Planet Money

  • Should we all be getting tariff refunds right now?

    Companies are getting billions of dollars back. How about us?  It seems simple, right? We paid higher prices for imported goods because of tariffs. Then the tariffs were ruled illegal. Courts said the money paid…

  • Charles Ponzi’s scheme (plus a new scam)

    Charles Ponzi was down on his luck. In 1919, the Italian immigrant had spent a decade and a half in the U.S. He was looking for a way to get rich and tried his hand…

  • Where all those weird new drinks are coming from

    It’s getting pretty wild in the beverage aisle these days — from the rainbow wall of seltzers, to the increasingly strange flavors of Pepsi, to the new “functional” sodas with added fiber or supplements that…

  • Who’s gonna pay for your Social Security?

    Very soon, Social Security may not have enough money to make full payments to retirees. Very soon. Like by 2032, just six years from now. So what are we gonna do about it?  Today on…

  • Middlegarchs are the new Oligarchs

    Wanna know who is really in the top 1%? And how they use their influence? It may not be who you think. Look beyond Silicon Valley. Look beyond Wall Street. Look beyond the “oligarchs”. There’s…

  • Is our national debt finally too much? (update)

    (Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2024.) $40,000,000,000,000. Four commas. Thirteen zeroes. It’s an eye-popping, almost infinite-sounding pile of money. And every time the debt passes a big round number, almost everyone…

  • The Domino’s Pizza Tracker Theory of Everything

    Did a pizza restaurant’s humble status page change how we wait forever?  When you order a Lyft or Uber, you get texts every few minutes about your car approaching and arriving. When you have a…

  • How investing is getting riskier (Two Indicators)

    Margin borrowing and sports gambling “investments” are both on the rise! Today on the show, two stories from Planet Money’s daily podcast The Indicator about the ways investing is changing, and getting riskier. According to…

  • The loan at the heart of a new foreclosure crisis

    There is a new type of loan that is sweeping through the country right now. It’s advertised as a super quick and super easy way to get a mortgage to buy a home. In recent…

  • Cost-cutting, quiet guilt and the inflation generation

    In this economy it is boom times and doom times all at once. The statistics aren’t really capturing it. K-shaped only goes so far as a metaphor. So … we asked you to help. And…

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