Planet Money

The secret world behind school fundraisers

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fundraising is a staple of the school experience in the U.S. There's an assembly showing off all the prizes kids can win by selling enough wrapping pa...

A controversial idea at the heart of Bidenomics

23 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Réka Juhász is a professor of economics at the University of British Columbia, and she studies what's known as industrial policy. That's the general...

Two Indicators: Economics of the defense industry

21 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Department of Defense's proposed budget for 2024 is $842 billion. That is about 3.5% of the U.S.'s GDP. The military buys everything from pens and...

How the Navy came to protect cargo ships

16 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Genco Picardy is not an American ship. It doesn't pay U.S. taxes, none of its crew are U.S. nationals, and when it sailed through the Red Sea last...

It's giving ... Valentines

15 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

L, is for the way you Listen to Planet MoneyO, is for the Only podcast I hearV, is Very, very, fiduciaryE, is for... ECONOMICS! Every February, we ded...

A lawsuit for your broken heart

09 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Keith King was upset when his marriage ended. His wife had cheated, and his family broke apart. And that's when he learned about a very old type of la...

Morally questionable, economically efficient

07 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There are tons of markets that don't exist because people just don't want to allow a market – for whatever reason, people feel icky about putting a ...

Groundhog Day 2024: Trademark, bankruptcy, and the dollar that failed

02 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's Groundhog Day, and the eyes of the nation have turned to a small town in western Pennsylvania. And, just like last year, all anyone can talk abou...

The Chicken Tax (Classic)

31 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Note: This episode originally ran in 2015.German families in the 60s loved tasty, cheap American-raised chicken that was suddenly coming in after the ...

Bonus: Janet Yellen on Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

29 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Our friends at NPR's news quiz Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! recently had a very Planet Money guest on their show: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. They ...

Rescues at sea, and how to make a fortune

27 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At around 1 a.m. on the morning of November 15, 1994, Captain Prentice "Skip" Strong III woke to a distress call. Skip was the new captain of an oil t...

Hear us out: We ban left turns and other big ideas

24 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On today's episode, we have three big economic ideas for your consideration – ideas that could potentially improve the economy and make us more effi...

Econ Battle Zone: Disinflation Confrontation

20 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After very high inflation, the United States is finally feeling some relief in the form of "disinflation." But, why exactly has inflation slowed down?...

Mid-East conflict escalation, two indicators

17 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On today's show, we look at two indicators of the economic disruptions of the war in Gaza and try to trace how far they will reach. We start in the Re...

The Maine Potato War of 1976

13 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When you think of a potato, one state probably comes to mind: Idaho. But for much of American history, Maine was home to the nation's largest potato c...

The Universal Basic Income experiment in Kenya

10 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There's this fundamental question in economics that has proven really hard to answer: What's a good way to help people out of poverty? The old-school ...

The case of the serial sinking Spanish ships

05 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Picture the Pacific Ocean of the 16th century. Spanish Galleons sail the wide open seas, carrying precious cargo like silver, porcelain, and textiles....

The Rest of the Story, 2023

29 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's that time of year again! Our annual year-end tradition of checking in on the stories we've reported and the people we met along the way.We'll hea...

The Indicators of this year and next

27 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today on the show, hosts from Planet Money and The Indicator debate the economic indicators of this year and next year.First up, we try to identify th...

We buy a lot of Christmas trees (Update)

22 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

*Note: This episode originally ran in 2020*'Tis the season for Americans to head out in droves and bring home a freshly-cut Christmas tree. But decora...

Dollarizing Argentina

21 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Argentina has been on a decades-long search for economic stability, but it always seems to be out of reach. High inflation has been plaguing the count...

How to be better at hybrid work, according to research

19 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The research keeps coming in on remote work. New evidence suggests working from home, at least full-time, may not be as productive as we once thought....

What econ says in the shadows

16 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Economics Job Market Rumors is a website that's half a job information Wiki, where people post about what's going on inside economics departments, and...

Why '90s ads are unforgettable

14 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's __________.The best part of waking up, is _______ in your cup!Got ____?If you can identify these brands based on ...

The U.S. economy's biggest superpower, explained

11 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What if you could borrow money on the cheap and use it to pay for just about anything? The U.S. government can, and does, with U.S. Treasuries. But th...

Why do doctors still use pagers?

08 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Remember pagers? They were huge in the 80s — these little devices that could receive short messages. Sir Mix-A-Lot even had a song about them! But t...

Two food and drink indicators

06 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today on the show, we have two episodes from our daily podcast, The Indicator, about things we spend a lot of time thinking about this time of year: f...

Why are we so bummed about the economy?

01 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Would you say that you and your family are better off or worse off, financially, than you were a year ago? Do you think in 12 months we'll have good t...

So you want to sell marijuana across state lines

29 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the state of Oregon, there is a glut of grass. A wealth of weed. A crisis of chronic. And, jokes aside, it's a real problem for people who work in ...

A very Planet Money Thanksgiving

22 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Here at Planet Money, Thanksgiving is not just a time to feast on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casseroles and pie(s). It's also a tim...

Economic fact in literary fiction

18 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Some of the most influential and beloved novels of the last few years have been about money, finance, and the global economy. Some overtly so, others ...

China's real estate crisis, explained

15 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

China's economic growth for the past few decades has been extraordinary. And much of that growth was fueled by real estate – it was like this miracu...

The alleged theft at the heart of ChatGPT

10 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When best-selling thriller writer Douglas Preston began playing around with OpenAI's new chatbot, ChatGPT, he was, at first, impressed. But then he re...

Never have I ever

08 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The world of economics has these two different sides. One one side, there are the economists in their cozy armchairs and dusty libraries, high up in t...

FTC Chair Lina Khan on Antitrust in the age of Amazon

03 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Lina Khan was in law school back in 2017, she wrote a law review article called 'Amazon's Antitrust Paradox,' that went kinda viral in policy cir...

Antitrust in America (classic)

01 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this fall, the Federal Trade Commission filed a high-stakes lawsuit against Amazon.In that suit, the FTC claims Amazon is a monopoly, and it a...

All you can eat economics

27 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

You might expect to find economic concepts in the pages of an economics textbook. But you know where you can really see a lot of economic concepts in ...

Cutting school... by 20%

26 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Right now, a lot of school districts across the country are making a pretty giant change to the way public education usually works. Facing teacher sho...

How unions are stopped before they start

20 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

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. Th...

Indicator exploder: jobs and inflation

18 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When someone says "the economy is doing well"—what does that even mean? Like, for workers, for employers, for the country as a whole? According to w...

Maria Bamford gets personal (about) finance

13 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Note: There is swearing in this episode.In 2017, The University of Minnesota asked comedian Maria Bamford to give their commencement speech. But the U...

Why the price of Coke didn't change for 70 years (classic)

11 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Prices go up. Occasionally, prices go down. But for 70 years, the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola didn't change. From 1886 until the late 1950s, a bott...

A man, a plan, wind power, Uruguay

06 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 2007, Uruguay had a massive problem with no obvious fix. The economy of this country of 3.5 million people was growing, but there wasn't enough ene...

The flight attendants of CHAOS

04 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When contract negotiations between Alaska Airlines and their flight attendants' union broke down in 1993, the union had a choice to make.The union —...

A trucker hat mystery, the curse of September and other listener questions

29 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ba-dee-yah! Say do you remember? Ba-dee-yah! Questions in September!That's right - it's time for Listener Questions!Every so often, we like to hear fr...

The natural disaster economist

27 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There seems to be headlines about floods, wildfires, or hurricanes every week. Scientists say this might be the new normal — that climate change is ...

A black market, a currency crisis, and a tango competition in Argentina

23 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Nobel-prize winning economist Simon Kuznets once analyzed the world's economies this way — he said there are four kinds of countries: developed,...

"Based on a true story"

20 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When a group of amateur investors rallied around the stock for GameStop back in 2021, the story blew up the internet. News outlets around the world, i...

How to launder $600 million on the internet

16 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Erin Plante is a private detective who specializes in chasing down stolen cryptocurrency. In March of 2022, she got the biggest assignment of her care...

China's weakening economy in two Indicators

13 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In China, data on the economy is sometimes difficult to come by. The Chinese government has put a pause on releasing some of its official economic dat...

Is economists' favorite tool to crush inflation broken?

08 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When economists and policymakers talk about getting inflation under control, there's an assumption they often make: bringing inflation down will proba...

The prince of prints and his prints of Prince

06 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1981, photographer Lynn Goldsmith took a portrait of the musician Prince. It's a pretty standard headshot — it's in black-and-white, and Prince i...

How to fight a patent pirate

01 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Back in the 1990s, Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar was in his office in New Delhi when he came across a puzzling story in the newspaper. Some university scien...

Summer School 8: Graduation and the Guppy Tank

30 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Congratulations to the Planet Money Summer School Class of 2023! Today, you become masters of business administration... spelled with lower-case lette...

The secret entrance that sidesteps Hollywood picket lines

26 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Across Hollywood right now, writers and actors are picketing in front of studio lots. They're walking back and forth, holding up signs demanding conce...

Summer School 7: Negotiating and the empathetic nibble

23 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How do you get the best deal? How do you know you're getting the best deal? Whether you're talking down the price of a car or talking up your salary, ...

Vacation, and why the U.S. takes so little of it

18 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Do you work more for more money? Or work less for more time? For some, this is the ultimate economic choice.Every single worker in the European Union ...

Summer School 6: Operations and 25,000 roses

16 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

"It's difficult to control everything," says our guest professor for this week, Santiago Gallino. "What is not difficult is to plan for everything." T...

The new Biden plan that could still erase your student loans

11 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This summer, the Supreme Court struck down Biden's plan to forgive student loan debt for millions of borrowers. Except, on the same day Biden first an...

Summer School 5: Tech and the innovator's dilemma

09 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For anyone running a business, technology is both threat and opportunity. Today, we run through techniques entrepreneurs can use to take advantage of ...

A tarot card reading for the U.S. economy

04 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Predicting the future of the economy is always a dicey proposition. That is especially true after more than three years of pandemic-related economic w...

Summer School 4: Marketing and the Ultimate Hose Nozzle

02 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this session of Planet Money Summer School, we are getting the word out about your brand. How do you convince consumers to buy your product, even i...

Tackle your medical debt with Life Kit

31 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There's an estimated $195 billion of medical debt in America. But just because a medical bill comes in the mail doesn't mean you have to pay that exac...

Did two honesty researchers fabricate their data?

28 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino are two of the biggest stars in behavioral science. Both have conducted blockbuster research into how to make people mor...

Summer School 3: Accounting and The Last Supper

26 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Usually, the first class that an MBA student takes is accounting. That involves, yes, equations and counting widgets...but it's more than that. Inside...

Planet Money Paper Club

21 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We here at Planet Money love economics papers. And that is also the case for so many of the economists we speak with. For them, new research can expl...

Summer School 2: Competition and the cheaper sneaker

19 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For episode 2 of Planet Money Summer School, we are talking strategy. You have your million dollar business idea, and maybe some money in your pocket ...

Surprise, you just signed a contract! How hidden contracts took over the internet

15 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When you make an account online or install an app, you are probably entering into a legally enforceable contract. Even if you never signed anything. T...

Summer School 1: Planet Money goes to business school

12 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Find all episodes of Planet Money Summer School here.Planet Money Summer School is back! It's the free economics class you can take from anywhere... f...

The quest to save macroeconomics from itself

07 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When it comes to big questions about the economy, we're still kind of in the dark ages. Why do some economies grow so much faster than others? How lon...

Two Indicators: After Affirmative Action & why America overpays for subways

05 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Two stories today.First, as we start to understand post-affirmative action America, we look to a natural experiment 25 years ago, when California ende...

Supply, demand, extinction

30 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Back in the 90s, Ivan Lozano Ortega was in charge of Bogota's wildlife rescue center. And he kept getting calls from the airport to come deal with... ...

Planet Money Live: Two Truths and a Lie

28 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The shocks of the pandemic economy gave us a bunch of enormous natural experiments, which helped to prove or disprove conventional economic thinking.T...

Mike The Mover vs. The Furniture Police

23 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1978, a young man named Mike Shanks started a moving business in the north end of Seattle. It was just him and a truck — a pretty small operation...

Twins (classic)

21 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Twins are used to fielding all sorts of questions, like "Can you read each other's minds?" or "Can you feel each other's pain?" Two of our Planet Mone...

The 60-day job race

16 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

People come from all over the world to work in U.S. tech. And during the tech boom years, the industry relied heavily on foreign workers. This is how ...

Two Indicators: The economics of innovation

14 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Innovation is crucial for game-changing advancements in society, whether it's treatments for serious diseases, developments in AI technology, or rocke...

The town that changed economics

09 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 90s, when a young economist named Michael Kremer finished his PhD, there had been a few economic studies based on randomized trials. But ...

The Spider-Man Problem (update)

07 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

(Note: This episode originally ran back in 2022.)This past weekend, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had the second largest domestic opening of 202...

AI Podcast 3.0: Dial M for Mechanization

02 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's the thrilling conclusion to our three-part series on AI — the world premiere of the first episode of Planet Money written by AI. In Part 1 of t...

AI Podcast 2.0: The host in the machine

31 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Part 1 of this series, AI proved that it could use real research and real interviews to write an original script for an episode of Planet Money. Ou...

AI Podcast 1.0: Rise of the machines

26 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We used to think some jobs were safe from automation. Though machines have transformed industries like agriculture and manufacturing, the conventional...

Green energy gridlock

24 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Lyle Jack wants to build a wind farm on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. But to make the project work, he has to connect that wind farm to ...

Predictions: Jobs!

19 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's time for another installment of ... Planet Money Predictions! *air horn* Last year, we invited two economic forecasters to tell us what they saw ...

How AI could help rebuild the middle class

17 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For the last four decades, technology has been mostly a force for greater inequality and a shrinking middle class. But new empirical evidence suggests...

Inflation and the Profit-Price Spiral

12 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Economists say that inflation is just too much money chasing too few goods.But something else can make inflation stick around.If you think of the 1970...

The Day of Two Noons (Classic)

10 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

(Note: this episode originally ran in 2019.)In the 1800s, catching your train on time was no easy feat. Every town had its own "local time," based on ...

How to fight a squatting goat

06 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Back in 2005, Burt Banks inherited a plot of old family land in Delaware. But when it came time to sell it, he ran into a problem: his neighbor had a ...

Two Indicators: the influencer industry

03 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? An astronaut, a doctor or maybe a famous athlete? Today one of the most popular respon...

Financial advising while Black

28 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After a successful career in advertising, Erika Williams decided it was time for a change. She went back to school to get an MBA at the University of ...

The zoo economy (classic)

26 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Note: This episode originally aired in September, 2014.Zoos follow a fundamental principle: You can't sell or buy the animals. It's unethical and ille...

The quest for the factory-built house

21 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine if we built cars the same way we build houses. First, a typical buyer would meet with the car designer, and tell them what kind of car they wa...

Tax Code Switch

19 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This past January, researchers uncovered that Black taxpayers are three to five times as likely to be audited as everyone else. One likely reason for ...

The life and possible death of low interest rates

15 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Right now, the economy is running hot. Inflation is high, and central banks are pushing up interest rates to fight it. But before the pandemic, econom...

Two innovation market indicators

12 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Right now, the economy is all over the place. And when things get confusing, we look to basic economic indicators to help explain what's going on. Tod...

Your banking questions, answered

08 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's been a month since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank touched off the worst episode of banking turmoil since 2008. While the financial system ap...

The battle for Puerto Rico's beaches

05 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Puerto Rico's beaches are an integral part of life on the island, and by law, they're one of the few places that are truly public. In practice, the sa...

The safety net for banks

01 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the first half of March, three banks - Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Silvergate - all had relatively classic bank runs and collapsed. Wh...

A Great Recession bank takeover

30 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this month, we saw the largest bank collapse since the 2008 financial crisis. For many of us, seeing Silicon Valley Bank's meltdown brought us...

The battle over Osage headrights

25 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Richard J. Lonsinger is a member of the Ponca tribe of Oklahoma, who was adopted at a young age into a white family of three. He eventually reconnecte...