Planet Money

Summer School 1: An Economic History of the World

10 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Planet 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 surpr...

How flying got so bad (or did it?)

05 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 f...

The two companies driving the modern economy

03 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At 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...

Do immigrants really take jobs and lower wages?

29 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 f...

The Carriage Tax (Update)

26 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

(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 ri...

The Vapes of Wrath

21 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When 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 toba...

Why is everyone talking about Musk's money?

19 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 comp...

What's with all the tiny soda cans? And other grocery store mysteries, solved.

14 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Bringing a tariff to a graphite fight

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Graphite 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...

How much national debt is too much?

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 co...

The history of light (classic)

05 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

How the FBI's fake cell phone company put criminals into real jail cells

31 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There is a constant arms race between law enforcement and criminals, especially when it comes to technology. For years, law enforcement has been frust...

So you've been scammed, now what?

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

The junkyard economist

24 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On 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 ou...

Anatomy of a layoff

22 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

By 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 no...

The hack that almost broke the internet

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Last month, the world narrowly avoided a cyberattack of stunning ambition. The targets were some of the most important computers on the planet. Comput...

Why Gold? (Classic)

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Zombie mortgages are coming back to life

10 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Karen McDonough of Quincy, Mass., was enjoying her tea one morning in the dining room when she saw something odd outside her window: a group of people...

Inside video game economics (Two Indicators)

08 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

The birth of the modern consumer movement

03 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today 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 ...

Hire Power (Update)

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

(Note: This episode originally ran in 2021.)Millions of American workers in all sorts of industries have signed some form of noncompete agreement. The...

The case of the stolen masks

26 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

About 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 ransack...

How unions are stopped before they start (Update)

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

(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 Americ...

FTX and the Serengeti of bankruptcy

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For 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 actua...

Grocery prices, credit card debt, and your 401K (Two Indicators)

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 un...

TikTok made me deduct it

12 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

TikTok, 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, ...

How much does this cow weigh? (Classic)

10 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally ran in 2015.About one hundred years ago, a scientist and statistician named Francis Galston came upon an opportunity to test h...

Japan's Lost Decades

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Last 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 spo...

The real estate industry on trial

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 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 c...

How much of your tax dollars are going to Israel and Ukraine

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There'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 an...

The trouble with Table 101 (Update)

27 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

(Note: This episode originally ran in 2020.)In the restaurant game, you need to make the most of every table every minute you are open. And you need t...

What is Temu?

22 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It is rare that a new e-commerce company has such a meteoric rise as Temu. The company, which launched in the fall of 2022, has been flooding the Amer...

How Big Steel in the U.S. fell

20 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Steel manufacturing was at one point the most important industry in the United States. It was one of the biggest employers, a driver of economic growt...

The billion dollar war behind U.S. rum

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When you buy a bottle of rum in the United States, by law nearly all the federal taxes on that rum must be sent to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Isl...

Wind boom, wind bust (Two Windicators)

13 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The wind power business is a bit contradictory right now. It's showing signs of boom and bust seemingly all at once. The story of wind energy markets ...

On the Oscars campaign trail

08 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When you sit down to watch the Oscars, what you are really watching is the final battle in a months-long war of financial engineering and campaign str...

Is dynamic pricing coming to a supermarket near you?

06 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dynamic pricing is an increasingly common phenomenon: You can see it when Uber prices surge during rainy weather, or when you're booking a flight at t...

Shopping for parental benefits around the world

01 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It is so expensive to have a kid in the United States. The U.S. is one of just a handful of countries worldwide with no federal paid parental leave; i...

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...