In 2007, Uruguay had a massive problem with no obvious fix. The economy of this country of 3.5 million people was growing, but there wasn't enough energy to power all that growth. Ramón Méndez Galain was, at the time, a particle physicist, but he wanted to apply his scientific mind to this issue. He started researching different energy sources and eventually wrote up a plan for how Uruguay's power grid could transition to renewable energy. It would be better for the climate, and, he thought, in ...
Oct 06, 2023•23 min•Ep 1682•Transcript available on Metacast When contract negotiations between Alaska Airlines and their flight attendants' union broke down in 1993, the union had a choice to make. The union — The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA — knew that if they chose to strike, Alaska Airlines could use a plan. While Alaska Airlines technically couldn't fire someone on strike, they could permanently replace the striking flight attendants with new workers. Essentially, if the union went on strike, they could risk thousands of people's jobs. The f...
Oct 04, 2023•29 min•Ep 1681•Transcript available on Metacast Ba-dee-yah! Say do you remember? Ba-dee-yah! Questions in September! That's right - it's time for Listener Questions! Every so often, we like to hear from listeners about what's on their minds, and we try to get to the bottom of their economic mysteries. On today's show, we have questions like: Why is September historically the worst month for the stock market? How did the Bass Pro Shops hat get so popular in Ecuador? Are casinos banks? What is the Federal Reserve's new plan to make bank transfe...
Sep 29, 2023•27 min•Ep 1680•Transcript available on Metacast There seems to be headlines about floods, wildfires, or hurricanes every week. Scientists say this might be the new normal — that climate change is making natural disasters more and more common. Tatyana Deryugina is a leading expert on the economics of natural disasters — how we respond to them, how they affect the economy, and how they change our lives. And back when Tatyana first started researching natural disasters she realized that there's a lot we don't know about their long-term economic ...
Sep 27, 2023•24 min•Ep 1679•Transcript available on Metacast The Nobel-prize winning economist Simon Kuznets once analyzed the world's economies this way — he said there are four kinds of countries: developed, underdeveloped, Japan... and Argentina. If you want to understand what happens when inflation really goes off the rails, go to Argentina. Annual inflation there, over the past year, was 124 percent. Argentina's currency, the peso, is collapsing, its poverty rate is above 40 percent, and the country may be on the verge of electing a far right Liberta...
Sep 23, 2023•24 min•Ep 1678•Transcript available on Metacast When a group of amateur investors rallied around the stock for GameStop back in 2021, the story blew up the internet. News outlets around the world, including us here at Planet Money , rushed in to explain why the stock for this retail video game company was suddenly skyrocketing, at times by as much as 1700% in value, and what that meant for the rest of us. When movie producer Aaron Ryder saw the GameStop story — an army of scrappy underdogs, banding together to strike back against a financial ...
Sep 20, 2023•29 min•Ep 1677•Transcript available on Metacast Erin Plante is a private detective who specializes in chasing down stolen cryptocurrency. In March of 2022, she got the biggest assignment of her career: Hackers had broken into an online game called Axie Infinity and made off with over $600 million worth of digital money. It was the largest crypto heist in history. And now it was Erin's job to find that money and get it back. Erin's investigation would lead her to face off against some of the world's most formidable digital money launderers, wh...
Sep 16, 2023•26 min•Ep 1676•Transcript available on Metacast In China, data on the economy is sometimes difficult to come by. The Chinese government has put a pause on releasing some of its official economic data. But many of the stories emerging from the country paint a clear picture: the second largest economy in the world is struggling. Today, our friends at The Indicator share some of their recent reporting on China. First up, it's a special edition of the Beigie Awards focused entirely on China. What can the approach of the Federal Reserve's Beige Bo...
Sep 13, 2023•19 min•Ep 1675•Transcript available on Metacast 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 
