Indicators of the Year, Past and Future
Episode Date: December 31, 20252025 is finally over. It was a wild year for the U.S. economy. Tariffs transformed global trading, consumer sentiment hit near-historic lows, and stoc...
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535 episodes transcribed2025 is finally over. It was a wild year for the U.S. economy. Tariffs transformed global trading, consumer sentiment hit near-historic lows, and stoc...
With the year coming to a close, we're sharing our most popular Planet Money bonus episode of 2025! As U.S. trade with China exploded in the early 200...
Most stories keep going even after we set down our microphones and the music fades up. That's why, at the end of each year, we look back and we take s...
On the eve of Netflix shoveling a fourish-hour chunk of Stranger Things onto Christmas Day, we visit the past, present, and future of binge-dropped te...
As a country, we are spending more to get data centers up and running than we spent to build the entire interstate highway system. (Yes, that’s inflat...
Welcome to the inaugural Planet Money Pop Culture Draft! In today's episode (a Planet Money+ episode we’re releasing into the main feed) we're gonna g...
In 2008, Chicago’s budget was in a bad place. The city needed money. One way to raise money was to increase property taxes, but what politician wants...
From nuclear fission to GPS to the internet, it’s common knowledge that many of the most resource intensive technologies of the last century got their...
A few years ago, the Jamaican government started making an unusual financial bet. It went to investors around the world asking if they'd like to wager...
Vote for us in NPR’s People’s Choice Awards: npr.org/peopleschoice AI is already reshaping how people find work. Fewer entry-level jobs, robot recruit...
Taylor Swift reaches new heights with her latest album, which is both divisive and record-breaking. And it’s fueled by an elaborate series of business...
Givewell is a nonprofit organization that gives money to “save or improve the most lives per dollar.” Part of their whole thing is a rigorous research...
Wherever consumer sentiment goes, consumer spending usually goes too. They’re like buddies that do everything together. Consumer sentiment wants a hai...
Tariffs. They’ve been announced, unannounced, re-announced, raised and lowered. It’s an on-going saga with billions at stake!On today’s episode, we ru...
Last month, during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the United States had offered to f...
(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2022.)Every time you shop online and make it to the checkout screen, you see those colorful pastel...
When people in Maine prisons started getting laptops to use in their cells for online classes and homework, it sparked this new idea. Could they have...
People in the U.S. are feeling the financial squeeze, in part because of rising inflation, higher consumer prices and slowing job growth. The Indicato...
This week’s SNAP crisis is just a preview. Tucked inside the giant tax-cut and spending bill signed by President Donald Trump this summer are enormous...
For decades, the U.S. has been the single biggest source of remittances worldwide. A remittance is a transfer of money, typically from an immigrant to...