Planet Money

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Business

What's Planet Money about?

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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A trucker hat mystery, the ...

09.29.2023

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 from listeners about what's on their minds, and we try to get to the bottom of ...

Planet Money episodes:

09.29.2023 A trucker hat mystery, the curse of September and other listener questions 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 from listeners about what's on their minds, and we try to get to the bottom of ...
09.27.2023 The natural disaster economist There seems to be headlines about floods, wildfires, or hurricanes every week. Scientists say this might be the new normal — that climate change is making natural disasters more and more common. Tatyana Deryugina is a leading expert on the ...
09.23.2023 A black market, a currency crisis, and a tango competition in Argentina The Nobel-prize winning economist Simon Kuznets once analyzed the world's economies this way — he said there are four kinds of countries: developed, underdeveloped, Japan... and Argentina. If you want to understand what happens when inflation really goes off the ...
09.20.2023 "Based on a true story" 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, including us here at Planet Money, rushed in to explain why the stock for ...
09.16.2023 How to launder $600 million on the internet Erin Plante is a private detective who specializes in chasing down stolen cryptocurrency. In March of 2022, she got the biggest assignment of her career: Hackers had broken into an online game called Axie Infinity and made off with over ...
09.13.2023 China's weakening economy in two Indicators 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 data. But many of the stories emerging from the country paint a clear picture: ...
09.08.2023 Is economists' favorite tool to crush inflation broken? When economists and policymakers talk about getting inflation under control, there's an assumption they often make: bringing inflation down will probably result in some degree of layoffs and job loss. But that is not the way things have played out ...
09.06.2023 The prince of prints and his prints of Prince 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 is staring down the camera lens. This was early in his career, when he was still building ...
09.01.2023 How to fight a patent pirate 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 scientists in the U.S. had apparently filed a patent for using turmeric to help ...
08.30.2023 Summer School 8: Graduation and the Guppy Tank Congratulations to the Planet Money Summer School Class of 2023! Today, you become masters of business administration... spelled with lower-case letters for legal purposes. Your diploma is waiting for you just across the stage. But first, there's one final skill ...
08.26.2023 The secret entrance that sidesteps Hollywood picket lines Across Hollywood right now, writers and actors are picketing in front of studio lots. They're walking back and forth, holding up signs demanding concessions on things like pay, how many writers work on projects, and the use of AI in ...
08.23.2023 Summer School 7: Negotiating and the empathetic nibble 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, you don't have to be a jerk to get what ...
08.18.2023 Vacation, and why the U.S. takes so little of it 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 is guaranteed four weeks of paid vacation. No matter how long they've ...
08.16.2023 Summer School 6: Operations and 25,000 roses "It's difficult to control everything," says our guest professor for this week, Santiago Gallino. "What is not difficult is to plan for everything." Today we venture into the sphere of business that masters the planning, and backup planning: operations management. ...
08.11.2023 The new Biden plan that could still erase your student loans 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 announced that plan, he also unveiled another, the SAVE plan. And though SAVE sounded less ...
08.09.2023 Summer School 5: Tech and the innovator's dilemma For anyone running a business, technology is both threat and opportunity. Today, we run through techniques entrepreneurs can use to take advantage of new tech or defend against the dangers. It's not just about the product you're selling. It's about ...
08.04.2023 A tarot card reading for the U.S. economy Predicting the future of the economy is always a dicey proposition. That is especially true after more than three years of pandemic-related economic weirdness. No one quite knows what will happen next. Will the Fed be able to pull off ...
08.02.2023 Summer School 4: Marketing and the Ultimate Hose Nozzle 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 if they are only just hearing about it? It's time for sales and ...
07.31.2023 Tackle your medical debt with Life Kit 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 exact price. In this special episode from our friends at Life Kit, you'll ...
07.28.2023 Did two honesty researchers fabricate their data? Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino are two of the biggest stars in behavioral science. Both have conducted blockbuster research into how to make people more honest, research we've highlighted on Planet Money. The two worked together on a paper about ...
07.26.2023 Summer School 3: Accounting and The Last Supper 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 the simple act of accounting is a revolutionary way of thinking not just about a business, but ...
07.21.2023 Planet Money Paper Club 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 explain something they have always wondered about, or make them see something ...
07.19.2023 Summer School 2: Competition and the cheaper sneaker 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 to get it up and running. But now you enter into a crowded market. ...
07.15.2023 Surprise, you just signed a contract! How hidden contracts took over the internet 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. These days, we enter into these contracts so often, it can feel like no big ...
07.12.2023 Summer School 1: Planet Money goes to business school 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... for everyone! For Season 4 of Summer School, we are taking you to business school. ...
07.07.2023 The quest to save macroeconomics from itself 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 long is the next recession going to last? How do we stop ...
07.05.2023 Two Indicators: After Affirmative Action & why America overpays for subways Two stories today. First, as we start to understand post-affirmative action America, we look to a natural experiment 25 years ago, when California ended the practice in public universities. It reshaped the makeup of the universities almost instantly. We find ...
06.30.2023 Supply, demand, extinction 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... frogs. Hundreds of brightly colored, poisonous frogs. Ivan had stumbled upon the poisonous ...
06.28.2023 Planet Money Live: Two Truths and a Lie The shocks of the pandemic economy gave us a bunch of enormous natural experiments, which helped to prove or disprove conventional economic thinking. Take, for example, the bullwhip effect, the idea that the further away from the customer you are ...
06.23.2023 Mike The Mover vs. The Furniture Police 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. Things were going great. Then one afternoon, he was pulled ...
06.21.2023 Twins (classic) 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 Money reporters are twins, and they have heard them all. But it's not ...
06.16.2023 The 60-day job race 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 we built Silicon Valley – with great minds coming from everywhere to ...
06.14.2023 Two Indicators: The economics of innovation Innovation is crucial for game-changing advancements in society, whether it's treatments for serious diseases, developments in AI technology, or rocket science. Today on the show, we're airing two episodes from our daily economics show The Indicator. First, a new paper ...
06.09.2023 The town that changed economics 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 they were rare. In part because randomized trials – in which you recruit two ...
06.07.2023 The Spider-Man Problem (update) (Note: This episode originally ran back in 2022.) This past weekend, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had the second largest domestic opening of 2023, netting (or should we say webbing?) over $120 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. and ...
06.02.2023 AI Podcast 3.0: Dial M for Mechanization 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 this series, we taught AI how to write an original Planet Money ...
05.31.2023 AI Podcast 2.0: The host in the machine 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. Our next task was to teach the computer how to sound like ...
05.26.2023 AI Podcast 1.0: Rise of the machines We used to think some jobs were safe from automation. Though machines have transformed industries like agriculture and manufacturing, the conventional wisdom was that they could never perform what's called "knowledge work." That the robots could never replace lawyers or ...
05.24.2023 Green energy gridlock 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 the electric grid. Which is easier said than done. On ...
05.19.2023 Predictions: Jobs! 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 coming for jobs, the housing market, and inflation. And now they're back. Which means it's ...
05.17.2023 How AI could help rebuild the middle class For the last four decades, technology has been mostly a force for greater inequality and a shrinking middle class. But new empirical evidence suggests that the age of AI could be different. We speak to MIT's David Autor, one of ...
05.12.2023 Inflation and the Profit-Price Spiral 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 1970s, the last time the U.S. had really high sustained inflation, a big concern ...
05.10.2023 The Day of Two Noons (Classic) (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 the position of the sun in the sky. There were 23 local ...
05.06.2023 How to fight a squatting goat 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 goat pen, and about half of it crossed over ...
05.03.2023 Two Indicators: the influencer industry 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 responses to that question is influencer – content creators who grow ...
04.28.2023 Financial advising while Black 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 Chicago, and eventually, in 2012, she got a job at Wells Fargo ...
04.26.2023 The zoo economy (classic) 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 illegal to put a price tag on an elephant's head. But money is really useful — it ...
04.21.2023 The quest for the factory-built house 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 want. Then the designer would draw up plans for the car. ...
04.19.2023 Tax Code Switch 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 this is that the IRS disproportionately audits lower-income earners who claim a tax benefit called ...
04.15.2023 The life and possible death of low interest rates 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, economies around the world were stuck in a different rut: low inflation, low interest rates, ...

Older episodes

Planet Money

What's Planet Money about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Planet Money episodes:

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

The natural disaster economist

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

"Based on a true story"

How to launder $600 million on the internet

China's weakening economy in two Indicators

Is economists' favorite tool to crush inflation broken?

The prince of prints and his prints of Prince

How to fight a patent pirate

Summer School 8: Graduation and the Guppy Tank

The secret entrance that sidesteps Hollywood picket lines

Summer School 7: Negotiating and the empathetic nibble

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

Summer School 6: Operations and 25,000 roses

The new Biden plan that could still erase your student loans

Summer School 5: Tech and the innovator's dilemma

A tarot card reading for the U.S. economy

Summer School 4: Marketing and the Ultimate Hose Nozzle

Tackle your medical debt with Life Kit

Did two honesty researchers fabricate their data?

Summer School 3: Accounting and The Last Supper

Planet Money Paper Club

Summer School 2: Competition and the cheaper sneaker

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

Summer School 1: Planet Money goes to business school

The quest to save macroeconomics from itself

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

Supply, demand, extinction

Planet Money Live: Two Truths and a Lie

Mike The Mover vs. The Furniture Police

Twins (classic)

The 60-day job race

Two Indicators: The economics of innovation

The town that changed economics

The Spider-Man Problem (update)

AI Podcast 3.0: Dial M for Mechanization

AI Podcast 2.0: The host in the machine

AI Podcast 1.0: Rise of the machines

Green energy gridlock

Predictions: Jobs!

How AI could help rebuild the middle class

Inflation and the Profit-Price Spiral

The Day of Two Noons (Classic)

How to fight a squatting goat

Two Indicators: the influencer industry

Financial advising while Black

The zoo economy (classic)

The quest for the factory-built house

Tax Code Switch

The life and possible death of low interest rates

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