When economists and policymakers talk about getting inflation under control, there's an assumption they often make: bringing inflation down will probably result in some degree of layoffs and job loss. But that is not the way things have played out since inflation spiked last year. Instead, so far, inflation has come down, and unemployment has stayed low. So where does the idea of this tradeoff – between inflation and unemployment – come from? That story starts in the 1940s, with a soft-spoken el...
Sep 08, 2023•23 min•Ep 1674•Transcript available on Metacast In 1981, photographer Lynn Goldsmith took a portrait of the musician Prince. It's a pretty standard headshot — it's in black-and-white, and Prince is staring down the camera lens. This was early in his career, when he was still building the pop icon reputation he would have today. And in 1984, shortly after Prince had released Purple Rain , he was chosen to grace the cover of Vanity Fair. The magazine commissioned pop culture icon Andy Warhol to make a portrait of Prince for the cover. He used L...
Sep 06, 2023•29 min•Ep 1673•Transcript available on Metacast Back in the 1990s, Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar was in his office in New Delhi when he came across a puzzling story in the newspaper. Some university scientists in the U.S. had apparently filed a patent for using turmeric to help heal wounds. Mashelkar was shocked, because he knew that using turmeric that way was a well known remedy in traditional Indian medicine. And he knew that patents are for brand new inventions. So, he decided to do something about it – to go to battle against the turmeric pate...
Sep 01, 2023•25 min•Ep 1672•Transcript available on Metacast Congratulations to the Planet Money Summer School Class of 2023! Today, you become masters of business administration... spelled with lower-case letters for legal purposes. Your diploma is waiting for you just across the stage. But first, there's one final skill to impart: the pitch. We wouldn't be doing our job as a half-baked parody of a business school if we didn't leave you with the confidence and opportunity to stand in front of an investor and ask for money. We understand what you ambitiou...
Aug 30, 2023•32 min•Ep 1671•Transcript available on Metacast Across Hollywood right now, writers and actors are picketing in front of studio lots. They're walking back and forth, holding up signs demanding concessions on things like pay, how many writers work on projects, and the use of AI in TV and movies. But, on some of these lots, there are these strange alternate entrances where there are no picketers. Here drivers can come and go as they please without ever encountering any sign of a strike. Behold the neutral gate. An entrance intended for people w...
Aug 26, 2023•22 min•Ep 1670•Transcript available on Metacast How do you get the best deal? How do you know you're getting the best deal? Whether you're talking down the price of a car or talking up your salary, you don't have to be a jerk to get what you want. Negotiations can be win-win – if you know what to ask for and how to grow the pie. We have three stories in today's episode about how to negotiate tactically. First, a hostage negotiator tries to buy a car. Will he get far? Then, one man's encounter at the airline ticket booth may inform how you res...
Aug 23, 2023•34 min•Ep 1669•Transcript available on Metacast Do you work more for more money? Or work less for more time? For some, this is the ultimate economic choice. Every single worker in the European Union is guaranteed four weeks of paid vacation. No matter how long they've been at a company. No matter how low paying the job is. Vacation is a right. In fact, all but one of the richest countries in the world guarantees paid vacation, except: the U.S. According to a 2019 study, people in Japan get 10 paid vacation days and 15 paid holidays; in Austra...
Aug 18, 2023•25 min•Ep 1668•Transcript available on Metacast "It's difficult to control everything," says our guest professor for this week, Santiago Gallino. "What is not difficult is to plan for everything." Today we venture into the sphere of business that masters the planning, and backup planning: operations management. It's more than just predicting a bottleneck and imagining a solution, because there's always a bottleneck to clear. It's about modeling, and weighing the costs of messing up vs. missing out. For instance, take a newspaper vendor who ha...
Aug 16, 2023•32 min•Ep 1667•Transcript available on Metacast This summer, the Supreme Court struck down Biden's plan to forgive student loan debt for millions of borrowers. Except, on the same day Biden first announced that plan, he also unveiled another, the SAVE plan. And though SAVE sounded less significant than Biden's big forgiveness pledge, it's still alive and could erase even more student debt. SAVE is officially a loan repayment plan. But through a few seemingly minor yet powerful provisions, many more low-income borrowers will end up paying litt...
Aug 11, 2023•27 min•Ep 1666•Transcript available on Metacast For anyone running a business, technology is both threat and opportunity. Today, we run through techniques entrepreneurs can use to take advantage of new tech or defend against the dangers. It's not just about the product you're selling. It's about consumer psychology, and ethics, and taking calculated risks to navigate uncertainty. But, since this is Planet Money Summer School and we want to set your business on the path to riches, we're going to talk about how to use tech to dream big. Maybe m...
Aug 09, 2023•34 min•Ep 1665•Transcript available on Metacast Predicting the future of the economy is always a dicey proposition. That is especially true after more than three years of pandemic-related economic weirdness. No one quite knows what will happen next. Will the Fed be able to pull off a soft landing and bring down inflation without causing either a recession or a big jump in unemployment? Or will we end up with a hard landing, in which inflation comes down, but at the price of the country's economic health? Or, a third possibility, will the Fed ...
Aug 04, 2023•26 min•Ep 1664•Transcript available on Metacast In this session of Planet Money Summer School, we are getting the word out about your brand. How do you convince consumers to buy your product, even if they are only just hearing about it? It's time for sales and marketing! If you've watched a show like Mad Men or The Office , you know the importance of a strong pitch. It's precision-crafted to show how what you're selling can solve a problem your customer needs solved. Sometimes it even creates the need. Once you've got your sales pitch, it's t...
Aug 02, 2023•33 min•Ep 1663•Transcript available on Metacast There's an estimated $195 billion of medical debt in America. But just because a medical bill comes in the mail doesn't mean you have to pay that exact price. In this special episode from our friends at Life Kit, you'll learn how to eliminate, reduce or negotiate a medical bill. If you liked this episode, you can check out more Life Kit here . They have episodes on how to choose a bank , and how to save money at the grocery store . This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglis. Their v...
Jul 31, 2023•18 min•Ep 1662•Transcript available on Metacast Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino are two of the biggest stars in behavioral science. Both have conducted blockbuster research into how to make people more honest, research we've highlighted on Planet Money . The two worked together on a paper about how to "nudge" people to be more honest on things like forms or tax returns. Their trick: move the location where people attest that they have filled in a form honestly from the bottom of the form to the top. But recently, questions have arisen about whe...
Jul 28, 2023•26 min•Ep 1661•Transcript available on Metacast Usually, the first class that an MBA student takes is accounting. That involves, yes, equations and counting widgets...but it's more than that. Inside the simple act of accounting is a revolutionary way of thinking not just about a business, but about the world. A universe where all the forces are in balance. Accounting gives you a sixth sense–one that can help you determine whether your business will survive or fail. In this class, you'll learn the basics of accounting, and uncover its origins....
Jul 26, 2023•35 min•Ep 1660•Transcript available on Metacast We here at Planet Money love economics papers. And that is also the case for so many of the economists we speak with. For them, new research can explain something they have always wondered about, or make them see something they have never noticed before. And it inspires their own work. So, to bring that same sense of discovery to you, the listener, today we are dedicating our show to a special experiment. A new way to share some of the most fascinating, clever and surprising economics papers in ...
Jul 21, 2023•23 min•Ep 1659•Transcript available on Metacast For episode 2 of Planet Money Summer School, we are talking strategy. You have your million dollar business idea, and maybe some money in your pocket to get it up and running. But now you enter into a crowded market. You have to deal with competition. So, what can you do to make sure your product is a success? That was the conundrum facing the Starbury . It was a basketball shoe with a celebrity endorsement, that had to go up against THE basketball shoe with THE celebrity endorsement: the Air Jo...
Jul 19, 2023•31 min•Ep 1658•Transcript available on Metacast When you make an account online or install an app, you are probably entering into a legally enforceable contract. Even if you never signed anything. These days, we enter into these contracts so often, it can feel like no big deal. But then there are the horror stories like Greg Selden's. He tried to sue AirBnB for racial discrimination while using their site. But he had basically signed away his ability to sue AirBnB when he made an account. That agreement was tucked away in a little red link, s...
Jul 15, 2023•24 min•Ep 1657•Transcript available on Metacast Find all episodes of Planet Money Summer School here . Planet Money Summer School is back! It's the free economics class you can take from anywhere... for everyone! For Season 4 of Summer School, we are taking you to business school. It's time to get your MBA, the easy way! In this first class: Everyone has a million dollar business idea (e.g., "Shazam but for movies"), but not everyone has what it takes to be an entrepreneur. We have two stories about founders who learned the hard way what goes...
Jul 12, 2023•32 min•Ep 1656•Transcript available on Metacast When it comes to big questions about the economy, we're still kind of in the dark ages. Why do some economies grow so much faster than others? How long is the next recession going to last? How do we stop inflation without wrecking the rest of the economy? These questions are the domain of macroeconomics. But even some macroeconomists themselves admit: While we have many theories about how the economy works, we have very few satisfying answers. Emi Nakamura wants to change all that. She's a super...
Jul 07, 2023•19 min•Ep 1655•Transcript available on Metacast Two stories today. First, as we start to understand post-affirmative action America, we look to a natural experiment 25 years ago, when California ended the practice in public universities. It reshaped the makeup of the universities almost instantly. We find out what happened in the decades that followed. Then, we ask, why does it cost so much for America to build big things, like subways. Compared to other wealthy nations, the costs of infrastructure projects in the U.S. are astronomical. We ta...
Jul 05, 2023•20 min•Ep 1654•Transcript available on Metacast Back in the 90s, Ivan Lozano Ortega was in charge of Bogota's wildlife rescue center. And he kept getting calls from the airport to come deal with... frogs. Hundreds of brightly colored, poisonous frogs. Ivan had stumbled upon the poisonous frog black market. Tens of thousands of frogs were being poached out of the Colombian rainforest and sold to collectors all around the world by smugglers. And it put these endangered frogs at risk of going extinct. Today on the show, how Ivan tried to put an ...
Jun 30, 2023•29 min•Ep 1653•Transcript available on Metacast The shocks of the pandemic economy gave us a bunch of enormous natural experiments, which helped to prove or disprove conventional economic thinking. Take, for example, the bullwhip effect , the idea that the further away from the customer you are in the supply chain, the more volatile your orders are likely to be. This theory played out at an enormous scale, in the pandemic. Consumers and companies overreacted to the risk of shortages by ordering more products and hoarding them, causing massive...
Jun 28, 2023•24 min•Ep 1652•Transcript available on Metacast In 1978, a young man named Mike Shanks started a moving business in the north end of Seattle. It was just him and a truck — a pretty small operation. Things were going great. Then one afternoon, he was pulled over and cited for moving without a permit. The investigators who cited him were part of a special unit tasked with enforcing utilities and transportation regulations. Mike calls them the furniture police . To legally be a mover, Mike needed a license. Otherwise, he'd face fines — and even ...
Jun 23, 2023•26 min•Ep 1651•Transcript available on Metacast Twins are used to fielding all sorts of questions, like "Can you read each other's minds?" or "Can you feel each other's pain?" Two of our Planet Money reporters are twins, and they have heard them all. But it's not just strangers on the street who are fascinated by twins. Scientists have been studying twins since the 1800s, trying to get at one of humanity's biggest questions: How much of what we do and how we are is encoded in our genes? The answer to this has all kinds of implications, for ev...
Jun 21, 2023•21 min•Ep 1650•Transcript available on Metacast People come from all over the world to work in U.S. tech. And during the tech boom years, the industry relied heavily on foreign workers. This is how we built Silicon Valley – with great minds coming from everywhere to work in the U.S. But when the industry started to shrink, all of these people who moved here for work are finding that linking their jobs to their residency is really complicated. That was the case for Aashka and Nilanjan. Aashka was a product engineer at Amazon, and Nilanjan work...
Jun 16, 2023•26 min•Ep 1649•Transcript available on Metacast Innovation is crucial for game-changing advancements in society, whether it's treatments for serious diseases, developments in AI technology, or rocket science. Today on the show, we're airing two episodes from our daily economics show The Indicator. First, a new paper suggests that breakthrough innovations are more likely at smaller, younger companies. We talk to an inventor who left a big pharmaceutical company to start afresh, leading to some incredible treatments for serious diseases. Then, ...
Jun 14, 2023•20 min•Ep 1648•Transcript available on Metacast In the early 90s, when a young economist named Michael Kremer finished his PhD, there had been a few economic studies based on randomized trials. But they were rare. In part because randomized trials – in which you recruit two statistically identical groups, choose one of them to get a treatment, and then compare what happens to each group – are expensive, and they take a lot of time. But then, by chance, Michael had the opportunity to run a randomized trial in Busia, Kenya. He helped a nonprofi...
Jun 09, 2023•25 min•Ep 1647•Transcript available on Metacast (Note: This episode originally ran back in 2022 .) This past weekend, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had the second largest domestic opening of 2023, netting (or should we say webbing?) over $120 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada. But the story leading up to this latest Spider-Man movie has been its own epic saga. When Marvel licensed the Spider-Man film rights to Sony Pictures in the 1990s, the deal made sense — Marvel didn't make movies yet, and their business was main...
Jun 07, 2023•31 min•Ep 1646•Transcript available on Metacast It's the thrilling conclusion to our three-part series on AI — the world premiere of the first episode of Planet Money written by AI. In Part 1 of this series, we taught AI how to write an original Planet Money script by feeding it real research and interviews. In Part 2, we used AI to clone the voice of our former colleague Robert Smith. Now, we've put everything together into a 15-minute Planet Money episode. And we've gathered some of our co-hosts to listen along. So, how did the AI do? You'l...
Jun 02, 2023•33 min•Ep 1645•Transcript available on Metacast 
