NPR: Planet Money
Money makes the world go around, faster and faster every day. On NPR's Planet Money, you'll meet high rollers, brainy economists and regular folks -- all trying to make sense of our rapidly changing global economy.
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#541: Who Owns The Air?
Tons of entrepreneurs have come up with clever ways to ...
Tons of entrepreneurs have come up with clever ways to make money using little drones: farmers, who want to spot aphids on their soybean plants; ranchers trying to find lost cows; crews wanting to film shiny cars cruising on windy roads. There's just this one little problem – according to the Federal Aviation Administration – all these people- they are breaking the law.Today on the show: drones are proliferating, but who owns the air? If you buy a house, you know you own the ground. But what about the space above it? Who exactly, owns that?
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#540: Great Expectations
Today on the show we have three radio stories for ...
Today on the show we have three radio stories for you about the strange ways people think about their the future.In the first Ashley Milne-Tyte talks to two graduates Seeking A Fortune Through Search Funds. Then David Kestenbaum tells us How One State Convinced Its 'Young Invincibles' To Get Health Insurance. And in the last story Jacob Goldstein explains Why Inflation Is So Low.
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#539: What's A Penny Worth?
Today on the show: The penny. And the strange spot ...
Today on the show: The penny. And the strange spot it occupies in our economy. It's worth almost nothing, but not quite. We have three stories on the penny. First, we go on an expedition through the streets of Manhattan to find something, anything, we can buy for one cent. Next, we talk to a guy who's betting on the government killing the penny. And finally, we visit a place where people dream of how pennies could change everything: the internet.
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#337: The Secret Document That Transformed China
Note: Today's show is a re-run. It originally ran in ...
Note: Today's show is a re-run. It originally ran in January 2012.In 1978, a group of farmers in a Chinese village called Xiaogang wrote a secret contract and hid it in the roof of a mud hut. They were afraid the document might get them executed. Instead, it wound up completely transforming the Chinese economy.On today's show, we travel to Xiaogang, and hear the farmers' story.
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#538: Is A Stradivarius Just A Violin?
A trumpet is more or less a trumpet. A clarinet ...
A trumpet is more or less a trumpet. A clarinet is a clarinet. But violin or a viola... they are different. More like living breathing things. Hand crafted from wood, from a tree. Every one is different. And, you know the story. Antonio Stradivari, was the master. Some say the greatest violin maker to ever live. The Stradivarius is one of the most powerful and expensive brands in the world. And certainly, the guy made really nice instruments. But how nice exactly. This is a question that comes up all the time with all kinds of products: coffee, clothes, dish washing detergent, jeans and shoes. How much of a brand is real? And how much is in our heads? Of course you could do a test with a stradivarius to answer this exact question. And In fact, in 2010, researchers did just that.
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#537: Hold The Music, Just The Lyrics Please
If you thought Daft Punk was saying something about a ...
If you thought Daft Punk was saying something about a Mexican monkey when they were actually singing "up all night to get lucky" — you're not alone. There are more than five million searches for lyrics on Google every day.*And there is a big fight going on over who should make money off those searches: is it the websites who put the lyrics up? Or the songwriters, who put the words together?From George Washington to Rick Ross, this country has been trying for hundreds of years to figure out — what's the difference between fair use and stealing?*Source: LyricFind*
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#536: The Future Of Work Looks Like A UPS Truck
In a lot of ways, the job looks the same ...
In a lot of ways, the job looks the same as ever — the brown truck, the dogs, the lady coming out to apologize about the dogs.Underneath the surface, though, Bill Earle's job as a driver for UPS, has changed a lot. When Bill started back in the '90s, he was a guy out there by himself, alone in a truck on an empty road. UPS was a trucking company.Today, it's a technology company. Every step Bill takes, every mile he drives, is tracked. His truck is a rolling computer. From the time he punches in in the morning until he gets back to base at night, the company is trying to figure out how Bill can do his job quicker, more efficiently.Technology means that no matter what kind of job you have — whether you're alone in a truck on an empty road or sitting in a cubicle in front of a computer — your company can now track everything you do.
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#535: Humanitarians, For A Price
When a famine swept through Somalia in 2011, it was ...
When a famine swept through Somalia in 2011, it was hard for aid workers to get food distributed. Most of the country was too dangerous for non-Somalis to do the work. Instead, the United Nations looked at satellite images of camps filling up with tents and dispatched locals to deliver the food. A local industry around distributing aid and sheltering the poor sprung up.On today's show, we visit a country with almost no government, but a lot of entrepreneurs. And we see what happens when locals decide to make money by becoming humanitarians for profit.
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#534: The History of Light
On today's show: How we got from dim little candles ...
On today's show: How we got from dim little candles made out of cow fat, to as much light as we want at the flick of a switch.The history of light explains why the world today is what it is. It explains why we aren't all subsistence farmers, and why we can afford to have artists and massage therapists and plumbers. (And, yes, people who do radio stories about the history of light.)The history of light is the history of economic growth — of things getting faster, cheaper, and more efficient.
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#444: New Jersey Wine
Note: Today's show is a re-run. It originally ran in ...
Note: Today's show is a re-run. It originally ran in March, 2013. Sometimes your success depends on how your competitors behave. People judge you not just by your product, but by the product that your rival down the street makes. This is a problem for Lou Caracciolo. He's trying to make high-quality wine, from grapes he grows in New Jersey. But Jersey wine already has a reputation — and fancy isn't it. On today's show: Can New Jersey become the next Napa? For more, see Adam Davidson's latest NYT Magazine column, Bottle Bing.
