Planet Money

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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

Two indicators: Congression...

10.22.2021

We bring you two stories from The Indicator on the recent battles being fought in Congress. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

Planet Money episodes:

10.22.2021 Two indicators: Congressional Game Theory and the Debt Ceiling We bring you two stories from The Indicator on the recent battles being fought in Congress. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.21.2021 Burnout (Classic) All types of companies are struggling with burnout. Many try to fix it. Most of them fail. One exception: A 26-year-old call center manager, with stress balls and costumes in her arsenal. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.18.2021 Bonus: Janet Jackson's 'Control' On the 35th anniversary of Janet Jackson's first No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit, our friends at It's Been A Minute look back at Control, her career-defining album that changed the trajectory of pop music in the late '80s and ...
10.15.2021 Hire power Noncompete agreements have become an integral part of job contracts. A show about what they are and how we got here. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.13.2021 How Do You Feel? (Classic) We tend to think of economists as cold, unfeeling, attempting to be as rational as possible. But once a month, economists pick up the phone to just... check in with us. How are we feeling? Good, bad, worse than a ...
10.09.2021 LIBOR pains For decades, banks used one rate to help set all other rates: LIBOR. After it came out that it'd been rigged, regulators said: no more. Now it's a race — and a road trip — to find an alternative. \| ...
10.06.2021 We set up an offshore company in a tax haven (Classic) The Pandora Papers released this week reveal how many world leaders allegedly hold wealth through the use of shell companies. We listen back to when we set up our very own Planet Money shell companies.
10.02.2021 The Rent Help Is Too Damn Slow Congress created a massive pile of money to help people pay rent during the pandemic. Why have so few people gotten help? We follow the money. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.29.2021 When The U.S. Paid Off The Entire National Debt (Classic) There was one time the U.S. federal government stopped borrowing and paid off every penny of national debt. It did not end well. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.24.2021 When Luddites Attack (Classic) A couple centuries ago, a group of English clothworkers set out to destroy the machines that had been taking their jobs. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.23.2021 Original Sign A request for dozens of stop signs flummoxes a town and angers a resident. A show about infrastructure, decision making and stop signs. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.18.2021 Two Indicators: Women And Work Women start a lot of businesses, but when it comes time for them to grow, many hit a wall, or the women founders end up losing control. Why? We bring you two indicators on women and work from our daily ...
09.15.2021 Afghanistan's Money Problem Afghanistan's economy changed — almost overnight — after the Taliban retook control of the country \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.10.2021 Flood Money (Classic) Bill Pennington's house floods a lot: Three times over the course of three years. And every time his house floods, the government pays to help him repair the damage. Is something wrong here? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.09.2021 Do You Want To Live In A Bounty Economy? The Texas abortion law includes an unusual provision: a financial incentive to report others. On today's show, we look into another time in U.S. history where the government tried bounties.
09.09.2021 A Quest To Support Women-Led Businesses A reporter frustrated by the gender and race gap in company CEOs sets out to buy products only from companies led or owned by women. Today on the show, what it takes to advance women in business.
09.09.2021 This Is Your Brain On Drug Ads Apologies to listeners who received two episodes in their feed today. The U.S. is one of two countries in the world that allows pharmaceutical companies to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers. Why? And what does that do to us ...
09.03.2021 Two Indicators: Water Pressure It's another extremely dry, hot summer for the American West. Our daily podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money, brings us two stories about the water shortage in the West with economic ideas that may help. \| Subscribe to our weekly ...
09.02.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 6: Crypto & Commencement In the last class of Planet Money Summer School Season 2, we cover one more important market — cryptocurrency. If you're thinking about investing in crypto, do you know exactly what it is that you're buying? Or how it should ...
08.27.2021 The Lost Archives of Sadie Alexander The work of our first Black economist was lost to history. The story of what happened when Professor Nina Banks set out on a quest to rediscover it — a tale of economic archeology.
08.25.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 5: Bubbles, Bikes, & Biases Investing during a bubble can leave you bust. But how to tell the difference between a bubble before it bursts and an investing rocket ship taking off? We'll run through a historical example and look inside our own thinking to ...
08.20.2021 Two Indicators: Will Remote Work Kill The Office? It's Stacey vs Greg in a face off on the future of the office. Each takes a side, armed with studies, historical examples, theories on efficiency and happiness and from their closet studios, they bring their indicators for the future ...
08.18.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 4: Bonds & Becky With The Good Yield A few years back, Cardiff asked for an unusual Christmas present: a junk bond... Parallel to the stock market, the bond market offers different levels of risk and reward. In this class, what is a bond, how do they differ ...
08.14.2021 Big Little Ideas There are a lot of fancy terms for the things we experience — but are they really useful? Yes! We explain four social-science terms that can help us understand our world. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
08.11.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 3: Smooth Spending & The 401K Even if you don't own stocks, there are a lot of reasons to care about investing. We meet some of the folks left out of the stock market who deploy sophisticated economic thinking, even creating their own alternate financial systems. ...
08.06.2021 Mobile Home Parked We find out what happens when big investors spend billions of dollars buying mobile home parks and make them less affordable for the people who live there. Then we learn how the government helps them do it, with super low-cost ...
08.04.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 2: Index Funds & The Bet In 2006, Warren Buffett bet a million dollars that the most brainless, boring investment around would do better than the researched, handpicked investments of some of the smartest hedge fund managers in the world. The second class of Summer School ...
07.30.2021 Three Reasons for the Housing Shortage America's housing shortage has been decades in the making. A lot of people blame Baby Boomers — but is it really their fault? We unpack three big reasons for the shortage. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.28.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 1: The Stock Market & Penelope The Cow The first class of Planet Money Summer School starts off with a field trip. With the help of a cow, two economists, and three cute animals, we learn what a stock is and how stocks are priced, and we begin ...
07.24.2021 Banque Worms Last year, one of the biggest banks accidentally paid off a client's loan to its lenders — a $900 million mistake. Some of the recipients wouldn't give the money back. And then a surprising court ruling affirmed their no give-back. ...
07.21.2021 Video Gaming The System Two groups of people who would never meet in real life collide in a world of wizards and dragons. They battle it out in a low-tech video game, and it shakes the lives of a lot of real people living ...
07.17.2021 The Great Inflation (Classic) For much of the 1970s inflation was bad. Prices rose at over 10 percent a year. Nothing could stop it — until one powerful person did something very unpopular. Today's show: How we beat inflation. \| Subscribe to our weekly ...
07.14.2021 100 Years Since Sadie Alexander In 1921, Sadie Alexander became the first Black person in America to receive a PhD in economics. Then, she was functionally shut out of economics jobs, got a law degree, and became an attorney instead. A century later, economics has ...
07.10.2021 Of Memestocks and Milk Bags We answer your questions about memestocks, milk in bags, the size of cereal boxes, and products exclusive to the rich, but not for long? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.07.2021 Two Indicators: Clogged Ports And Corporate Vets We bring you two stories from The Indicator on two industries that are undergoing rapid change: vets and container shipping. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.02.2021 The Rest Of The Story, Summer 2021 We follow up on takeout cocktails, college athletes at the Supreme Court, bankrupt Hertz, and the new shape of pasta. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.01.2021 What's A Bubble? (Classic) Can you tell if the economy is in a bubble? How? And why do bubbles happen? Robert Shiller and Eugene Fama shared the economics Nobel back in 2013 despite fundamentally disagreeing over the meaning of a bubble. \| Subscribe to ...
06.26.2021 Bobby Bonilla Day How the worst deal in baseball explains one of the most important concepts in economics. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.23.2021 Corporate Fugitive: Carlos Ghosn Japan once served sushi in the shape of Carlos Ghosn's face. Then Japanese authorities arrested the celebrity CEO who remade Nissan. We bring you first hand accounts of his spectacular rise, sudden fall and dramatic escape. \| This episode is ...
06.18.2021 Predictions! Two forecasters predict the future of the U.S. economy — and promise to come back on the show to see who was right, and who was wrong. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.16.2021 How Uncle Jamie Broke Jeopardy (Update) James Holzhauer took a math degree, a gambling career, and a buzzer, and turned it into a fortune on a game show. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.11.2021 Used Car Talk How supply and demand stalled out the used car industry. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.09.2021 How Stuff Gets Cheaper (Classic) In the world of consumer electronics, it pays to be cheap. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.04.2021 Amateur Hour at the Supreme Court College athletes are considered amateur players. And amateurs don't make any money. But can they get more education paid for at least? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.02.2021 Black Wall Street 100 years ago, Black Wall Street was destroyed. But how was it built? And what does it take to get restitution? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
05.28.2021 One Hack to Fool Them All How a single hack pried open the networks of giant corporations and the U.S. government itself. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
05.26.2021 Runaway Recommendation Engine Recommendation systems have changed how we choose what we want. But are they choosing what we want? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
05.21.2021 Big Government Cheese (CLASSIC) That time the U.S. government accidentally created a cheese surplus so large it had to be stored in a ginormous cave. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
05.19.2021 Get The Vaccine, Lose The Skinny Jeans Two stories from our Indicator team about the sometimes-unlikely people who shape what we buy and what we do. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
05.14.2021 Blood Money The United States is one of the few countries that lets companies pay people for their blood plasma. Why? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

Older episodes

10.22.2021 Two indicators: Congressional Game Theory and the Debt Ceiling We bring you two stories from The Indicator on the recent battles being fought in Congress. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.21.2021 Burnout (Classic) All types of companies are struggling with burnout. Many try to fix it. Most of them fail. One exception: A 26-year-old call center manager, with stress balls and costumes in her arsenal. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.18.2021 Bonus: Janet Jackson's 'Control' On the 35th anniversary of Janet Jackson's first No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit, our friends at It's Been A Minute look back at Control, her career-defining album that changed the trajectory of pop music in the late '80s and ...
10.15.2021 Hire power Noncompete agreements have become an integral part of job contracts. A show about what they are and how we got here. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
10.13.2021 How Do You Feel? (Classic) We tend to think of economists as cold, unfeeling, attempting to be as rational as possible. But once a month, economists pick up the phone to just... check in with us. How are we feeling? Good, bad, worse than a ...
10.09.2021 LIBOR pains For decades, banks used one rate to help set all other rates: LIBOR. After it came out that it'd been rigged, regulators said: no more. Now it's a race — and a road trip — to find an alternative. \| ...
10.06.2021 We set up an offshore company in a tax haven (Classic) The Pandora Papers released this week reveal how many world leaders allegedly hold wealth through the use of shell companies. We listen back to when we set up our very own Planet Money shell companies.
10.02.2021 The Rent Help Is Too Damn Slow Congress created a massive pile of money to help people pay rent during the pandemic. Why have so few people gotten help? We follow the money. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.29.2021 When The U.S. Paid Off The Entire National Debt (Classic) There was one time the U.S. federal government stopped borrowing and paid off every penny of national debt. It did not end well. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.24.2021 When Luddites Attack (Classic) A couple centuries ago, a group of English clothworkers set out to destroy the machines that had been taking their jobs. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.23.2021 Original Sign A request for dozens of stop signs flummoxes a town and angers a resident. A show about infrastructure, decision making and stop signs. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.18.2021 Two Indicators: Women And Work Women start a lot of businesses, but when it comes time for them to grow, many hit a wall, or the women founders end up losing control. Why? We bring you two indicators on women and work from our daily ...
09.15.2021 Afghanistan's Money Problem Afghanistan's economy changed — almost overnight — after the Taliban retook control of the country \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.10.2021 Flood Money (Classic) Bill Pennington's house floods a lot: Three times over the course of three years. And every time his house floods, the government pays to help him repair the damage. Is something wrong here? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
09.09.2021 Do You Want To Live In A Bounty Economy? The Texas abortion law includes an unusual provision: a financial incentive to report others. On today's show, we look into another time in U.S. history where the government tried bounties.
09.09.2021 A Quest To Support Women-Led Businesses A reporter frustrated by the gender and race gap in company CEOs sets out to buy products only from companies led or owned by women. Today on the show, what it takes to advance women in business.
09.09.2021 This Is Your Brain On Drug Ads Apologies to listeners who received two episodes in their feed today. The U.S. is one of two countries in the world that allows pharmaceutical companies to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers. Why? And what does that do to us ...
09.03.2021 Two Indicators: Water Pressure It's another extremely dry, hot summer for the American West. Our daily podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money, brings us two stories about the water shortage in the West with economic ideas that may help. \| Subscribe to our weekly ...
09.02.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 6: Crypto & Commencement In the last class of Planet Money Summer School Season 2, we cover one more important market — cryptocurrency. If you're thinking about investing in crypto, do you know exactly what it is that you're buying? Or how it should ...
08.27.2021 The Lost Archives of Sadie Alexander The work of our first Black economist was lost to history. The story of what happened when Professor Nina Banks set out on a quest to rediscover it — a tale of economic archeology.
08.25.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 5: Bubbles, Bikes, & Biases Investing during a bubble can leave you bust. But how to tell the difference between a bubble before it bursts and an investing rocket ship taking off? We'll run through a historical example and look inside our own thinking to ...
08.20.2021 Two Indicators: Will Remote Work Kill The Office? It's Stacey vs Greg in a face off on the future of the office. Each takes a side, armed with studies, historical examples, theories on efficiency and happiness and from their closet studios, they bring their indicators for the future ...
08.18.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 4: Bonds & Becky With The Good Yield A few years back, Cardiff asked for an unusual Christmas present: a junk bond... Parallel to the stock market, the bond market offers different levels of risk and reward. In this class, what is a bond, how do they differ ...
08.14.2021 Big Little Ideas There are a lot of fancy terms for the things we experience — but are they really useful? Yes! We explain four social-science terms that can help us understand our world. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
08.11.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 3: Smooth Spending & The 401K Even if you don't own stocks, there are a lot of reasons to care about investing. We meet some of the folks left out of the stock market who deploy sophisticated economic thinking, even creating their own alternate financial systems. ...
08.06.2021 Mobile Home Parked We find out what happens when big investors spend billions of dollars buying mobile home parks and make them less affordable for the people who live there. Then we learn how the government helps them do it, with super low-cost ...
08.04.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 2: Index Funds & The Bet In 2006, Warren Buffett bet a million dollars that the most brainless, boring investment around would do better than the researched, handpicked investments of some of the smartest hedge fund managers in the world. The second class of Summer School ...
07.30.2021 Three Reasons for the Housing Shortage America's housing shortage has been decades in the making. A lot of people blame Baby Boomers — but is it really their fault? We unpack three big reasons for the shortage. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.28.2021 SUMMER SCHOOL 1: The Stock Market & Penelope The Cow The first class of Planet Money Summer School starts off with a field trip. With the help of a cow, two economists, and three cute animals, we learn what a stock is and how stocks are priced, and we begin ...
07.24.2021 Banque Worms Last year, one of the biggest banks accidentally paid off a client's loan to its lenders — a $900 million mistake. Some of the recipients wouldn't give the money back. And then a surprising court ruling affirmed their no give-back. ...
07.21.2021 Video Gaming The System Two groups of people who would never meet in real life collide in a world of wizards and dragons. They battle it out in a low-tech video game, and it shakes the lives of a lot of real people living ...
07.17.2021 The Great Inflation (Classic) For much of the 1970s inflation was bad. Prices rose at over 10 percent a year. Nothing could stop it — until one powerful person did something very unpopular. Today's show: How we beat inflation. \| Subscribe to our weekly ...
07.14.2021 100 Years Since Sadie Alexander In 1921, Sadie Alexander became the first Black person in America to receive a PhD in economics. Then, she was functionally shut out of economics jobs, got a law degree, and became an attorney instead. A century later, economics has ...
07.10.2021 Of Memestocks and Milk Bags We answer your questions about memestocks, milk in bags, the size of cereal boxes, and products exclusive to the rich, but not for long? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.07.2021 Two Indicators: Clogged Ports And Corporate Vets We bring you two stories from The Indicator on two industries that are undergoing rapid change: vets and container shipping. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.02.2021 The Rest Of The Story, Summer 2021 We follow up on takeout cocktails, college athletes at the Supreme Court, bankrupt Hertz, and the new shape of pasta. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
07.01.2021 What's A Bubble? (Classic) Can you tell if the economy is in a bubble? How? And why do bubbles happen? Robert Shiller and Eugene Fama shared the economics Nobel back in 2013 despite fundamentally disagreeing over the meaning of a bubble. \| Subscribe to ...
06.26.2021 Bobby Bonilla Day How the worst deal in baseball explains one of the most important concepts in economics. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.23.2021 Corporate Fugitive: Carlos Ghosn Japan once served sushi in the shape of Carlos Ghosn's face. Then Japanese authorities arrested the celebrity CEO who remade Nissan. We bring you first hand accounts of his spectacular rise, sudden fall and dramatic escape. \| This episode is ...
06.18.2021 Predictions! Two forecasters predict the future of the U.S. economy — and promise to come back on the show to see who was right, and who was wrong. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.16.2021 How Uncle Jamie Broke Jeopardy (Update) James Holzhauer took a math degree, a gambling career, and a buzzer, and turned it into a fortune on a game show. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.11.2021 Used Car Talk How supply and demand stalled out the used car industry. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.09.2021 How Stuff Gets Cheaper (Classic) In the world of consumer electronics, it pays to be cheap. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.04.2021 Amateur Hour at the Supreme Court College athletes are considered amateur players. And amateurs don't make any money. But can they get more education paid for at least? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
06.02.2021 Black Wall Street 100 years ago, Black Wall Street was destroyed. But how was it built? And what does it take to get restitution? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
05.28.2021 One Hack to Fool Them All How a single hack pried open the networks of giant corporations and the U.S. government itself. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
05.26.2021 Runaway Recommendation Engine Recommendation systems have changed how we choose what we want. But are they choosing what we want? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
05.21.2021 Big Government Cheese (CLASSIC) That time the U.S. government accidentally created a cheese surplus so large it had to be stored in a ginormous cave. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
05.19.2021 Get The Vaccine, Lose The Skinny Jeans Two stories from our Indicator team about the sometimes-unlikely people who shape what we buy and what we do. \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
05.14.2021 Blood Money The United States is one of the few countries that lets companies pay people for their blood plasma. Why? \| Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

Planet Money

What's Planet Money about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Planet Money episodes:

Two indicators: Congressional Game Theory and the Debt Ceiling

Burnout (Classic)

Bonus: Janet Jackson's 'Control'

Hire power

How Do You Feel? (Classic)

LIBOR pains

We set up an offshore company in a tax haven (Classic)

The Rent Help Is Too Damn Slow

When The U.S. Paid Off The Entire National Debt (Classic)

When Luddites Attack (Classic)

Original Sign

Two Indicators: Women And Work

Afghanistan's Money Problem

Flood Money (Classic)

Do You Want To Live In A Bounty Economy?

A Quest To Support Women-Led Businesses

This Is Your Brain On Drug Ads

Two Indicators: Water Pressure

SUMMER SCHOOL 6: Crypto & Commencement

The Lost Archives of Sadie Alexander

SUMMER SCHOOL 5: Bubbles, Bikes, & Biases

Two Indicators: Will Remote Work Kill The Office?

SUMMER SCHOOL 4: Bonds & Becky With The Good Yield

Big Little Ideas

SUMMER SCHOOL 3: Smooth Spending & The 401K

Mobile Home Parked

SUMMER SCHOOL 2: Index Funds & The Bet

Three Reasons for the Housing Shortage

SUMMER SCHOOL 1: The Stock Market & Penelope The Cow

Banque Worms

Video Gaming The System

The Great Inflation (Classic)

100 Years Since Sadie Alexander

Of Memestocks and Milk Bags

Two Indicators: Clogged Ports And Corporate Vets

The Rest Of The Story, Summer 2021

What's A Bubble? (Classic)

Bobby Bonilla Day

Corporate Fugitive: Carlos Ghosn

Predictions!

How Uncle Jamie Broke Jeopardy (Update)

Used Car Talk

How Stuff Gets Cheaper (Classic)

Amateur Hour at the Supreme Court

Black Wall Street

One Hack to Fool Them All

Runaway Recommendation Engine

Big Government Cheese (CLASSIC)

Get The Vaccine, Lose The Skinny Jeans

Blood Money

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