Episódios

  • How the government got hedge funded

    How the government got hedge funded
    Oct 10 2025
    The U.S. government spends a ton of money, on everything from Medicare to roads to defense. In fact, it spends way more than it takes in. So…it borrows money, in the bond market. By selling U.S. Treasurys, basically IOUs with periodic interest payments. And for decades, people have loved to invest in Treasurys, for their safety and security.

    But lately, Treasurys have started to look riskier.

    In part because, in recent years, there’s a new buyer at the table: hedge funds, those loosely-regulated financial companies that invest on behalf of institutions and wealthy clients. They have started doing a special trade called the “Treasury basis trade.” And, depending on who you talk to, this trade could destabilize our entire financial system. Or help the U.S. government borrow more money. Or both.

    On the latest episode: how and why are hedge funds getting into Treasurys? We follow how a Treasury travels from the nest into the hands of hedge funds. And we speak to someone from one of those hedge funds, about what they’re doing and why.

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    This episode was hosted by Mary Childs and Kenny Malone. It was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Jimmy Keeley and Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is our Executive Producer.

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    28 minutos
  • Two ways AI is changing the business of crime (Two Indicators)

    Two ways AI is changing the business of crime (Two Indicators)
    Oct 8 2025

    Pre-order the Planet Money book here for your free gift.

    Our sister show, The Indicator, is chronicling the evolving business of crime for its Vice Week series. Today, we bring to you two cases of crime in the age of AI.

    First, cybercriminals are using our own voices against us. Audio deepfake scams are picking up against individuals but also against businesses. We hear from a bank on how they’re adapting defenses, and find out how the new defenses are a game of AI vs AI.

    Then, we move over to the stock market to witness AI market manipulation. A new breed of trading bots behave differently. They could collude with each other, even without human involvement or instruction, so researchers are asking how to think about blame, and regulation in a world of more sophisticated trading bots. That’s assuming regulators could even keep up with the tech in the first place.

    Indicator Vice Series
    Head to The Indicator from Planet Money podcast feed for the latest on the Indicator Vice Series including an episode on data breaches . If you don’t already subscribe, check it out. Each episode explains one slice of the economy connected to the news recently, always in 10 minutes or less.

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    This episode is hosted by Darian Woods, Adrian Ma, and Wailin Wong. These episodes of The Indicator were originally produced by Cooper Katz McKim and engineered by Robert Rodriguez. They were fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kate Concannon is The Indicator’s editor. Alex Goldmark is the Executive Producer.

    Music: NPR Source Audio - “Diamond High”

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    20 minutos
  • The Planet Money Game: Test our prototype

    The Planet Money Game: Test our prototype
    Oct 4 2025
    It’s here! It’s free to download and playtest! It’s the Planet Money game! (Download here.)
    • Download and playtest the game go here
    • Sign up for the 11/1 virtual AMA event and get updates about the game
    • Submit your feedback on the game
    • Watch the how-to video with Kenny and Elan for playtest instructions
    In this episode, the story of how we arrived here. Ride along as our game-making partners at Exploding Kittens help us turn our (sometimes wild) economics game ideas into the next blockbuster game. It’s a behind the scenes look at how to design a game from scratch — a game that is somehow filled with economics, impossible to put down, but does not feel like you’re cramming for school. Which is… harder than we thought.

    After months of trying to find the perfect balance of ideas and entertainment, the Planet Money game is ready for our next phase. And that’s where you come in, listeners! We need you to playtest the Planet Money game to help us perfect it.

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    This episode was hosted by Kenny Malone and Erika Beras. It was produced by James Sneed with help from Emma Peaslee and edited by Jess Jiang. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.

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    36 minutos
  • BOARD GAMES 1: We're making a game

    BOARD GAMES 1: We're making a game
    Oct 1 2025
    We want to make a board game. It must, of course, teach the world about economics. It must be fun. It’d be nice if it sold lots of copies! How hard could that be!? (Monopoly and Catan are hugely popular and basically little economy simulators, after all.)

    Well, turns out, it’s quite hard!

    We’re in a golden age of tabletop games. Thirty years ago there were around 800 new games each year. Now it is more like 5,000. Just a handful of those get to be hits.

    In the first episode of our new series, Planet Money sets forth on an epic quest to beat the odds.

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    This episode was hosted by Kenny Malone and Erika Beras. It was produced by James Sneed with help from Emma Peaslee and edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Gilly Moon and Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.

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    32 minutos
  • How refrigeration took over the world

    How refrigeration took over the world
    Sep 26 2025
    The next time you open your fridge, take a second to behold the miracles inside of it: Raspberries from California, butter from New Zealand, steak from Nebraska. None of that would have been remotely possible before the creation of the cold chain.

    The cold chain is the name for the end-to-end refrigeration of our food from farm to truck to warehouse to grocery store and ultimately to our fridges at home. And it’s one of the great achievements of the modern world.

    On today’s show, Nicola Twilley, food journalist and author of Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves, tells us the story of how our world got cold, and what that’s meant for the economy.

    We’ll hear about two pioneers of cold: The cheapskate meat baron Gustavus Swift, and the train-hopping chemist Polly Pennington. And we’ll take a look at whether all this refrigeration might have created some new problems.

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    Today’s episode of Planet Money was hosted by Nick Fountain and Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. It was produced by James Sneed and edited by Keith Romer. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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    23 minutos
  • How Jane Street’s secret billion-dollar trade unraveled

    How Jane Street’s secret billion-dollar trade unraveled
    Sep 24 2025
    On Wall Street, fortunes are often won and lost with the tiniest advantages. And for the past few years, one trading firm has stood out from the rest for both huge profits and careful secrecy — Jane Street Group.

    But last year, one of Jane Street’s biggest and most lucrative trading strategies was unexpectedly revealed in a Manhattan courtroom. The news ricocheted around the world. It drew the attention of competitors and regulatory agencies, destabilized billions of dollars worth of trades, and called into question some of the most fundamental strategies in global finance.

    Some Planet Money episodes about finance:
    - The rise and fall of Long Term Capital Management
    - How George Soros forced the UK to devalue the pound

    Further reading:
    - Jane Street Group, LLC v. Millennium Management LLC, Douglas Schadewald, and Daniel Spottiswood
    - “Jane Street’s Indian Options Trade Was Too Good,” from Bloomberg
    - SEBI's report: "Interim Order in the matter of Index manipulation by Jane Street Group"
    - “Jane Street Defends India Trading Activity, Blasts Regulator,” from Bloomberg

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    This episode was hosted by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi and Mary Childs. It was produced by Eric Mennel, with production help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and Cooper Katz-McKim. It was edited by Jess Jiang. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Planet Money’s executive producer is Alex Goldmark.

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    29 minutos
  • In Gaza, money is falling apart

    In Gaza, money is falling apart
    Sep 20 2025
    Israel has been blocking the flow of physical money into Gaza since the start of the war. So whatever paper cash was in Gaza before the war, that’s all that’s been circulating. It's falling apart from overuse.

    Two best friends, one in Gaza and one in Belgium, are now trying to get money in.

    But how do you get money into a bank account in Gaza? And how do you get that money out, in Gaza, when there are no functioning banks or ATMs? And almost no electricity. And spotty internet. And what is there to buy? How does money even work in Gaza right now?

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    This episode was hosted by Sarah Gonzalez. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Marianne McCune, and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. It was engineered by Cena Loffredo, Robert Rodriguez, and James Willetts. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.

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    35 minutos
  • When CEO pay exploded (update)

    When CEO pay exploded (update)
    Sep 17 2025
    (Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2016.)

    It’s no secret that CEOs get paid a ton – and a ton more than the average worker. More than a hundred times than what their average employee makes.

    But it wasn’t always this way. So, how did this gap get so vast? And why?

    On today’s episode … we go back to a specific moment when the way CEOs were paid got changed. It involves Bill Clinton's campaign promises, and Silicon Valley workers taking to the streets to protest an accounting rule. And of course, Dodd Frank.

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    This episode was hosted by Jacob Goldstein and Stacey Vanek Smith, and was originally produced by Nick Fountain. This update was reported and produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Alex Goldmark.


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    23 minutos