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 – 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
- 2025 / 9 / 12The 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 stake in its business. That means the U.S....
- 2025 / 9 / 10Asking 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 like, “Maybe my yoga teacher side gig is actually my...
- 2025 / 9 / 6What 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 banks, to see what it might mean for us and for the...
- 2025 / 9 / 3The million dollar mystery behind Milk.comWhen 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 more. So, why is someone using this valuable...
- 2025 / 8 / 29Lisa Cook and the fight for the FedThe Federal Reserve has been under intense pressure from President Donald Trump as he pushes for more control over the historically independent agency. The Fed is tasked with keeping inflation and...
- 2025 / 8 / 27Summer 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 heroes of government service. And we will pick...
- 2025 / 8 / 22Buy discount Ozempic here now click this linkIn 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 lose weight before, suddenly the numbers on the...
- 2025 / 8 / 15When our inflation infeelings don’t match the CPIFor 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 TikTok, tons of people have posted videos of how...
- 2025 / 8 / 13Summer School 7: Trade blocks and blockagesTariffs 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 services. Some of these trade barriers are so...
- 2025 / 8 / 13Summer School 6: When the markets need a designerIn economics, a market is a place (even virtual) where buyers and sellers meet to exchange goods or services. Economists love markets. It's like all of our supply and demand graphs have come to life. Almost...
- 2025 / 8 / 9What happens when governments cook the booksAfter President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, economists and statisticians across the board were horrified. Because the firing raises the spectre of potential manipulation – and it...
- 2025 / 8 / 6Summer School 5: The many ways governments influence industryLIVE SHOW: August 18th in Brooklyn. Tickets here. Traditional economics says the market is guided by the forces of supply and demand. Customers decide what they want to buy, and private enterprise responds to...
- 2025 / 8 / 2Would 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 burn acutely. In fact, President Trump just fired...
- 2025 / 7 / 30Summer 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 the game and steal other people's ideas, or cut some...
- 2025 / 7 / 25The President's Golden Share in U.S. SteelLIVE 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 U.S. Steel, it was still 2023, just before an...
- 2025 / 7 / 23Summer School 3: How government decides what to spend our money onAlthough 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 week's lesson is: How do we decide? Why does the...
- 2025 / 7 / 18Why 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 make the U.S. a manufacturing powerhouse again.On...
- 2025 / 7 / 18Congress has voted to eliminate government funding for public mediaAct now to ensure public media remains free and accessible to all. Your donation will help this essential American service survive and thrive. Visit donate.npr.org now.Learn more about sponsor message...
- 2025 / 7 / 16Summer School 2: How taxes change behavior and the economyWe 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 of The New School, helps us explore the true...
- 2025 / 7 / 9Summer School 1: A government's role in the economy is to make us all richerGovernment. The Big G. We like to imagine the free market and the invisible hand as being independent from political influence. But Nobel laureate, Simon Johnson, says that influence has been there since the...
- 2025 / 7 / 4The simple math of the big billIf we think about the economic effects of President Donald Trumps big taxing and spending and domestic policy bill, we can roughly sum it up in one line. It goes something like this: We will make many big tax...
- 2025 / 7 / 2A thought experiment on how to fix the national debt problemThere'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. They claim that all the new spending will be...
- 2025 / 6 / 27When Trump met cryptoIn 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 and the first lady. They own a stablecoin, a...
- 2025 / 6 / 25Econ Battle Zone: Budget ShowdownEcon 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 Mary explain what effect extending the 2017 tax cuts...
- 2025 / 6 / 20The 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 has said that this anti-corruption law is...
- 2025 / 6 / 19Jay & 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 country takes on debt. Congress has the power to...
- 2025 / 6 / 14Why I joined DOGEWhat 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 months, there were reports of software engineers...
- 2025 / 6 / 11Are 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 impose broad tariffs with a snap of their fingers.But...
- 2025 / 6 / 6When Chinese manufacturing met Small Town, USAOver the past decade, politicians from both parties have courted American voters with an enticing economic prospect – the dream of bringing manufacturing and manufacturing jobs back to America. They've pushed...
- 2025 / 6 / 4Trump'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 the $TRUMP coin. It's a memecoin that quickly...
- 2025 / 5 / 30The U.S.-China trade war, according to game theoryOver 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 theory. Game theory is all about how decisions are...
- 2025 / 5 / 28Why 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 have received billions in federal dollars to help...
- 2025 / 5 / 23The secret world behind those scammy text messagesYou 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 reporter Zeke Faux it was – "Hi David, I'm Vicky Ho....
- 2025 / 5 / 21How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is comingLately 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 (like sales for lipstick going up and men's...
- 2025 / 5 / 16The 145% tariff already did its damageEven 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 turn off and on like that. Some companies got...
- 2025 / 5 / 14What happened to U.S. farmers during the last trade warThe 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 have been caught up in a trade war. U.S. farmers...
- 2025 / 5 / 9Is 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, businesses, and people use it to trade; around 90%...
- 2025 / 5 / 7What "Made in China" actually meansVirtually 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 the country that counts for calculating...
- 2025 / 5 / 2Why it's so hard to find a public toiletWhy 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 you had to put in a coin to use them. Pay toilets...
- 2025 / 4 / 30Planet 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 have something in common: We're annoyed...
- 2025 / 4 / 26How 23andMe's bankruptcy led to a run on the gene bankReporter 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 over 15 million 23andMe customers who sent their...
- 2025 / 4 / 23A primer on the Federal Reserve's independencePresident Donald Trump has been loudly critical of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for years now. Since January, the President has accused him of playing politics by keeping interest rates high. Trump has...
- 2025 / 4 / 18How much for that eggRecently, 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 shortage. What is Planet Money here for if not...
- 2025 / 4 / 16OIRA: The tiny office that's about to remake the federal governmentOIRA — the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — is an obscure, but powerful federal office around the corner from the White House. President Trump has decided that it should get even more...
- 2025 / 4 / 11Trade war dispatch from CanadaHow 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 trying to navigate the uncertainty.And, while...
- 2025 / 4 / 9Do 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 to get rid of the trade deficit. And in the wake...
- 2025 / 4 / 4How the War on Drugs got us... blueberriesEver 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 the war on drugs led to an American trade policy...
- 2025 / 4 / 2Tariffs: 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, and they discourage free trade, and we want more!...
- 2025 / 4 / 2Tariffs: 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, and they discourage free trade, and we want more!...
- 2025 / 3 / 28PM 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 enable us to live as we do here on Earth — everything...