Planet Money

Note: A version of this episode first ran in 2023.Every year, the U.S. government spends more money than it takes in. In order to fund all that spending, the country takes on debt. Congress has the po...

19 Jun 202530min

What was it like to work inside Elon Musk's DOGE? The cost-cutting initiative promised transparency, but most of its actions have been shrouded in secrecy.For months, there were reports of software en...

14 Jun 202527min

When President Trump announced his sweeping new tariffs this year, many trade law experts were startled. Typically, presidents don't have the authority to impose broad tariffs with a snap of their fin...

11 Jun 202524min

Over the past decade, politicians from both parties have courted American voters with an enticing economic prospect – the dream of bringing manufacturing and manufacturing jobs back to America. They'v...

6 Jun 202531min

Today on the show – our crypto president. Just before President Donald Trump began his second administration in January, he and his business partners launched the $TRUMP coin. It's a memecoin that qui...

4 Jun 202518min

Over the last few months U.S.-China trade relations have been pretty hard to make sense of – unless you look at what's happening through the lens of game theory. Game theory is all about how decisions...

30 Mai 202528min

American universities are where people go to learn and teach. They're also where research and development happens. Over the past eight decades, universities have received billions in federal dollars t...

28 Mai 202527min

You might have seen these texts before. The scam starts innocently enough. Maybe it's a "Long time no see" or "Hello" or "How are you." For investigative reporter Zeke Faux it was – "Hi David, I'm Vic...

23 Mai 202534min