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
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Recent Episodes
The Business of Heated Rivalry
Mar 04, 2026Heated 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 crea...
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Planet Money explores the business of television production through the lens of Heated Rivalry, a surprise hit Canadian hockey romance series. Host Kenny Malone talks with journalist Kara Swisher about her interview with the show's creators, Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady, who reveal how Canada's unique funding model allows producers to retain IP rights while making high-quality shows on modest budgets—a stark contrast to the bloated costs and studio ownership that dominate American production.
- The Canadian Production Model vs. Hollywood
- Efficient Production: Anti-Fascist Filmmaking
Don't hate the replicator, hate the game
Feb 27, 2026The 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 ...
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Planet Money reporters visit a 'Replication Game' in Montreal, where economist Abel Brodeur has created an innovative system to address the replication crisis in social science research. Through crowdsourced hackathon-style events, teams of researchers verify whether published papers' findings can be reproduced, creating an accountability mechanism that's changing how academics conduct research.
- The Replication Crisis Discovery
- Star Wars: The Empirics Strike Back
The ICE hiring boom
Feb 25, 2026Live event info and tickets here ICE is scaling up, with rapid new hiring. So we ask, has training new officers changed? At what cost? Also, the Trump administration has plans to pour billions of ...
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This episode examines the unprecedented expansion of ICE, which has more than doubled its workforce by adding 12,000 new agents in the past year. Planet Money investigates how this rapid hiring boom has affected training quality, field operations, and communities hosting detention facilities. The show explores concerns about shortened training programs, the influence of experienced officers on new recruits, and profiles a rural Georgia town grappling with the economic benefits and moral costs of hosting one of the nation's largest ICE detention centers.
- ICE's Unprecedented Hiring Boom and Growing Scrutiny
- Inside the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers
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 st...
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Planet Money examines the Supreme Court's landmark ruling declaring President Trump's sweeping tariffs under IEPA illegal, exploring what this means for businesses who paid over $100 billion in tariffs, the emerging market for tariff refund claims, and the administration's quick pivot to new tariffs under different legal authority.
- Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump's IEPA Tariffs
- The Complicated Path to Getting Refunds
How to get what Greenland has, with permission
Feb 18, 2026Book 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. lawmakers ...
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Planet Money explores why President Trump wants Greenland, examining the territory's strategic location and rare earth minerals. The episode reveals that the U.S. already has military access to Greenland and that cooperation, not control, is the key to mineral security. Experts explain how the U.S. lost its rare earth dominance to China and why taking over Greenland wouldn't solve America's mineral supply problems.
- The Rare Earth Minerals Expert's Crazy Schedule
- Greenland: A Vast, Sparsely Populated Arctic Territory
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. Each...
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Planet Money's 2025 Valentine's Day episode celebrates things the team loves, from Jennifer Jenkins' annual public domain list to innovative journalism and beloved technologies. The episode features multiple hosts presenting valentines to cultural phenomena, technology, and reporting methods they admire, while also creating an official Planet Money Valentine's Day card using the newly public domain Betty Boop character.
- The Public Domain Revolution and Betty Boop
- The College Excel Championships
The Invention Invention
Feb 11, 2026Book 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 f...
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This episode explores how patent pools—collaborative agreements that allow competing companies to share essential inventions—shaped technological innovation from the 1850s to today. The story traces the rise, fall, and rebirth of patent pools, from Isaac Singer's sewing machine through antitrust concerns in the 20th century, to the creation of MPEG video compression in the 1990s that reopened the door for modern technological collaboration.
- Leonardo Chiariglione and the Dream of MPEG
- Isaac Singer and the Birth of the Sewing Machine
Iran, protests, and sanctions
Feb 07, 2026Book 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 cause...
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This Planet Money episode examines the 47-year history of U.S. sanctions on Iran through three key economic moments, exploring how sanctions have shaped Iran's economy and contributed to recent massive protests. The episode reveals how sanctions, while intended as a non-violent alternative to war, have created immense suffering for ordinary Iranians while enriching powerful regime-connected entities, and questions whether they achieve their stated goals.
- The Revolution and Birth of Economic Isolation (1979)
- Economic Opening and Growth Despite Sanctions (1990s-2012)
Riding with the repo man (update)
Feb 04, 2026Planet 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...
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Planet Money investigates the epidemic of car repossessions in America by following three interconnected stories: a used car dealer selling subprime loans, a young woman who falls behind on payments, and a repo man tracking down vehicles in the middle of the night. The episode reveals how GPS tracking technology has made repossessions easier, contributing to a rise in subprime auto lending, and provides a 2026 update showing the situation has worsened to Great Recession levels.
- The Subprime Auto Loan Crisis Emerges
- The Salesman's Perspective: Subprime Lending Done Right
Can Trump make buying a home more affordable?
Jan 31, 2026Book 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 Dona...
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Planet Money explores two Trump administration initiatives aimed at making housing more affordable: limiting big institutional investors from buying single-family homes and directing Fannie and Freddie to purchase mortgage-backed securities. The episode follows James Lawrence, a National Guard member who deployed to Djibouti to save enough for a down payment, as a case study in how extreme the housing crisis has become. Researchers reveal that while Wall Street investors own a small percentage of homes nationally, their impact varies by location and time period, and both policies may have limited effects without addressing the core issue: housing supply.
- James's Extreme Housing Solution
- The Housing Affordability Crisis by the Numbers
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 housi...
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Planet Money explores groundbreaking new research from Harvard economist Raj Chetty on the HOPE VI federal housing program. The study tracked over a million families across three decades to determine whether transforming low-income neighborhoods by mixing incomes could lift children out of poverty. The findings reveal that children who grew up in revitalized public housing earned 50% more as adults—but only when those developments were located near higher-income neighborhoods where kids could form connections across economic lines.
- The HOPE VI Program and Economic Desegregation
- Life Before and After: The Richard Allen Homes Transformation
A trip to the magic mushroom megachurch
Jan 24, 2026Book 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 ...
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Planet Money explores the Zide Door Church in Oakland, California, which has become the world's largest psychedelic mushroom church with over 135,000 members. The episode examines how churches built around Schedule 1 substances operate in legal gray areas, using religious freedom claims to distribute psychedelics, and features perspectives from both the church's founder Pastor Dave Hodges and psychedelic church lawyer John Rapp on navigating the complex legal landscape.
- Introduction to Zide Door Church
- The Sacrament Room and Church Operations
BOARD GAMES 3: What’s in a name?
Jan 22, 2026Planet Money has teamed up with the company Exploding Kittens to make a board game inspired by the legendary economics paper The Market for Lemons. We’ve decided we want a mass-appeal party game that ...
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Planet Money chronicles the high-stakes process of naming and theming their economics-inspired board game, partnering with Exploding Kittens to create a mass-market party game based on the Nobel Prize-winning 'Market for Lemons' paper. The team navigates the surprisingly unscientific world of big-box retail, where a game's success can hinge on three feet and three seconds of shelf appeal, ultimately landing on 'Sell Me a Sasquatch' as their final name despite international market concerns.
- The Critical Importance of Game Naming
- Three Initial Theme Concepts Emerge
Chevron, Venezuela and the Paradox of Plenty
Jan 17, 2026Venezuela 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, ...
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This Planet Money episode explores Venezuela's transformation into the world's first petrostate and Chevron's unique position as the only American oil company that has remained in Venezuela through decades of political and economic turmoil. The episode traces how oil discovery in 1922 turned Venezuela from a coffee-exporting nation into a global oil powerhouse, examining the economic concepts of Dutch disease, resource curse, and mono-economic vulnerability, while revealing how Chevron's persistence has positioned it to benefit from current U.S. involvement in Venezuela.
- The Lake Maracaibo Gusher and Oil Rush
- Dutch Disease and the Coffee Industry Collapse
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 t...
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This Planet Money episode examines how President Donald Trump and his family have made approximately $4 billion during his second term in office, a stark departure from his first term and unprecedented in U.S. presidential history. Reporter David Kirkpatrick provides a comprehensive accounting of money made across categories including cryptocurrency, real estate deals, merchandise, media ventures, and legal settlements—focusing only on profits that wouldn't have existed without Trump's presidency.
- The Scale of Presidential Profiteering
- Methodology and Historical Context
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 th...
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Planet Money explores the question of whether the current AI boom represents an economic bubble, examining cutting-edge research on bubble detection and theories about whether some bubbles might actually benefit the economy. The episode features Harvard economist Robin Greenwood's research challenging Eugene Fama's skepticism about bubble prediction, and discusses what an AI bubble pop could mean for the broader economy.
- The AI Stock Market Surge and the Bubble Question
- Defining Bubbles and the Challenge of Detection
How Black hair care grew Black power
Jan 07, 2026The 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. It was ...
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This Planet Money episode chronicles the rise and fall of Johnson Products Company, founded by George and Joan Johnson, which became the first Black-owned company on the American Stock Exchange. Through the lens of three iconic hairstyles—the conk, the afro, and the jerry curl—the story explores how the Johnsons built a multibillion-dollar Black hair care industry by understanding what Black Americans needed, funded the civil rights movement, and ultimately lost control of the business they created.
- From Depression-Era Scrapper to Chemistry Lab
- Joan Johnson: The Fearless Business Partner
Venezuela’s recent economic history (Update)
Jan 04, 2026We’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-surf...
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Planet Money examines Venezuela's dramatic economic collapse over the past decade, tracing how a country with the world's largest oil reserves squandered its wealth through misguided currency controls and over-dependence on oil exports. The episode covers the period from Hugo Chavez's oil-fueled boom years through the catastrophic hyperinflation crisis under Nicolas Maduro, and finally to an unexpected stabilization driven by the informal adoption of the U.S. dollar.
- Venezuela's Oil Boom and Hugo Chavez's Economic Gamble
- The Fatal Currency Controls: Hugo Chavez's Economic Time Bomb
Indicators of the Year, Past and Future
Dec 31, 20252025 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 e...
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Planet Money and The Indicator team up for their annual 'Indicators of the Year' competition, where hosts pitch their top economic metrics of 2025. Three contenders emerge: consumer sentiment (now in its third year as a contender), tariffs reaching historic highs, and the CAPE ratio signaling potential stock market overvaluation. The episode also looks ahead to 2026, highlighting three key indicators to watch: Federal Reserve interest rates amid leadership changes, rising electricity costs driven by AI data centers, and consumer spending increasingly concentrated among the top 10% of earners.
- The Battle for Indicator of the Year 2025
- Kenny Malone Champions Consumer Sentiment (For the Third Time)
Why economists got free trade with China so wrong
Dec 30, 2025With 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. Th...
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MIT economist David Autor discusses his groundbreaking research on the China shock - the devastating impact of Chinese imports on American manufacturing communities after 2001. His latest paper reveals that while local economies eventually recovered, the original manufacturing workers never did. Instead, new demographic groups filled emerging jobs in different sectors, while displaced workers aged in place, often leaving the workforce entirely. The research challenges conventional economic thinking about trade adjustment and has profound implications for understanding America's political and economic landscape.
- The China Shock and Its Regional Concentration
- Why Economists Missed the Warning Signs