For decades, dollars have been the world's common financial language. Central banks everywhere hold dollars as a way to safely store their wealth. Countries, businesses, and people use it to trade; around 90% of all foreign exchange transactions involve dollars. It's the world's money, the world's "reserve currency."

But what if that is changing? What if the world stops seeing the dollar as safe?

Today on the show, what is a "reserve currency"? Why is it the dollar? And if the dollar falls from favor, what will replace it?

This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee with help from James Sneed. It was edited by Marianne McCune with fact checking help from Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

The Dollar Trap by Eswar Prasad
Exorbitant Privilege by Barry Eichengreen
Our Dollar. Your Problem by Ken Rogoff

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Virtually every product brought into the United States must have a so-called "country of origin." Think of it as the official place it comes from. And this is the country that counts for calculating tariffs.

But what does it really mean when something is a "Product of China"? How much of it actually comes from China? And how do customs officials draw the line?

Here in the U.S., the rules are delightfully counterintuitive. A product's country of origin is not necessarily where that product got on the container ship to come here. It's not necessarily where most of its ingredients are from or even where most of the manufacturing happened.

Our system is much stranger. The answers can be surprisingly philosophical — and at times, even poetic.

This episode of Planet Money was produced by James Sneed with help from Sylvie Douglis. It was edited by Jess Jiang, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Why is it so hard to find a bathroom when you need one?

In the U.S., we used to have lots of publicly accessible toilets. But many had locks on the doors and you had to put in a coin to use them. Pay toilets created a system of haves and have nots when it came to bathroom access. So in the 60s, movements sprung up to ban pay toilets.

Problem is: when the pay toilets went away, so too did many free public toilets.

Today on the show, how toilets exist in a legal and economic netherworld; they're not quite a public good, not quite a problem the free market can solve.

Why we're stuck, needing to go, with nowhere to go.

This episode was produced by Willa Rubin with help from James Sneed. It was edited by Marianne McCune and engineered by Cena Loffredo. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Music: Audio Network - "Smoke Rings," "Can't Walk Away" and "Bright Crystals."

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On today's show: we're ... venting.

We at Planet Money are an ensemble show – each with different curiosities and styles. But we recently realized many of us have something in common: We're annoyed consumers.

So we're going to get ranty ... but then try to understand the people annoying us. Like stingy coffee shops, manufacturers that don't design things for repair ... and stores that send way too many emails every day.

Along the way, we learn a very sad thing about satisfaction and the future of skilled labor in the U.S.

(Also, we should all just stop using umbrellas. They have negative consumption externalities. Come on people.)

This episode was produced by James Sneed. It was edited by Marianne McCune, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by James Willetts. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Reporter Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi's Aunt Vovi signed up for 23andMe back in 2017, hoping to learn more about the genetic makeup of her ancestors. Vovi was one of over 15 million 23andMe customers who sent their saliva off to be analyzed by the company.

But last month, 23andMe filed for bankruptcy, and it announced it would be selling off that massive genetic database. Today on the show, what might happen to Vovi's genetic data as 23andMe works its way through the bankruptcy process, how the bankruptcy system has treated consumer data privacy in the past, and what this case reveals about the data that all of us willingly hand over to companies every single day.

This episode was produced by Sylvie Douglis and edited by Jess Jiang. It was engineered by Harry Paul and Neal Rauch and fact-checked by Tyler Jones. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Music: NPR Source Audio - "Lazybones," "Twirp," and "On Your Marks"

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President Donald Trump has been loudly critical of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for years now. Since January, the President has accused him of playing politics by keeping interest rates high. Trump has also threatened to oust Powell — which would mark an extraordinary shift away from the independence of the central bank.

Today on the show, three Indicators: a short history of the Federal Reserve and why it's insulated from day-to-day politics; how the Fed amassed a ton of power in recent years; and a Trump executive order that took some of that power away.

The original episodes from the Indicator were produced by Corey Bridges, Brittany Cronin, and Julia Ritchey. They were engineered by Cena Loffredo, James Willetts, and Gilly Moon, and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kate Concannon is the editor of the Indicator. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode of Planet Money was produced by James Sneed and edited by Marianne McCune & Mary Childs. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

For more of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Or, find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook.

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Recently, one of our NPR colleagues wrote a message to all of NPR saying he had extra eggs to sell for cheap, but needed a fair way to distribute them during a shortage. What is Planet Money here for if not to get OVERLY involved in this kind of situation?

Our colleague didn't want to charge more than $5, so we couldn't just auction the eggs off. A lottery? Too boring, he said.

Okay! A very Planet Money puzzle to solve.

Today on the show, we go in search of novel systems to help our colleague decide who gets his scarce resource: cheap, farm-fresh eggs. We steal from the world of new product development to try and secretly test for egg love, and we discover a pricing method used in development economics that may be America's next great gameshow.

This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee and it was edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Jimmy Keeley. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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OIRA — the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — is an obscure, but powerful federal office around the corner from the White House. President Trump has decided that it should get even more powerful.

For the last 45 years, OIRA has overseen most federal agencies by reviewing proposed regulations to make sure they agree with the President's policies and don't conflict with the work of other agencies. But one set of federal agencies has always been exempt from this review process — independent federal agencies like the SEC, FTC, FCC, and Federal Reserve. Until now.

According to a new executive order, those independent agencies are about to get a lot less independent. We take a look at what this change could mean for financial markets...and the future of American democracy.

This episode was produced by James Sneed and Willa Rubin. It was edited by Jess Jiang and engineered by Jimmy Keeley. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Music: Universal Music Production - "Tanga," "The Jump Back," and "Kumbatia."

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How do you run a business when a trade war is brewing? As President Trump's tariffs kick in - or are paused or are restarted - businesses around the world are trying to navigate the uncertainty.

And, while trade is this big global thing, it is made up of individual farmers and business owners and truckers and manufacturers. Millions of people all over the world are being forced to reevaluate relationships that they've been building for years.

Canadians have had a head start - Trump announced his plan to tariff Canadian goods on day one in office. So in today's episode: how one Canadian small business is trying to manage the chaos.

This episode was produced by Sylvie Douglis and edited by Sally Helm. It was engineered by Cena Loffredo and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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At the heart of President Trump's tariffs is this idea that we should not be buying more from other countries than they are buying from us. Basically, he wants to get rid of the trade deficit.

And in the wake of the tariff announcement we got a LOT of questions from listeners about what that means. Do trade deficits matter? Is it bad to have a trade deficit? Are we getting ripped off?

Today on the show – we tackle those questions.

This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee and edited by Marianne McCune and Kenny Malone. It was fact checked by Sarah McClure and engineered by Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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