Planet Money

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The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, "Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy." Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.

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LAST EPISODE

Hollywood's Black List

07.10.2020

In 2005, an anonymous list of the best unmade scripts in Hollywood shook up the movie biz. This episode: how a math-loving, movie nerd solved Hollywood's script problem. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

Planet Money episodes:

07.10.2020 Hollywood's Black List In 2005, an anonymous list of the best unmade scripts in Hollywood shook up the movie biz. This episode: how a math-loving, movie nerd solved Hollywood's script problem. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.08.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 1: Choices & Dating First lesson: Economics is not about money. It's a lens of great power and beauty. In this episode, we meet our teachers and learn the first four fundamental concepts of economic thinking, and watch them applied to things like dating ...
07.06.2020 Planet Money Summer School Planet Money Summer School is a crash course in economics for your ears.
07.03.2020 Reparations For Police Brutality (UPDATE) For years, some Chicago police officers tortured suspects. Survivors fought for reparations — and got them. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.01.2020 Inflation, Deflation After decades of relative stability, prices in the US may be about to go through the roof — or the floor. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.27.2020 Seed Spy Espionage. Deceit. Theft. In this episode we follow the case of a global effort to steal top secret high technology: seeds. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.24.2020 Owner Of A Broken Hertz Rental car giant Hertz declared bankruptcy last month, which should have made their stock worthless. So how come people keep buying it? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.19.2020 Money And Justice We talk to podcast host Sam Sanders, Professor William A Darity Jr., social activist Oluchi Omeoga, nonprofit runner Kevin Cheng and economist Dean Karlan.
06.17.2020 The Problem Of The Root (2018) Wild ginseng sells for thousands. We go to a farm hidden in the Appalachian mountains to find out why. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.12.2020 Patent Racism Dr. Lisa Cook found a hole in a central economic growth theory — how violence and the lack of rule of law impacts innovation. But getting her colleagues to see it took 10 years.
06.10.2020 The Very First Vaccine We've only made vaccines for so many diseases. Let's look at the history. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.05.2020 Police Unions And Police Violence We look at the data connecting police unions and police violence. Today's episode comes from our daily podcast, The Indicator. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.04.2020 Where'd The Money Go, And Other Questions When the economy tanks, does money just vanish? Why are home prices still so high? You asked these and other questions. We try to answer. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
05.30.2020 Small America Vs. Big Internet Small-town internet is often terrible... though not for lack of trying. Today on the show, one small city starts their own service provider only to get trolled by Big Internet.
05.27.2020 Three Big Ideas Spend billions on vaccine factories we'll never use. Set up autopay to send checks to almost everybody. Build a giant bubble for an entire sports league.
05.23.2020 J. Screwed This month, J.Crew went bankrupt. But not before inventing a whole new way of thinking about promises to lenders.
05.20.2020 How To Get Trillions To Millions In March, Congress passed the CARES act. But the stroke of a pen only does so much. This episode — two stories from the Indicator about how $2.2 trillion gets from Congress to you.
05.16.2020 Episode 1,000 We did it! Planet Money is officially 1,000. And to thank all of our listeners for joining us on this heck of a ride — we're gonna let you in on our secrets...
05.13.2020 The Restaurant From The Future The restaurant industry has gotten walloped in this pandemic — 5.5 million unemployed or furloughed. Yet, one guy wants to expand.
05.08.2020 Journey To The Center Of The Fed The Federal Reserve's response to coronavirus has made it maybe the most important institution in the world right now. This episode, we go down to the Fed to talk about why.
05.07.2020 Georgia's Open Question Georgia is one of the first states to reopen non-essential businesses. This episode, business owners answer the question: Can you safely reopen a business right now? Should you?
05.01.2020 About That Hazard Pay Many essential workers right now are low paid. And they're being asked to risk more. Titles got fancier but their job got worse. So... why aren't these workers getting paid more?
04.30.2020 Buybacks And Bailouts In a viral video about billionaires, buybacks, and bailouts, a deep question that's been simmering since the last financial crisis has reemerged: Who deserves to fail?
04.24.2020 Making It Work Lockdown has changed how people spend money. Some companies are doing unexpectedly well. This episode: Farm animals, a crafty comeback, Clint Eastwood, and a story with a twist.
04.23.2020 Negative Oil On Monday the price of a barrel of oil in the United States fell below zero. Specifically, it fell to a negative $37 a barrel. Today on the show — what just happened?
04.17.2020 The Mask Mover During this pandemic, getting PPE has turned into a free-for-all — states competing against states. To even have a chance... well, you kind of have to know a guy.
04.15.2020 Lives Vs. The Economy The economy will start back up again. When it does, it'll be because someone decided that it was worth the lives risked, and lost. Today on the show: How that decision is made.
04.11.2020 The Big Small Business Rescue This past week, millions of small business owners have been trying to take advantage of a $349 billion rescue program.
04.09.2020 What If No One Pays Rent? We follow the distress from a laid-off worker, to her landlord, to the multi-trillion-dollar global mortgage market.
04.04.2020 The Economics Of Hospital Beds Bellevue is the oldest public hospital in the nation. It's seen everything, and survived everything. But even they might not have enough beds for the COVID peak. Here's why.
03.31.2020 The Race To Make Ventilators At maximum output, Seattle-area-based Ventec can produce about 1,000 ventilators a month. That's not going to be nearly enough. So, they called in help.
03.28.2020 America Unemployed There are 3,283,000 new claims for unemployment – but the unemployment system wasn't designed for that kind of record number. Now 3 million people are asking, "What's next?"
03.26.2020 Where Do We Get $2,000,000,000,000? The government's economic rescue package will cost so much it's worth writing out the full number: $2,000,000,000,000. Where will that money come from? And what will happen next?
03.25.2020 Food And Farmworkers In this episode, to understand how the coronavirus might impact our food, we talk to an economist, a farmer, and, of course, the people who really make farms go — the farmworkers.
03.24.2020 You Asked About The Virus Economy We're here with you! And wow do you have questions. From stock market shutdowns to Coronavirus checks, to "What's the deal with toilet paper?" This episode, we try to answer a few.
03.20.2020 How To Save The Economy Now The Federal Reserve usually has one main job: Setting interest rates. But in emergencies, another Fed job becomes more important: Trying to prevent a financial crisis.
03.19.2020 How To Test A Country To try to understand the coronavirus tests we've all been hearing so much about — we take you inside the pandemic testing system.
03.16.2020 The Fed Fights The Virus The Federal Reserve usually has one main job: setting interest rates. But in emergencies, another Fed job becomes more important: trying to prevent a financial crisis.
03.14.2020 Medicine For The Economy COVID-19 is hammering our economy. We called up three super smart economists and asked what we should do about it.
03.11.2020 Coronavirus, Oil, and Kansas How the coronavirus outbreak in China led to a fight over oil in Vienna, and changed lives in America.
03.07.2020 Where's The Vaccine? A vaccine would be great right now. Of course, people would buy it. But the market for emergency vaccines isn't like regular markets — that's why the government steps in.
03.05.2020 Terms Of Service Every day, we accept another set of terms and conditions without reading the fine print. But what if there's something hiding in there, waiting to blow up our lives?
02.28.2020 Reparations In New Zealand We follow Mavis Mullins, Māori sheep-shearing magnate, through New Zealand's reparations system — from the fact-finding Waitangi Tribunal to a public apology.
02.26.2020 Vodka Proof By definition, vodka is colorless, odorless and tasteless. So, could there really be any difference between vodkas? Or is the difference all in the marketing?
02.21.2020 Michael Milken Michael Milken created the market for "junk bonds" and built an empire in the process. Then he went to prison. And then, he got pardoned.
02.19.2020 Indicate This Two stories from The Indicator podcast: The symbiotic relationship between refugees and one Pennsylvania town, and Amazon's weird flex in the gig economy.
02.15.2020 The CryptoQueen Jamie Bartlett and BBC producer Georgia Catt bring us the story of OneCoin, which promised to revolutionize money, but instead led to one of the world's biggest scams.
02.12.2020 Our Valentines 2020 It's our Valentine's Day episode, full of love, bananas, and financial analysis.
02.07.2020 Raw Milk Deal A farmer in California built an empire dealing raw milk. And then the Feds showed up.
02.05.2020 Small Change How fast is the world really changing? The answer has implications for everything from how the next generation will live to whether robots really will take all our jobs.

Older episodes

Planet Money

What's Planet Money about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Planet Money episodes:

Hollywood's Black List

SUMMER SCHOOL 1: Choices & Dating

Planet Money Summer School

Reparations For Police Brutality (UPDATE)

Inflation, Deflation

Seed Spy

Owner Of A Broken Hertz

Money And Justice

The Problem Of The Root (2018)

Patent Racism

The Very First Vaccine

Police Unions And Police Violence

Where'd The Money Go, And Other Questions

Small America Vs. Big Internet

Three Big Ideas

J. Screwed

How To Get Trillions To Millions

Episode 1,000

The Restaurant From The Future

Journey To The Center Of The Fed

Georgia's Open Question

About That Hazard Pay

Buybacks And Bailouts

Making It Work

Negative Oil

The Mask Mover

Lives Vs. The Economy

The Big Small Business Rescue

What If No One Pays Rent?

The Economics Of Hospital Beds

The Race To Make Ventilators

America Unemployed

Where Do We Get $2,000,000,000,000?

Food And Farmworkers

You Asked About The Virus Economy

How To Save The Economy Now

How To Test A Country

The Fed Fights The Virus

Medicine For The Economy

Coronavirus, Oil, and Kansas

Where's The Vaccine?

Terms Of Service

Reparations In New Zealand

Vodka Proof

Michael Milken

Indicate This

The CryptoQueen

Our Valentines 2020

Raw Milk Deal

Small Change

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