Épisodes

  • Can Trump make buying a home more affordable?

    Can Trump make buying a home more affordable?
    Jan 31 2026
    Book tour dates and ticket info here.

    Housing is too expensive. Everyone knows this. Democrats know that talking about it plays well with voters. And now – in a midterm election year – President Donald Trump seems to be focused on it, too.

    His administration has recently started talking more about affordability. And they’re taking action with two new initiatives that aim to make buying a house easier.

    Today on the show, we’re gonna take a close look at these two moves. And ask: Will they work?

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    This episode was produced by Willa Rubin with production help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Marianne McCune, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Jimmy Keeley and Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

    Music: NPR Source Audio - "No Problem,” “Fruit Salad,” “Checking In” and “Day Dreamer.”

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    28 min
  • Can transforming neighborhoods help kids escape poverty?

    Can transforming neighborhoods help kids escape poverty?
    Jan 28 2026
    In the 1990s, Congress created HOPE VI, a program that demolished old public housing projects and replaced them with more up-to-date ones. But the program went further than just improving public housing buildings. HOPE VI was designed to transform neighborhoods with concentrated poverty into neighborhoods that attracted people with different incomes. Some people who moved to HOPE VI neighborhoods earned too much to qualify for public housing. And some even paid for market-rate housing. The idea was that this would help create new opportunities for the low-income people who lived there and even lift people out of poverty.

    For years though, there wasn’t a clear answer to whether this approach actually succeeded. A new working paper from Raj Chetty and the team at Opportunity Insights finally provides some answers. On today’s show: Who really benefits when people living in poverty are more connected to their surrounding communities? Are there lessons from the HOPE VI experiment that could apply to other kinds of policies aimed at fostering upward mobility?

    More about Opportunity Insights’ study and a link to their interactive map here.

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    28 min
  • A trip to the magic mushroom megachurch

    A trip to the magic mushroom megachurch
    Jan 24 2026
    Book tour dates and ticket info here.

    Just as every market has its first movers, every religion has its martyrs — the people willing to risk everything for what they believe. Pastor Dave Hodges just might be a little bit of both. He’s the spiritual leader of the Zide Door Church of Entheogenic Plants, in Oakland, California which places psilocybin mushrooms at the center of their religious practice.

    Today on the show, like its 130,000+ members, we’re going to take a trip through the psychedelic mushroom megachurch. We’ll meet one of the lawyers trying to keep psychedelic religious leaders like Pastor Dave from running afoul of the law, and get a peek into how the government decides whether a belief system counts as sincere religion.

    This episode was reported with support from The Ferriss – UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship.

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    This episode was hosted by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and edited by Eric Mennel. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Kwesi Lee with help from Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.

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    32 min
  • BOARD GAMES 3: What’s in a name?

    BOARD GAMES 3: What’s in a name?
    Jan 22 2026
    Planet Money has teamed up with the company Exploding Kittens to make a board game inspired by the legendary economics paper The Market for Lemons. We’ve decided we want a mass-appeal party game that quietly sneaks in the economics, so that we can report from inside a world that no other Planet Money project has entered: the real shelves at real big box retail stores.

    We have a great game mechanic and a set of rules. Now all we need is a good name and theme.

    Turns out, that is way harder and way higher stakes than any of us could have imagined.

    In the third episode of our series, we learn the importance of a good game name and theme and try to come up with one for our game.

    Find our previous episodes in the board game series, here and here.

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    This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Kenny Malone and Erika Beras. It was produced by James Sneed and edited by Marianne McCune, fact-checked by Willa Rubin, and engineered by Cena Loffredo and Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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    36 min
  • Chevron, Venezuela and the Paradox of Plenty

    Chevron, Venezuela and the Paradox of Plenty
    Jan 17 2026
    Venezuela and Chevron have perhaps one of the strangest partnerships … ever? Chevron, one of the world’s most famous and profitable oil corporations, has for decades, been plugging away in Venezuela, one of the world’s most famous and infamous socialist countries.

    Today on the show, the story of their intertwined histories. Before Saudi Arabia, before Iran… there was Venezuela, the first petrostate. The first country whose entire economy became dependent on oil. With the blessing of oil, an entire economic textbook of complications opened up: from the Dutch Disease, to the resource curse, to mono-economic vulnerability.

    And, oddly, along for that ride…Chevron.


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    This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Erika Beras and Kenny Malone. It was produced by Luis Gallo with help from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Marianne McCune, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.


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    33 min
  • How much money President Trump and his family have made

    How much money President Trump and his family have made
    Jan 14 2026
    Before President Donald Trump’s first term, he was in a “tight spot” financially, according to New Yorker writer David Kirkpatrick. At the start of his second term, David says, Trump was in an “even tighter” spot. But after just six months into his second term, Trump’s financial situation started looking really good.


    David has done a full accounting for what the family has been up to, and even using conservative estimates, David says Trump and his family have made almost $4 billion dollars “off of the presidency,” in just about a year.


    Today on the show: we look at every new business and business deal and financial transaction that David says likely would not have happened if Trump wasn’t the president of the United States. And we stop at the most innovative ways Trump and his family have made all that.


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    Listen free: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts. ??Listen to our playlist on Federal Reserve independence here.


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    Today’s episode of Planet Money was hosted by Sarah Gonzalez and Mary Childs. It was produced by James Sneed, edited by Jess Jiang, and fact checked by Sierra Juarez. Robert Rodriguez engineered it. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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    31 min
  • So are we in an AI bubble? Here are clues to look for.

    So are we in an AI bubble? Here are clues to look for.
    Jan 10 2026
    Are we in an AI bubble? That’s the $35 trillion dollar question right now as the stock market soars higher and higher. The problem is that bubbles are famously hard to spot. But some economists say they may have found some telltale clues.


    On our latest: How do economists detect a bubble? And, how much should society be worried about bubbles in the first place?


    Related shows:


    - How to make $35 trillion ... disappear

    -What is a bubble? (featuring Nobel prize winning economics Eugene Fama and Robert Shiller)

    -What AI data centers are doing to your electric bill


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    This episode was produced by Willa Rubin and edited by Marianne McCune. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Cena Loffredo and Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.


    Music: NPR Source Audio - “The best is yet to come,” “Marsh mellow,” and “Sunshine beat”

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    25 min
  • How Black hair care grew Black power

    How Black hair care grew Black power
    Jan 7 2026
    The Afro is one of the most iconic hairstyles of the last century. And one of its main ingredients was a hair product – Afro Sheen. But Afro Sheen did so much more than make Black afros shine. It was the money behind the television show Soul Train, it helped fuel the civil rights movement – all because of an entrepreneur named George Johnson.

    For decades, Joan and George Johnson owned and ran Johnson Products Company, a Black hair care company out of Chicago. Their intimate understanding of what Black people wanted and needed – for their hair and for their lives – helped grow the Black middle class and became an engine for Black culture and power. They helped turn the Black haircare industry into what is now a multi-billion-dollar industry. But although they helped create this industry, they no longer have a part in it.

    Today on the show – the story of the rise and fall of Johnson Products. We’re gonna tell you this story in three hairstyles. The conk, the afro… and the jheri curl.

    Related episodes:

    This Ad’s For You

    'Soul Train' and the business of Black joy

    Fashion Fair's makeover


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    This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Sonari Glinton and Erika Beras. It was produced by James Sneed, edited by Marianne McCune, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Jimmy Keeley. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.

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    29 min