Episodes
Planet Money investigates a new type of loan called DSCR loans that is sweeping the country, advertised as a super quick and easy way to get a mortgage. Wall Street has funneled billions into these loans, but they are now raising questions about whether they are a financial innovation helping the housing market or a sign that Wall Street is forgetting the mistakes that led to the Global Financial Crisis. The episode goes to Baltimore, where reporters from The Baltimore Banner found that two local landlords quickly and quietly amassed over 700 homes and $100 million in borrowed cash using these loans, then tried to disappear, sparking a new foreclosure crisis.
Planet Money explores the economic moment through listener stories, revealing a picture not captured by standard statistics. While unemployment is low and the market is up, inflation remains sticky and over 75% of Americans report money stress. Listeners shared experiences of extreme frugality, quiet guilt among those doing well, and a new generation becoming hyper cost-conscious. The episode argues that the K-shaped economy metaphor oversimplifies a reality where boom and doom coexist.
Planet Money examines President Trump's announced deal giving the U.S. control of over 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil reserves at no taxpayer cost. The hosts turn to third-generation Venezuelan oil insider José Ángel Pereira Ruimwyk, who witnessed Venezuela's earlier cycle of inviting in and then expelling foreign oil companies — an experience that landed him in jail. He offers both optimism and caution about what this new arrangement means for Venezuela.
Planet Money investigates what Palantir actually knows about people by attending a Manhattan singles event that uses the company's data for matchmaking. The episode explores how Palantir's data aggregation and pattern-matching capabilities work in practice, using the dating event as a window into the broader question of what the surveillance technology company collects and how it processes personal information.
Planet Money revisits the true story behind Dolly Parton's iconic song “9 to 5” and the 1980 film. In the 1970s, a group of secretaries in Boston formed a labor organization called 9to5, fighting for respect, fair pay, and an end to workplace abuse. Their movement inspired the movie, which turned a grim reality into a comedic anthem. The episode explores the song's dual nature—catchy yet subversive—and reflects on how much has changed (and hasn't) for women in the workplace since then.
The produce aisle is changing. Once filled with generic fruits and vegetables, it's now dominated by branded, trademarked products like Honeycrisp apples and Cotton Candy grapes. Planet Money teams up with Dan Pashman of The Sporkful to explore this trend, visiting Rutgers University to taste a new grape tomato variety and speaking with agricultural economist Miguel Gomez about the risk of market saturation.
Planet Money's Summer School finale travels to Antarctica, starting with a look back at NPR's scrappy 1979 South Pole reporting by Ira Flatow that put the network on the map. A former McMurdo Station store manager explains why normal retail economics break down when you're on an uninhabited continent. An economist argues we should measure Antarctica's value not as real estate, but by its ecosystem services — the environmental benefits it provides to the entire planet. The episode closes by sharing listeners' best economic ideas for making life better.
Planet Money creates a board game called “Sell Me a Sasquatch” and takes it behind the closed doors of big box retailer buyer meetings. The episode reveals how products actually end up on shelves—what buyers look for, how decisions get made, and how much power those deciders have. After pitching to several stores, the hosts learn the fate of their game and what compromises are required to land a deal.
Planet Money Summer School explores entrepreneurship in Korea. The first half tells the story of how South Korea's textile industry and a partnership with Bangladesh lifted the country out of post-war poverty and sparked rapid economic growth. The second half crosses the 38th parallel to North Korea, where a woman started her own small business selling goods, part of a growing affluent entrepreneurial class called the Donju. The episode examines how capitalism can emerge even in a heavily restrictive socialist society.
Planet Money explores the secondary market for life insurance policies, where policyholders can sell their policies to investors who then collect the death benefit. The practice began during the AIDS crisis as terminally ill people needed cash fast, but it has since grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry. The episode examines how a desperate deal became a financial product, raising questions about who benefits when investors wait for people to die.
Planet Money visits Argentina to explore how everyday people have become experts in navigating extreme currency volatility. The episode examines the unintended consequences of government attempts to control inflation, the resilience of Argentines who act as "monetary contortionists" to manage daily life, and the broader economic lessons about uncertainty. From tango classes to a Coldplay concert that sparked a special exchange rate, the show illustrates how volatile economies force creative adaptation.
Planet Money explores the growing tension between generations as older workers delay retirement—sometimes because they can't afford to, sometimes because they don't want to. The episode examines a law professor's proposal for mandatory retirement at age 70, as a way to address gerontocracy and open opportunities for younger workers. An economist counters that people should actually keep working longer, given rising life expectancy and financial pressures on Social Security. The show digs into the lump of labor fallacy, the politics of age in the workforce, and the tough tradeoffs between fairness, freedom, and economic sustainability.
This Summer School episode visits two Caribbean islands to explore property rights. First, Barbuda's unusual communal land system, where residents claim land freely without formal deeds or taxes, challenging the standard model of private ownership. Then, a mysterious sand heist in Jamaica, where an entire beach was stolen, and 'sand forensics' were employed to track it down, revealing the difficulties of protecting public resources when profit is at stake. The episode asks: does property have to be private, and what happens when it's not?
The once-humble squishy dumpling toy has become a viral hit, part of a wave of squishy, slimy, fidgety toys that are more than just an anxiety-soothing, social-media-fueled trend—they are reshaping how toys get made. Planet Money talks to the toy's creator about what it takes to make a viral hit and how to manufacture it without getting left holding the bag.
Planet Money Summer School explores how Norway avoided the resource curse after striking oil. The episode contrasts Norway's handling of its oil wealth with its salmon glut, examining how the country managed a sudden resource boom by exercising restraint. Key economic concepts like the Dutch disease, coordination problems, and the free-rider problem are explained through Norway's experience. The story highlights strategic decisions that allowed Norway to get rich and stay that way, while creatively dealing with an oversupply of salmon.
Planet Money's Summer School visits Kenya and Nigeria to explore radical economic experiments that tackled poverty. The episode highlights how the town of Busia, Kenya, became a real-world laboratory for randomized controlled trials, a methodology that won some economists the Nobel Prize. It also revisits Nigeria's 'You Win!' program, a business plan competition that tested a new way to allocate development grants. Along the way, the show unpacks key concepts like human capital, the 'missing middle' in business financing, and the challenge of translating economic research into large-scale policy.
A cyclospora outbreak sickening thousands of Americans prompts Planet Money to explore the rise of bagged lettuce. The episode traces how bagged greens went from niche to grocery store staple, examines the food safety challenges that come with industrialized processing, and asks why outbreaks keep happening despite FDA oversight.
Planet Money presents a trailer for the NPR Embedded series 'We Keep Us Safe,' which investigates the death of 16-year-old Antonio Mays Jr., who was shot in Seattle's Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone in 2020. Hosts Sydney Brownstone and Will James track down eyewitnesses and uncover never-before-published evidence in an eight-part investigation. The case remains unsolved and raises questions about justice and safety inside autonomous protest zones.
As the 2026 World Cup concludes, Major League Soccer executives race to capitalize on a rare surge in American soccer interest. NPR Sports Correspondent Becky Sullivan follows MLS teams and league officials as they deploy strategies to convert temporary World Cup enthusiasm into long-term fan engagement and league growth. The episode explores whether this once-in-a-generation opportunity can break through the structural barriers that have limited soccer's mainstream appeal in the U.S.
China’s rapid economic growth, driven by an engineering state mindset, has created a building spree of high-speed rail, skyscrapers, and apartments. This episode explores the boom-era excesses—private jets, thousand-dollar fish soup, casual bribes—and the resulting overbuilding and malinvestment. As the construction boom ends, rising youth unemployment and the despair of success signal a less prosperous future, with some educated young people opting out of work altogether.
Planet Money examines the booming secondhand luxury market. Online resellers like The RealReal have made used designer goods more accessible. But the authentication process remains controversial. Luxury brands like Chanel claim that fakes slip through. The episode explores the tension between luxury houses and the resale economy.
Planet Money Summer School embarks on a global tour to explore innovative economic ideas from around the world. The episode visits New Zealand and Australia to examine markets for water (the most essential commodity) and speculators' role in liquidity, then explores how a jazz musician-economist revolutionized inflation fighting by introducing inflation targeting as a psychological tool.
Planet Money revisits a Soccernomics episode exploring penalty kicks through the lens of game theory. Even the greatest soccer players, like Lionel Messi, are only average at penalties—and game theory's concept of mixed strategies may explain why. The episode tells how a once-controversial idea in economics gained real-world evidence by studying soccer players, who seem to randomize their kicks in ways that match theoretical predictions. The result is a practical illustration of how game theory works in high-stakes moments and how sports can validate academic models.
The Trump administration is implementing a new policy to cap federal student loans for graduate students, hoping to force colleges to lower tuition prices. The plan is based on the Bennett Hypothesis—a 40-year-old economic theory claiming that reducing student borrowing capacity will pressure schools to reduce costs. NPR Education Correspondent Cory Turner explores whether this hypothesis holds up under decades of actual data.
In 1990, General Magic set out to build a handheld device that combined email, phone calls, and games—a vision remarkably close to what would become the smartphone. Despite having generous investors, world-class talent, and creative freedom, the device never caught on. This episode examines a theory for its failure: that the team lacked the constraints—technical, financial, or time-based—that often force innovation to actually ship. Hosts Erika Beras and Emma Peaslee explore what happens when too much freedom undermines the discipline needed to bring a product to market.
This excerpt from NPR's Throughline explores the forgotten history of prediction markets: election betting was once common but mysteriously disappeared in the 1940s, political party bosses used conspicuous gambling as a signal of confidence, and in the 1980s, the Iowa Electronic Markets predicted elections more accurately than polls 74% of the time, laying the groundwork for today's platforms.
Planet Money uses the Alien franchise to explore monopsony — the economic situation in which a single employer dominates a labor market and gains the power to underpay workers. Economist Arin Dube explains how the film's Weyland-Yutani represents real-world employer power, and discusses policy ideas to counter it. Director Fede Álvarez describes how Alien: Romulus puts worker exploitation front and center.
Planet Money investigates a 20-year-old cyber weapon discovered by security researchers that was designed to secretly sabotage Iranian nuclear scientists' calculations—an early act of epistemological warfare. The episode unfolds like a whodunit, following cyber paleontologists who piece together malware fossils and cryptic intelligence leaks, revealing a hidden front in the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict.
Can the government stop you from cutting down your own tree? This Planet Money episode, hosted by Jeff Guo and Amanda Aronczyk, explores the growing conflict between individual property rights and environmental regulations. It tells the story of a Portland homeowner denied a permit to remove a backyard tree, raising fundamental questions about what ownership means. The hosts examine the legal history of zoning power and the 'bundle of rights' theory, and they talk to experts about whether tree-protection ordinances have gone too far or are necessary for the common good.
This episode explores two policy approaches to lowering rents: reviving boarding houses and single room occupancy units, a once-popular affordable housing model that nearly disappeared; and the curious effect of corporate landlords, which studies suggest may actually reduce rents even as they drive up purchase prices. The episode also discusses the Trump administration's proposal to restrict corporate home ownership.
Sarah Gonzalez and Jane Black investigate the $70 billion dietary supplement industry, which is projected to double in seven years despite weak evidence that most products work. They trace a century-long tug-of-war between regulators and consumers who are drawn to the promise of a quick fix, and explain how lobbying, lax regulation, and the GRAS loophole have allowed the industry to thrive.
Planet Money investigates why multiple Wetzel's Pretzels locations cluster so densely at the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center Station in Brooklyn. The episode explores the economic logic behind franchise clustering—how competing locations of the same brand can coexist profitably—through interviews with franchisees and executives. What looks like market inefficiency on the surface reveals deeper patterns about foot traffic, market saturation, and franchise economics.
The vast majority of chemicals in our food were added without any FDA review, thanks to a loophole in the 1958 Food Additives Amendment. Food companies and chemical makers can declare new substances 'Generally Recognized As Safe' (GRAS) without government approval, and the FDA has formally endorsed this self‑certification process. The episode explores how this loophole came to be and what it reveals about the U.S. priority on speed and innovation over precaution. It also follows one lawyer who is challenging the entire GRAS system.
Planet Money collaborates with Tax Notes to investigate how the wealthiest Americans legally avoid paying taxes. They listen to secret tapes that detail a tax avoidance strategy born in Malta. The episode traces the loophole's creation, growth, and a federal crackdown, only for the tax planning industry to revive it with help from a high-ranking Trump administration official. It's a look inside the grey area between legal avoidance and criminal evasion.
How does a poor country become a rich country? The old blueprint said industrialization would lift nations up, but many developing economies get stuck — they're not poor anymore, but not rich either. The World Bank calls this the 'middle income trap.' Planet Money heads to Manaus, a giant factory town in the Amazon, to see why Brazil became the poster child for this stalled progress and what that reveals about economic development today.
Planet Money investigates why the United States is virtually alone among wealthy nations in guaranteeing zero paid vacation days or holidays to workers, while the EU mandates four weeks minimum, and most other developed countries offer 10-25+ days. The episode explores the historical and economic reasons America became the global outlier on time off, interviewing labor economists and historians to understand what makes American work culture fundamentally different from Europe.
As Jerome Powell's term as Federal Reserve Chair ends, Planet Money examines the unprecedented political pressure he faced—from the president who nominated him—and what it means for central bank independence. The episode traces Powell's tenure through a pandemic, inflation spike to 9%, and tariff wars, asking whether Fed independence is holding or crumbling under pressure.
Planet Money answers a listener's question about OPEC: why it exists, why it limits oil supply, and what the UAE's withdrawal means for gas prices. The episode explores the secret meeting that created the cartel and explains the economic forces behind oil price manipulation.
Dallas Wings forward Alysha Clark, the oldest player in the WNBA, co-negotiated a groundbreaking collective bargaining agreement for the league's players alongside a Nobel Prize-winning economist. The episode follows her minute-by-minute account of the high-stakes negotiations that capitalized on the league's explosive growth—from a $36,400 starting salary era to a new era powered by a $3.1 billion media rights deal. Clark's journal entries reveal what it's like to be a player turned negotiator fighting for the future of women's basketball.
Curt Flood, the best center fielder in baseball, was traded against his will and sued Major League Baseball to overturn its reserve clause. For decades, courts had upheld owners' control over players, but Flood argued workers should sell their labor freely. His case destroyed his career but sparked a chain of events that created free agency and reshaped professional sports economics.
Planet Money investigates how a book lands on the New York Times Best Seller List, exploring both the official playbook and a century of shadowy hacks. From a 1950s mass hallucination that willed a nonexistent book onto the list to authors bulk-buying their own work, the episode reveals how easily the system can be gamed. The team also learns that aggressively engineering a bestseller can backfire, keeping a book off the list instead.
Spirit Airlines' near-collapse reveals how legacy carriers systematically defeated budget airlines at their own game. The episode traces Spirit's rise as a cost-cutting disruptor under CEO Ben Baldanza and explores how major airlines adopted and weaponized Spirit's strategies—unbundling, fees, capacity discipline—to undercut budget competitors while protecting their own margins. The result: fewer cheap options for passengers and a cautionary tale about disruption.
At one point in history, one U.S. company monopolized the rare earths industry. Then China took over the industry. Can the U.S. bring it back? Rare earths are critical to making, like, everything. From smart phones to electric vehicles to microwaves.
Rare earth elements are essential for everything from smartphones to electric vehicles, and they’ve become a geopolitical weapon. Planet Money traces the story through a single U.S. company that once monopolized the industry, then lost its grip when China took over mining and processing. The episode unpacks how America’s rare earth industry rose and fell, and why that matters for national security and the global economy.
We talk with Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and Chief Economist at Redfin Daryl Fairweather about two of the biggest issues of our time: AI and housing. We have been crisscrossing America doing live shows to help promote the new Planet Money book.
Planet Money explores monopsony — when a single buyer dominates a labor market. New research suggests monopsony is far more common than economists thought and may be a key driver of wage stagnation and inequality.
Have you noticed a lot of young people getting into antenna-maxxing as alpha? Or, maybe searching for any bit of copium after they fat-fingered and got rinsed? Or maybe they farmed during a yes-fest on Mention Markets resulting in some serious printing?
The United States has been at war with Iran since February 28th. And for a month and a half, Iran’s main leverage over the U.S. has been their control over the Strait of Hormuz — a key global shipping route. Iran has attacked ships that try to pass without approval.
How do bookstores choose the books they stock, and how does that affect what customers read? It may not seem like it, but every shelf in a bookstore is a highly valuable and contested piece of commercial real estate.
Live event info and tickets here. If your company got bought by a private equity firm, how would you feel? Maybe a little nervous? You might find yourself wondering if there will be layoffs. And you’d be right to worry about that.
The average American now subscribes to 4.5 streaming services at $15-20 each — totaling $80-90/month. That's exactly what cable cost in 2015. Planet Money traces how cord-cutting led right back to bundling.
Live event info and tickets here.
Live event info and tickets here. For more than 60 years, Cuba has survived on two seemingly contradictory economic strategies: leaning on friendly communist and socialist countries, and flirting with capitalism. And right now it seems the US is making both strategies impossible.
LIVE SHOW TOUR INFO HERE. New stories, live tapings, special guests, book signings and more. What would you build on a piece of land when all the normal rules go out the window?
When you come across a book at a yard sale or a bookstore, you might pay more attention to the words between the covers than the physical form of the book itself. But content and the form are both crucial to a book’s success.
In the age of TikTok and Polymarket, it can be easy to overlook the humble book. But books are one of the most influential technologies ever invented. From “The Wealth of Nations” to “Das Kapital,” books have the power to shape whole economic systems… and everything else in our world.
The cardinal tetra is one of the most popular pet fish in the world. They look like little red and blue sequins. You've almost certainly seen them at the pet store or the fish tank at your dentist's office. They're everywhere.
Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen argues that we live in an increasingly gamified world where metrics and rankings distort what we value. Why optimizing for measurable outcomes makes us worse at the things that matter most.
Robby the chef has lots of endearing qualities. He can make over 5000 dishes, he’s a consistent cook, and he’s never late for work. But he’s not a human. It is a 750 lb. stainless steel robot. With a rotating wok at its center. It’s a wok-bot. Automation has changed many industries.
Live event info and tickets here. If something is going wrong in your workplace, there's probably a law that explains why. Meetings always seem long, and never end early?
Why everything costs more when you're poor: check cashing fees, payday loans, laundromat costs vs owning a washer, buying in small quantities, and the 'poverty premium' across every category.
What do we want from sports? The very best athletes competing as hard as they know how, putting all their effort and training and natural ability to the test against their opponents. But this time of year, that’s not the product the NBA is putting on the court.
Heated Rivalry, the steamy hockey romance show, was made for about $2 million per episode. That is remarkably cheap for an hour-long drama. Today on the show, a conversation with Heated Rivalry creators Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady about their television miracle on ice.
The world of science has been stuck in an existential crisis over whether we actually know the things we thought we knew. Re-running an old study today doesn't always yield the same result. Same with re-enacting old experiments.
Live event info and tickets here. ICE is scaling up, with rapid new hiring. So we ask, has training new officers changed? At what cost?
Live event info and tickets here. The Supreme Court has spoken. Those big, sweeping tariffs that President Trump imposed early last year? They’re illegal. On today’s show: Why were those tariffs struck down? Will anyone get refunds?
Book tour and ticket info here. Greenland has said it is not for sale. Denmark has said it can’t even legally sell Greenland. And at a security conference in Munich over the weekend, U.S.
Planet Money on why retail investors consistently buy high and sell low. The psychology of FOMO investing and why the boring index fund strategy beats 95% of active traders.
Book tour event details and ticket info here. An iconic cartoon character liberated from copyright, journalism from the world of competitive spreadsheeting, a controversial piece of US currency.
Book tour tickets and details here. Today, the story of three inventions. The first, the sewing machine, was created by a selfish and ambitious inventor who wanted all the credit and was willing to fight a war for it.
Planet Money investigates the corporate landlord narrative: institutional investors own a growing share of single-family homes, but are they really the primary driver of the housing crisis? The evidence is more nuanced than the headlines.
Book tour tickets and details here. The recent protests in Iran are about so many things. Human rights, corruption, freedom. But this time – they are also motivated by economic hardship. Hardship caused, in part, by US sanctions. The US has been sanctioning Iran in one way or another for 47 years.
Planet Money book tour ticket info and dates here. A record number of Americans with poor or just okay credit are behind on their car payments. And once last year’s numbers are tallied, an estimated 3 million cars will have been repossessed in 2025.
Book tour dates and ticket info here. Housing is too expensive. Everyone knows this. Democrats know that talking about it plays well with voters. And now – in a midterm election year – President Donald Trump seems to be focused on it, too.
In the 1990s, Congress created HOPE VI, a program that demolished old public housing projects and replaced them with more up-to-date ones. But the program went further than just improving public housing buildings.
Book tour dates and ticket info here. Just as every market has its first movers, every religion has its martyrs — the people willing to risk everything for what they believe. Pastor Dave Hodges just might be a little bit of both.
Planet Money has teamed up with the company Exploding Kittens to make a board game inspired by the legendary economics paper The Market for Lemons.
Planet Money looks at the actual data on AI job displacement — not the predictions, the reality. Surprise: the jobs disappearing aren't the ones everyone expected.
Venezuela and Chevron have perhaps one of the strangest partnerships … ever? Chevron, one of the world’s most famous and profitable oil corporations, has for decades, been plugging away in Venezuela, one of the world’s most famous and infamous socialist countries.
Before President Donald Trump’s first term, he was in a “tight spot” financially, according to New Yorker writer David Kirkpatrick. At the start of his second term, David says, Trump was in an “even tighter” spot.
Are we in an AI bubble? That’s the $35 trillion dollar question right now as the stock market soars higher and higher. The problem is that bubbles are famously hard to spot. But some economists say they may have found some telltale clues. On our latest: How do economists detect a bubble?
The Afro is one of the most iconic hairstyles of the last century. And one of its main ingredients was a hair product – Afro Sheen. But Afro Sheen did so much more than make Black afros shine.
We’ve been checking in on the economic conditions in Venezuela for about a decade now. In response to the U.S. strike and the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro this weekend, we’re re-surfacing this episode with an update. The original version ran in 2016, with an update in 2024.
2025 is finally over. It was a wild year for the U.S. economy. Tariffs transformed global trading, consumer sentiment hit near-historic lows, and stocks hit dramatic new heights! So … which of these economic stories defined the year?
With the year coming to a close, we're sharing our most popular Planet Money bonus episode of 2025! As U.S. trade with China exploded in the early 2000's, American manufacturing began to shrivel. Those workers struggled to adapt and find new jobs.
Planet Money's annual tradition: updating listeners on stories they reported throughout the year. Follow-ups on the diamond mystery, the Gaza money story, the subscription economy, and the team's own book project — a creative meta-experiment in economics.
Dollar stores are the fastest-growing retail format in America — and they may be making food deserts worse. Planet Money investigates why dollar stores thrive where grocery stores fail.
Planet Money takes listeners behind the scenes of manufacturing their book: paper sourcing from sustainable forests, printing negotiations in China vs. the US, ocean shipping, warehouse distribution, and the economics of why books cost $28 but the author gets $2.
How tipping expanded from restaurants to every transaction. The iPad flip, tip creep, and the economic research showing tipping is a terrible compensation system that produces racial and gender discrimination.
Why your cereal box got smaller but the price stayed the same. Companies reduce package sizes instead of raising prices because consumers are more sensitive to price changes than quantity changes.
Planet Money produces the definitive explainer on tariffs: who pays them (importers, not foreign countries), who benefits (protected domestic industries), who loses (consumers and non-protected industries), and what the historical evidence says about their effectiveness.
An estimated 3 million cars were repossessed in the US in 2025 — the highest number since 2009. Planet Money follows a repo agent on his nightly rounds and traces how pandemic-era car loans (low rates, high prices, loose standards) are now unwinding.
Planet Money examines HOPE VI — a federal program that demolished old public housing projects and replaced them with mixed-income developments. The promise: transform concentrated poverty. The reality: displaced residents rarely returned, and the new developments served wealthier residents.
Planet Money investigates why Reese's Peanut Butter Cups changed their recipe — replacing cocoa butter with cheaper vegetable oil — without telling consumers. The story reveals how food companies quietly reduce product quality to maintain margins, a practice called 'skimpflation.'
Planet Money updates their Venezuela hyperinflation story: from oil-fueled prosperity to economic collapse, hyperinflation that reached 1,000,000%, the introduction of the digital bolivar, and the political crisis between Maduro and opposition leader González.
Planet Money and The Indicator's annual crossover: looking back at the indicators that defined 2024 (soft landing, AI investment, election uncertainty) and looking forward to 2025 (tariff impacts, AI adoption rates, housing market).
Planet Money and The Indicator hosts compete to pick the most important economic indicators of 2024. Topics: the soft landing, consumer sentiment, Bitcoin, tariff speculation, and the labor market.
Cuba experiences its longest nationwide blackout in decades. Planet Money traces the cause: US sanctions prevent oil from reaching the island, Venezuela's collapse cut off Cuba's primary fuel supplier, and the aging power grid can't handle the load.
Planet Money examines the greedflation debate: did corporations cause inflation by raising prices beyond cost increases, or did supply constraints and demand spikes create the conditions for price increases?
Planet Money investigates the theft and international trafficking of sacred Bhairav masks from Nepalese temples. The story traces how colonial-era looting, Western museums, and the art market created an economics of cultural theft that persists today.
Planet Money revisits FTX two years after its collapse. The surprising twist: because crypto prices surged after FTX's bankruptcy, the estate now has enough assets to repay customers in full — with interest. The biggest financial fraud in history might have a happy ending.
Planet Money investigates the 'vibecession' — the paradox that economic indicators (unemployment, GDP, inflation) improved in 2023-2024 while consumer sentiment remained deeply negative. Why does a good economy feel bad?
Japan's central bank raises interest rates for the first time since 2007, ending negative interest rates. Planet Money explains how Japan's 30-year experiment with ultra-low rates reshaped the global economy — and why ending it sends shockwaves worldwide.