Description
Wanna see a trick? Give us any topic and we can tie it back to the economy. At Planet Money, we explore the forces that shape our lives and bring you along for the ride. Don't just understand the economy â understand the world.
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Wanna go deeper? Subscribe to Planet Money+ and get sponsor-free episodes of Planet Money, The Indicator, and Planet Money Summer School. Plus access to bonus content. It's a new way to support the show you love. Learn more at plus.npr.org/planetmoney
Episodes
- 2026 / 7 / 17Can World Cup mania grow MLS in the U.S.?As the World Cup comes to a close, so does a massive real-time experiment happening just around the edges. Major League Soccer â the top menâs professional soccer league in the U.S. and Canada â has been...
- 2026 / 7 / 15Building things and breaking things in China (Summer School World Tour)Chinaâs turbocharged growth may have made it rich, but now it has to deal with rich country problems. High-speed trains that connect every town. Gleaming new bridges and skyscrapers. An apartment (or two) for...
- 2026 / 7 / 10Seven allegedly fake Chanel bags vs The RealRealOnce upon a time, if you wanted to buy a luxury brand item secondhand (say, a Chanel handbag) you had to have an in. There was no easy way to find one. But over the past decade, the market for secondhand...
- 2026 / 7 / 8Our mission: Find the worldâs best economic ideas (Summer School World Tour)Come along as we travel the world in search of the best economic ideas to bring home!From the beaches of Barbuda to the fjords of Norway, there's money (and money problems) everywhere. For this summer travel...
- 2026 / 7 / 3How to win a penalty shootout (with game theory)Lionel Messi is arguably the greatest soccer scorer of all time. But when it comes to penalty kicks, Messi is merely average. Why? Maybe the answer involves game theory.According to game theory, thereâs an...
- 2026 / 7 / 1Can the Trump administration make college cheaper?Will limiting how much students can borrow force schools to lower their prices? The Department of Education thinks so. It has a new plan to bring down tuition costs. Starting today, July 1st, itâs going to...
- 2026 / 6 / 26We almost had a smartphone in the 90s. Why did it fail?In the early 90âs, a company called General Magic began working on a portable device that would allow people to check email, make phone calls, even play games. It was basically a smartphone. But it never...
- 2026 / 6 / 24Before Kalshi and Polymarket there was the Iowa Electronic MarketsPrediction markets arenât new. Election betting was common until the 1940s, then mysteriously faded away.There was an entire political era when party bosses were expected to conspicuously gamble on their...
- 2026 / 6 / 19The real horror of âAlienâ and how it explains why weâre not paid enoughMaybe the real monster in the Alien franchise isnât actually the killer alien. Because behind the acid blood and jump scares is an even more insidious horror: a single employer with unchecked power. That...
- 2026 / 6 / 17Can computer hackers get inside your mind?The cyber weapon that might have prevented nuclear war.The U.S. and Israel have long been in conflict with Iran over their nuclear development program. Some of that conflict has been out in the open, with...
- 2026 / 6 / 12Itâs my tree. Why canât I cut it down?Can the government stop you from cutting down your own tree? In many towns and cities these days, removing a tree now requires a permit. You might have to pay a fee, or promise to plant replacement trees. But...
- 2026 / 6 / 10Two indicators for lowering the rentOne specific type of affordable housing used to be popular in American cities, kept rents low, then nearly vanished. Is it time to reconsider boarding houses and single room occupancy units? If they lowered...
- 2026 / 6 / 5Why is there a supplement craze if they donât even work?One reason the $70 billion supplement industry is set to double in the next seven years? Lax regulation.On today's show, we tell the story of a century-long battle between the U.S. government and ⌠you, the...
- 2026 / 6 / 3There's no business like dough businessHave you ever walked around a street, mall, or airport and noticed two or three of the same franchise restaurant within walking distance? Why might one Starbucks or McDonaldâs or Wetzelâs Pretzels sometimes...
- 2026 / 5 / 29The sneaky way companies get new chemicals into our food99% of chemicals in our food right now were added without FDA approval. Many were added in secret, through a sneaky loophole built into the 1958 Food Additives Amendment.It was supposed to require FDA...
- 2026 / 5 / 27The leaked tapes that show how the rich avoid taxesTax avoidance -- that is, legally reducing your tax bill -- is as American as apple pie. But the line between tax avoidance and tax evasion is often a grey one. On todayâs show, a collaboration with Tax...
- 2026 / 5 / 22The giant factory town that might be a giant mistakeHow does a poor country become a rich country? There's a simple blueprint â or at least, that's what many economists used to believe. But over the years, a lot of rapidly developing economies have stalled...
- 2026 / 5 / 20Vacation and why Americans take so littleNote: This episode originally ran in 2023.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 guaranteed...
- 2026 / 5 / 15Jerome Powell and the Future of Fed IndependenceIf you have a credit card, hope to buy a house, or just want stable grocery prices â letâs talk about the future of Fed independence!Itâs impossibly important for the Federal Reserve to steer monetary policy...
- 2026 / 5 / 13The secret meeting that launched OPECRecently, a listener wrote in with a question about OPEC and oil prices. She was prepping for a camping trip⌠thinking about how much it costs to fill up her diesel-guzzling camper van at the pump. âIt would...
- 2026 / 5 / 9Diary of a WNBA negotiatorToday the WNBA season tips off, but Dallas Wings veteran forward Alysha Clark has already won a high-stakes competition. She â and a Nobel Prize winning economist â were on the team that negotiated a...
- 2026 / 5 / 6How we got free agents in baseballCurt Flood was the best center fielder in baseball and one of the gameâs highest paid players. He took the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series three times. Then he got traded to the Phillies. He didnât...
- 2026 / 5 / 2How to make a BOOK into a bestsellerIn the world of commercial publishing, there are few crowning achievements more coveted than a place on the New York Times Best Seller List. But how does a book actually end up there? There is, of course, a...
- 2026 / 4 / 29Spirit Airlines and the future of cheap flightsItâs way more than fuel costs that pushed Spirit Airlines to the brink of liquidation and led President Trump to muse about âbuyingâ them. Many low cost airlines are struggling due to a canny and calculated...
- 2026 / 4 / 24Battlefield rare earths: How the U.S. lost to ChinaAt one point in history, one U.S. company monopolized the rare earths industry. Then China took over the industry. Can the U.S. bring it back?Rare earths are critical to making, like, everything. From smart...
- 2026 / 4 / 22Live: Anthropic co-founder on AI and jobsWe talk with Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and Chief Economist at Redfin Daryl Fairweather about two of the biggest issues of our time: AI and housing. We have been crisscrossing America doing live shows to...
- 2026 / 4 / 18Do prediction market bettors make anything better?Have you noticed a lot of young people getting into antenna-maxxing as alpha? Or, maybe searching for any bit of copium after they fat-fingered and got rinsed? Or maybe they farmed during a yes-fest on...
- 2026 / 4 / 14How to get through the Strait of HormuzThe United States has been at war with Iran since February 28th. And for a month and a half, Iranâs main leverage over the U.S. has been their control over the Strait of Hormuz â a key global shipping route....
- 2026 / 4 / 10BOOKstore EconomicsHow do bookstores choose the books they stock, and how does that affect what customers read? It may not seem like it, but every shelf in a bookstore is a highly valuable and contested piece of commercial real...
- 2026 / 4 / 8A pro-worker experiment in private equityLive event info and tickets here. If your company got bought by a private equity firm, how would you feel? Maybe a little nervous? You might find yourself wondering if there will be layoffs.And youâd be right...
- 2026 / 4 / 4Reeseâs heir vs. chocolate skimpflationLive event info and tickets here. When ingredient costs skyrocket, companies have three basic options: They can raise their prices (a sort of product-specific inflation), shrink the size of the products...
- 2026 / 4 / 2Dark times for Cubaâs economic experimentLive event info and tickets here. For more than 60 years, Cuba has survived on two seemingly contradictory economic strategies: leaning on friendly communist and socialist countries, and flirting with...
- 2026 / 3 / 28The skyscrapers that NIMBYs and zoning couldn't stopLIVE 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 go out the window?On todayâs show, how the...
- 2026 / 3 / 26Our BOOK vs. the global supply chainWhen 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 itself. But content and the form are both crucial to...
- 2026 / 3 / 21Inside a BOOK auctionIn 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 âThe Wealth of Nationsâ to âDas Kapital,â books have...
- 2026 / 3 / 18The little pet fish that saved a town in the AmazonThe 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 store or the fish tank at your dentist's office....
- 2026 / 3 / 13Chef vs. RobotRobby the chef has lots of endearing qualities. He can make over 5000 dishes, heâs a consistent cook, and heâs never late for work. But heâs not a human. It is a 750 lb. stainless steel robot. With a rotating...
- 2026 / 3 / 11The laws of the office revisitedLive 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 end early? Thereâs Parkinsonâs Law, which says...
- 2026 / 3 / 6Planet Money vs. the NBAâs tanking problemWhat 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 against their opponents. But this time of year,...
- 2026 / 3 / 4The Business of Heated RivalryHeated 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, a conversation with Heated Rivalry creators Jacob...
- 2026 / 2 / 27Don't hate the replicator, hate the gameThe 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 always yield the same result. Same with...
- 2026 / 2 / 25The ICE hiring boomLive event info and tickets hereICE is scaling up, with rapid new hiring. So we ask, has training new officers changed? At what cost? Also, the Trump administration has plans to pour billions of dollars into...
- 2026 / 2 / 21The 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? Theyâre illegal. On todayâs show: Why were those tariffs struck down?...
- 2026 / 2 / 18How to get what Greenland has, with permissionBook tour and ticket info here.Greenland has said it is not for sale. Denmark has said it canât even legally sell Greenland. And at a security conference in Munich over the weekend, U.S. lawmakers spent a lot...
- 2026 / 2 / 13Betty Boop, Excel Olympics, Penny-isms: Our 2026 ValentinesBook tour event details and ticket info here.An iconic cartoon character liberated from copyright, journalism from the world of competitive spreadsheeting, a controversial piece of US currency. Each year the...
- 2026 / 2 / 11The Invention InventionBook 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 wanted all the credit and was willing to fight a war...
- 2026 / 2 / 7Iran, protests, and sanctionsBook tour tickets and details here.The recent protests in Iran are about so many things. Human rights, corruption, freedom. But this time â they are also motivated by economic hardship. Hardship caused, in...
- 2026 / 2 / 4Riding 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 yearâs numbers are tallied, an estimated 3 million...
- 2026 / 1 / 31Can 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 â in a midterm election year â President Donald Trump...
- 2026 / 1 / 28Can 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 further than just improving public housing...