Planet Money: episodes

60 recent episodes from the show's feed. Back to the show

1. Can the Trump administration make college cheaper?

   Jul 1, 2026 · 29 min

   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 plan is to give students less money to pay for school.  This plan is, in part

2. We almost had a smartphone in the 90s. Why did it fail?

   Jun 26, 2026 · 27 min

   In the early 90’s, a company called General Magic began working on a portable device that would allow people to check email, make phone calls, even play games. It was basically a smartphone. But it never caught on. On today’s show, a theory about why this device failed. General Magic had generous investors, world-class talent and creative freedom. But is it possible what they needed was constrain

3. Before Kalshi and Polymarket there was the Iowa Electronic Markets

   Jun 24, 2026 · 23 min

   Prediction markets aren’t new. Election betting was common until the 1940s, then mysteriously faded away. There was an entire political era when party bosses were expected to conspicuously gamble on their candidates (even if they secretly hedged). And in the 1980s, a few economists designed an election market that beat out election polling 74 percent of the time. Today, we’re running an excerpt

4. The real horror of ‘Alien’ and how it explains why we’re not paid enough

   Jun 19, 2026 · 33 min

   Maybe the real monster in the Alien franchise isn’t actually the killer alien. Because behind the acid blood and jump scares is an even more insidious horror: a single employer with unchecked power. That employer is named Weyland-Yutani, a mega-corporation that dominates workers across the galaxy. Weyland-Yutani is a sort of extreme example of what economists call a monopsony — when one employer

5. Can computer hackers get inside your mind?

   Jun 17, 2026 · 30 min

   The cyber weapon that might have prevented nuclear war. The U.S. and Israel have long been in conflict with Iran over their nuclear development program. Some of that conflict has been out in the open, with bombs and blockades, but some of it has been invisible.  Recently some security researchers discovered a cyberweapon likely tied to that invisible conflict. It looks like it was designed to hi

6. It’s my tree. Why can’t I cut it down?

   Jun 12, 2026 · 25 min

   Can the government stop you from cutting down your own tree? In many towns and cities these days, removing a tree now requires a permit. You might have to pay a fee, or promise to plant replacement trees. But sometimes, the city won't let you cut down the tree at all, even a tree in your own backyard. That's because trees are important for air quality, for flood control, and for public health. Th

7. Two indicators for lowering the rent

   Jun 10, 2026 · 18 min

   One specific type of affordable housing used to be popular in American cities, kept rents low, then nearly vanished. Is it time to reconsider boarding houses and single room occupancy units? If they lowered rents in cities, why did they go away? We have the history. Then, let’s talk about corporate landlords. They’re blamed for driving up rents. Studies show they do the opposite. When corporate l

8. Why is there a supplement craze if they don’t even work?

   Jun 5, 2026 · 35 min

   One reason the $70 billion supplement industry is set to double in the next seven years? Lax regulation. On today's show, we tell the story of a century-long battle between the U.S. government and … you, the people, blinded by your love of a magic pill. We’re talking about protein powders, pre-workouts, creatine, stuff for gut health, joint health, vitamin C, turmeric supplements. All that. You

9. There's no business like dough business

   Jun 3, 2026 · 27 min

   Have you ever walked around a street, mall, or airport and noticed two or three of the same franchise restaurant within walking distance? Why might one Starbucks or McDonald’s or Wetzel’s Pretzels sometimes be built so close to another? Are they friends or competitors? And how can that possibly be profitable? Today’s show is one such example. Our pals at Hyperfixed got a knotty question we just h

10. The sneaky way companies get new chemicals into our food

    May 29, 2026 · 36 min

    99% of chemicals in our food right now were added without FDA approval. Many were added in secret, through a sneaky loophole built into the 1958 Food Additives Amendment. It was supposed to require FDA approval for new additives. But food companies and chemical makers found a workaround. And the FDA formally okayed the loophole in the 90s — in the process bringing attention to a loophole to the l

11. The leaked tapes that show how the rich avoid taxes

    May 27, 2026 · 26 min

    Tax avoidance -- that is, legally reducing your tax bill -- is as American as apple pie. But the line between tax avoidance and tax evasion is often a grey one.  On today’s show, a collaboration with Tax Notes, we listen in on the secret tapes that show how the wealthiest Americans avoid taxes.  We trace the lifecycle of a tax loophole: how it was born (in Malta), how it grew, how the Feds crack

12. The giant factory town that might be a giant mistake

    May 22, 2026 · 27 min

    How does a poor country become a rich country? There's a simple blueprint — or at least, that's what many economists used to believe. But over the years, a lot of rapidly developing economies have stalled out. These countries aren't poor anymore, but they're not rich either. They're stuck in the middle. The World Bank calls this problem the "middle income trap." And if there's a poster child for

13. Vacation and why Americans take so little

    May 20, 2026 · 25 min

    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 been at a company. No matter how low paying the job is. Vacation is a right.  In fact, all but one of the richest countries in the world guarantees paid vacation, except: the U

14. Jerome Powell and the Future of Fed Independence

    May 15, 2026 · 29 min

    If you have a credit card, hope to buy a house, or just want stable grocery prices – let’s talk about the future of Fed independence! It’s impossibly important for the Federal Reserve to steer monetary policy without political interference – an ideal pushed to its brink during Jerome Powell’s time as Fed Chair. Powell’s Fed faced a once-in-a-century pandemic, oversaw the economy as inflation spi

15. The secret meeting that launched OPEC

    May 13, 2026 · 28 min

    Recently, a listener wrote in with a question about OPEC and oil prices. She was prepping for a camping trip… thinking about how much it costs to fill up her diesel-guzzling camper van at the pump.  “It would be so awesome if you guys could do an episode explaining OPEC to us,” she emailed us. She wanted to know: why does OPEC exist? Why does it limit the supply of oil? And now that the United Ar

16. Diary of a WNBA negotiator

    May 9, 2026 · 29 min

    Today the WNBA season tips off, but Dallas Wings veteran forward Alysha Clark has already won a high-stakes competition. She – and a Nobel Prize winning economist – were on the team that negotiated a ground-breaking contract for the players. And Alysha wrote all about it in her journal. Alysha is the oldest player in the league – and when she started she was making a yearly salary of about $36,40

17. How we got free agents in baseball

    May 6, 2026 · 29 min

    Curt Flood was the best center fielder in baseball and one of the game’s highest paid players. He took the St. Louis Cardinals to the World Series three times. Then he got traded to the Phillies. He didn’t want to go. But baseball’s rules said he had no say in the decision. He could either go to Philly or quit the sport. Instead, Flood took Major League Baseball to court. Flood argued that the le

18. How to make a BOOK into a bestseller

    May 2, 2026 · 47 min

    In the world of commercial publishing, there are few crowning achievements more coveted than a place on the New York Times Best Seller List. But how does a book actually end up there? There is, of course, a playbook that publishers and authors use to try to gin up enough sales at the beginning of a new book’s life to launch it onto the list. But there is also a world of more shadowy techniques – a

19. Spirit Airlines and the future of cheap flights

    Apr 29, 2026 · 26 min

    It’s way more than fuel costs that pushed Spirit Airlines to the brink of liquidation and led President Trump to muse about “buying” them. Many low cost airlines are struggling due to a canny and calculated set of strategies from bigger airlines that we can think of as ‘revenge of the legacy carriers.’  Today on the show, we go back in time to when Spirit was riding high and pressuring the whole

20. Battlefield rare earths: How the U.S. lost to China

    Apr 24, 2026 · 34 min

    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. They’ve also become a powerful political weapon for China, which controls the majority of mining and processing of rare earths.  Today, we have the