Planet Money

By NPR

Business

What's Planet Money about?

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

What Economy Are You Voting...

10.30.2020

Two candidates. Two very different ways of thinking about the economy. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

Planet Money episodes:

10.30.2020 What Economy Are You Voting For? Two candidates. Two very different ways of thinking about the economy. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.28.2020 Who Gets To Vote In Florida? Angel Sanchez was 17 and in prison when he learned felons couldn't vote in Florida. When he got out, he tried to change that. It was working – until money got involved.\| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.23.2020 Frame Canada For years, Wendell Potter ran a campaign to terrify Americans... about health care in Canada. Now he explains how he did it, and why. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.22.2020 Hey Google, Are You Too Big? The government just filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. In this episode, we talk about why, and why it matters. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.16.2020 Opening Schools And Other Hard Decisions Emily Oster wanted to understand the risks of opening schools. So she started a massive data collection campaign. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.14.2020 Caste Arrives In Silicon Valley For some Indian employees of big U.S. tech companies, caste discrimination is real. To combat it, first people have to talk about it. That's hard. \| Today's episode is from our friends at Rough Translation.
10.09.2020 Political Ad Nauseam It's presidential election season, and that means it's political ad season. But who do ads target, anyway? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.07.2020 Rethinking Black Wealth Homes in Black neighborhoods are valued lower than homes in white neighborhoods. Why? This episode, Dr. Andre Perry flips the narrative of the racial wealth gap. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.02.2020 Call Center Call Out We visit life on the other side of your customer service call and get a glimpse into the troubling future of work in America. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.01.2020 Trump's Tiny Taxes A totally refreshing 20 minutes or so of infotainment related to Trump, taxes and toy wooden arrows. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.25.2020 Sell Me Your Climate Bombs There's this greenhouse gas out there that's thousands of times more dangerous than carbon dioxide, lurking in garages and sheds all over the country.
09.23.2020 REDMAP (Update) The result of national elections is shaped in a big and underappreciated way by very local elections. This is the story of the man who shaped many, many local elections to tip the national scales. \| Subscribe to our weekly ...
09.18.2020 Apple v Everybody When Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney sued Apple over its App Store, it started a war about antitrust and the internet.
09.16.2020 After The Plague The Black Death was one of the worst catastrophes to ever hit humanity. But it also helped redistribute wealth and make daily life better for a lot of medieval Europeans.
09.11.2020 Waste Land For 30 years, oil companies convinced the public that all their plastic trash could be, and would be, recycled, when they knew it wasn't true.
09.09.2020 We Buy A Junk Bond Team Indicator buys Cardiff a surprise present. A terrible, extremely risky, but wildly interesting investment. Then it gets interesting. The company that issued the junk bond declared bankruptcy. But that wasn't the end of the story. \| Subscribe to our ...
09.05.2020 The Murderer, The Boy King, And The Invention Of Modern Finance John Law killed a man in a duel, brought the first paper money to France, and became one of the richest people in the world. Then it all collapsed.
09.02.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL: Graduation! Summer School graduates take the stage to show us how we can all see our everyday world through the beautiful lens of economics. \| Take the final exam and get your diploma here.
09.01.2020 Your Brain On Retail Trading Stock-picking retail traders have been jumping into the market this year. They may not understand the risks.
08.28.2020 The Old Rules Were Dumb Anyway Going to work, seeing the doctor, playing college sports and drinking on the street: How the world will be different after COVID-19.
08.26.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 8: Risk & Disaster Inside one insurance policy is a world of incentives and bad behaviors. Take the final exam and get your diploma here.
08.22.2020 Crisis At The Post Office Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is facing intense political scrutiny and some very old problems in his new job at the U.S. Postal Service.
08.19.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 7: Advertising & Race A Black ad executive figures out how to reach diverse audiences.
08.14.2020 Big Rigged Trucking companies have been underpaying workers for years. And now they've found a way to get them to buy the trucks too.
08.12.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 6: Taxes & Donald Duck The surprisingly entertaining history of the income tax. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
08.07.2020 Mask Communication Behavioral economists have helped us smoke less and save more. Can they help us understand why some people won't wear masks, and find ways to get them to want to?
08.05.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 5: Trade & Santa The economics of free trade and what happens when governments get involved. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.31.2020 College Fails With a month to go before the fall semester starts, universities are closing due to coronavirus, and also making hard cuts and tradeoffs around remote learning.
07.29.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 4: Scarcity & Pistachios Learn about scarce resources and the tragedy of the commons from drought-stricken California.
07.24.2020 Rest of the Story, Pandemic Edition Rest of the Story, Pandemic Edition We check in on the people we've met and stories we've covered since this whole thing started. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.23.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 3: Profit & Cocaine In our third class, we take all that we've learned about decisions and markets and bring it to a former drug kingpin. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.20.2020 BONUS: The Kerner Commission In 1967, President Johnson created a commission to investigate racial unrest in America. But, the answer they came up with was not the answer he was hoping for. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.18.2020 Getting Out Of Prison Sooner Shortening prison sentences might be about morals, but it's definitely about money. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.16.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 2: Markets & Pickles In our second class, we meet our old friends supply and demand and do graphs using only the power of the human voice. Then, we show you how markets can be created anywhere by telling the story of a food ...
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.

Older episodes

10.30.2020 What Economy Are You Voting For? Two candidates. Two very different ways of thinking about the economy. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.28.2020 Who Gets To Vote In Florida? Angel Sanchez was 17 and in prison when he learned felons couldn't vote in Florida. When he got out, he tried to change that. It was working – until money got involved.\| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.23.2020 Frame Canada For years, Wendell Potter ran a campaign to terrify Americans... about health care in Canada. Now he explains how he did it, and why. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.22.2020 Hey Google, Are You Too Big? The government just filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. In this episode, we talk about why, and why it matters. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.16.2020 Opening Schools And Other Hard Decisions Emily Oster wanted to understand the risks of opening schools. So she started a massive data collection campaign. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.14.2020 Caste Arrives In Silicon Valley For some Indian employees of big U.S. tech companies, caste discrimination is real. To combat it, first people have to talk about it. That's hard. \| Today's episode is from our friends at Rough Translation.
10.09.2020 Political Ad Nauseam It's presidential election season, and that means it's political ad season. But who do ads target, anyway? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.07.2020 Rethinking Black Wealth Homes in Black neighborhoods are valued lower than homes in white neighborhoods. Why? This episode, Dr. Andre Perry flips the narrative of the racial wealth gap. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.02.2020 Call Center Call Out We visit life on the other side of your customer service call and get a glimpse into the troubling future of work in America. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.01.2020 Trump's Tiny Taxes A totally refreshing 20 minutes or so of infotainment related to Trump, taxes and toy wooden arrows. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.25.2020 Sell Me Your Climate Bombs There's this greenhouse gas out there that's thousands of times more dangerous than carbon dioxide, lurking in garages and sheds all over the country.
09.23.2020 REDMAP (Update) The result of national elections is shaped in a big and underappreciated way by very local elections. This is the story of the man who shaped many, many local elections to tip the national scales. \| Subscribe to our weekly ...
09.18.2020 Apple v Everybody When Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney sued Apple over its App Store, it started a war about antitrust and the internet.
09.16.2020 After The Plague The Black Death was one of the worst catastrophes to ever hit humanity. But it also helped redistribute wealth and make daily life better for a lot of medieval Europeans.
09.11.2020 Waste Land For 30 years, oil companies convinced the public that all their plastic trash could be, and would be, recycled, when they knew it wasn't true.
09.09.2020 We Buy A Junk Bond Team Indicator buys Cardiff a surprise present. A terrible, extremely risky, but wildly interesting investment. Then it gets interesting. The company that issued the junk bond declared bankruptcy. But that wasn't the end of the story. \| Subscribe to our ...
09.05.2020 The Murderer, The Boy King, And The Invention Of Modern Finance John Law killed a man in a duel, brought the first paper money to France, and became one of the richest people in the world. Then it all collapsed.
09.02.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL: Graduation! Summer School graduates take the stage to show us how we can all see our everyday world through the beautiful lens of economics. \| Take the final exam and get your diploma here.
09.01.2020 Your Brain On Retail Trading Stock-picking retail traders have been jumping into the market this year. They may not understand the risks.
08.28.2020 The Old Rules Were Dumb Anyway Going to work, seeing the doctor, playing college sports and drinking on the street: How the world will be different after COVID-19.
08.26.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 8: Risk & Disaster Inside one insurance policy is a world of incentives and bad behaviors. Take the final exam and get your diploma here.
08.22.2020 Crisis At The Post Office Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is facing intense political scrutiny and some very old problems in his new job at the U.S. Postal Service.
08.19.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 7: Advertising & Race A Black ad executive figures out how to reach diverse audiences.
08.14.2020 Big Rigged Trucking companies have been underpaying workers for years. And now they've found a way to get them to buy the trucks too.
08.12.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 6: Taxes & Donald Duck The surprisingly entertaining history of the income tax. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
08.07.2020 Mask Communication Behavioral economists have helped us smoke less and save more. Can they help us understand why some people won't wear masks, and find ways to get them to want to?
08.05.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 5: Trade & Santa The economics of free trade and what happens when governments get involved. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.31.2020 College Fails With a month to go before the fall semester starts, universities are closing due to coronavirus, and also making hard cuts and tradeoffs around remote learning.
07.29.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 4: Scarcity & Pistachios Learn about scarce resources and the tragedy of the commons from drought-stricken California.
07.24.2020 Rest of the Story, Pandemic Edition Rest of the Story, Pandemic Edition We check in on the people we've met and stories we've covered since this whole thing started. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.23.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 3: Profit & Cocaine In our third class, we take all that we've learned about decisions and markets and bring it to a former drug kingpin. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.20.2020 BONUS: The Kerner Commission In 1967, President Johnson created a commission to investigate racial unrest in America. But, the answer they came up with was not the answer he was hoping for. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.18.2020 Getting Out Of Prison Sooner Shortening prison sentences might be about morals, but it's definitely about money. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.16.2020 SUMMER SCHOOL 2: Markets & Pickles In our second class, we meet our old friends supply and demand and do graphs using only the power of the human voice. Then, we show you how markets can be created anywhere by telling the story of a food ...
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.

Planet Money

What's Planet Money about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Planet Money episodes:

What Economy Are You Voting For?

Who Gets To Vote In Florida?

Frame Canada

Hey Google, Are You Too Big?

Opening Schools And Other Hard Decisions

Caste Arrives In Silicon Valley

Political Ad Nauseam

Rethinking Black Wealth

Call Center Call Out

Trump's Tiny Taxes

Sell Me Your Climate Bombs

REDMAP (Update)

Apple v Everybody

After The Plague

Waste Land

We Buy A Junk Bond

The Murderer, The Boy King, And The Invention Of Modern Finance

SUMMER SCHOOL: Graduation!

Your Brain On Retail Trading

The Old Rules Were Dumb Anyway

SUMMER SCHOOL 8: Risk & Disaster

Crisis At The Post Office

SUMMER SCHOOL 7: Advertising & Race

Big Rigged

SUMMER SCHOOL 6: Taxes & Donald Duck

Mask Communication

SUMMER SCHOOL 5: Trade & Santa

College Fails

SUMMER SCHOOL 4: Scarcity & Pistachios

Rest of the Story, Pandemic Edition

SUMMER SCHOOL 3: Profit & Cocaine

BONUS: The Kerner Commission

Getting Out Of Prison Sooner

SUMMER SCHOOL 2: Markets & Pickles

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

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