NPR: Planet Money

We really are going to space.

What did Paul Manafort do, exactly? Robert Mueller's indictment is 31 pages of hard-to-understand financial crime. We try to figure it out.

A while back, the charity Feeding America was a mess. It was sending pickles to food banks that wanted produce, and potatoes to Idaho. So they called some economists, and a free food market was born.

Walmart and Amazon are in a battle to be the store where you buy everything. But when both companies sell everything, what sets them apart? Food inventions like a bright, red pickle!

In South Sudan, there is a kind of money that works even through bank failures and unstable governments. But when war struck, it upended a whole economy: the economy of cows.

Once you've got a Birkin bag, you've made it. But to get one, you need more than just money. Birkins always seem to be mysteriously out of stock. This is no accident.

Timothy Carpenter stole cell phones. Then his phone sold him out to the Feds. Now the Supreme Court has to decide how private our cell phone data should be.

Once a year, teenagers from across the country team up and compete to run the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Once a year, teenagers from across the country team up and compete to run the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Why do smart people make dumb decisions? Figuring that out won Richard Thaler a Nobel Prize.

Why do smart people make dumb decisions? Figuring that out won Richard Thaler a Nobel Prize.

A Chinese company pays millions of dollars for a failing hotel in a small, rural town. We follow the trail of money, and it explains the world economy.

A Chinese company pays millions of dollars for a failing hotel in a small, rural town. We follow the trail of money, and it explains the world economy.

In any other industry, it's illegal for a group of companies to get together and cap wages. What makes the NCAA different?

In any other industry, it's illegal for a group of companies to get together and cap wages. What makes the NCAA different?

Today on the show: death. We have four stories about how people prepare for death and what they leave behind for the living.

Today on the show: death. We have four stories about how people prepare for death and what they leave behind for the living.

Bob Peterson claims to have found the thing people have sought for thousands of years — an investment guaranteed to double in value. He keeps it in a storage locker in Utah.

Bob Peterson claims to have found the thing people have sought for thousands of years — an investment guaranteed to double in value. He keeps it in a storage locker in Utah.

Capitalism isn't supposed to exist in North Korea. But small businesses are popping up, growing the nation's economy. And much of that money is going straight to the country's nuclear program.

Capitalism isn't supposed to exist in North Korea. But small businesses are popping up, growing the nation's economy. And much of that money is going straight to the country's nuclear program.

Republicans are proposing big changes to the corporate income tax. Trillions of dollars are at stake. Here's what it all means.

Republicans are proposing big changes to the corporate income tax. Trillions of dollars are at stake. Here's what it all means.

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

For most of our lives, Equifax has been slurping up our financial data. Now the company's been hacked and our data is loose. Today, we trace this mess back to two brothers and one fateful decision.

It might just be the secret weapon of the U.S. economy.

Bill Pennington's house floods a lot: Three times in the last three years. And every time his house floods, the government pays to help him repair the damage. Is something wrong here?

The government suspended the Jones Act last week, to allow non-US ships to move fuel to victims of hurricanes in Houston and Florida. Which once again made us wonder why the act even exists.

The basic income. A flat payment to citizens, without strings. Is it a progressive fantasy, or sensible policy? We may soon find out. The Finnish Government is testing it on 2,000 unemployed citizens.

The Guinness Book of World Records had a problem: It made its money selling books, but book sales aren't what they used to be. So Guinness changed what it was selling, and who they were selling it to.

Behind almost all popular music, there is this hidden economy of music producers buying and selling sonic snippets, texting each other half-finished beats, and angling for back-end royalties.

Patty McCord helped create a workplace at Netflix that runs more like a professional sports team than a family. If you're not up to scratch, you're off the team. Is this the future of work?

Congress has neglected to do the basic work of keeping the economy running. Today, we look at three time bombs they're sitting on: The federal budget, the debt ceiling, and DREAMers.

In the early 1960s, Tom Burrell became the first black man in Chicago advertising. He went on to change the whole industry, not just the way we think about ads, but the way advertisers think about us.

When someone has been kidnapped, what do you do? If you pay ransom, you create a market for hostages. If you don't, people die. Different countries have different policies with different results.

There's an entire universe of things spies are not allowed to tell us. Today on the show, a few of the teeny things they can say. They might come in handy.

Fake news from Russia helped spark a real war in Ukraine. What can Ukraine's fight against fake news teach the US?

Hidden in the trash heap of commerce there is buried treasure. Abandoned brands--including trusted, beloved brands--are waiting to be claimed and reborn. Today on the show: A cookie comeback.

Your phone rings--it looks like your neighbor's calling. But instead, it's the creepiest scam of the year.

Costco made shopping harder, and customers loved it. Now a new company is taking the Costco experience to new extremes.

Planet Money goes to Distrito Federal. With you?

When we go to the state fair, we don't go for the rides, deep-fried tacos or the butter cow. We head straight for the vendor marketplace to meet the masters of the lost art of salesmanship.

We visit the workshop of the meat inventor who came up with Steak-Umm and KFC's popcorn chicken. And we try to figure out what meat inventors tell us about patents and innovation.

Google just got hit with a multibillion-dollar antitrust fine. Here's what it tells us about competition, market power, and the biggest corporations on the planet.

We answer one of the most important questions in finance: What actually happens at the end of Trading Places?

News moves fast. Some of our best stories from this year have new chapters. Here, we catch up on three: Dirty trademarks, trading bots, and the war against the bald eagle.

Sam Cohen buys stuff at big retail stores, then turns around and sells it on Amazon for a quick profit. It defies economic logic. But somehow, there's a whole multimillion-dollar industry doing this.

Most athlete endorsements make a product more expensive. But what happens when an NBA All-Star uses his name to make a sneaker much, much cheaper? On today's show: How that worked out.

On today's show: The story of two guys who tried to cut the pay of a CEO at a small pneumatic tool company.

That meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer was two decades in the making. It began in 1996, when an adventurous American went to Russia, trying to make a buck.