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The flight attendants of CHAOS

When contract negotiations between Alaska Airlines and their flight attendants' union broke down in 1993, the union had a choice to make.The union — The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA — knew tha

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A trucker hat mystery, the curse of September and other listener questions

Ba-dee-yah! Say do you remember? Ba-dee-yah! Questions in right - it's time for Listener so often, we like to hear from listeners about what's on their minds, and we t

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The natural disaster economist

There seems to be headlines about floods, wildfires, or hurricanes every week. Scientists say this might be the new normal — that climate change is making natural disasters more and more common.Tatyan

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A black market, a currency crisis, and a tango competition in Argentina

The Nobel-prize winning economist Simon Kuznets once analyzed the world's economies this way — he said there are four kinds of countries: developed, Japan... and Argentina.If you want

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Based on a true story

When a group of amateur investors rallied around the stock for GameStop back in 2021, the story blew up the internet. News outlets around the world, including us here at Planet Money, rushed in to exp

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How to launder $600 million on the internet

Erin Plante is a private detective who specializes in chasing down stolen In March of 2022, she got the biggest assignment of her career: Hackers had broken into an online game called

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China's weakening economy in two Indicators

In China, data on the economy is sometimes difficult to come by. The Chinese government has put a pause on releasing some of its official economic data. But many of the stories emerging from the count

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Is economists' favorite tool to crush inflation broken?

When economists and policymakers talk about getting inflation under control, there's an assumption they often make: bringing inflation down will probably result in some degree of layoffs and job loss.

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The prince of prints and his prints of Prince

In 1981, photographer Lynn Goldsmith took a portrait of the musician Prince. It's a pretty standard headshot — it's in and Prince is staring down the camera lens.This was early in his

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How to fight a patent pirate

Back in the 1990s, Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar was in his office in New Delhi when he came across a puzzling story in the newspaper. Some university scientists in the U.S. had apparently filed a patent fo

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Summer School 8: Graduation and the Guppy Tank

to the Planet Money Summer School Class of 2023! Today, you become masters of business spelled with lower-case letters for legal purposes. Your diploma is waiting for

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The secret entrance that sidesteps Hollywood picket lines

Across Hollywood right now, writers and actors are picketing in front of studio lots. They're walking back and forth, holding up signs demanding concessions on things like pay, how many writers work o

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Summer School 7: Negotiating and the empathetic nibble

How do you get the best deal? How do you know you're getting the best deal? Whether you're talking down the price of a car or talking up your salary, you don't have to be a jerk to get what you want.

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Vacation, and why the U.S. takes so little of it

Do you work more for more money? Or work less for more time? For some, this is the ultimate economic choice.Every single worker in the European Union is guaranteed four weeks of paid vacation. No matt

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Summer School 6: Operations and 25,000 roses

It's difficult to control everything, says our guest professor for this week, Santiago Gallino. What is not difficult is to plan for everything. Today we venture into the sphere of business that m

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The new Biden plan that could still erase your student loans

This summer, the Supreme Court struck down Biden's plan to forgive student loan debt for millions of borrowers. Except, on the same day Biden first announced that plan, he also unveiled another, the S

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Summer School 5: Tech and the innovator's dilemma

For anyone running a business, technology is both threat and opportunity. Today, we run through techniques entrepreneurs can use to take advantage of new tech or defend against the dangers. It's not j

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A tarot card reading for the U.S. economy

Predicting the future of the economy is always a dicey proposition. That is especially true after more than three years of economic weirdness. No one quite knows what will happen next

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Summer School 4: Marketing and the Ultimate Hose Nozzle

In this session of Planet Money Summer School, we are getting the word out about your brand. How do you convince consumers to buy your product, even if they are only just hearing about it? It's time f

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Tackle your medical debt with Life Kit

There's an estimated $195 billion of medical debt in America. But just because a medical bill comes in the mail doesn't mean you have to pay that exact price. In this special episode from our friends

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Did two honesty researchers fabricate their data?

Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino are two of the biggest stars in behavioral science. Both have conducted blockbuster research into how to make people more honest, research we've highlighted on Planet Mon

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Summer School 3: Accounting and The Last Supper

Usually, the first class that an MBA student takes is accounting. That involves, yes, equations and counting widgets...but it's more than that. Inside the simple act of accounting is a revolutionary w

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Planet Money Paper Club

We here at Planet Money love economics papers. And that is also the case for so many of the economists we speak with. For them, new research can explain something they have always wondered about, or m

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Summer School 2: Competition and the cheaper sneaker

For episode 2 of Planet Money Summer School, we are talking strategy. You have your million dollar business idea, and maybe some money in your pocket to get it up and running. But now you enter into a

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Surprise, you just signed a contract! How hidden contracts took over the internet

When you make an account online or install an app, you are probably entering into a legally enforceable contract. Even if you never signed anything. These days, we enter into these contracts so often,

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Summer School 1: Planet Money goes to business school

Find all episodes of Planet Money Summer School here.Planet Money Summer School is back! It's the free economics class you can take from anywhere... for everyone! For Season 4 of Summer School, we are

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The quest to save macroeconomics from itself

When it comes to big questions about the economy, we're still kind of in the dark ages. Why do some economies grow so much faster than others? How long is the next recession going to last? How do we s

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Two Indicators: After Affirmative Action & why America overpays for subways

Two stories today.First, as we start to understand action America, we look to a natural experiment 25 years ago, when California ended the practice in public universities. It reshaped

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Supply, demand, extinction

Back in the 90s, Ivan Lozano Ortega was in charge of Bogota's wildlife rescue center. And he kept getting calls from the airport to come deal with... frogs. Hundreds of brightly colored, poisonous fro

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Planet Money Live: Two Truths and a Lie

The shocks of the pandemic economy gave us a bunch of enormous natural experiments, which helped to prove or disprove conventional economic thinking.Take, for example, the bullwhip effect, the idea th

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Mike The Mover vs. The Furniture Police

In 1978, a young man named Mike Shanks started a moving business in the north end of Seattle. It was just him and a truck — a pretty small operation. Things were going great. Then one afternoon, he wa

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Twins (classic)

There seems to be headlines about floods, wildfires, or hurricanes every week. Scientists say this might be the new normal — that climate change is making natural disasters more and more common.Tatyan3