Episodes

  • History 8: Big ideas and life lessons from Marx, Keynes and Smith and more

    History 8: Big ideas and life lessons from Marx, Keynes and Smith and more
    Aug 28 2024
    Take the 2024 Planet Money Summer School Quiz here to earn your personalized diploma!

    Find all the episodes from this season of Summer School here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School.

    We are assembled here on the lawn of Planet Money University for the greatest graduation in history – because it features the greatest economic minds in history. We'll hear from Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and some surprising guests as they teach us a little bit more economics, and offer a lot of life advice.

    But first, we have to wrap up our (somewhat) complete economic history of the world. We'll catch up on the last fifty years or so of human achievement and ask ourselves, has economics made life better for us all?

    This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

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    33 mins
  • History 7: The Great Depression, the New Deal and how it changed our economy

    History 7: The Great Depression, the New Deal and how it changed our economy
    Aug 21 2024
    Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School.

    When we last left the United States of America in our economic telling of history, it was the early 1900s and the country's leaders were starting to feel like they had the economic situation all figured out. Flash forward a decade or so, and the financial picture was still looking pretty good as America emerged from the first World War.

    But then, everything came crashing down with the stock market collapse of 1929. Businesses closed, banks collapsed, one in four people was unemployed, families couldn't make rent, the economy was broken. And this was happening all over the world. Today we'll look at how leaders around the globe intervened to turn the international economy around, and in the process, how the Great Depression rapidly transformed the relationship between government and business forever.

    This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

    Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+     in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

    Always free at these links:     Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.

    Find more Planet Money:     Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.

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    35 mins
  • History 6: China, Taiwan and how nations grow rich

    History 6: China, Taiwan and how nations grow rich
    Aug 14 2024
    Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School.

    In the middle of the twentieth century, China and its neighbors in East Asia were poor, mostly rural economies. China had been wrecked by a brutal civil war. Taiwan became the home of people fleeing from that conflict. Japan and Korea were rebuilding after their own wars. And then in the later half of the twentieth century, they started their comeback. The governments made some explicit choices that unleashed the power of individual incentives and free market forces and lifted millions of people out of poverty. We focus specifically on China and Taiwan during this time, when they showed a burst of economic progress rarely seen on this globe. Why then? Why there? Can other nations copy that? We'll try to find out.

    This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

    Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in     Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

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    36 mins
  • History 5: 250 years of trade history in three chapters

    History 5: 250 years of trade history in three chapters
    Aug 7 2024
    Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School.

    Trade has come up in all of the episodes of Summer School so far. An early use of money was to make trade easier. Trade was responsible for the birth of companies and the stock market. And trade was the lifeblood of the early United States.

    Today's episode covers 250 years of trade history in three chapters. We start with one of the founding texts of economics, Wealth of Nations, in which Adam Smith argues a country's true value is not measured in gold and silver, but by its people's ability to buy things that enhance their standard of living. Then we'll watch American politicians completely ignore that argument in favor of protecting domestic industries – until one congressman makes a passionate case for free trade as the means to world peace. And finally we'll follow the trade debate up to the modern day, where the tides of American politics have turned toward regulation.

    This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

    Subscribe to Planet Money+ for sponsor-free episode listening     in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

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    37 mins
  • History 4: Banker vs president and the birth of the dollar

    History 4: Banker vs president and the birth of the dollar
    Jul 31 2024
    Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School.

    Planet Money Summer School has arrived at the birth of the United States and the chance to set up a whole new economy from scratch. Should there be a centralized bank? Should there be a single currency? We'll travel to two moments in the country's early history when the founders said "nope" to these questions and see what happened.

    First we'll witness one of the great economic battles in U.S. history – the president of the United States versus the president of the Bank of the United States – and see how the outcome ushered in an age of financial panics. Then we'll drop in on a time before the U.S. dollar existed as we know it, when you could buy things using one of about 8,000 forms of money circulating in the country. We watch as the Civil War leads to the first standard currency. Along the way, we'll learn why the cycle of economic booms and busts persists to today despite efforts to centralize America's economy throughout history.

    This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

    Subscribe to Planet Money+ for sponsor-free episode listening     in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

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    37 mins
  • History 3: The first stock and perpetual life

    History 3: The first stock and perpetual life
    Jul 26 2024
    Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School.

    Once upon a time, every business was a small business. It was run by the owner, maybe the spouse and the kids. Maybe they borrowed money from friends and relatives, but there was only so big it could get. Then came what can only be described as the big bang of economics. Over the span of a few decades, people figured out a way for businesses to sell ownership shares – otherwise known as stocks – and let people trade those shares. There was suddenly money to buy machines and expand.

    Today, we head to the Netherlands around the year 1600. First, we'll visit the bridge in Amsterdam where some of the first stock trading took place. Then we track down the Dutch water company that's the source of the oldest "living" bond. It's the origin of stocks and bonds and the stock market and it leads directly to many of the financial innovations that we still have today.

    This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

    Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+     in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

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    34 mins
  • History 2: The golden ages of labor and looms

    History 2: The golden ages of labor and looms
    Jul 17 2024
    Who has the power? Workers or bosses? It changes through the ages, though it's usually the bosses. Today, we look at two key moments when the power of labor shifted, for better and worse, and we ask why then? What does history have to say about labor power right now?

    We travel to Sicily, Italy in the year 1347, where the bubonic plague is about to strike. The horror known as the Black Death will remake European society in countless ways, but we'll focus on one silver lining: how economic conditions shifted for workers.

    Then we head about 500 years into the future, to an English factory at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, where textile workers take up arms against the machines taking their jobs and show how rapidly labor supply and demand can change. This is the famed tale of the Luddites, now a byword for knee jerk anti-technology, but the true story has nuance and a desperate but rational violent rebellion.

    This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

    Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in     Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

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    33 mins
  • History 1: Money and the stone coin at the bottom of the sea

    History 1: Money and the stone coin at the bottom of the sea
    Jul 11 2024
    Planet Money Summer School is back for eight weeks. Join as we travel back in time to find the origins of our economic way of life. Today we ask surprisingly hard question: What is money? And where did it come from? We travel to a remote island in the Pacific Ocean for the answer. Then we'll visit France in the year 1714, where a man on the lam tries to revolutionize the country's entire monetary system, and comes impressively close to the modern economy we have today, before it all falls apart. Check out our Summer School video cheat sheet on the origins of money at the Planet Money TikTok.

    The series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

    Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in     Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

    Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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    34 mins