Planet Money

When you sit down to watch the Oscars, what you are really watching is the final battle in a months-long war of financial engineering and campaign strategy. Because in Hollywood, every year is an election…

Dynamic pricing is an increasingly common phenomenon: You can see it when Uber prices surge during rainy weather, or when you’re booking a flight at the last minute or buying tickets to your favorite superstar’s…

It is so expensive to have a kid in the United States. The U.S. is one of just a handful of countries worldwide with no federal paid parental leave; it offers functionally no public childcare…

Fundraising is a staple of the school experience in the U.S. There’s an assembly showing off all the prizes kids can win by selling enough wrapping paper or chocolate to their neighbors. But it’s pretty…

Réka Juhász is a professor of economics at the University of British Columbia, and she studies what’s known as industrial policy. That’s the general term for whenever the government tries to promote specific sectors of…

The Department of Defense’s proposed budget for 2024 is $842 billion. That is about 3.5% of the U.S.’s GDP. The military buys everything from pens and paper clips to fighter jets and submarines. But the…

The Genco Picardy is not an American ship. It doesn’t pay U.S. taxes, none of its crew are U.S. nationals, and when it sailed through the Red Sea last month, it wasn’t carrying cargo to…

L, is for the way you Listen to Planet MoneyO, is for the Only podcast I hearV, is Very, very, fiduciaryE, is for… ECONOMICS! Every February, we dedicate a show to the things in our…

Keith King was upset when his marriage ended. His wife had cheated, and his family broke apart. And that’s when he learned about a very old type of lawsuit, called a heart balm tort. A…

There are tons of markets that don’t exist because people just don’t want to allow a market – for whatever reason, people feel icky about putting a price on something. For example: Surrogacy is a…