Planet Money Planet Money

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.

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Last weekend we were all thrown for a loop when President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris for the nomination. Just like everyone else, we are trying to quickly wrap our heads around what it means now that Harris is almost certainly going to be the Democratic nominee for president.

We expect to see the Harris campaign come out with some official policy proposals in the coming weeks and months. But for now, all we've got are clues, little breadcrumbs that she has dropped throughout her career that might lead us to a rough idea of what economic policies she might support.

Today on the show, we're going to visit three key moments from Harris' political career that might give us an idea of how her economic agenda might look. First, the 2019 presidential primary debates, where she laid out her own economic policies. Next, a vote in her Senate years that shows where she might fall on future trade agreements. And finally, a fight with some of the country's biggest banks from her very first year as Attorney General of California.

This episode was hosted by Keith Romer and Nick Fountain. It was produced by Emma Peaslee, edited by Jess Jiang with help from Meg Cramer, and fact checked by Sierra Juarez and Sofia Shchukina. Engineering by Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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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In 2022, artist Stuart Semple opened up his laptop to find that all his designs had turned black overnight. All the colors, across files on Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator, were gone. Who had taken the colors away? The story of what happened begins with one company, Pantone.

Pantone is known for their Color of the Year forecasts, but they actually make the bulk of their money from selling color reference guides. These guides are the standard for how designers pretty much anywhere talk about color.

On today's show, how did Pantone come to control the language of the rainbow? We look back at the history of Pantone, beginning with the man who made Pantone into the industry standard. And, we hear from Stuart, who tried to break the color monopoly.

Share your thoughts — What color should we choose to be Planet Money's color?

This episode was hosted by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and Jeff Guo, and produced by Willa Rubin with help from James Sneed. It was edited by Jess Jiang and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Debbie Daughtry with help from Carl Craft. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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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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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The company NVIDIA dominates the AI chip market. Its success comes from designing computer chips and a software ecosystem its built to use those chips. In this bonus episode, it's an extended conversation with David Rosenthal, co-host of the Acquired podcast. He tells Darian Woods how Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's co-founder and CEO, took the company from video game graphics cards to AI juggernaut. Show your support for Planet Money and the reporting we do by signing up for Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. You'll be able to unlock this episode and other great bonus content. Regular episodes remain free to listen!Email the show at planetmoney@npr.org.

4.5 million households in the U.S. have solar panels on their homes. Most of those customers are happy with it - their electricity bills have just about disappeared, and it's great for the planet. But thousands and thousands of people are really disappointed with what they've been sold. Their panels are more expensive than they should be, and they say it is hard to get someone to come fix them when they break.

It turns out this sometimes crummy customer experience is no accident. It ties back to how big, national solar companies built their businesses in the first place. To entice people to install expensive solar panels, companies developed new financing models which cut upfront costs for customers. And they deployed lots and lots of salespeople to grow their businesses. But in the drive to get more households installing solar panels, consumer costs went up and the focus seemed to shift away from making sure those panels actually worked. All of this left some consumers feeling like they've been sold a lie.

On today's episode, we look into how the residential solar business model has turned some people sour on solar. And we'll try to figure out where the industry could go from here.

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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