Planet Money 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 soundtrack , and tons of heart. Science reporter Ira Flatow took a trip to the South P...

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 with Bangladesh lifted the country out of poverty and paved the way for rapid econom...

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 its debts. This week on our Summer School World Tour, we fly to Buenos Aires, m...

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 week on our Summer School World Tour we make port on the small economies of island...

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 of oil and icy waters full of salmon. While one resource was heavily in demand,...

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 blocks of health, education and prosperity for all? How does a nation grow rich? Wha...

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. China has become the factory to the world, a grand experiment in central governm...

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 nose for adventure, this is our semester abroad. We’re going to explore exotic lo...

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 Indic...

Find all episodes of Planet Money Summer School here . 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...

In economics, a market is a place (even virtual) where buyers and sellers interact to exchange goods or services. Economists love markets. It's like all of our supply and demand graphs have come to life. 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 wi...

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 a...

LIVE SHOW: August 18th in Brooklyn. Tickets here . (Planet Money+ supporters get a 10 percent discount off their tickets. Listen to the July 8th bonus episode to get the discount code!) 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...

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...

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We all know the government uses taxes to pay for things. But what about using taxes to control behavior? This week on Summer School, Professor Darrick Hamilton of The New School, helps us explore the true power of the tax code. Can taxes help lift people out of poverty? What about saving the planet? Get tickets to our August 18th live show and graduation ceremony at The Bell House, in Brooklyn. (P...

Government. The Big G. We like to imagine the free market and the invisible hand as being independent from political influence. But Nobel laureate, Simon Johnson, says that influence has been there since the birth of economics. Call it political economy. Call it government and business. Call it our big topic each Wednesday through Labor Day. We're kicking off another semester of Planet Money Summe...

Take the 2024 Planet Money Summer School Quiz here to earn your personalized diploma! Find all the episodes from this season of Summer School here . And past seasons here . And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School . We are assembled here on the lawn of Planet Money University for the greatest graduation in history – because it features the greatest economic minds in history. We'll h...

Find all the episodes from this season here . And past seasons here . And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School . When we last left the United States of America in our economic telling of history, it was the early 1900s and the country's leaders were starting to feel like they had the economic situation all figured out. Flash forward a decade or so, and the financial picture was stil...

Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here . And past seasons here . And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School . In the middle of the twentieth century, China and its neighbors in East Asia were poor, mostly rural economies. China had been wrecked by a brutal civil war. Taiwan became the home of people fleeing from that conflict. Japan and...

Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here . And past seasons here . And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School . Trade has come up in all of the episodes of Summer School so far. An early use of money was to make trade easier. Trade was responsible for the birth of companies and the stock market. And trade was the lifeblood of the early Uni...

Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here . And past seasons here . And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School . Planet Money Summer School has arrived at the birth of the United States and the chance to set up a whole new economy from scratch. Should there be a centralized bank? Should there be a single currency? We'll travel to two moment...

Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here . And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School . Once upon a time, every business was a small business. It was run by the owner, maybe the spouse and the kids. Maybe they borrowed money from friends and relatives, but there was only so big it could get. Then came what can only b...

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 the power of labor shifted, for better and worse, and we ask why then? What does history have to say about labor power right now? We travel to Sicily, Italy in the year 1347, where the bubonic plague is about to strike. The horror known as the Black Death will r...

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 we ask surprisingly hard question: What is money? And where did it come from? We travel to a remote island in the Pacific Ocean for the answer. Then we'll visit France in the year 1714, where a man on the lam tries to revolutionize the country's entire monetary...