The hidden world behind your new "banking" app
You might have seen ads for online banking services that seem to offer a lot of great stuff — accounts you can open in minutes and without...
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Episodes
Latest first
Summer School 6: China, Taiwan and how nations grow rich
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok...
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Will the Olympics break breakdancing?
For some sports, picking the winner is simple: It's the athlete who crosses the finish line first, or the side that scores the most goals....
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Summer School 5: 250 years of trade history in three chapters
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok...
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What to do when you're in a class action
Maybe you got a boring slip of paper in the mail. Maybe you got a spammy-looking email promising you money. Surprise! You're in a class...
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Summer School 4: Banker vs president and the birth of the dollar
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok...
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Summer School 3: The first stock and perpetual life
Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok...
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What Kamala Harris' economic agenda might look like
Last weekend we were all thrown for a loop when President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris for the...
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The color monopoly
In 2022, artist Stuart Semple opened up his laptop to find that all his designs had turned black overnight. All the colors, across files on...
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Summer School 2: The golden ages of labor and looms
Who has the power? Workers or bosses? It changes through the ages, though it's usually the bosses. Today, we look at two key moments when...
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Rooftop solar's dark side
4.5 million households in the U.S. have solar panels on their homes. Most of those customers are happy with it - their electricity bills...
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Summer School 1: An Economic History of the World
Planet Money Summer School is back for eight weeks. Join as we travel back in time to find the origins of our economic way of life. Today...
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How flying got so bad (or did it?)
We often hear that air travel is worse than it's ever been. Gone are the days when airplanes touted piano bars and meat carving stations —...
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The two companies driving the modern economy
At the core of most of the electronics we use today are some very tiny, very powerful chips. Semiconductor chips. And they are mighty: they...
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Do immigrants really take jobs and lower wages?
We wade into the heated debate over immigrants' impact on the labor market. When the number of workers in a city increases, does that take...
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The Carriage Tax (Update)
(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2019.)In 1794, George Washington decided to raise money for the federal government by...
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The Vapes of Wrath
When the vape brand Juul first hit the market back in 2015, e-cigarettes were in a kind of regulatory limbo. At the time, the rules that...
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Why is everyone talking about Musk's money?
We've lived amongst Elon Musk headlines for so long now that it's easy to forget just how much he sounds like a sci-fi character. He runs a...
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What's with all the tiny soda cans? And other grocery store mysteries, solved.
There's a behind the scenes industry that helps big brands decide questions like: How big should a bag of chips be? What's the right size...
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Bringing a tariff to a graphite fight
Graphite is sort of the one-hit wonder of minerals. And that hit? Pencils. Everyone loves to talk about pencils when it comes to graphite....
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