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
- 2026 / 3 / 13Chef vs. RobotRobby 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 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? There’s Parkinson’s Law, which says...
- 2026 / 3 / 6Planet Money vs. the NBA’s 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? They’re illegal. On today’s 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 can’t 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 – 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 year’s 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 – in a midterm election year – 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...
- 2026 / 1 / 24A trip to the magic mushroom megachurchBook 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 what they believe. Pastor Dave Hodges just might be a...
- 2026 / 1 / 22BOARD 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 decided we want a mass-appeal party game that quietly...
- 2026 / 1 / 17Chevron, Venezuela and the Paradox of PlentyVenezuela and Chevron have perhaps one of the strangest partnerships … ever? Chevron, one of the world’s most famous and profitable oil corporations, has for decades, been plugging away in Venezuela, one the...
- 2026 / 1 / 14How much money President Trump and his family have madeBefore 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 term, David says, Trump was in an “even tighter”...
- 2026 / 1 / 10So 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 hard to spot. But some economists say they may...
- 2026 / 1 / 7How Black hair care grew Black powerThe 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 more than make Black afros shine. It was the...
- 2026 / 1 / 4Venezuela’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 Nicolás Maduro this weekend, we’re re-surfacing...
- 2025 / 12 / 31Indicators of the Year, Past and Future2025 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 dramatic new heights! So … which of these economic...
- 2025 / 12 / 30Why economists got free trade with China so wrongWith 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, American manufacturing began to shrivel. Those...
- 2025 / 12 / 26The Rest of the Story, 2025Most 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 call this tradition "The Rest of the Story." And...
- 2025 / 12 / 24The summer I turned binge-yOn 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 shows. The strategy of releasing an entire season...
- 2025 / 12 / 20What AI data centers are doing to your electric billAs 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 inflation-adjusted.) With tech companies spending hundreds of...
- 2025 / 12 / 17PM does a pop culture draft: 1999 editionWelcome 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 the year 1999. Three hosts, Kenny Malone, Wailin...
- 2025 / 12 / 12When Chicago pawned its parking metersIn 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 that? So instead, Mayor Richard M. Daley’s...
- 2025 / 12 / 10Strange threadfellows: How the U.S. military shaped what we all wearFrom 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 military R&D projects in government-funded labs....
- 2025 / 12 / 5How hurricanes became a hot investmentA 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 chances a major hurricane would hit the island in...
- 2025 / 12 / 3Is 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 ever-changing new skill requirements all add up...
- 2025 / 11 / 28Capitalism (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 that propel profits but also chart numbers....
- 2025 / 11 / 27Saving lives with fewer dollarsGivewell 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 with copious and specific datapoints. So, in the...
- 2025 / 11 / 21The Consumer Sentiment vs. Consumer Spending PuzzleWherever consumer sentiment goes, consumer spending usually goes too. They’re like buddies that do everything together. Consumer sentiment wants a hair cut, its buddy consumer spending does too.But lately,...
- 2025 / 11 / 19Days of our TariffsTariffs. 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 full-on at the twisty, turny drama of life with...
- 2025 / 11 / 15The obscure pool of money the US used to bail out ArgentinaLast month, during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the United States had offered to functionally loan Argentina $20 billion. Despite the sums...
- 2025 / 11 / 12Buy 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 at the bottom. Affirm. Klarna. Afterpay. Asking:...
- 2025 / 11 / 7A new experiment in remote work … from the insideWhen 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 in their cells to work remotely for real outside...
- 2025 / 11 / 5Everything’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 Planet Money is tackling a special series on the...
- 2025 / 11 / 5Everything’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 Planet Money is tackling a special series on the...
- 2025 / 11 / 1After the shutdown, SNAP will still be in troubleThis 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 SNAP: Who qualifies, how much they get, and who...
- 2025 / 10 / 30The remittance mysteryFor 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 family in their country of origin. But we are in...
- 2025 / 10 / 24Should 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 Fines Clause, which basically says that the fine has...
- 2025 / 10 / 22TikTok’s Trojan Horse StrategyWhen TikTok videos started to go viral on Instagram and Reddit, TikTok turned to professional sound designers to protect their content.More and more companies are paying to develop a “sonic identity” – a...
- 2025 / 10 / 17How Russia’s shadow fleet is sailing around oil sanctionsBjarne 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 Ukraine, the tankers started getting weird. They were...
- 2025 / 10 / 15The year NYC went brokeIn 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 taking on billions of dollars in debt. But eventually...
- 2025 / 10 / 10How the government got hedge fundedThe 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, in the bond market. By selling U.S. Treasurys,...
- 2025 / 10 / 8Two 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 series. Today, we bring to you two cases of crime in...
- 2025 / 10 / 4The Planet Money Game: Test our prototypeIt’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 virtual AMA event and get updates about the gameSubmit...
- 2025 / 10 / 4BOARD GAMES 2: Making our prototypeIt’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 virtual AMA event and get updates about the gameSubmit...