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Planet Money
NPR · Business
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. Support public media by joining NPR+ at plus.npr.org . You’ll get perks for over 25 NPR podcasts, including bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Planet Money.
More from this show
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Where all those weird new drinks are coming from
It's getting pretty wild in the beverage aisle these days — from the rainbow wall of seltzers, to the increasingly strange flavors of Pepsi, to the new "functional" sodas with added fiber or supplements that supposedly offer health benefits. Where are all these new drinks coming from? And why does it seem like the…
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Who’s gonna pay for your Social Security?
Very soon, Social Security may not have enough money to make full payments to retirees. Very soon. Like by 2032, just six years from now. So what are we gonna do about it? Today on the show, we look at some of the most talked about possible solutions; and exactly whose wallets we’ll have to rifle through to find the…
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Middlegarchs are the new Oligarchs
Wanna know who is really in the top 1%? And how they use their influence? It may not be who you think. Look beyond Silicon Valley. Look beyond Wall Street. Look beyond the “oligarchs”. There's a much larger class of wealthy Americans hiding in plain sight. And, often, they got rich in mundane ways. They own car…
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Is our national debt finally too much? (update)
(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2024 .) $40,000,000,000,000. Four commas. Thirteen zeroes. It’s an eye-popping, almost infinite-sounding pile of money. And every time the debt passes a big round number, almost everyone asks the same question: How much debt is too much? It’s maybe the most important…
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The Domino’s Pizza Tracker Theory of Everything
Did a pizza restaurant’s humble status page change how we wait forever? When you order a Lyft or Uber, you get texts every few minutes about your car approaching and arriving. When you have a package coming, you get a notification when it’s shipped, when it’s en route, and when it’s out for delivery. Why do so many…
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How investing is getting riskier (Two Indicators)
Margin borrowing and sports gambling “investments” are both on the rise! Today on the show, two stories from Planet Money’s daily podcast The Indicator about the ways investing is changing, and getting riskier. According to one study, more than half of Gen Zers are using investment dollars for sports gambling. On…
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The loan at the heart of a new foreclosure crisis
There is a new type of loan that is sweeping through the country right now. It’s advertised as a super quick and super easy way to get a mortgage to buy a home. In recent years, Wall Street has been funneling billions of dollars into these loans. But these loans are also raising questions. Are they a financial…
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Cost-cutting, quiet guilt and the inflation generation
In this economy it is boom times and doom times all at once. The statistics aren’t really capturing it. K-shaped only goes so far as a metaphor. So … we asked you to help. And you delivered! One one hand, the stock market is on a prolonged, upward trajectory. Unemployment is low and inflation has come down from its…
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Trump drinks Venezuela’s milkshake
One week ago, President Trump announced a deal that would give the “U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer.” The exact nature of this deal has been … obscure, to say the least. But today, we wanted to know, from someone who’s been through…
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Love in the time of Palantir
To a lot of people, Palantir is a mystery — what does the company know, what data do they have, and (if they have it) what do they do with it all? We dig into that mystery and take you to a singles event to see if Big Data is good for Big Dating. That event, deep in the heart of Manhattan, is called: “Singles Dating…
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Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” the true story behind the anthem (bonus)
The brilliance of "9 to 5" is that it is catchy even though it’s also kinda depressing. You will be dancing along. You're enjoying it. And, then when you really listen to the lyrics, you're like, Wait, this is messed up. This is real. This is a problem we need to fix. Like, why does it have to be this way? That is the…
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Branded fruit: How produce got “Honeycrisp-ified"
The produce aisle is changing. You’ve noticed this, I’m sure. It is now full of superstar fruits and vegetables: The Honeycrisp apple, The Cotton Candy grape, The Cuties mandarin orange. They stand out. They cost more. They have branding and sometimes trademarks and patent-ish kinds of protections. And now – it’s…
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The continent nobody owns & everyone benefits from (Summer School)
This episode is packed with your best economic ideas from around the world and a penguin interview. It all comes together in this final session of Summer School 2026. Pack your parka, we’re headed to Antarctica. First, we’ll travel back in time to the late 1970s when NPR was a scrappy young network, with a synth…
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Who decides what big box sells? Our GAME got us answers
There’s a room where the fates of retail products are decided. Will they make it onto the shelves of the big box stores? Usually the rest of us can’t get inside the room where decisions are made – until now! Today on the show, we pitch the Planet Money game, Sell Me a Sasquatch, to big box retailers. We go behind the…
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Getting entrepreneurial in Korea (Summer School)
This week’s stop on our world tour - Korea. A country divided into two very different power structures since the end of WWII. Today South Korea is the maker of some of the world’s favorite exports – from Samsung TV’s to BTS. But 75 years ago it was a much different story. How the textile industry and a partnership…
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You bet your life insurance
Some of the biggest firms on Wall Street are, at this very moment, waiting for thousands of strangers to die to reap their returns. Because there’s a market for life insurance policies. And it’s legal. You don’t have to actually die to get some of your life insurance money. Thanks to a secondary market for life…
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Currency Chaos in Argentina (Summer School)
Just about everyone in Argentina is an expert in inflation and whether they like it or not, economic flexibility. Can we learn from them? Over the years, we at Planet Money have checked in on Argentina as it tried to recover from economic collapse in 2001 and 2002, and as inflation shot up and the country defaulted on…
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Older workers aren’t retiring. Should they be forced to?
When workers past retirement age can’t afford to retire — that’s one thing. When they can, and just don’t want to — that’s trickier. It used to be legal to force people to retire when they hit a certain age. The trend used to be earlier and earlier retirement. Now it’s later and later retirement. And younger workers…
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Sand heists and property rights in the Caribbean (Summer School)
Imagine a nation where, for the residents, land is for the claiming. You walk down the street, pick out a nice looking plot of land, and just plop down a marker. No rent, no taxes, no deed – just free land. That’s the communal system of property rights that governed a small Caribbean island for over a century. This…
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What makes a toy go viral
Squishy, slimy, fidgety toys are having a moment. But it’s more than just an anxiety-soothing, social-media fueled trend – these toys are reshaping how toys get made. Today on the show, we have the story of the once-humble squishy dumpling and what it teaches us about how to make a viral hit and how to manufacture it…
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How to beat the resource curse in Norway (Summer School)
Let’s call it the luxury of restraint. This is what enabled Norway to avoid the fate of so many other countries when they discovered oil and it changed the mix of their economy overnight. Norway! It’s expensive, wealthy, and abundant in resources. We’re going to compare two of them in particular today: deep reservoirs…
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Piles of cash and a town of solutions in Kenya, Nigeria (Summer School)
Let’s head to a small town in Kenya that’s become globally famous for helping economists answer some of the biggest questions facing humanity. In Kenya and Nigeria, economics isn’t just theory, it’s real life. We’ll look at some radical experiments that turned out to be enormously successful. What are the building…
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Big Lettuce meets Small Intestine
The cyclospora outbreak that’s sickening thousands of Americans got us interested in the rise of Big Lettuce, and the challenges of keeping it clean. So on today’s show, we tell you just how much lettuce Americans eat every year (SO MUCH!), how bagged lettuce came to dominate grocery store shelves, what that means for…
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New NPR Series: "We Keep Us Safe" from the Embedded podcast
In the summer of 2020, sixteen-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. traveled a thousand miles to join the racial justice movement of his generation in the wake of George Floyd's killing. Antonio arrived in Seattle during the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, known as CHOP. Less than a week later, he was shot and killed there. The…
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Can World Cup mania grow MLS in the U.S.?
As the World Cup comes to a close, so does a massive real-time experiment happening just around the edges. Major League Soccer – the top men’s professional soccer league in the U.S. and Canada – has been scrambling to take advantage of this once-in-a-generation opportunity when average American sports fans suddenly…
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Building things and breaking things in China (Summer School World Tour)
China’s turbocharged growth may have made it rich, but now it has to deal with rich country problems. High-speed trains that connect every town. Gleaming new bridges and skyscrapers. An apartment (or two) for every family. No country on Earth has seen the kind of economic growth that China has over the last 50 years.…
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Seven allegedly fake Chanel bags vs The RealReal
Once upon a time, if you wanted to buy a luxury brand item secondhand (say, a Chanel handbag) you had to have an in. There was no easy way to find one. But over the past decade, the market for secondhand luxury goods has exploded. There are now many online resellers where you can shop for used and discounted luxury…
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Our mission: Find the world’s best economic ideas (Summer School World Tour)
Come along as we travel the world in search of the best economic ideas to bring home! From the beaches of Barbuda to the fjords of Norway, there's money (and money problems) everywhere. For this summer travel season, Planet Money Summer School will take you on a world tour for your ears. Pack that sense of wonder and…
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How to win a penalty shootout (with game theory)
Lionel Messi is arguably the greatest soccer scorer of all time. But when it comes to penalty kicks, Messi is merely average. Why? Maybe the answer involves game theory. According to game theory, there’s an optimal strategy for taking penalty kicks. This strategy involves an idea that was once somewhat controversial…
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Can the Trump administration make college cheaper?
Will limiting how much students can borrow force schools to lower their prices? The Department of Education thinks so. It has a new plan to bring down tuition costs. Starting today, July 1st, it’s going to cap how much it’s willing to loan to graduate students. You read that right. To reduce the burden of school…the…
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