Planet Money

Let’s head to a small town in Kenya that’s become globally famous for helping economists answer some of the biggest questions facing humanity.

In Kenya and Nigeria, economics isn’t just theory, it’s real life. We’ll look at some radical experiments that turned out to be enormously successful.

What are the building blocks of health, education and prosperity for all? How does a nation grow rich? What is the most effective way to spend a dollar to fight poverty? We find answers in a town that became the laboratory for new concepts in economic research that netted some researchers the most prestigious prize in economics.

Featured Episodes:

How randomized trials and the town of Busia, Kenya changed economics (2023)
Nigeria, You Win! (2016)

Featured Terms:
Randomized controlled trial
Human capital
Missing middle
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The series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Sophia Paliza-Carre. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark. This episode was fact-checked by Leyla Doss, with engineering by Annlie Huang.

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The cyclospora outbreak that’s sickening thousands of Americans got us interested in the rise of Big Lettuce, and the challenges of keeping it clean. 

So on today’s show, we tell you just how much lettuce Americans eat every year (SO MUCH!), how bagged lettuce came to dominate grocery store shelves, what that means for food safety, and why these outbreaks continue to happen — despite the FDA’s efforts to stop them.

Check out other related episodes:
Food Scare Squad
How refrigeration took over the world

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This episode was hosted by Jeff Guo and Emma Peaslee. It was produced by Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Marianne McCune and it was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Annlie Huang. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer. 

Music: NPR Source Audio - "Electric Leak," "West Green Road," and "Melty Heart"

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In the summer of 2020, sixteen-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. traveled a thousand miles to join the racial justice movement of his generation in the wake of George Floyd's killing. Antonio arrived in Seattle during the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, known as CHOP. Less than a week later, he was shot and killed there. The case remains unsolved.

In this eight-part series, hosts Sydney Brownstone of The Seattle Times and Will James of KUOW team up with NPR's Embedded to investigate Antonio's death. They track down key eyewitnesses and surface crucial evidence that's never been made public.

Find "We Keep Us Safe" in the Embedded podcast feed.

Listen to Embedded wherever you get your podcasts, including the NPR App, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and via RSS.

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As the World Cup comes to a close, so does a massive real-time experiment happening just around the edges. Major League Soccer – the top men’s professional soccer league in the U.S. and Canada – has been scrambling to take advantage of this once-in-a-generation opportunity when average American sports fans suddenly cared a lot about soccer.

In between World Cup matches, NPR Sports Correspondent Becky Sullivan has been following Major League Soccer executives as they try to figure out how best to get a foot in the door with sports fans in the U.S.

In this episode, we tag along to see if U.S. and Canadian professional soccer can harness 2026 for the mythical World Cup bump in soccer interest. What strategies are teams using? And does it stand a chance to work?

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This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Becky Sullivan and Kenny Malone. It was produced by James Sneed with an assist from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and edited by Jess Jiang. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Annlie Huang. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer. 

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China’s turbocharged growth may have made it rich, but now it has to deal with rich country problems. 

High-speed trains that connect every town. Gleaming new bridges and skyscrapers. An apartment (or two) for every family. No country on Earth has seen the kind of economic growth that China has over the last 50 years. China has become the factory to the world, a grand experiment in central government planning mixed with personal ambition. 

It was all enabled by what our guide for today calls, an engineering state, a central planning mindset where leaders believe they can engineer their way out of economic problems. And problems are mounting. 

Today on the show, the perils of prosperity and the despair of success as China deals with overbuilding. 

We’ll travel back to China’s free-wheeling boom-era of the early 2000s and hang out with a property developer who amassed his wealth at the center of the action – private jet rides, thousand-dollar fish soup, casual bribes. Then, as the economy slows, we ask what can we learn from the despair of success. Does rising youth unemployment signal a less prosperous future? With young people struggling to find white-collar jobs, some of them are opting out of work altogether. 

Featured Episodes:
China’s real estate crisis, explained (2023) 
Young, “spoiled and miserable” in China (2023) 

Featured Terms: 

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
Engineering State
Malinvestment

Support:

Planet Money+

Read: 

Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life (Audiobook here) 
Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter
Our weekly Indicator link round-up newsletter
Dan Wang’s book: Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future
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This episode of Planet Money Summer School is hosted by Robert Smith. It was produced by Sophia Paliza-Carre, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Maggie Luthar. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark.

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