Planet Money

  • The birth of the modern consumer movement

    Today on the show, the story of the modern consumer movement in the U.S. and the person who inspired it: Ralph Nader. How Ralph Nader’s battle in the 1960s set the stage for decades of…


  • Hire Power (Update)

    (Note: This episode originally ran in 2021.) Millions of American workers in all sorts of industries have signed some form of noncompete agreement. Their pervasiveness has led to situations where workers looking to change jobs…


  • The case of the stolen masks

    About thirty years ago, Yagya Kumar Pradhan woke up to the news that the temple he and his clan used had been broken into. The temple had been ransacked. And someone had stolen two holy…


  • How unions are stopped before they start (Update)

    (Note: This episode originally ran in 2023.) Union membership in the U.S. has been declining for decades. But, in 2022, support for unions among Americans was the highest it’s been in decades. This dissonance is…


  • FTX and the Serengeti of bankruptcy

    For the last year and a half, the story of FTX has focused largely on the crimes and punishment of Sam Bankman-Fried. But in the background, the actual customers he left behind have been caught…


  • Grocery prices, credit card debt, and your 401K (Two Indicators)

    What’s going on with consumers? This is one of the trickiest puzzles of this weird economic moment we’re in. We’ve covered a version of this before under the term “vibecession,” but it’s safe to say,…


  • TikTok made me deduct it

    TikTok, and other apps like it, are filled with financial advice. Some of it is reliable, some… less so. There are videos about running a business, having a side hustle, generating passive income. And also,…


  • How much does this cow weigh? (Classic)

    This episode originally ran in 2015. About one hundred years ago, a scientist and statistician named Francis Galston came upon an opportunity to test how well regular people were at answering a question. He was…


  • Japan’s Lost Decades

    Last month, Japan’s central bank raised interest rates for the first time in 17 years. That is a really big deal, because it means that one of the spookiest stories in modern economics might finally…


  • The real estate industry on trial

    In 2019, Mike Ketchmark got a call. Mike is a lawyer in Kansas City, Missouri, and his friend, Brandon Boulware, another lawyer, was calling about a case he wanted Mike to get involved with. Mike…


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