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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#477: Waiting For Robot Nannies
More than half of all Japanese women quit their jobs ...
More than half of all Japanese women quit their jobs after giving birth to their first child. That's more than double the rate in the U.S., and it's a problem for Japan's economy. If more women returned to the workforce, it would go a huge way toward boosting growth in the country and solving a big demographic problem — not enough working people to support the nation's retirees. But finding childcare in Japan is even harder than finding childcare in the U.S. The long-term solution is robot nannies. (Really.) On today's show: How Japanese working moms can survive until the robots arrive. For More: Will Robot Nannies Save Japan's Economy?
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Episode 386: The Cost Of Free Doughnuts
Everybody likes free. But free can be dangerous, too. Today's ...
Everybody likes free. But free can be dangerous, too. Today's show is sort of the flip side free. It is what happens when you take something that was free — and you give it a price, a decision many Internet companies face today. That is a highly risky move, it turns out. And the damage can be enormous.This week, free of charge, Chana Joffe-Walt and Alex Blumberg tell the story of the Red Cross and free doughnuts — that suddenly weren't free any more. It happened 70 years ago, and the Red Cross is still feeling the consequences.***Note this episode originally aired in July 2012.***
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#476: The Return Of The Indicator*
*Not really. But sort of. On today's show, we bring ...
*Not really. But sort of. On today's show, we bring you three Planet Money radio stories, each of which looks at something indicator-ish: 1. The Beige Book: The 'Ask Your Uncle' Approach To Economics 2. The price of gold: What A Falling Gold Price Means For Pawn Shops 3. The price of a pedi-cab ride: How To Spend $442 on a 15-minute cab ride
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#475: What Happened To Detroit's Big Plans?
On today's show, we took a tour of Detroit with ...
On today's show, we took a tour of Detroit with a local newspaper reporter and an urban planner. We go see what happened to all the big dreams Detroit has had over the years.
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#474: The North Korea Files
U.S. citizens who want to buy stuff from North Korea ...
U.S. citizens who want to buy stuff from North Korea have to write a letter to the U.S. government asking for special permission. As regular listeners know, we're sort of obsessed with North Korea. So we decided to try to get those letters. Several months ago, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request. It worked! We recently got a stack of heavily redacted letters. On today's show: we try to figure out who sent the letters, why they wanted to do business with North Korea, and what that tells us about the North Korean economy.
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#422: Schoolhouse Rock Is A Lie (Or, How The Filibuster Ate Washington)
On our show today, we tell you everything you need ...
On our show today, we tell you everything you need to know about the filibuster, including: What Schoolhouse Rock didn't tell us Why Aaron Burr and Jimmy Stewart are the two great villains in filibuster history How Senators can now filibuster bills without having to talk for hours on end * Note: Today's show is a rerun. It originally ran on December, 2012.
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#473: Top Of The Charts (Econ Remix)
1. A Mashup Of Planet Money and American Top 40. ...
1. A Mashup Of Planet Money and American Top 40. 2. An econ summer mixtape. 3. How the top three songs in America explain the crazy transformation in the music business. Those three songs by the way, are by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Justin Timberlake and Icona Pop. They come from last week's America's Top 40.
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#472: The One-Page Plan To Fix Global Warming
Climate change seems like this complicated, intractable problem. But maybe ...
Climate change seems like this complicated, intractable problem. But maybe it doesn't have to be. On today's show, we talk to a couple economists about a very simple idea that could solve the climate-change problem: Tax carbon emissions. A carbon tax could be paired with cuts in the income tax. And it would drive down emissions without picking winners or losers, and without creating complicated regulations.
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#471: The Eddie Murphy Rule
On today's show, we talk to commodities traders to answer ...
On today's show, we talk to commodities traders to answer one of the most important questions in finance: What actually happens at the end of Trading Places? We know something crazy happens on the trading floor. We know that Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd get rich and the Duke brothers lose everything. But how does it all happen? And could it happen in the real world? Also on the show: The "Eddie Murphy Rule" that wound up in the the big financial overhaul law Congress passed in 2010. Today's special guest co-host is Roman Mars, host of 99% Invisible.
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#286: Libertarian Summer Camp
On today's Planet Money, we travel to a place where ...
On today's Planet Money, we travel to a place where people are trying to live without government interference. A place where you can use bits of silver to buy uninspected bacon. A place where a 9-year-old will sell you alcohol. It's the Porcupine Freedom Festival, known to its friends as PorcFest. It's the summer festival for people who think we should return to the gold standard and abolish the IRS.
