Planet Money

  • 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 scratch ticket as a consumer item has only existed for fifty years. Not so long ago,…


  • 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 powerful as many of its American competitors, but its makers claimed…


  • 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 wind blows or the sun shines. The idea of a battery was floated around…


  • 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 promise to crack down on immigration. Trump’s border czar has said Chicago is at the…


  • 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, they face a series of almost impossible questions: Do we want…


  • 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 in America has at least one question about what’s to come in the next…


  • 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 them alike? In the 1940s, if you were flying from…


  • 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 higher stakes. In today’s episode, we listen back through the Nixon White House tapes to search…


  • 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 after WWII, but now it pops…


  • 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 and forth between the two countries, from cars to strawberries to MRI…


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