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 h […]

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 […]

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 s […]

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 […]

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 i […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 b […]

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 […]

How much national debt is too much? Most economic textbooks will tell you that there can be real dangers in running up a big national debt. A major concern is how […]

The history of light (classic) For thousands of years, getting light was a huge hassle. You had to make candles from scratch. This is not as romantic as it sounds. […]

How the FBI’s fake cell phone company put criminals into real jail cells There is a constant arms race between law enforcement and criminals, especially when it […]

So you’ve been scammed, now what? We are living in a kind of golden age for online fraudsters. As the number of apps and services for storing and sending money has […]

The junkyard economist On today’s episode, we ride through the streets of San Francisco with a long-time junkman, Jon Rolston. Jon has spent the last two d […]

Anatomy of a layoff By one estimate, 40 percent of American workers get laid off at least once in their careers. And when that happens, companies will often say, […]

The hack that almost broke the internet Last month, the world narrowly avoided a cyberattack of stunning ambition. The targets were some of the most important […]

Why Gold? (Classic) In the past few months, the price of gold has gone way up – even hitting a new high last month at just over $2,400 per troy ounce. Gold has l […]

Zombie mortgages are coming back to life Karen McDonough of Quincy, Mass., was enjoying her tea one morning in the dining room when she saw something odd outside […]

Inside video game economics (Two Indicators) Why do video game workers offer labor at a discount? How can you design a video game for blind and sighted players? Does […]