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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#462: When Patents Hit the Podcast
Back in the nineties, Jim Logan started a company called ...
Back in the nineties, Jim Logan started a company called Personal Audio. The concept was simple — people could pick out magazine articles they liked on the internet, and his company would send them a cassette tape of those articles being read out loud. The cassette tapes didn't catch on like Jim hoped, but he had bigger dreams for the idea behind them. He dreamed that one day you wouldn't need a cassette player, you would just be able to hear smart people talking about whatever subject you wanted, and that audio would be magically downloaded to a device of your choice. He says he dreamed of podcasting as we know it today. Now Jim Logan did not create the technology to podcast. He himself is not a modern-day podcaster. But he did get a patent on that big dream of downloading personalized audio, and he claims to have the patent on podcasting. On today's show, he says all the people out there podcasting today, owe him money. For more, check out Alex Blumberg and Laura Sydell's story on this weekend's This American Life :When Patents Attack...Part Two!
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#461: Lawyers, Guns and Money
On today's show: Three short stories from the far flung ...
On today's show: Three short stories from the far flung shores of New Zealand, Ireland and New Jersey. First up, it's no secret that some Americans hide money offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Over the past decade, some 39,000 people have come forward voluntarily to tell the IRS about their offshore money. This group provides a small window into the world of people who are hiding money in offshore havens. Also: how a single page in a report written decades ago by U.S. consultants, and funded by the U.S. State Department, brought Apple to Ireland.
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#217: The Art Of Living At The Poverty Line
On today's Planet Money, we meet a single mother who ...
On today's Planet Money, we meet a single mother who makes $16,000 a year — and who managed to fund a vacation at a Caribbean resort with an interest-free loan from one of the world's largest banks.Edith Calzado gets credit cards with teaser zero-percent interest rates — then transfers her balance before the rate ticks up. She signs up for store cards to get discounts — then pays off her bill on time. She gets food stamps and lives in subsidized housing. Her son is doing well in school.She may be the single most successful and productive beneficiary of government assistance you'll ever meet.Note: This podcast was originally posted in 2010.
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#460: It's Hard To Do Good
In 2010, we reported on a poor town in Haiti, ...
In 2010, we reported on a poor town in Haiti, where school was held in a small, one-room church. Planet Money listeners were moved to donate some $3,000, which the principal of the school thought would be enough to build a school. A few months later, the money was gone, and all there was to show for it was a foundation, some concrete blocks and some rock and sand. We thought that would be the end of it. Then we heard from Tim Myers, a retired contractor from Colorado who decided to go to Haiti to build the school — and who realized, in 2011, that the project would cost more than $100,000. On today's show: We return to Haiti, to see how the project is going. And we hear from Tim Myers, who says, if he had it to do over, he might do things differently.
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#459: Getting It Right
On today's show: Three short Planet Money stories about trying ...
On today's show: Three short Planet Money stories about trying to figure out what things are really worth. When Lady Gaga writes a song, does that count as economic output? Is a $20 worth $20 in Myanmar (Spoiler: Probably not.) And economists help a young college grad think through what to do with his life. Also: An update on our t-shirt project.
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#458: Bangladesh's T-Shirt Economy
H&M, Zara, Wal-Mart and JC Penney all buy t-shirts from ...
H&M, Zara, Wal-Mart and JC Penney all buy t-shirts from Bangladesh. Soon, Planet Money will too. As you may have heard, we're making a t-shirt and telling the story of how it's made. We decided a few months ago to work with Jockey to make our t-shirts. Our women's shirt will be made in Colombia. Our men's shirt will be made, in part, in Bangladesh. But horrifying news has been coming out of Bangladesh's apparel industry recently. A garment factory collapsed a few weeks ago, killing more than 1,000 people. Last year, a factory fire killed hundreds of workers. As part of the t-shirt project, we'll be traveling to Bangladesh to report on the industry. On today's show, we start to ask: Is buying a t-shirt from Bangladesh a good thing or a bad thing for the people of Bangladesh? For more: See Adam Davidson's latest New York Times Magazine column, Economic Recovery, Made in Bangladesh?
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#457: Why Pink
We're making a t-shirt that tells the story of its ...
We're making a t-shirt that tells the story of its own creation. Part of that story — color. It took long meetings, late nights and endless discussion to choose the exact hues for our Planet Money t-shirt. On today's show, we'll explain what the color of our women's t-shirt has to do with this painting from 1976, and we'll tell you how unfinished buildings halfway around the world are shaping what we see on store shelves right now. You only have three days left to get your very own Planet Money t-shirt. All it takes is a $25 pledge on Kickstarter.
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#456: Marijuana Arbitrage
Nearly 20 states have legalized marijuana to some degree. As ...
Nearly 20 states have legalized marijuana to some degree. As it turns out, this has profound economic consequences for dealers all across the country.On today's show, we meet a wholesaler who moves weed across the country, a California weed dealer seeking higher profits in New York, and a special agent who may be inadvertently helping the dealer out by trying to put him in jail.For More: See The Weed Trail, from WNYC
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#224: The Cotton Wars
On today's show, we meet a Brazilian who took on ...
On today's show, we meet a Brazilian who took on the world's largest superpower; a Texas cotton farmer who's tired of hearing the Brazilians complain; and a guy named Renato — a.k.a. Retaliation Master. And we hear why U.S. taxpayers are paying Brazilian cotton growers nearly $150 million a year. This show originally ran in 2011, near the beginning of our quest to make a Planet Money t-shirt. We're re-playing it now because we just re-launched the t-shirt project. If you want a Planet Money t-shirt, visit our Kickstarter page. We had more about the project in our most recent podcast, The Planet Money T-Shirt Is Finally (Almost) Here. Music: Johnny Cash's "Cotton Fields" Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/Spotify/ Tumblr. Download the Planet Money iPhone App.
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#455: The Planet Money T-Shirt Is Finally (Almost) Here
We're making a t-shirt that tells the story of its ...
We're making a t-shirt that tells the story of its own creation. To help make it happen, visit our Kickstarter page.
