The birth of the modern consumer movement Today on the show, the story of the modern consumer movement in the U.S. and the person who inspired it: Ralph Nader. How […]

Hire Power (Update) (Note: This episode originally ran in 2021.) Millions of American workers in all sorts of industries have signed some form of noncompete […]

The case of the stolen masks About thirty years ago, Yagya Kumar Pradhan woke up to the news that the temple he and his clan used had been broken into. The temple […]

How unions are stopped before they start (Update) (Note: This episode originally ran in 2023.) Union membership in the U.S. has been declining for decades. But, in […]

FTX and the Serengeti of bankruptcy For the last year and a half, the story of FTX has focused largely on the crimes and punishment of Sam Bankman-Fried. But in […]

Grocery prices, credit card debt, and your 401K (Two Indicators) What’s going on with consumers? This is one of the trickiest puzzles of this weird economic moment w […]

TikTok made me deduct it TikTok, and other apps like it, are filled with financial advice. Some of it is reliable, some… less so. There are videos about running a […]

How much does this cow weigh? (Classic) This episode originally ran in 2015. About one hundred years ago, a scientist and statistician named Francis Galston came upon […]

Japan’s Lost Decades Last month, Japan’s central bank raised interest rates for the first time in 17 years. That is a really big deal, because it means that one o […]

The real estate industry on trial In 2019, Mike Ketchmark got a call. Mike is a lawyer in Kansas City, Missouri, and his friend, Brandon Boulware, another lawyer, […]

How much of your tax dollars are going to Israel and Ukraine There’s been a lot of disagreement in Congress and in the country about whether the U.S. should c […]

The trouble with Table 101 (Update) (Note: This episode originally ran in 2020.) In the restaurant game, you need to make the most of every table every minute you […]

What is Temu? It is rare that a new e-commerce company has such a meteoric rise as Temu. The company, which launched in the fall of 2022, has been flooding the […]

How Big Steel in the U.S. fell Steel manufacturing was at one point the most important industry in the United States. It was one of the biggest employers, a driver […]

The billion dollar war behind U.S. rum When you buy a bottle of rum in the United States, by law nearly all the federal taxes on that rum must be sent to Puerto […]

Wind boom, wind bust (Two Windicators) The wind power business is a bit contradictory right now. It’s showing signs of boom and bust seemingly all at once. The s […]

On the Oscars campaign trail When you sit down to watch the Oscars, what you are really watching is the final battle in a months-long war of financial engineering […]

Is dynamic pricing coming to a supermarket near you? Dynamic pricing is an increasingly common phenomenon: You can see it when Uber prices surge during rainy […]

Shopping for parental benefits around the world It is so expensive to have a kid in the United States. The U.S. is one of just a handful of countries worldwide […]

The secret world behind school fundraisers Fundraising is a staple of the school experience in the U.S. There’s an assembly showing off all the prizes kids can w […]