Planet Money

One week ago, President Trump announced a deal that would give the “U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer.”The exact nature of this deal has been … obscure, to say the least. But today, we wanted to k

To a lot of people, Palantir is a mystery — what does the company know, what data do they have, and (if they have it) what do they do with it all? We dig into that mystery and take you to a singles event to see if Big Data is good for Big Dating.That event, deep in the heart of M

The brilliance of "9 to 5" is that it is catchy even though it’s also kinda depressing. You will be dancing along. You're enjoying it. And, then when you really listen to the lyrics, you're like, Wait, this is messed up. This is real. This is a problem we need to fix. Like, why d

The produce aisle is changing. You’ve noticed this, I’m sure. It is now full of superstar fruits and vegetables: The Honeycrisp apple, The Cotton Candy grape, The Cuties mandarin orange. They stand out. They cost more. They have branding and sometimes trademarks and patent-ish ki

This episode is packed with your best economic ideas from around the world and a penguin interview. It all comes together in this final session of Summer School 2026.Pack your parka, we’re headed to Antarctica.First, we’ll travel back in time to the late 1970s when NPR was a scra

There’s a room where the fates of retail products are decided. Will they make it onto the shelves of the big box stores? Usually the rest of us can’t get inside the room where decisions are made – until now! Today on the show, we pitch the Planet Money game, Sell Me a Sasquatch,

This week’s stop on our world tour - Korea. A country divided into two very different power structures since the end of WWII. Today South Korea is the maker of some of the world’s favorite exports – from Samsung TV’s to BTS. But 75 years ago it was a much different story. How the

Some of the biggest firms on Wall Street are, at this very moment, waiting for thousands of strangers to die to reap their returns. Because there’s a market for life insurance policies. And it’s legal.You don’t have to actually die to get some of your life insurance money. Thanks

Just about everyone in Argentina is an expert in inflation and whether they like it or not, economic flexibility. Can we learn from them? Over the years, we at Planet Money have checked in on Argentina as it tried to recover from economic collapse in 2001 and 2002, and as inflati

When workers past retirement age can’t afford to retire — that’s one thing. When they can, and just don’t want to — that’s trickier.It used to be legal to force people to retire when they hit a certain age. The trend used to be earlier and earlier retirement. Now it’s later and l

Imagine a nation where, for the residents, land is for the claiming. You walk down the street, pick out a nice looking plot of land, and just plop down a marker. No rent, no taxes, no deed – just free land. That’s the communal system of property rights that governed a small Carib

Squishy, slimy, fidgety toys are having a moment. But it’s more than just an anxiety-soothing, social-media fueled trend – these toys are reshaping how toys get made.Today on the show, we have the story of the once-humble squishy dumpling and what it teaches us about how to make