Planet Money

Planet Money explores monopsony — when a single buyer dominates a labor market. New research suggests monopsony is far more common than economists thought and may be a key driver of wage stagnation and inequality.

The United States has been at war with Iran since February 28th. And for a month and a half, Iran’s main leverage over the U.S. has been their control over the Strait of Hormuz — a key global shipping route. Iran has attacked ships that try to pass without approval.

How do bookstores choose the books they stock, and how does that affect what customers read? It may not seem like it, but every shelf in a bookstore is a highly valuable and contested piece of commercial real estate.

Live event info and tickets here. If your company got bought by a private equity firm, how would you feel? Maybe a little nervous? You might find yourself wondering if there will be layoffs. And you’d be right to worry about that.

Live event info and tickets here.

Live event info and tickets here. For more than 60 years, Cuba has survived on two seemingly contradictory economic strategies: leaning on friendly communist and socialist countries, and flirting with capitalism. And right now it seems the US is making both strategies impossible.

LIVE SHOW TOUR INFO HERE. New stories, live tapings, special guests, book signings and more. What would you build on a piece of land when all the normal rules go out the window?

When you come across a book at a yard sale or a bookstore, you might pay more attention to the words between the covers than the physical form of the book itself. But content and the form are both crucial to a book’s success.

In the age of TikTok and Polymarket, it can be easy to overlook the humble book. But books are one of the most influential technologies ever invented. From “The Wealth of Nations” to “Das Kapital,” books have the power to shape whole economic systems… and everything else in our world.

The cardinal tetra is one of the most popular pet fish in the world. They look like little red and blue sequins. You've almost certainly seen them at the pet store or the fish tank at your dentist's office. They're everywhere.

Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen argues that we live in an increasingly gamified world where metrics and rankings distort what we value. Why optimizing for measurable outcomes makes us worse at the things that matter most.

Robby the chef has lots of endearing qualities. He can make over 5000 dishes, he’s a consistent cook, and he’s never late for work. But he’s not a human. It is a 750 lb. stainless steel robot. With a rotating wok at its center. It’s a wok-bot. Automation has changed many industries.

Live event info and tickets here. If something is going wrong in your workplace, there's probably a law that explains why. Meetings always seem long, and never end early?

What do we want from sports? The very best athletes competing as hard as they know how, putting all their effort and training and natural ability to the test against their opponents. But this time of year, that’s not the product the NBA is putting on the court.

Heated 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 creators Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady about their television miracle on ice.

The 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 re-enacting old experiments.

Live event info and tickets here. ICE is scaling up, with rapid new hiring. So we ask, has training new officers changed? At what cost?

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 struck down? Will anyone get refunds?

Book 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.

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.

Book 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 fight a war for it.

Planet Money investigates the corporate landlord narrative: institutional investors own a growing share of single-family homes, but are they really the primary driver of the housing crisis? The evidence is more nuanced than the headlines.

Book 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 caused, in part, by US sanctions. The US has been sanctioning Iran in one way or another for 47 years.

Planet 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 3 million cars will have been repossessed in 2025.

Book 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 Donald Trump seems to be focused on it, too.

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 housing buildings.

Book 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 might be a little bit of both.

Planet Money has teamed up with the company Exploding Kittens to make a board game inspired by the legendary economics paper The Market for Lemons.

Planet Money's annual tradition: updating listeners on stories they reported throughout the year. Follow-ups on the diamond mystery, the Gaza money story, the subscription economy, and the team's own book project — a creative meta-experiment in economics.

Planet Money takes listeners behind the scenes of manufacturing their book: paper sourcing from sustainable forests, printing negotiations in China vs. the US, ocean shipping, warehouse distribution, and the economics of why books cost $28 but the author gets $2.

Planet Money produces the definitive explainer on tariffs: who pays them (importers, not foreign countries), who benefits (protected domestic industries), who loses (consumers and non-protected industries), and what the historical evidence says about their effectiveness.

An estimated 3 million cars were repossessed in the US in 2025 — the highest number since 2009. Planet Money follows a repo agent on his nightly rounds and traces how pandemic-era car loans (low rates, high prices, loose standards) are now unwinding.

Planet Money examines HOPE VI — a federal program that demolished old public housing projects and replaced them with mixed-income developments. The promise: transform concentrated poverty. The reality: displaced residents rarely returned, and the new developments served wealthier residents.

Planet Money investigates why Reese's Peanut Butter Cups changed their recipe — replacing cocoa butter with cheaper vegetable oil — without telling consumers. The story reveals how food companies quietly reduce product quality to maintain margins, a practice called 'skimpflation.'

Planet Money updates their Venezuela hyperinflation story: from oil-fueled prosperity to economic collapse, hyperinflation that reached 1,000,000%, the introduction of the digital bolivar, and the political crisis between Maduro and opposition leader González.

Planet Money and The Indicator hosts compete to pick the most important economic indicators of 2024. Topics: the soft landing, consumer sentiment, Bitcoin, tariff speculation, and the labor market.

Planet Money and The Indicator's annual crossover: looking back at the indicators that defined 2024 (soft landing, AI investment, election uncertainty) and looking forward to 2025 (tariff impacts, AI adoption rates, housing market).

Cuba experiences its longest nationwide blackout in decades. Planet Money traces the cause: US sanctions prevent oil from reaching the island, Venezuela's collapse cut off Cuba's primary fuel supplier, and the aging power grid can't handle the load.

Planet Money examines the greedflation debate: did corporations cause inflation by raising prices beyond cost increases, or did supply constraints and demand spikes create the conditions for price increases?

Planet Money investigates the theft and international trafficking of sacred Bhairav masks from Nepalese temples. The story traces how colonial-era looting, Western museums, and the art market created an economics of cultural theft that persists today.

Planet Money revisits FTX two years after its collapse. The surprising twist: because crypto prices surged after FTX's bankruptcy, the estate now has enough assets to repay customers in full — with interest. The biggest financial fraud in history might have a happy ending.

Planet Money investigates the 'vibecession' — the paradox that economic indicators (unemployment, GDP, inflation) improved in 2023-2024 while consumer sentiment remained deeply negative. Why does a good economy feel bad?

Japan's central bank raises interest rates for the first time since 2007, ending negative interest rates. Planet Money explains how Japan's 30-year experiment with ultra-low rates reshaped the global economy — and why ending it sends shockwaves worldwide.