Planet Money

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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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Why do doctors still use pa...

12.08.2023

Remember pagers? They were huge in the 80s — these little devices that could receive short messages. Sir Mix-A-Lot even had a song about them! But then cell phones came along, and pagers more or less became obsolete. Except there's ...

Planet Money episodes:

12.08.2023 Why do doctors still use pagers? Remember pagers? They were huge in the 80s — these little devices that could receive short messages. Sir Mix-A-Lot even had a song about them! But then cell phones came along, and pagers more or less became obsolete. Except there's ...
12.06.2023 Two food and drink indicators Today on the show, we have two episodes from our daily podcast, The Indicator, about things we spend a lot of time thinking about this time of year: food and drink. First up, we explore how changes in economic conditions ...
12.01.2023 Why are we so bummed about the economy? Would you say that you and your family are better off or worse off, financially, than you were a year ago? Do you think in 12 months we'll have good times, financially, or bad? Generally speaking, do you think now ...
11.29.2023 So you want to sell marijuana across state lines In the state of Oregon, there is a glut of grass. A wealth of weed. A crisis of chronic. And, jokes aside, it's a real problem for people who work in the cannabis industry like Matt Ochoa. Ochoa runs the ...
11.22.2023 A very Planet Money Thanksgiving Here at Planet Money, Thanksgiving is not just a time to feast on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casseroles and pie(s). It's also a time to feast on economics. Today, we host a very Planet Money Thanksgiving feast, and ...
11.18.2023 Economic fact in literary fiction Some of the most influential and beloved novels of the last few years have been about money, finance, and the global economy. Some overtly so, others more subtly. It got to the point where we just had to call up ...
11.15.2023 China's real estate crisis, explained China's economic growth for the past few decades has been extraordinary. And much of that growth was fueled by real estate – it was like this miraculous economic engine for the country. But recently, that engine seems to have stopped ...
11.10.2023 The alleged theft at the heart of ChatGPT When best-selling thriller writer Douglas Preston began playing around with OpenAI's new chatbot, ChatGPT, he was, at first, impressed. But then he realized how much in-depth knowledge GPT had of the books he had written. When prompted, it supplied detailed ...
11.08.2023 Never have I ever The world of economics has these two different sides. One one side, there are the economists in their cozy armchairs and dusty libraries, high up in their ivory towers. On the other, there's the messy world we're all living in, ...
11.03.2023 FTC Chair Lina Khan on Antitrust in the age of Amazon When Lina Khan was in law school back in 2017, she wrote a law review article called 'Amazon's Antitrust Paradox,' that went kinda viral in policy circles. In it, she argued that antitrust enforcement in the U.S. was behind the ...
11.01.2023 Antitrust in America (classic) Earlier this fall, the Federal Trade Commission filed a high-stakes lawsuit against Amazon. In that suit, the FTC claims Amazon is a monopoly, and it accuses the company of using anti-competitive tactics to hold onto its market power. It's a ...
10.27.2023 All you can eat economics You might expect to find economic concepts in the pages of an economics textbook. But you know where you can really see a lot of economic concepts in action? Buffets. Here at Planet Money we believe there's a lot of ...
10.26.2023 Cutting school... by 20% Right now, a lot of school districts across the country are making a pretty giant change to the way public education usually works. Facing teacher shortages and struggling to fill vacant spots, they are finding a new recruitment tool: the ...
10.20.2023 How unions are stopped before they start Union membership in the U.S. has been declining for decades. But, in 2022, support for unions among Americans was the highest it's been in decades. This dissonance is due, in part, to the difficulties of one important phase in the ...
10.18.2023 Indicator exploder: jobs and inflation When someone says "the economy is doing well"—what does that even mean? Like, for workers, for employers, for the country as a whole? According to what calculation? How do you put a number on it? The world of economics is ...
10.13.2023 Maria Bamford gets personal (about) finance Note: There is swearing in this episode. In 2017, The University of Minnesota asked comedian Maria Bamford to give their commencement speech. But the University may not have known what it was in for. In her speech, Bamford told the ...
10.11.2023 Why the price of Coke didn't change for 70 years (classic) Prices go up. Occasionally, prices go down. But for 70 years, the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola didn't change. From 1886 until the late 1950s, a bottle of coke cost just a nickel. On today's show, we find out ...
10.06.2023 A man, a plan, wind power, Uruguay In 2007, Uruguay had a massive problem with no obvious fix. The economy of this country of 3.5 million people was growing, but there wasn't enough energy to power all that growth. Ramón Méndez Galain was, at the time, a ...
10.04.2023 The flight attendants of CHAOS When contract negotiations between Alaska Airlines and their flight attendants' union broke down in 1993, the union had a choice to make. The union — The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA — knew that if they chose to strike, Alaska Airlines ...
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 ...

Older episodes

Planet Money

What's Planet Money about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Planet Money episodes:

Why do doctors still use pagers?

Two food and drink indicators

Why are we so bummed about the economy?

So you want to sell marijuana across state lines

A very Planet Money Thanksgiving

Economic fact in literary fiction

China's real estate crisis, explained

The alleged theft at the heart of ChatGPT

Never have I ever

FTC Chair Lina Khan on Antitrust in the age of Amazon

Antitrust in America (classic)

All you can eat economics

Cutting school... by 20%

How unions are stopped before they start

Indicator exploder: jobs and inflation

Maria Bamford gets personal (about) finance

Why the price of Coke didn't change for 70 years (classic)

A man, a plan, wind power, Uruguay

The flight attendants of CHAOS

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)

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