Planet Money

Planet Money

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

Episodes

September 26, 2025 23 mins
The next time you open your fridge, take a second to behold the miracles inside of it: Raspberries from California, butter from New Zealand, steak from Nebraska. None of that would have been remotely possible before the creation of the cold chain. 

The cold chain is the name for the end-to-end refrigeration of our food from farm to truck to warehouse to grocery store and ultimately to our fridges at home. And it’s one of t...
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On Wall Street, fortunes are often won and lost with the tiniest advantages. And for the past few years, one trading firm has stood out from the rest for both huge profits and careful secrecy — Jane Street Group.

But last year, one of Jane Street’s biggest and most lucrative trading strategies was unexpectedly revealed in a Manhattan courtroom. The news ricocheted around the world. It drew the attention of competitors and ...
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September 20, 2025 35 mins
Israel has been blocking the flow of physical money into Gaza since the start of the war. So whatever paper cash was in Gaza before the war, that’s all that’s been circulating. It's falling apart from overuse. 

Two best friends, one in Gaza and one in Belgium, are now trying to get money in.

But how do you get money into a bank account in Gaza? And how do you get that money out, in Gaza, when there are no function...
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September 17, 2025 22 mins
(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2016.)

It’s no secret that CEOs get paid a ton – and a ton more than the average worker. More than a hundred times than what their average employee makes. 

But it wasn’t always this way. So, how did this gap get so vast? And why? 

On today’s episode … we go back to a specific moment when the way CEOs were paid got changed. It involves Bill Clinton's campa...
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Last month, President Donald Trump announced an unusual deal. Intel, the biggest microchip maker in America, had agreed to give the United States a 10 percent stake in its business. That means the U.S. government is now Intel's largest shareholder — and a major American company is now a partially state-owned enterprise. 

This deal has raised a lot of eyebrows. The U.S. government almost never gets tangled up with businesse...
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There’s one question we seem to be hearing everywhere: “Is my job safe from AI?

Dozens of you, our listeners, have written to us about this. Saying things like, “Maybe my yoga teacher side gig is actually my safest bet now,” and “My parents were in real estate, and I never thought I’d say it ... but maybe that’s what I should do?”  

If only there were a list that could tell you which jobs are safe from AI. We go...
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President Donald Trump has been pressuring the Federal Reserve from a few angles. So we wanted to look at other examples of political pressure on central banks, to see what it might mean for us and for the economy. 

Enter the watchers. The people who’ve had their eyes trained on central banks all over the world, for years, notebooks out, scribbling down their observations. They’ve been trying to gauge just how independent ...
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September 3, 2025 20 mins
When we stumbled upon Milk.com, we were mystified. It appears to be someone’s personal website. But memorable domain names can be worth a million dollars or more. So, why is someone using this valuable internet real estate to post their resume and favorite recipes?  

Back in the internet’s early days, it was easy to get a domain name. They were cheap or even free. The first people to grab them may now be holding onto asset...
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August 29, 2025 22 mins
The Federal Reserve has been under intense pressure from President Donald Trump as he pushes for more control over the historically independent agency. The Fed is tasked with keeping inflation and unemployment under control, and it’s supposed to be insulated from politics so it can do whatever is necessary for the economy. But Trump has been openly saying he wants interest rates to be lower. A lot lower.

And on Monday, Tru...
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August 27, 2025 30 mins
Get your own personalized summer school diploma here.

Today on our final episode of Summer School 2025, we will test your knowledge. We will salute the unsung heroes of government service. And we will pick our valedictorian from among you of the class of 2025. 

Editorial Note:

President Trump attempted to fire Lisa Cook, a Biden appointee to the Federal Reserve Board. Our daily podcast, The Indicator, has...
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In the past couple years, demand has gone wild for drugs like Ozempic – and its cousins, Zepbound, Wegovy, and Mounjaro. For people who had never been able to lose weight before, suddenly the numbers on the scale were plummeting. And everybody wanted to get their hands on them. 

Now, in most industries, if a product goes viral like this, it’s a golden ticket. And thanks to government-granted monopolies designed to encourag...
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Tariffs are the favorite tool of our current president, but there are lots of other ways that governments insert themselves into the free exchange of goods and services. Some of these trade barriers are so insidious and have been going on for so long that it may surprise you that they even exist. 

We bring you the classic story of what happens when you try to protect an American industry and end up hurting another American...
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For most Americans, we just lived through the highest period of inflation in our lives. And we are reminded of this every time we go grocery shopping. All over TikTok, tons of people have posted videos of how little they got for… $20. $40. $100. Most upsetting to us: an $8 box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Food prices are almost 30% higher than they were five years ago. It’s bad. And those new, higher prices aren’t going away....
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In economics, a market is a place (even virtual) where buyers and sellers meet to exchange goods or services. Economists love markets. It's like all of our supply and demand graphs have come to life. Almost everything you buy goes through some sort of marketplace—your cup of coffee came from trading in the bean markets. Your spouse might have come from the dating marketplace on the apps. Even kids will tell you one Snickers is wort...
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After President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, economists and statisticians across the board were horrified. Because the firing raises the spectre of potential manipulation – and it raises the worry that, in the future, the numbers won't be as trustworthy.

So: we looked at two countries that have some experience with data manipulation. To ask what happens when governments get tempted to cook the bo...
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LIVE SHOW: August 18th in Brooklyn. Tickets here.

Traditional economics says the market is guided by the forces of supply and demand. Customers decide what they want to buy, and private enterprise responds to that need.

So what makes government think that it's smarter than capitalism? Why offer tax breaks to Hollywood or incentives to build silicon chip factories in Arizona? Why those industries and not others? ...
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Trust in experts is down. In all kinds of institutions and professions - in government, in media, in medical science... and lately, economists are feeling the burn acutely. In fact, President Trump just fired the economist who ran the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accusing her – with no evidence – of faking a jobs report that showed fewer gains than expected.

In decades past, economists whispered in the ears of presidents. N...
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LIVE SHOW: August 18th in Brooklyn. Tickets here.

There are occasional incentives in business that make it very profitable to do bad things; maybe cheat at the game and steal other people's ideas, or cut some corners on safety. In theory, the government as referee steps in to make the rules and enforce them, and manage competition in a way that hopefully makes things better for us all.

But you have to ask... Whe...
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LIVE SHOW ALERT: August 18th, NYC. Get your tickets here.

When news broke that a Japanese company, Nippon Steel, was buying the storied American steel company U.S. Steel, it was still 2023, just before an election.

And right away, politicians from both sides of the aisle came out forcefully against the deal, saying the company should remain American. Before leaving office, President Biden even blocked the sale.
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Although it seems like the government can spend an endless amount of money, it cannot actually do all the things it wants to do. So the big question in this week's lesson is: How do we decide? Why does the government spend so much money on some things and not on others? And honestly, is there any limit?Get tickets to our August 18th live show and graduation ceremony at The Bell House, in Brooklyn. (Planet Money+ supporters get a 10...
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