Planet Money

Companies are getting billions of dollars back. How about us? It seems simple, right? We paid higher prices for imported goods because of tariffs. Then the tariffs were ruled illegal. Courts said the money paid to the...

Charles Ponzi was down on his luck. In 1919, the Italian immigrant had spent a decade and a half in the U.S. He was looking for a way to get rich and tried his hand at everything — including bookkeeping, sign painting...

It's getting pretty wild in the beverage aisle these days — from the rainbow wall of seltzers, to the increasingly strange flavors of Pepsi, to the new "functional" sodas with added fiber or supplements that supposedly...

Very soon, Social Security may not have enough money to make full payments to retirees. Very soon. Like by 2032, just six years from now. So what are we gonna do about it? Today on the show, we look at some of the most...

Wanna know who is really in the top 1%? And how they use their influence? It may not be who you think. Look beyond Silicon Valley. Look beyond Wall Street. Look beyond the “oligarchs”. There's a much larger class of...

(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2024 .) $40,000,000,000,000. Four commas. Thirteen zeroes. It’s an eye-popping, almost infinite-sounding pile of money. And every time the debt passes a big round...

Did a pizza restaurant’s humble status page change how we wait forever? When you order a Lyft or Uber, you get texts every few minutes about your car approaching and arriving. When you have a package coming, you get a...

Margin borrowing and sports gambling “investments” are both on the rise! Today on the show, two stories from Planet Money’s daily podcast The Indicator about the ways investing is changing, and getting riskier...

There is a new type of loan that is sweeping through the country right now. It’s advertised as a super quick and super easy way to get a mortgage to buy a home. In recent years, Wall Street has been funneling billions...

In this economy it is boom times and doom times all at once. The statistics aren’t really capturing it. K-shaped only goes so far as a metaphor. So … we asked you to help. And you delivered! One one hand, the stock...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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. The...