Planet Money

Ever wondered why you can buy fresh Peruvian blueberries in the dead of winter? The answer, surprisingly, is tied to cocaine. Today on the show, we look at how the War on Drugs led to an American trad...

What are tariffs good for? For years, mainstream economists have basically said: tariffs are not good. They are an import tax paid by consumers, they've said, and they discourage free trade, and we w...

Earth can sustain life for another 100 million years, but can we? This episode, we partner with Radiolab to take stock of the essential raw materials that enable us to live as we do here on Earth — ev...

The deal seemed too good to be true. There's a website that's been selling top quality diamonds at bizarrely low prices. Prices we couldn't find at any retail outlet. Prices so low, we could buy a dia...

There's one statistic that rules them all when it comes to keeping track of the economy: gross domestic product (GDP). It's the sum of all final transactions, so all the goods or services bought and s...

Note: This original episode ran in 2020. Walter Schramm did everything right as an investor — at least according to the philosophy of Warren Buffett. So how come he lost a small fortune? In this epi...

Tupperware is the stealthy star of our modern homes. These plastic storage containers are ubiquitous in our fridges, pantries, and closets. But the original product was revolutionary. So was its break...

If you cut every single federal job President Donald Trump wants to cut, how much money would that save? A president has tried to massively shrink the size of the federal government before. It was i...

In some ways, starting a bank is a lot like starting any other business. Who will you hire? Where will you be located? What color will the couches be? But it's also way more complicated. There are ton...

Memecoins are having a moment. Everyone from Hawk Tuah to President Donald Trump to animal influencers like Moo Deng the pygmy hippo have been turned into cryptocurrency. But what are the costs of all...