Planet Money

The U.S. is the world's bribery cop. Is that about to change?

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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, Preside...

Jay & Shai's debt ceiling adventure (Update)

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 spendi...

Why I joined DOGE

14 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What 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 sec...

Are Trump's tariffs legal?

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When President Trump announced his sweeping new tariffs this year, many trade law experts were startled. Typically, presidents don't have the authorit...

When Chinese manufacturing met Small Town, USA

06 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past decade, politicians from both parties have courted American voters with an enticing economic prospect – the dream of bringing manufact...

Trump's crypto interests (Two Indicators)

04 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today on the show – our crypto president. Just before President Donald Trump began his second administration in January, he and his business partner...

The U.S.-China trade war, according to game theory

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over 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...

Why does the government fund research at universities?

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

American universities are where people go to learn and teach. They're also where research and development happens. Over the past eight decades, univer...

The secret world behind those scammy text messages

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

You 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 investigat...

How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is coming

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Lately 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 prac...

The 145% tariff already did its damage

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Even 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 ...

What happened to U.S. farmers during the last trade war

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The U.S. exports billions of dollars worth of agricultural products each year — things like soybeans, corn and pork. And over the last month, these ...

Is the reign of the dollar over?

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, dollars have been the world's common financial language. Central banks everywhere hold dollars as a way to safely store their wealth. Cou...

What "Made in China" actually means

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Virtually 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...

Why it's so hard to find a public toilet

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why 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 do...

Planet Money complains. To learn.

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ma...

How 23andMe's bankruptcy led to a run on the gene bank

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Reporter 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...

A primer on the Federal Reserve's independence

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

President Donald Trump has been loudly critical of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for years now. Since January, the President has accused him of ...

How much for that egg

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Recently, 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...

OIRA: The tiny office that's about to remake the federal government

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

OIRA — the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — is an obscure, but powerful federal office around the corner from the White House. Presi...

Trade war dispatch from Canada

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How 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 w...

Do trade deficits matter?

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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,...

How the War on Drugs got us... blueberries

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ever 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 lo...

Tariffs: What are they good for?

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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'v...

PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Planet Money buys a mystery diamond

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The deal seemed too good to be true. There's a website that's been selling top quality diamonds at bizarrely low prices. Prices we couldn't find at an...

Can we just change how we measure GDP?

21 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There's one statistic that rules them all when it comes to keeping track of the economy: gross domestic product (GDP). It's the sum of all final trans...

Escheat show (Update)

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Note: This original episode ran in 2020.Walter Schramm did everything right as an investor — at least according to the philosophy of Warren Buffett....

How Tupperware took over our homes, with Decoder Ring

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tupperware is the stealthy star of our modern homes. These plastic storage containers are ubiquitous in our fridges, pantries, and closets. But the or...

The last time we shrank the federal workforce

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you cut every single federal job President Donald Trump wants to cut, how much money would that save? A president has tried to massively shrink the...

How to start a bank

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In some ways, starting a bank is a lot like starting any other business. Who will you hire? Where will you be located? What color will the couches be?...

The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Memecoins are having a moment. Everyone from Hawk Tuah to President Donald Trump to animal influencers like Moo Deng the pygmy hippo have been turned ...

The Memecoin Casino

28 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What do Moo Deng the pygmy hippo, social media sensation Hawk Tuah, and the President of the United States all have in common? They've all inspired hi...

The controversy over Tyson Foods' hiring of asylum seekers

27 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Last year, Tyson Foods shuttered a meat processing plant in Perry, Iowa. The company said it made the decision because the plant was old and inefficie...

The rise and fall of Long Term Capital Management

22 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There's this cautionary tale, in the finance world, that nearly any trader can tell you. It's about placing too much confidence in math and models. It...

Can the president override Congress on spending?

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

So the president can't spend more money than Congress has agreed and voted to spend. But can the president spend less money than Congress wants?It all...

The Big Government Money Pipe Freeze

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There has been chaotic uncertainty around billions of dollars allocated by Congress. The Trump administration ordered a pause on — and review of —...

The 'Crypto Wizard' vs. Nigeria

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The trip that changed Tigran Gambaryan's life forever was supposed to be short — just a few days. When he flew to Nigeria in February of 2024, he di...

The fight for a legendary shipwreck's treasure

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The San Jose was a marvel of 17th century technology. The Spanish galleon weighed more than a thousand tons, was made of wood reinforced with iron, an...

How the scratch off lottery changed America

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Americans spend more on scratch lottery tickets per year than on pizza. More than all Coca-Cola products. Yet the scratch ticket as a consumer item ha...

How DeepSeek changed the market's mind

01 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On Monday, the stock market went into a tizzy over a new AI model from Chinese company DeepSeek. It seemed to be just as powerful as many of its Ameri...

Re-imagining the energy grid ... through batteries (Two Indicators)

29 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When it comes to solar and wind power, renewable energy has always had a caveat: it can only run when the wind blows or the sun shines.The idea of a b...

The "chilling effect" of deportations

25 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After being sworn into office, President Trump signed a whole host of executive actions and orders that affirm his campaign promise to crack down on i...

After the fires

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The fires in Los Angeles are almost out. Residents are starting to trickle back into their burned-out neighborhoods. When they get to their houses, th...

Tariffs, grocery prices and other listener questions

17 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump is just about to begin his second presidency. And it may be safe to say that every single person in America has at least one question abo...

The Land of the Duty Free (classic)

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

(Note: This episode originally ran in 2018.)Is it really cheaper to shop at an airport Duty Free store? And why are so many of them alike?In the 1940s...

The case for Fed Independence in the Nixon Tapes

11 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

You know Watergate, but do you know Fedgate? The more subtle scandal with more monetary policy and, arguably, much higher stakes.In today's episode, w...

ZIP Codes!

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The ZIP code is less like a cold, clinical, ordered list of numbers, and more like a weird overgrown number garden. It started as a way to organize ma...

The potato-shaped loophole in free trade

03 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ever since free trade opened up between the US and Mexico in the 1990s, trillions of dollars of goods have been going back and forth between the two c...

If AI is so good, why are there still so many jobs for translators?

30 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you believe the hype, translators will all soon be out of work. Luis von Ahn, CEO and co-founder of the language learning app Duolingo, doesn't thi...

The Rest of the Story, 2024

27 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After the gift exchange comes another great holiday tradition: returns season. Once again, we are joining the fun in our own Planet Money way. We are ...

The Indicators of this year and next

25 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This year, there was some economic good news to go around. Inflation generally ticked down. Unemployment more or less held around 4-percent. Heck, the...

The habitat banker

20 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Our planet is in serious trouble. There are a million species of plants and animals in danger of extinction, and the biggest cause is companies destro...

How sports gambling blew up

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sports gambling isn't exactly a financial market, but it rhymes with financial markets. What happens on Wall Street somehow eventually also happens in...

A Nobel prize for explaining why there's global inequality

14 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why do some nations fail and others succeed?In the late 1990s and early 2000s, three economists formed a partnership that would revolutionize how econ...

Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update)

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Smoot Hawley Tariffs were a debacle that helped plunge America into the Great Depression. What can we learn from them?Today on the show, we tell t...

There Will Be Flood

06 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Windell Curole spent decades working to protect his community in southern Louisiana from the destructive flooding caused by hurricanes. His local offi...

George Soros vs. the Bank of England

04 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As people learn more about Donald Trump's pick for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, one story comes up over and over: a legendary trade that he play...

How useful, really, are the steps you can take after a data breach?

02 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The dreaded data breach notification... It tells you your personal data's been compromised and suggests steps you can take to minimize the potential h...

Why you bought your couch

27 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

You probably own a chair or a table or a sofa. And you probably think you know why you bought it. Because it was comfy. Or blue. Or the right price. B...

Title Pirates

23 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A couple years ago, Gina Leto, a real estate developer, bought a property with her business partner. The process went like it usually did: Lots of pap...

The long view of economics and immigration (Two Indicators)

20 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mass deportations. What would actually happen—economically—if the President-elect follows through on promises to deport millions of people from Am...

The great German land lottery

15 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Every ten years, a group of German farmers gather in the communal farm fields of the Osing for the Osingverlosung, a ritual dating back centuries. Osi...

The strange way the world's fastest microchips are made

13 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This is the story behind one of the most valuable — and perhaps, most improbable — technologies humanity has ever created. It's a breakthrough cal...

What markets bet President Trump will do

09 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On the day after the election, Wall Street responded in a dramatic way. Some stocks went way up, others went way down. By reading those signals — by...

Moving to the American dream? (update)

06 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Back in the 90s, the federal government ran a bold experiment, giving people vouchers to move out of high-poverty neighborhoods into low-poverty ones....

The veteran loan calamity

01 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Ray and Becky Queen live in rural Oklahoma with their kids (and chickens). The Queens were able to buy that home with a VA loan because of Ray's servi...

So your data was stolen in a data breach

31 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you... exist in the world, it's likely that you have gotten a letter or email at some point informing you that your data was stolen. This happened ...

Why do hospitals keep running out of generic drugs?

25 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There's something strange going on in hospitals. Cheap, common drugs that nurses use every day seem to be constantly hit by shortages. These are often...

Romance on the screen and on the page: Two Indicators

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On today's show, we have two stories from The Indicator, Planet Money's daily podcast. They just launched Love Week, a weeklong series exploring the b...

The Subscription Trap

18 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past two decades, there's been a sort of tectonic economic shift happening under our feet. More and more companies have switched from selling...

We asked 188 economists. And the survey says...

16 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

(For our story on this year's Nobel in Economics, check out our daily show, The Indicator!)Let's face it. Economics is filled with terms that don't al...

So imPORTant: Bananas, frogs, and... Bob's??

11 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Even in our modern world with planes and jets and drones, the vast majority of goods are moved around the planet in cargo ships. Which means our ports...

Can cap and trade work in the US?

09 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Recently, the state of Washington embarked on an ambitious new plan to combat climate change. Taking a page from economics textbooks, the state instit...

What's up with all the ads for law firms?

04 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The lawyer commercial is almost an art form unto itself. Learned practitioners of the law doing whatever it takes to get your attention, from impressi...

How Venezuela imploded (update)

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2016.)Back in 2016, things were pretty bad in Venezuela. Grocery stores didn't have enough food. Ho...

What's THAT got to do with economics?

27 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"Wanna see a trick? Give us any topic and we can tie it back to the economy."That is the bold promise in Planet Money's tagline. And we believe the sh...

Veep-onomics

25 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Next week, JD Vance and Tim Walz will face off in the only confirmed vice presidential debate ahead of the election. As voters look ahead to what thei...

How to save 10,000 fingers

20 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Table saws are extremely dangerous. The government estimates that injuries from table saws send something like 30,000 people to the emergency room eve...

Can money buy happiness?

18 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

People often say that money can't buy you happiness. Sometimes, if you ask them to tell you more about it, they'll mention a famous 2010 study by Nobe...

99 Percent Invisible: The White Castle System of Eating Houses

16 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today we have a guest episode from 99 Percent Invisible.It is about White Castle, the burger chain. Even if you haven't visited, you have tasted its i...

Rate Expectations

13 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates to get inflation under control. One side effect is that taking out a mortgage to buy a home has gotten very ...

Is AI overrated or underrated?

11 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Are the promises made by AI boosters all hype, or are we actually under-appreciating the transformative potential of AI?Can artificial intelligence ma...

Summer camp capitalism

06 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Summer 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. B...

Bingo! (Presidential debate edition)

04 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 straightfo...

How to fix a housing shortage

30 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Cody Fischer decided to get into real estate development, he had a vision. He wanted to build affordable, energy efficient apartments in Minneapo...

Summer School 8: Big ideas and life lessons from Marx, Keynes and Smith and more

28 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Take 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...

The trade fraud detective

23 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When David Rashid took over US autoparts maker Plews and Edelmann, the company was losing business to its Chinese rival, Qingdao Sunsong. Both compani...

Summer School 7: The Great Depression, the New Deal and how it changed our economy

21 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Find 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 Uni...

The hidden world behind your new "banking" app

16 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

You 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...

Summer School 6: China, Taiwan and how nations grow rich

14 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for vid...

Will the Olympics break breakdancing?

09 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Summer School 5: 250 years of trade history in three chapters

07 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for vid...

What to do when you're in a class action

02 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Maybe 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...

Summer School 4: Banker vs president and the birth of the dollar

31 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for vid...

Summer School 3: The first stock and perpetual life

26 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for vid...

What Kamala Harris' economic agenda might look like

24 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Last 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...

The color monopoly

20 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 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 prod...

Summer School 2: The golden ages of labor and looms

17 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Who 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...

Rooftop solar's dark side

12 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

4.5 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 abo...