Planet Money

Venezuela 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, one of the world’s most famous and infamous socialist countries.  Today on the show, the story of their intertwined histories. Before Saudi Arabia, before Iran… there was Venezuela, the first petrosta...

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 tighter” spot. But after just six months into his second term, Trump’s financial situation started looking really good. David has done a full accounting for what the family has been up to, and even usi...

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 they may have found some telltale clues. On our latest: How do economists detect a bubble? And, how much should society be worried about bubbles in the first place?  Related shows: - How to make $35 tri...

The 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 the money behind the television show Soul Train, it helped fuel the civil rights movement – all because of an entrepreneur named George Johnson.  For decades, Joan and George Johnson owned and ran Joh...

We’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-surfacing this episode with an update. The original version ran in 2016 , with an update in 2024 . Back in 2016, things were pretty bad in Venezuela. Grocery stores didn’t have enough food. Hospitals didn...

2025 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 economic stories defined the year? We will square off in a family feud to make our case, debate, and decide it.  Also, as we enter 2026, we are watching the trends and planning out what next years stor...

With 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. Those workers struggled to adapt and find new jobs. It ran counter to how mainstream economics at the time viewed free trade ... that it would be a clear win for the U.S. Greg Rosalsky talks with David A...

Most stories keep going even after we set down our microphones and the music fades up. That's why, at the end of each year, we look back and we take stock.  We call this tradition "The Rest of the Story." And we bring you updates on the stories we've reported, and from the people we've met along the way. Today, we check in on an engineer and patent attorney who made a safer saw; we get an update o...

On the eve of Netflix shoveling a fourish-hour chunk of Stranger Things onto Christmas Day, we visit the past, present, and future of binge-dropped television shows.  The strategy of releasing an entire season at the same time has been key to taking Netflix from a little startup that used to lend us DVDs in the mail … to a company so big and powerful, it is maybe going to buy Warner Brothers and o...

As a country, we are spending more to get data centers up and running than we spent to build the entire interstate highway system. (Yes, that’s inflation-adjusted.) With tech companies spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI, data centers have kind of become the thing in the US economy.  But along with that growth have come a lot of questions. Like where is all the electricity to run these...

Welcome to the inaugural Planet Money Pop Culture Draft! In today's episode (a Planet Money+ episode we’re releasing into the main feed) we're gonna go back to the year 1999. Three hosts, Kenny Malone, Wailin Wong, and Jeff Guo, go head to head and each drafts a “team” of economic pop culture. So a movie, a song, and a wild card pick that best represents the Planet Money spirit! It could be a movi...

In 2008, Chicago’s budget was in a bad place. The city needed money. One way to raise money was to increase property taxes, but what politician wants to do that? So instead, Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration looked around at the resources the city had, and thought, ‘Any of this worth anything?’ They opted to lease out the city’s metered parking system — to privatize all 36,000 of its parking...

From nuclear fission to GPS to the internet, it’s common knowledge that many of the most resource intensive technologies of the last century got their start as military R&D projects in government-funded labs. But as Avery Trufelman explains in her fashion history podcast, Articles of Interest , the influence of the US military is, in many ways, even more intimate than that, shaping much of the clo...

A few years ago, the Jamaican government started making an unusual financial bet. It went to investors around the world asking if they'd like to wager on the chances a major hurricane would hit the island in the next couple of years.  In finance terms, these kinds of wagers are called "catastrophe bonds." They're a way to get investors to share the risk of a major disaster, whether that's a Japane...

Vote for us in NPR’s People’s Choice Awards: npr.org/peopleschoice   AI is already reshaping how people find work. Fewer entry-level jobs, robot recruiters, and ever-changing new skill requirements all add up to a new, daunting landscape for humans trying to find dignified work. Today on the show: two stories from the edges of a changing labor market. First we’ll assess claims that AI is causing a...

Taylor Swift reaches new heights with her latest album, which is both divisive and record-breaking. And it’s fueled by an elaborate series of business choices that propel profits but also chart numbers. Today’s episode comes from our friends at Today Explained , Vox’s lively, smart daily news podcast.  Pre-order the Planet Money book and get a free gift . /  Support our show. Subscribe to Planet M...

Givewell is a nonprofit organization that gives money to “save or improve the most lives per dollar.” Part of their whole thing is a rigorous research process with copious and specific datapoints. So, in the chaotic wake of USAID’s gutting, they scrambled to figure out if they could fund the kind of projects USAID used to. Today on the show: GiveWell let us in on their decision-making process, as...

Wherever consumer sentiment goes, consumer spending usually goes too. They’re like buddies that do everything together. Consumer sentiment wants a hair cut, its buddy consumer spending does too. But lately, these friends are drifting apart. While consumer sentiment about the economy is down … spending remains strong.  And not just that… Interest rates are still high, inflation is growing, tariffs...

Tariffs. They’ve been announced, unannounced, re-announced, raised and lowered. It’s an on-going saga with billions at stake! On today’s episode, we run full-on at the twisty, turny drama of life with broad-based tariffs and tackle perhaps our most asked question: Are we, regular U.S. shoppers, feeling the tariffs yet? When we’re at the grocery store or the coffee shop, are we paying more for thin...

Last month, during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the United States had offered to functionally loan Argentina $20 billion. Despite the sums involved, this bailout required no authorization from Congress, because of the loan’s source: an obscure pool of money called the Exchange Stabilization Fund. The ESF is essentially the Treasur...

(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2022 .) Every time you shop online and make it to the checkout screen, you see those colorful pastel buttons at the bottom. Affirm. Klarna. Afterpay. Asking: Do you want to split your payment into interest-free installments? No credit check needed. Get what you want, right now.  That temptation got shoppers like Amelia Schmarzo into some money tro...

When people in Maine prisons started getting laptops to use in their cells for online classes and homework, it sparked this new idea. Could they have laptops in their cells to work remotely for real outside world jobs, too??? And get real outside world wages? Today on the show, we have reporting from Maine Public Radio’s Susan Sharon about a new experiment in prisons: remote jobs … paying fair mar...

People in the U.S. are feeling the financial squeeze, in part because of rising inflation, higher consumer prices and slowing job growth. The Indicator from Planet Money is tackling a special series on the rising cost of living. Today, two stories from that series.  First, what’s making ticket prices go up? We look at the economics behind the ticket market and how “reseller bots” are wreaking all...

This week’s SNAP crisis is just a preview. Tucked inside the giant tax-cut and spending bill signed by President Donald Trump this summer are enormous cuts to SNAP: Who qualifies, how much they get, and who foots the bill for the program. That last part is a huge change. For the entire history of the food stamp program, the federal government has paid for all the benefits that go out. States pay p...

For decades, the U.S. has been the single biggest source of remittances worldwide. A remittance is a transfer of money, typically from an immigrant to their family in their country of origin. But we are in the middle of a big, loud and very public immigration crackdown on those who are here without legal status. And that crackdown is disrupting the global remittance market.  People who have come t...