Planet Money

  • George Soros vs. the Bank of England

    As people learn more about Donald Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, one story comes up over and over: a legendary trade that he played a small part in while he worked at George…


  • How useful, really, are the steps you can take after a data breach?

    The dreaded data breach notification… It tells you your personal data’s been compromised and suggests steps you can take to minimize the potential harm. On today’s episode, Kenny Malone pulls out a data breach letter…


  • Why you bought your couch

    You probably own a chair or a table or a sofa. And you probably think you know why you bought it. Because it was comfy. Or blue. Or the right price. But what if the…


  • Title Pirates

    A couple years ago, Gina Leto, a real estate developer, bought a property with her business partner. The process went like it usually did: Lots of paperwork; a virtual closing. Pretty cut-and-dry. Gina and her…


  • The long view of economics and immigration (Two Indicators)

    Mass deportations. What would actually happen—economically—if the President-elect follows through on promises to deport millions of people from America. We don’t have to guess. Today we have two stories from Planet Money’s daily podcast, The…


  • The great German land lottery

    Every ten years, a group of German farmers gather in the communal farm fields of the Osing for the Osingverlosung, a ritual dating back centuries. Osing refers to the area. And verlosung means “lottery,” as…


  • The strange way the world’s fastest microchips are made

    This is the story behind one of the most valuable — and perhaps, most improbable — technologies humanity has ever created. It’s a breakthrough called extreme ultraviolet lithography, and it’s how the most advanced microchips…


  • What markets bet President Trump will do

    On the day after the election, Wall Street responded in a dramatic way. Some stocks went way up, others went way down. By reading those signals — by breaking down what people were buying and…


  • Moving to the American dream? (update)

    Back in the 90s, the federal government ran a bold experiment, giving people vouchers to move out of high-poverty neighborhoods into low-poverty ones. They wanted to test if housing policy could be hope – whether…


  • The veteran loan calamity

    Ray and Becky Queen live in rural Oklahoma with their kids (and chickens). The Queens were able to buy that home with a VA loan because of Ray’s service in the Army. During COVID, the…


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