NPR: Planet Money

LeBron James is getting hosed. The NBA team owners, the players, the fans and even LeBron James himself want to keep it that way.

Banks and other financial institutions have their own banking accounts at the Federal Reserve. Morgan Ricks argues that regular folks should have access to Fed accounts, too.

President Trump recently announced strict economic sanctions in Iran. Today on the show, we talked to a young Iranian man about what it's like to live in the Iranian economy right now.

Every time the yield curve has inverted since 1970, the economy has fallen into recession. It's getting close to inverting now, but it may no longer be the recession predictor it once was.

You won't have to get coffee. But you might have to ride a hoverboard. Apply by Sunday, July 15th.

Two stories from our Indicator team. One province in China makes many of the world's flags. It's a unique window on global trade. And we find out why so few teenagers are working summer jobs.

It's jobs Friday! For a comprehensive mid-year update on the labor market, we ask labor economist Betsey Stevenson ten questions in ten minutes.

A quirk in French labor law makes it especially difficult for a company to lay off its employees. It's a system designed to protect workers, but it also has consequences for the rest of the economy.

It takes strategy and skill to sell snacks at a baseball game. Meet the hot dog vending legend of Fenway Park.

Flags: symbol of a country, patriotic rallying cry, and a telling economic indicator. Today on the show, a factory in China that makes American flags, and what it tells us about the modern economy.

The unemployment rate is already below the Federal Reserve's estimate for maximum employment. But former Fed Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin says it may still have further to fall.

A pesticide wreaks havoc. A listener needs a bitcoin detective. And the search for the rarest economic good continues.

Every year, the nation's biggest banks are subjected to stress tests, hypothetical disaster scenarios designed to test their balance sheets. But the stress tests could soon be getting less stressful.

The price of oil continued climbing throughout this year, catching forecasters and consumers by surprise. What happened, and what might make it move in the second half of the year?

Fake product reviews are wrecking the internet. But help is on the way: From a bodybuilding fake review hunter.

June marks the birthday of two of the most famous economists of all time: Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes. Whose ideas are most relevant today? Stacey and Cardiff duke it out.

If you pay MoviePass 10 dollars a month, you can go to the movies every day. Great for customers, but hard on a company's bottom line. Today on the show, what's the plan, MoviePass?

Politicians have argued for decades that CEOs are overpaid. But there's this precise moment in the 1990s when CEO pay suddenly shot up. We find out what happened.

The teen summer job is a vaunted tradition...one that is fading. Today's teenagers just aren't working as much as their forebears. And that could have serious implications for America's labor market.

President Trump says China is stealing U.S. technology. So we looked into one case. And things got a little complicated.

The Death Master File is a list kept by the government. It keeps track of everyone who has died. But what happens when you end up on the list while you're still alive?

Venezuela's economy has collapsed, and the normal economic indicators have gotten so bad they're almost unfathomable. So one economist created an indicator to capture the awful human cost.

The U.S. and China are on track for a trade war. Economists generally say that's a bad idea... but if the U.S. wants to get tough on China, what are some alternatives?

Despite the proliferation of apps like Lyft, TaskRabbit, and Uber, a new report found no growth in people primarily doing this kind of work. Here's how the "gig economy" is and isn't changing.

California has a ton of solar power. But as soon as night falls, it's gone. Today on the show: How to bottle the sun.

The New York Stock Exchange — that bastion of American capitalism — owes its existence to two dozen men, a buttonwood tree, and a coffee shop. Today on The Indicator: the history of Wall Street.

The medical world has been trying to cure color blindness for centuries. Then a glass scientist figured it out. By accident.

One way to think of President Trump's trade policy is as a sort of soap opera. Today, we catch you up on the latest dramatic twists and also answer a big, looming question: are we in a trade war?

The Congressional Budget Office has a long history of disputes with the White House, including the current administration. But the first-ever director of the CBO says this time is different.

The marshmallow test is one of the most famous social experiments of all time, but we may be thinking about it all wrong.

When Florida outlawed partisan gerrymandering, politicians tried to sneak it back in ... in disguise.

Why is one of the busiest blocks in Manhattan littered with empty storefronts? And what does that say about the changing landscape of American retail?

So how much should you have saved for retirement? We wanted to know, so we asked the guy who invented the 401k.

Meet Sue, the dinosaur who sparked a gold rush for fossils buried in the badlands of North Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana.

Social Security has traditionally paid for itself, with money leftover. Until this year. Social Security has a funding problem and it's getting bad quickly.

Unemployment is low, wage growth is picking up, the stock market is strong; by most measures the economy is doing pretty well. And yet, millions of Americans live on the edge of financial ruin.

Vaccines are expensive and time-consuming to develop and there's no guarantee the investment will ever pay off. This means promising vaccines often sit in laboratory freezers during major epidemics.

Meet the man who figured out how to reshape national politics by making tiny investments in the smallest of places.

The monthly jobs report. Economists watch it, financial markets move on it, but it may not be as accurate as you'd think.

A new study tries to put a dollar amount on free internet services... by looking at how much money it would take for people to give them up.

In game theory, sometimes the best way to win, is to lose.

After six years of preparation, an ambitious new experiment will study the effects of income on the development of infant brains.

Last week, Congress and President Trump passed a bill rolling back regulation put in place by the 2010 Dodd Frank banking reform bill. We look at what changed and what it means.

The earnings call is a peculiar Wall Street ritual, one that's almost designed to be boring. So when something interesting does happen it's news. Today, the lessons of those earnings calls gone rogue.

Today on the show: A small town stakes its future on writing, directing, and starring in a musical.

Recent news has cast a spotlight on a little-known regulatory agency quietly working behind the scenes of our economy. What is FinCEN and why is it so important?

Gene Freidman built a taxi empire. We visited him before he was in legal trouble.

The mortgage interest deduction is popular, but it has numerous distorting effects on the economy – and economists also say that it does exactly the opposite of what people think.

Finance is notorious for being a boys club. Marilyn Cohen has worked in the bond market for 30 years. She talks about what it takes to succeed in her field and why there aren't more women.

Congrats, Class of 2018! Rather than listen to another meandering cliche-riddled commencement speech, let Stacey and Cardiff guide you through young-adult life with advice backed up by research.