Planet Money

  • Two food and drink indicators

    Today on the show, we have two episodes from our daily podcast, The Indicator, about things we spend a lot of time thinking about this time of year: food and drink. First up, we explore…


  • Why are we so bummed about the economy?

    Would you say that you and your family are better off or worse off, financially, than you were a year ago? Do you think in 12 months we’ll have good times, financially, or bad? Generally…


  • So you want to sell marijuana across state lines

    In the state of Oregon, there is a glut of grass. A wealth of weed. A crisis of chronic. And, jokes aside, it’s a real problem for people who work in the cannabis industry like…


  • A very Planet Money Thanksgiving

    Here at Planet Money, Thanksgiving is not just a time to feast on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casseroles and pie(s). It’s also a time to feast on economics. Today, we host a very…


  • Economic fact in literary fiction

    Some of the most influential and beloved novels of the last few years have been about money, finance, and the global economy. Some overtly so, others more subtly. It got to the point where we…


  • China’s real estate crisis, explained

    China’s economic growth for the past few decades has been extraordinary. And much of that growth was fueled by real estate – it was like this miraculous economic engine for the country. But recently, that…


  • The alleged theft at the heart of ChatGPT

    When best-selling thriller writer Douglas Preston began playing around with OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT, he was, at first, impressed. But then he realized how much in-depth knowledge GPT had of the books he had written.…


  • Never have I ever

    The world of economics has these two different sides. One one side, there are the economists in their cozy armchairs and dusty libraries, high up in their ivory towers. On the other, there’s the messy…


  • FTC Chair Lina Khan on Antitrust in the age of Amazon

    When Lina Khan was in law school back in 2017, she wrote a law review article called ‘Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,’ that went kinda viral in policy circles. In it, she argued that antitrust enforcement in…


  • Antitrust in America (classic)

    Earlier this fall, the Federal Trade Commission filed a high-stakes lawsuit against Amazon. In that suit, the FTC claims Amazon is a monopoly, and it accuses the company of using anti-competitive tactics to hold onto…