CBOhhhh, that’s what they doIf you are a congressperson or a senator and you have an idea for a new piece of legislation, at some point someone will have to tell […]

Meow Money Meow ProblemsMore than 20 years ago, something unusual happened in the small town of Dixfield, Maine. A lady named Barbara Thorpe had left almost all […]

Hollywood’s Black List (Classic)This episode originally ran in 2020. In 2005, Franklin Leonard was a junior executive at Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company. A b […]

Jay & Shai’s debt ceiling adventureEvery year, the U.S. government spends more money than it takes in. In order to fund all that spending, the country takes on debt. […]

Two Indicators: Inside the Fed, then and nowA lot of the time, economic policy can seem pretty impersonal — cold, hard, data-driven. But at the heart of the F […]

Our 2023 valentinesEvery Valentine’s Day, we at Planet Money consider the things that we love, the things that we can’t stop talking about, the things that get […]

The ice cream conspiracyTake a look in any supermarket ice cream freezer section and you may see a mystery. There are big containers of the typical ice cream […]

Baby’s first market failureAnyone who has tried shopping for day care knows that it is tough out there. For one, it is hard even to get your hands on information […]

Groundhog Day 2023It’s Groundhog Day, and once again, the eyes of the nation have turned to a small town in Western Pennsylvania. Every February 2nd, the only s […]

To all the econ papers I’ve loved beforeA great economics paper does two things. It takes on a big question, and it finds a smart way to answer that question. But […]

The story of “Monopoly” and American capitalismMonopoly is one of the best-selling board games in history. The game’s staying power may in part be because of s […]

Charles Ponzi’s schemeSome of history’s biggest financial scams owe their name to Charles Ponzi. Here’s the story of the man behind the eponymous sch […]

Big Rigged (Classic)Driving a truck used to mean freedom. Now it means a mountain of debt. Subscribe to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at […]

Two Indicators: The 2% inflation targetIf the Fed had a mantra to go along with its mandate, it might well be “two percent.” We look into how that became the tar […]

Planet Money Movie Club: It’s a Wonderful LifeWelcome to the Planet Money Movie Club, a regular series from Planet Money+ in which we watch an economics-related […]

Two Indicators shaking China’s economyXi Jinping recently secured his third term as China’s president – so we’re looking at two shocks to the world’s second- […]

Planet Money Records Vol. 2: The NegotiationWe got our hands on the long-lost “Inflation” song, and now it’s time to put it out into the world. So, we started a rec […]

Planet Money Records Vol. 1: Earnest JacksonWe try to start a real record label. Just to put one song out there. It’s a song about inflation, recorded in 1975… and […]

The high cost of a strong dollarWhen it comes to international trade and finance, everyone pretty much speaks one language: the U.S. dollar. So when the Federal […]

The money fixers (classic)How do you mend a broken bill? On this classic episode, we visit the Mutilated Currency Division. Subscribe to Planet Money+ in Apple […]