Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi

Stephen says the book will also roll out in Europe and the Middle East.

Norton's gotten orders from Thailand, Singapore, even Malaysia.

There's a Korean translation slated to come out in June and a Chinese translation scheduled for September.

The Planet Money book was apparently going planetary.

But I have to say, in the days after I spoke to Stephen, all of this still felt kind of abstract, like a collection of daydreamy plans for something way off in the future.

Until one day earlier this week.

Let's go this way.

Okay.

That's when my boss's boss, my grandboss Alex Goldmark and I, decided to take a stroll down the rustic cobblestones of the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan.

So this is where the kind of real idea for the Planet Money book was born?

Yeah.

Alex points out the picnic table where almost four years ago, he first sat down with NPR's literary agents to talk about a potential Planet Money book, before he really knew how much work all of this would entail.

Making a book is hard.

Did you think it was going to be this hard?

Yet, after everything that had happened, here we were on a very special day.

The very day of the Planet Money book launch.

And as it happens, there's an independent bookstore right down the street called McNally Jackson.

Should we see if the Planet Money book is in the bookstore?

My grand boss literally squeals with delight.

Or maybe surprise.