Planet Money

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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.

Wanna go deeper? Subscribe to Planet Money+ and get sponsor-free episodes of Planet Money, The Indicator, and Planet Money Summer School. Plus access to bonus content. It's a new way to support the show you love. Learn more at plus.npr.org/planetmoney

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AI Podcast 3.0: Dial M for ...

06.02.2023

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 ...

Planet Money episodes:

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, ...
04.12.2023 Two mysterious bond market indicators Right now, the economy is all over the place. And when things get confusing, we look to basic economic indicators to help explain what's going on. Today, we're bringing you two episodes of our daily show The Indicator that focus ...
04.08.2023 Your banking questions, answered It's been a month since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank touched off the worst episode of banking turmoil since 2008. While the financial system appears to have stabilized, we're still reckoning with what happened. Regulators are getting dragged before ...
04.05.2023 The battle for Puerto Rico's beaches Puerto Rico's beaches are an integral part of life on the island, and by law, they're one of the few places that are truly public. In practice, the sandy stretch of land where the water meets the shore is one ...
04.01.2023 The safety net for banks In the first half of March, three banks - Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Silvergate - all had relatively classic bank runs and collapsed. Which sparked some major banking stress. As a result, the Federal Reserve got a lot ...
03.30.2023 A Great Recession bank takeover Earlier this month, we saw the largest bank collapse since the 2008 financial crisis. For many of us, seeing Silicon Valley Bank's meltdown brought us right back to that time 15 years ago, at the beginning of what would become ...
03.25.2023 The battle over Osage headrights Richard J. Lonsinger is a member of the Ponca tribe of Oklahoma, who was adopted at a young age into a white family of three. He eventually reconnected with his birth family, but when his birth mother passed away in ...
03.23.2023 Inside a bank run Sometimes you hear these stories about an airplane that suddenly nosedives. Everyone onboard thinks this is it, and then the plane levels out and everything is fine. For about 72 hours, people and companies that had deposited millions of dollars ...
03.18.2023 Planet Money Records Vol. 3: Making a hit Since we started Planet Money Records and released the 47-year-old song "Inflation," the song has taken off. It recently hit 1 million streams on Spotify. And we now have a full line of merch — including a limited edition vinyl ...
03.16.2023 How Silicon Valley Bank failed Silicon Valley Bank was the 16th largest bank in America, the bank of choice for tech startups and big-name venture capitalists. Then, in the span of just a few days, it collapsed. Whispers that SVB might be in trouble spread ...
03.11.2023 Dude, where's my streaming TV show? Over the past year, dozens of shows have been disappearing from streaming platforms like HBO Max and Showtime. Shows like Minx, Made for Love, FBoy Island, and even big budget hits like Westworld have been removed entirely. So why did ...
03.09.2023 The value of good teeth As a kid, Ryanne Jones' friend accidentally hit her in the mouth with a hammer, knocking out her two front teeth. Her parents never had enough money for the dental care needed to fix them, so Ryanne lived much of ...
03.03.2023 Seinfeld-onomics The 90s sit-com Seinfeld is often called "a show about nothing." Lauded for its observational humor, this quick-witted show focussed on four hapless New Yorkers navigating work, relationships...yada yada yada. Jerry, George, Elaine & Kramer set themselves apart from the ...
03.01.2023 CBOhhhh, that's what they do If you are a congressperson or a senator and you have an idea for a new piece of legislation, at some point someone will have to tell you how much it costs. But, how do you put a price on ...
02.25.2023 Meow Money Meow Problems More than 20 years ago, something unusual happened in the small town of Dixfield, Maine. A lady named Barbara Thorpe had left almost all of her money—$200,000—to benefit the cats of her hometown. When Barbara died in 2002, those cats ...
02.22.2023 Hollywood's Black List (Classic) This episode originally ran in 2020. In 2005, Franklin Leonard was a junior executive at Leonardo DiCaprio's production company. A big part of his job was to find great scripts. The only thing — most of the 50,000-some scripts registered ...
02.18.2023 Jay & Shai's debt ceiling adventure Every year, the U.S. government spends more money than it takes in. In order to fund all that spending, the country takes on debt. Congress has the power to limit how much debt the U.S. takes on. Right now, the ...
02.16.2023 Two Indicators: Inside the Fed, then and now A lot of the time, economic policy can seem pretty impersonal — cold, hard, data-driven. But at the heart of the Federal Reserve are people: fallible, complicated people who are just doing their best to steer the economy in the ...
02.11.2023 Our 2023 valentines Every Valentine's Day, we at Planet Money consider the things that we love, the things that we can't stop talking about, the things that get our hearts racing...in a good way. And we give them valentines! This year our valentines ...
02.08.2023 The ice cream conspiracy Take a look in any supermarket ice cream freezer section and you may see a mystery. There are big containers of the typical ice cream brands: Breyers, Turkey Hill, and Edy's. And there are specialty brands that make gelato, low-fat ...
02.03.2023 Baby's first market failure Anyone who has tried shopping for day care knows that it is tough out there. For one, it is hard even to get your hands on information about costs, either online or over the phone – day cares will often ...
02.01.2023 Groundhog Day 2023 It's Groundhog Day, and once again, the eyes of the nation have turned to a small town in Western Pennsylvania. Every February 2nd, the only story anyone can talk about is whether or not Punxsutawney Phil will see his own ...
01.27.2023 To all the econ papers I've loved before A great economics paper does two things. It takes on a big question, and it finds a smart way to answer that question. But some papers go even further. The very best papers have the power to change lives.That was ...
01.26.2023 The story of "Monopoly" and American capitalism Monopoly is one of the best-selling board games in history. The game's staying power may in part be because of strong American lore — the idea that anyone, with just a little bit of cash, can rise from rags to ...
01.21.2023 Charles Ponzi's scheme Some of history's biggest financial scams owe their name to Charles Ponzi. Here's the story of the man behind the eponymous scheme. Subscribe to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney
01.18.2023 Big Rigged (Classic) Driving a truck used to mean freedom. Now it means a mountain of debt. Subscribe to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney
01.13.2023 Two Indicators: The 2% inflation target If the Fed had a mantra to go along with its mandate, it might well be "two percent." We look into how that became the target inflation rate, why some economists are calling for a change and how the inflation ...
01.11.2023 Planet Money Movie Club: It's a Wonderful Life Welcome to the Planet Money Movie Club, a regular series from Planet Money+ in which we watch an economics-related movie and discuss! On today's episode, Kenny Malone, Wailin Wong, and Willa Rubin talk about Frank Capra's 1946 classic 'It's A ...
01.06.2023 The economics lessons in kids' books All sorts of lessons (even about economics) can be learned from kids' books. On today's show, we visit an elementary school to try to teach third graders econ using some beloved childrens' classics. And, along the way, we learn a ...
12.31.2022 The Rest of the Story, 2022 It's that time of year again! Our annual year-end tradition of checking in on previous stories to hear what happened after the microphones stopped running. We'll hear from a CEO who was trying to get her company out of Russia ...
12.28.2022 Which economic indicator defined 2022? 2022 was a year of big economic changes. But what economic story most defined the year? Our hosts from Planet Money and The Indicator battle it out over what should be crowned the indicator of the year. Subscribe to Planet ...
12.24.2022 In defense of gift giving Cold economic reasoning says, supposedly, that gifts are inefficient transfers of wealth. But Planet Money host Jeff Guo believes in the economic virtues of gift giving. On today's show, Jeff tries to win over Planet Money's resident Scrooge, Kenny Malone, ...
12.21.2022 Two Indicators: The fight over ESG investing "ESG" investing – Environmental, Social, Governance – has attracted a lot of attention from investors, and from Republican politicians who call it "woke investing." On today's show, what the fight over ESG reveals about the potential and limitations of sustainable ...
12.16.2022 The sports ticket price enigma Inflation is making prices go up, except not for...sports tickets? So, we set out on a daylong sporting event marathon to learn why. Subscribe to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.
12.14.2022 Spam call bounty hunter Telemarketing calls are not only annoying; in some cases, they are illegal. Congress even gives you the right to sue scofflaw telemarketers for $500 a call. Today, the story of one man who collected a surprising amount of money bringing ...
12.09.2022 The case of the missing cheese racks Jelle Peterse's company ships cheese all over the world, but they don't always get their cheese racks back. In this episode, we try to fix a supply chain problem. Gouda grief! Subscribe to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at ...

Older episodes

Planet Money

What's Planet Money about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Planet Money episodes:

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

Two mysterious bond market indicators

Your banking questions, answered

The battle for Puerto Rico's beaches

The safety net for banks

A Great Recession bank takeover

The battle over Osage headrights

Inside a bank run

Planet Money Records Vol. 3: Making a hit

How Silicon Valley Bank failed

Dude, where's my streaming TV show?

The value of good teeth

Seinfeld-onomics

CBOhhhh, that's what they do

Meow Money Meow Problems

Hollywood's Black List (Classic)

Jay & Shai's debt ceiling adventure

Two Indicators: Inside the Fed, then and now

Our 2023 valentines

The ice cream conspiracy

Baby's first market failure

Groundhog Day 2023

To all the econ papers I've loved before

The story of "Monopoly" and American capitalism

Charles Ponzi's scheme

Big Rigged (Classic)

Two Indicators: The 2% inflation target

Planet Money Movie Club: It's a Wonderful Life

The economics lessons in kids' books

The Rest of the Story, 2022

Which economic indicator defined 2022?

In defense of gift giving

Two Indicators: The fight over ESG investing

The sports ticket price enigma

Spam call bounty hunter

The case of the missing cheese racks

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