forth, holding up signs demanding concessions on…
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Summer School 7: Negotiating and the empathetic nibble
How do you get the best deal? How do you know you're getting the best deal? Whether you're talking down the price of a car or talking up your salary, you don't…
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Vacation, and why the U.S. takes so little of it
Do you work more for more money? Or work less for more time? For some, this is the ultimate economic choice. Every single worker in the European Union is…
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Summer School 6: Operations and 25,000 roses
"It's difficult to control everything," says our guest professor for this week, Santiago Gallino. "What is not difficult is to plan for everything." Today we…
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The new Biden plan that could still erase your student loans
This summer, the Supreme Court struck down Biden's plan to forgive student loan debt for millions of borrowers. Except, on the same day Biden first announced…
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Summer School 5: Tech and the innovator's dilemma
For anyone running a business, technology is both threat and opportunity. Today, we run through techniques entrepreneurs can use to take advantage of new tech…
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A tarot card reading for the U.S. economy
Predicting the future of the economy is always a dicey proposition. That is especially true after more than three years of pandemic-related economic weirdness.…
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Summer School 4: Marketing and the Ultimate Hose Nozzle
In this session of Planet Money Summer School, we are getting the word out about your brand. How do you convince consumers to buy your product, even if they…
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Tackle your medical debt with Life Kit
There's an estimated $195 billion of medical debt in America. But just because a medical bill comes in the mail doesn't mean you have to pay that exact price.…
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Did two honesty researchers fabricate their data?
Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino are two of the biggest stars in behavioral science. Both have conducted blockbuster research into how to make people more honest,…
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Summer School 3: Accounting and The Last Supper
Usually, the first class that an MBA student takes is accounting. That involves, yes, equations and counting widgets...but it's more than that. Inside the…
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Planet Money Paper Club
We here at Planet Money love economics papers. And that is also the case for so many of the economists we speak with. For them, new research can explain…
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Summer School 2: Competition and the cheaper sneaker
For episode 2 of Planet Money Summer School, we are talking strategy. You have your million dollar business idea, and maybe some money in your pocket to get it…
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Surprise, you just signed a contract! How hidden contracts took over the internet
When you make an account online or install an app, you are probably entering into a legally enforceable contract. Even if you never signed anything. These…
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Summer School 1: Planet Money goes to business school
Find all episodes of Planet Money Summer School here . Planet Money Summer School is back! It's the free economics class you can take from anywhere... for…
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The quest to save macroeconomics from itself
When it comes to big questions about the economy, we're still kind of in the dark ages. Why do some economies grow so much faster than others? How long is the…
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Two Indicators: After Affirmative Action & why America overpays for subways
Two stories today. First, as we start to understand post-affirmative action America, we look to a natural experiment 25 years ago, when California ended the…
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Supply, demand, extinction
Back in the 90s, Ivan Lozano Ortega was in charge of Bogota's wildlife rescue center. And he kept getting calls from the airport to come deal with... frogs.…
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Planet Money Live: Two Truths and a Lie
The shocks of the pandemic economy gave us a bunch of enormous natural experiments, which helped to prove or disprove conventional economic thinking. Take, for…
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Mike The Mover vs. The Furniture Police
In 1978, a young man named Mike Shanks started a moving business in the north end of Seattle. It was just him and a truck — a pretty small operation. Things…
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Twins (classic)
Twins are used to fielding all sorts of questions, like "Can you read each other's minds?" or "Can you feel each other's pain?" Two of our Planet Money…
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The 60-day job race
People come from all over the world to work in U.S. tech. And during the tech boom years, the industry relied heavily on foreign workers. This is how we built…
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Two Indicators: The economics of innovation
Innovation is crucial for game-changing advancements in society, whether it's treatments for serious diseases, developments in AI technology, or rocket…
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The town that changed economics
In the early 90s, when a young economist named Michael Kremer finished his PhD, there had been a few economic studies based on randomized trials. But they were…
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The Spider-Man Problem (update)
(Note: This episode originally ran back in 2022 .) This past weekend, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had the second largest domestic opening of 2023,…
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AI Podcast 3.0: Dial M for Mechanization
It's the thrilling conclusion to our three-part series on AI — the world premiere of the first episode of Planet Money written by AI. In Part 1 of this series,…
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AI Podcast 2.0: The host in the machine
In Part 1 of this series, AI proved that it could use real research and real interviews to write an original script for an episode of Planet Money. Our next…
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AI Podcast 1.0: Rise of the machines
We used to think some jobs were safe from automation. Though machines have transformed industries like agriculture and manufacturing, the conventional wisdom…
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Green energy gridlock
Lyle Jack wants to build a wind farm on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. But to make the project work, he has to connect that wind farm to the…
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Predictions: Jobs!
It's time for another installment of ... Planet Money Predictions ! *air horn* Last year , we invited two economic forecasters to tell us what they saw coming…
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How AI could help rebuild the middle class
For the last four decades, technology has been mostly a force for greater inequality and a shrinking middle class. But new empirical evidence suggests that the…
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Inflation and the Profit-Price Spiral
Economists say that inflation is just too much money chasing too few goods. But something else can make inflation stick around. If you think of the 1970s, the…
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The Day of Two Noons (Classic)
(Note: this episode originally ran in 2019 .) In the 1800s, catching your train on time was no easy feat. Every town had its own "local time," based on the…
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How to fight a squatting goat
Back in 2005, Burt Banks inherited a plot of old family land in Delaware. But when it came time to sell it, he ran into a problem: his neighbor had a goat pen,…
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Two Indicators: the influencer industry
When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? An astronaut, a doctor or maybe a famous athlete? Today one of the most popular responses to…
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Financial advising while Black
After a successful career in advertising, Erika Williams decided it was time for a change. She went back to school to get an MBA at the University of Chicago,…
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The zoo economy (classic)
Note: This episode originally aired in September, 2014 . Zoos follow a fundamental principle: You can't sell or buy the animals. It's unethical and illegal to…
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The quest for the factory-built house
Imagine if we built cars the same way we build houses. First, a typical buyer would meet with the car designer, and tell them what kind of car they want. Then…
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Tax Code Switch
This past January, researchers uncovered that Black taxpayers are three to five times as likely to be audited as everyone else. One likely reason for this is…
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The life and possible death of low interest rates
Right now, the economy is running hot. Inflation is high, and central banks are pushing up interest rates to fight it. But before the pandemic, economies…
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Two innovation market indicators
Right now, the economy is all over the place. And when things get confusing, we look to basic economic indicators to help explain what's going on. Today, we're…
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Your banking questions, answered
It's been a month since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank touched off the worst episode of banking turmoil since 2008. While the financial system appears to…
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The battle for Puerto Rico's beaches
Puerto Rico's beaches are an integral part of life on the island, and by law, they're one of the few places that are truly public. In practice, the sandy…
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The safety net for banks
In the first half of March, three banks - Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Silvergate - all had relatively classic bank runs and collapsed. Which…
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A Great Recession bank takeover
Earlier this month, we saw the largest bank collapse since the 2008 financial crisis. For many of us, seeing Silicon Valley Bank's meltdown brought us right…
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The battle over Osage headrights
Richard J. Lonsinger is a member of the Ponca tribe of Oklahoma, who was adopted at a young age into a white family of three. He eventually reconnected with…
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Inside a bank run
Sometimes you hear these stories about an airplane that suddenly nosedives. Everyone onboard thinks this is it, and then the plane levels out and everything is…
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Planet Money Records Vol. 3: Making a hit
Since we started Planet Money Records and released the 47-year-old song "Inflation," the song has taken off. It recently hit 1 million streams on Spotify. And…
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How Silicon Valley Bank failed
Silicon Valley Bank was the 16th largest bank in America, the bank of choice for tech startups and big-name venture capitalists. Then, in the span of just a…
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Dude, where's my streaming TV show?
Over the past year, dozens of shows have been disappearing from streaming platforms like HBO Max and Showtime. Shows like Minx, Made for Love, FBoy Island, and…
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The value of good teeth
As a kid, Ryanne Jones' friend accidentally hit her in the mouth with a hammer, knocking out her two front teeth. Her parents never had enough money for the…
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Seinfeld-onomics
The 90s sit-com Seinfeld is often called "a show about nothing." Lauded for its observational humor, this quick-witted show focussed on four hapless New…
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CBOhhhh, that's what they do
If you are a congressperson or a senator and you have an idea for a new piece of legislation, at some point someone will have to tell you how much it costs.…
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Meow Money Meow Problems
More than 20 years ago, something unusual happened in the small town of Dixfield, Maine. A lady named Barbara Thorpe had left almost all of her…
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Hollywood's Black List (Classic)
This episode originally ran in 2020 . In 2005, Franklin Leonard was a junior executive at Leonardo DiCaprio's production company. A big part of his job was to…
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Jay & Shai's debt ceiling adventure
Every year, the U.S. government spends more money than it takes in. In order to fund all that spending, the country takes on debt. Congress has the power to…
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Two Indicators: Inside the Fed, then and now
A lot of the time, economic policy can seem pretty impersonal — cold, hard, data-driven. But at the heart of the Federal Reserve are people: fallible,…
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Our 2023 valentines
Every Valentine's Day, we at Planet Money consider the things that we love, the things that we can't stop talking about, the things that get our hearts…
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The ice cream conspiracy
Take a look in any supermarket ice cream freezer section and you may see a mystery. There are big containers of the typical ice cream brands: Breyers, Turkey…
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Baby's first market failure
Anyone who has tried shopping for day care knows that it is tough out there. For one, it is hard even to get your hands on information about costs, either…
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Groundhog Day 2023
It's Groundhog Day, and once again, the eyes of the nation have turned to a small town in Western Pennsylvania. Every February 2nd, the only story anyone can…
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To all the econ papers I've loved before
A great economics paper does two things. It takes on a big question, and it finds a smart way to answer that question. But some papers go even further. The…
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The story of "Monopoly" and American capitalism
Monopoly is one of the best-selling board games in history. The game's staying power may in part be because of strong American lore — the idea that anyone,…
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Charles Ponzi's scheme
Some of history's biggest financial scams owe their name to Charles Ponzi. Here's the story of the man behind the eponymous scheme. Subscribe to Planet Money+…
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Big Rigged (Classic)
Driving a truck used to mean freedom. Now it means a mountain of debt. Subscribe to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney To manage…
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Two Indicators: The 2% inflation target
If the Fed had a mantra to go along with its mandate, it might well be "two percent." We look into how that became the target inflation rate, why some…
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Planet Money Movie Club: It's a Wonderful Life
Welcome to the Planet Money Movie Club, a regular series from Planet Money+ in which we watch an economics-related movie and discuss! On today's episode, Kenny…
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The economics lessons in kids' books
All sorts of lessons (even about economics) can be learned from kids' books. On today's show, we visit an elementary school to try to teach third graders econ…
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The Rest of the Story, 2022
It's that time of year again! Our annual year-end tradition of checking in on previous stories to hear what happened after the microphones stopped running.…
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Which economic indicator defined 2022?
2022 was a year of big economic changes. But what economic story most defined the year? Our hosts from Planet Money and The Indicator battle it out over what…
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In defense of gift giving
Cold economic reasoning says, supposedly, that gifts are inefficient transfers of wealth . But Planet Money host Jeff Guo believes in the economic virtues of…
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Two Indicators: The fight over ESG investing
"ESG" investing – Environmental, Social, Governance – has attracted a lot of attention from investors, and from Republican politicians who call it "woke…
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The sports ticket price enigma
Inflation is making prices go up, except not for...sports tickets? So, we set out on a daylong sporting event marathon to learn why. Subscribe to Planet Money+…
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Spam call bounty hunter
Telemarketing calls are not only annoying; in some cases, they are illegal. Congress even gives you the right to sue scofflaw telemarketers for $500 a call.…
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The case of the missing cheese racks
Jelle Peterse's company ships cheese all over the world, but they don't always get their cheese racks back. In this episode, we try to fix a supply chain…
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When women stopped coding (Classic)
A lot of computing pioneers were women. For decades, the number of women in computer science was growing. But in 1984, something changed. Subscribe to Planet…
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My Favorite Tax Loophole
There's a big difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. But sometimes even avoiding taxes (legally) can feel like you're getting away with something.…
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Messi economics
Soccer star Lionel Messi is currently hoping to lead Argentina to victory in the World Cup. His path to global fame was shaped by a crisis in Argentina's…
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One economist's take on popular advice for saving, borrowing, and spending
This episode was first released as a bonus episode for Planet Money+ listeners last month. We're sharing it today for all listeners. To hear more episodes like…
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