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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Wherever consumer sentiment goes, consumer spending usually goes too. They’re like buddies that do everything together. Consumer sentiment wants a hair cut, ...

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 ...

Last month, during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the United States had offered to ...

(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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The U.S. Constitution famously outlaws “cruel and unusual punishments.” But there’s another, far more obscure part of the Constitution called the ...

When TikTok videos started to go viral on Instagram and Reddit, TikTok turned to professional sound designers to protect their content. More and more companies ...

Bjarne Caesar Skinnerup works as a maritime pilot in the straits of Denmark. That means he’s used to seeing oil tankers. But after the start of the war in ...

In 1975, New York City ran out of money. For a decade it had managed to pay for its hundreds of thousands of city employees and robust social services by ...

The U.S. government spends a ton of money, on everything from Medicare to roads to defense. In fact, it spends way more than it takes in. So…it borrows money, ...

Pre-order the Planet Money book here for your free gift.  Our sister show, The Indicator, is chronicling the evolving business of crime for its Vice Week ...