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
- 2024 / 9 / 6Summer camp capitalismSummer 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 if it were ALSO a place where children came to...
- 2024 / 9 / 4Bingo! (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 this episode, we try to make the mess of words...
- 2024 / 8 / 30How to fix a housing shortageWhen Cody Fischer decided to get into real estate development, he had a vision. He wanted to build affordable, energy efficient apartments in Minneapolis, not far from where he grew up.His vision was...
- 2024 / 8 / 28Summer School 8: Big ideas and life lessons from Marx, Keynes and Smith and moreTake 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 seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for...
- 2024 / 8 / 23The trade fraud detectiveWhen David Rashid took over US autoparts maker Plews and Edelmann, the company was losing business to its Chinese rival, Qingdao Sunsong. Both companies make power steering hoses, but Sunsong was offering its...
- 2024 / 8 / 21Summer School 7: The Great Depression, the New Deal and how it changed our economyFind 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 States of America in our economic telling of history,...
- 2024 / 8 / 16The hidden world behind your new "banking" appYou 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 monthly fees. The ads seem to say: "These aren't...
- 2024 / 8 / 14Summer School 6: China, Taiwan and how nations grow richEpisodes 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 Summer School. In the middle of the twentieth century,...
- 2024 / 8 / 9Will 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 Olympic sport of breaking (if you want to be cool,...
- 2024 / 8 / 7Summer School 5: 250 years of trade history in three chaptersEpisodes 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 Summer School. Trade has come up in all of the episodes...
- 2024 / 8 / 2What to do when you're in a class actionMaybe 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 any commerce in the last decade, there's a good...
- 2024 / 7 / 31Summer School 4: Banker vs president and the birth of the dollarEpisodes 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 Summer School. Planet Money Summer School has arrived...
- 2024 / 7 / 26Summer School 3: The first stock and perpetual lifeEpisodes 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 Summer School. Once upon a time, every business was a...
- 2024 / 7 / 24What Kamala Harris' economic agenda might look likeLast 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 like everyone else, we are trying to quickly wrap...
- 2024 / 7 / 20The color monopolyIn 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 Photoshop and Illustrator, were gone. Who had...
- 2024 / 7 / 17Summer School 2: The golden ages of labor and loomsWho 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 shifted, for better and worse, and we ask why then?...
- 2024 / 7 / 12Rooftop solar's dark side4.5 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 disappeared, and it's great for the planet. But...
- 2024 / 7 / 10Summer School 1: An Economic History of the WorldPlanet 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 hard question: What is money? And where did it...
- 2024 / 7 / 5How 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. Instead we're crammed into tiny seats and...
- 2024 / 7 / 3The two companies driving the modern economyAt 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 phones, laptops, and cars. They enable advances in...
- 2024 / 6 / 29Do 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 people who already live and work there? Does a...
- 2024 / 6 / 26The 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 did it by putting a tax on horse-drawn...
- 2024 / 6 / 21The Vapes of WrathWhen 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 cigarettes did not explicitly apply to e-cigarettes....
- 2024 / 6 / 21How Juul created a market, fueled a crisis, and why regulators failed to stop itWhen 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 cigarettes did not explicitly apply to e-cigarettes....
- 2024 / 6 / 19Why 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 wants to colonize mars. He also runs a company...
- 2024 / 6 / 14What'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 shampoo? And yes, also: When should a company do a...
- 2024 / 6 / 12Bringing a tariff to a graphite fightGraphite 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 perform a concert, they'd close out the show with...
- 2024 / 6 / 7How 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 down economic growth in the future. Economists...
- 2024 / 6 / 5The 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, raise the cow, feed the cow, kill the cow, get the...
- 2024 / 5 / 31How the FBI's fake cell phone company put criminals into real jail cellsThere is a constant arms race between law enforcement and criminals, especially when it comes to technology. For years, law enforcement has been frustrated with encrypted messaging apps, like Signal and...
- 2024 / 5 / 29So 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 schemes that bad actors have cooked up to steal...
- 2024 / 5 / 24The junkyard economistOn 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 and offices of their junk. He's found all sorts...
- 2024 / 5 / 22Anatomy of a layoffBy 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 personal. It has nothing to do with you or your...
- 2024 / 5 / 17The hack that almost broke the internetLast month, the world narrowly avoided a cyberattack of stunning ambition. The targets were some of the most important computers on the planet. Computers that power the internet. Computers used by banks and...
- 2024 / 5 / 15Why 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 quality to it, literally and in the marketplace....
- 2024 / 5 / 10Zombie mortgages are coming back to lifeKaren MacDonough of Quincy, Mass., was enjoying her tea one morning in the dining room when she sees something odd outside of her window: A group of people gathering on her lawn. A man with a clipboard tells...
- 2024 / 5 / 8Inside 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 industries?These and other questions about the...
- 2024 / 5 / 3The birth of the modern consumer movementToday 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 the stage for decades of regulation and sparked...
- 2024 / 5 / 1Hire 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 pervasiveness has led to situations where workers...
- 2024 / 4 / 26The case of the stolen masksAbout 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 someone had stolen two holy Bhairav masks. Yagya...
- 2024 / 4 / 24How 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 the highest it's been in decades. This dissonance...
- 2024 / 4 / 19FTX and the Serengeti of bankruptcyFor 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 customers he left behind have been caught in a financial...
- 2024 / 4 / 17Grocery prices, credit card debit, 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 term "vibecession," but it's safe to say, the...
- 2024 / 4 / 17Grocery 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 term "vibecession," but it's safe to say, the...
- 2024 / 4 / 12TikTok made me deduct itTikTok, 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 side hustle, generating passive income. And also,...
- 2024 / 4 / 10How 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 regular people were at answering a question. He...
- 2024 / 4 / 5Japan's Lost DecadeLast 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 stories in modern economics might finally have an...
- 2024 / 4 / 5Japan's Lost DecadesLast 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 stories in modern economics might finally have an...
- 2024 / 4 / 3The real estate industry on trialIn 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 wanted Mike to get involved with. Mike was an...
- 2024 / 3 / 29How much of your tax dollars are going to Israel and UkraineThere'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. Some taxpayers don't think the U.S. should give...