About this podcast
Wanna see a trick? Give us any topic and we can tie it back to the economy. At Planet Money, we explore the forces that shape our lives and bring you along for the ride. Don't just understand the economy – understand the world.
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Episodes
The newest 50 of 355 episodes
- How bodegas led to the Yemeni coffeehouse explosion · 24 minThere is a long-standing tradition of different immigrant groups arriving in the U.S. and specializing in one particular type of business. Think, nail salons run by people from…
- Inside the insurance industry’s destruction lab · 32 minWhen you think of someone burning down a house for insurance purposes, you don’t imagine it would ever be the insurance company itself lighting the match. But that’s essentially…
- The history of light (classic) · 21 minHow do you measure human progress? Light is the answer. For thousands of years, getting light was a huge hassle. You had to make candles from scratch. This is not as romantic as…
- Is this how the great international borrowing spree ends? · 26 minIn recent months, there have been serious whispers about an outrageous possibility: that one day soon, France — the seventh largest economy in the world — might not be able to…
- Politicians are afraid to fix taxes. So 100 citizens tried. · 31 minConnecticut’s property tax system has been broken for decades and the politicians have failed to fix the problem. So now, they’re trying something new: a citizens assembly…
- How surveillance crept up on us · 35 minFor years, police have spent billions of tax dollars on watching us, tracking us, and recording us. In the largest police department in the country, these surveillance systems…
- We try to fix election polling (update) · 30 minPolling is facing an existential crisis. People aren't picking up the phone. Nobody wants to talk to pollsters. Trust is on the line. We pluck a solution from the economics canon…
- Anatomy of a movie market · 32 minBefore an independent movie makes it to a streaming platform or a theater near you, it first needs to survive an artistic and economic gauntlet. And even for those movies that…
- Wanna slow down AI? These biologists can help. · 29 minFifty years ago, scientists pioneering a terrifying gene-splicing technology figured out a way to collectively hit pause. Can we do it again with AI? We ask because some top AI…
- Should we all be getting tariff refunds right now? · 30 minCompanies are getting billions of dollars back. How about us? It seems simple, right? We paid higher prices for imported goods because of tariffs. Then the tariffs were ruled…
- Charles Ponzi's scheme (plus a new scam) · 26 minCharles Ponzi was down on his luck. In 1919, the Italian immigrant had spent a decade and a half in the U.S. He was looking for a way to get rich and tried his hand at everything…
- Where all those weird new drinks are coming from · 30 minIt's getting pretty wild in the beverage aisle these days — from the rainbow wall of seltzers, to the increasingly strange flavors of Pepsi, to the new "functional" sodas with…
- Who’s gonna pay for your Social Security? · 29 minVery soon, Social Security may not have enough money to make full payments to retirees. Very soon. Like by 2032, just six years from now. So what are we gonna do about it? Today…
- Middlegarchs are the new Oligarchs · 31 minWanna know who is really in the top 1%? And how they use their influence? It may not be who you think. Look beyond Silicon Valley. Look beyond Wall Street. Look beyond the…
- Is our national debt finally too much? (update) · 30 min(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2024.) $40,000,000,000,000. Four commas. Thirteen zeroes. It’s an eye-popping, almost infinite-sounding pile of money. And…
- The Domino’s Pizza Tracker Theory of Everything · 32 minDid a pizza restaurant’s humble status page change how we wait forever? When you order a Lyft or Uber, you get texts every few minutes about your car approaching and arriving…
- How investing is getting riskier (Two Indicators) · 18 minMargin borrowing and sports gambling “investments” are both on the rise! Today on the show, two stories from Planet Money’s daily podcast The Indicator about the ways investing…
- The loan at the heart of a new foreclosure crisis · 29 minThere is a new type of loan that is sweeping through the country right now. It’s advertised as a super quick and super easy way to get a mortgage to buy a home. In recent years…
- Cost-cutting, quiet guilt and the inflation generation · 24 minIn this economy it is boom times and doom times all at once. The statistics aren’t really capturing it. K-shaped only goes so far as a metaphor. So … we asked you to help. And…
- Trump drinks Venezuela’s milkshake · 25 minOne week ago, President Trump announced a deal that would give the “U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American…
- Love in the time of Palantir · 26 minTo a lot of people, Palantir is a mystery — what does the company know, what data do they have, and (if they have it) what do they do with it all? We dig into that mystery and…
- Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” the true story behind the anthem (bonus) · 23 minThe brilliance of "9 to 5" is that it is catchy even though it’s also kinda depressing. You will be dancing along. You're enjoying it. And, then when you really listen to the…
- Branded fruit: How produce got “Honeycrisp-ified" · 34 minThe produce aisle is changing. You’ve noticed this, I’m sure. It is now full of superstar fruits and vegetables: The Honeycrisp apple, The Cotton Candy grape, The Cuties mandarin…
- The continent nobody owns & everyone benefits from (Summer School) · 41 minThis episode is packed with your best economic ideas from around the world and a penguin interview. It all comes together in this final session of Summer School 2026. Pack your…
- Who decides what big box sells? Our GAME got us answers · 38 minThere’s a room where the fates of retail products are decided. Will they make it onto the shelves of the big box stores? Usually the rest of us can’t get inside the room where…
- Getting entrepreneurial in Korea (Summer School) · 40 minThis week’s stop on our world tour - Korea. A country divided into two very different power structures since the end of WWII. Today South Korea is the maker of some of the…
- You bet your life insurance · 39 minSome of the biggest firms on Wall Street are, at this very moment, waiting for thousands of strangers to die to reap their returns. Because there’s a market for life insurance…
- Currency Chaos in Argentina (Summer School) · 39 minJust about everyone in Argentina is an expert in inflation and whether they like it or not, economic flexibility. Can we learn from them? Over the years, we at Planet Money have…
- Older workers aren’t retiring. Should they be forced to? · 34 minWhen workers past retirement age can’t afford to retire — that’s one thing. When they can, and just don’t want to — that’s trickier. It used to be legal to force people to…
- Sand heists and property rights in the Caribbean (Summer School) · 40 minImagine a nation where, for the residents, land is for the claiming. You walk down the street, pick out a nice looking plot of land, and just plop down a marker. No rent, no…
- What makes a toy go viral · 26 minSquishy, slimy, fidgety toys are having a moment. But it’s more than just an anxiety-soothing, social-media fueled trend – these toys are reshaping how toys get made. Today on…
- How to beat the resource curse in Norway (Summer School) · 39 minLet’s call it the luxury of restraint. This is what enabled Norway to avoid the fate of so many other countries when they discovered oil and it changed the mix of their economy…
- Piles of cash and a town of solutions in Kenya, Nigeria (Summer School) · 39 minLet’s head to a small town in Kenya that’s become globally famous for helping economists answer some of the biggest questions facing humanity. In Kenya and Nigeria, economics…
- Big Lettuce meets Small Intestine · 26 minThe cyclospora outbreak that’s sickening thousands of Americans got us interested in the rise of Big Lettuce, and the challenges of keeping it clean. So on today’s show, we tell…
- New NPR Series: "We Keep Us Safe" from the Embedded podcast · 3 minIn the summer of 2020, sixteen-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. traveled a thousand miles to join the racial justice movement of his generation in the wake of George Floyd's killing…
- Can World Cup mania grow MLS in the U.S.? · 26 minAs the World Cup comes to a close, so does a massive real-time experiment happening just around the edges. Major League Soccer – the top men’s professional soccer league in the…
- Building things and breaking things in China (Summer School World Tour) · 39 minChina’s turbocharged growth may have made it rich, but now it has to deal with rich country problems. High-speed trains that connect every town. Gleaming new bridges and…
- Seven allegedly fake Chanel bags vs The RealReal · 26 minOnce upon a time, if you wanted to buy a luxury brand item secondhand (say, a Chanel handbag) you had to have an in. There was no easy way to find one. But over the past decade…
- Our mission: Find the world’s best economic ideas (Summer School World Tour) · 37 minCome along as we travel the world in search of the best economic ideas to bring home! From the beaches of Barbuda to the fjords of Norway, there's money (and money problems)…
- How to win a penalty shootout (with game theory) · 18 minLionel Messi is arguably the greatest soccer scorer of all time. But when it comes to penalty kicks, Messi is merely average. Why? Maybe the answer involves game theory…
- Can the Trump administration make college cheaper? · 29 minWill limiting how much students can borrow force schools to lower their prices? The Department of Education thinks so. It has a new plan to bring down tuition costs. Starting…
- We almost had a smartphone in the 90s. Why did it fail? · 27 minIn the early 90’s, a company called General Magic began working on a portable device that would allow people to check email, make phone calls, even play games. It was basically a…
- Before Kalshi and Polymarket there was the Iowa Electronic Markets · 23 minPrediction markets aren’t new. Election betting was common until the 1940s, then mysteriously faded away. There was an entire political era when party bosses were expected to…
- The real horror of ‘Alien’ and how it explains why we’re not paid enough · 33 minMaybe the real monster in the Alien franchise isn’t actually the killer alien. Because behind the acid blood and jump scares is an even more insidious horror: a single employer…
- Can computer hackers get inside your mind? · 30 minThe cyber weapon that might have prevented nuclear war. The U.S. and Israel have long been in conflict with Iran over their nuclear development program. Some of that conflict…
- It’s my tree. Why can’t I cut it down? · 25 minCan the government stop you from cutting down your own tree? In many towns and cities these days, removing a tree now requires a permit. You might have to pay a fee, or promise…
- Two indicators for lowering the rent · 18 minOne specific type of affordable housing used to be popular in American cities, kept rents low, then nearly vanished. Is it time to reconsider boarding houses and single room…
- Why is there a supplement craze if they don’t even work? · 35 minOne reason the $70 billion supplement industry is set to double in the next seven years? Lax regulation. On today's show, we tell the story of a century-long battle between the…
- There's no business like dough business · 27 minHave you ever walked around a street, mall, or airport and noticed two or three of the same franchise restaurant within walking distance? Why might one Starbucks or McDonald’s or…
- The sneaky way companies get new chemicals into our food · 36 min99% of chemicals in our food right now were added without FDA approval. Many were added in secret, through a sneaky loophole built into the 1958 Food Additives Amendment. It was…
