Bridget Bodner

And she's probably guessing that a dollar in the future will be able to buy even less than it does today.

Maybe a hula hoop will cost like $20.

Pretty sure she's not psychic.

And you don't need to be one to guess that prices of things are going to continue to go up as time goes on.

They've been going up for years.

It's called inflation.

And we're going to talk about it when we come back.

No, no, not filtration.

Inflation.

pretty sure I said inflation.

That's when the cost of a bunch of things go up at about the same time.

It's a pretty normal thing that happens in our money system.

Right now, inflation is higher than it's been in a while.

So you might hear a lot of grownups talking about how the prices of the things they buy have gone up.

Well, Alder wants to know why dollars buy less over time.

And that is a side effect of inflation.

Okay, well, first we really need to see how much prices have changed over time.

So, you know, this is a perfect chance for us to jump in the time machine.

Time machine?

1972 to be exact, 50 years ago.