How the scratch off lottery changed America Americans spend more on scratch lottery tickets per year than on pizza. More than all Coca-Cola products. Yet the […]

How DeepSeek changed the market’s mind On Monday, the stock market went into a tizzy over a new AI model from Chinese company DeepSeek. It seemed to be just as […]

Re-imagining the energy grid … through batteries (Two Indicators) When it comes to solar and wind power, renewable energy has always had a caveat: it can only run when […]

The “chilling effect” of deportations After being sworn into office, President Trump signed a whole host of executive actions and orders that affirm his campaign […]

After the fires The fires in Los Angeles are almost out. Residents are starting to trickle back into their burned-out neighborhoods. When they get to their houses, […]

Tariffs, grocery prices and other listener questions Donald Trump is just about to begin his second presidency. And it may be safe to say that every single person […]

The Land of the Duty Free (classic) (Note: This episode originally ran in 2018.) Is it really cheaper to shop at an airport Duty Free store? And why are so many of […]

The case for Fed independence in the Nixon tapes You know Watergate, but do you know Fedgate? The more subtle scandal with more monetary policy and, arguably, much […]

ZIP Codes! The ZIP code is less like a cold, clinical, ordered list of numbers, and more like a weird overgrown number garden. It started as a way to organize mail […]

The potato-shaped loophole in free trade Ever since free trade opened up between the US and Mexico in the 1990s, trillions of dollars of goods have been going back […]

If AI is so good, why are there still so many jobs for translators? If you believe the hype, translators will all soon be out of work. Luis von Ahn, CEO and […]

The Rest of the Story, 2024 After the gift exchange comes another great holiday tradition: returns season. Once again, we are joining the fun in our own Planet […]

The Indicators of this year and next This year, there was some economic good news to go around. Inflation generally ticked down. Unemployment more or less held […]

The habitat banker Our planet is in serious trouble. There are a million species of plants and animals in danger of extinction, and the biggest cause is companies […]

How sports gambling blew up Sports gambling isn’t exactly a financial market, but it rhymes with financial markets. What happens on Wall Street somehow e […]

A Nobel prize for explaining why there’s global inequality Why do some nations fail and others succeed? In the late 1990s and early 2000s, three economists formed a […]

Worst. Tariffs. Ever. (update) The Smoot Hawley Tariffs were a debacle that helped plunge America into the Great Depression. What can we learn from them? Today on the […]

There Will Be Flood Windell Curole spent decades working to protect his community in southern Louisiana from the destructive flooding caused by hurricanes. His […]

George Soros vs. the Bank of England As people learn more about Donald Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, one story comes up over and over: a l […]

How useful, really, are the steps you can take after a data breach? The dreaded data breach notification… It tells you your personal data’s been compromised and sug […]