The U.S. is the world’s bribery cop. Is that about to change?The U.S. has been policing bribery all over the world for nearly half a century using a law called the […]

Jay & Shai’s debt ceiling adventure (Update)Note: A version of this episode first ran in 2023. Every year, the U.S. government spends more money than it takes in. In […]

Why I joined DOGEWhat was it like to work inside Elon Musk’s DOGE? The cost-cutting initiative promised transparency, but most of its actions have been shrouded i […]

Are Trump’s tariffs legal?When President Trump announced his sweeping new tariffs this year, many trade law experts were startled. Typically, presidents don’t h […]

When Chinese manufacturing met Small Town, USAOver the past decade, politicians from both parties have courted American voters with an enticing economic prospect […]

Trump’s crypto interests (Two Indicators)Today on the show – our crypto president. Just before President Donald Trump began his second administration in January, h […]

The U.S.-China trade war, according to game theoryOver the last few months U.S.-China trade relations have been pretty hard to make sense of – unless you look at w […]

Why does the government fund research at universities?American universities are where people go to learn and teach. They’re also where research and development h […]

The secret world behind those scammy text messagesYou might have seen these texts before. The scam starts innocently enough. Maybe it’s a “Long time no see” or “H […]

How economists (and TikTok) know if a recession is comingLately we’ve noticed that something we think about all the time here at Planet Money is having a viral m […]

The 145% tariff already did its damageEven though the 145% tariff on Chinese imports only lasted a month, it already inflicted its scars on the economy. Global […]

What happened to U.S. farmers during the last trade warThe U.S. exports billions of dollars worth of agricultural products each year — things like soybeans, corn a […]

Is the reign of the dollar over?For decades, dollars have been the world’s common financial language. Central banks everywhere hold dollars as a way to safely s […]

What “Made in China” actually meansVirtually every product brought into the United States must have a so-called “country of origin.” Think of it as the official pla […]

Why it’s so hard to find a public toiletWhy is it so hard to find a bathroom when you need one? In the U.S., we used to have lots of publicly accessible toilets. […]

Planet Money complains. To learn.On today’s show: we’re … venting. We at Planet Money are an ensemble show – each with different curiosities and styles. But we rece […]

How 23andMe’s bankruptcy led to a run on the gene bankReporter Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi’s Aunt Vovi signed up for 23andMe back in 2017, hoping to learn more about t […]

A primer on the Federal Reserve’s independencePresident Donald Trump has been loudly critical of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for years now. Since January, […]

How much for that eggRecently, one of our NPR colleagues wrote a message to all of NPR saying he had extra eggs to sell for cheap, but needed a fair way to […]

OIRA: The tiny office that’s about to remake the federal governmentOIRA — the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — is an obscure, but powerful federal off […]