Beschikbare afleveringen

• Is this how the great international borrowing spree ends?

  In recent months, there have been serious whispers about an outrageous possibility: that one day soon, France — the seventh largest economy in the world — might not be able to pay back its debts. Right now, protesters in France are...

  31 okt 2026 1551 sec.

• Politicians are afraid to fix taxes. So 100 citizens tried.

  Connecticut’s property tax system has been broken for decades and the politicians have failed to fix the problem. So now, they’re trying something new: a citizens assembly. (Citizens assemblies are also old. They go back to Ancient...

  28 okt 2026 1831 sec.

• How surveillance crept up on us

  For years, police have spent billions of tax dollars on watching us, tracking us, and recording us. In the largest police department in the country, these surveillance systems were paid for and adopted without the kind of public...

  23 okt 2026 2076 sec.

• We try to fix election polling (update)

  Polling is facing an existential crisis. People aren't picking up the phone. Nobody wants to talk to pollsters. Trust is on the line. We pluck a solution from the economics canon and convince a polling firm to let us test it.  Today on...

  21 okt 2026 1799 sec.

• Anatomy of a movie market

  Before an independent movie makes it to a streaming platform or a theater near you, it first needs to survive an artistic and economic gauntlet. And even for those movies that make it into elite film festivals like Sundance – it can...

  16 okt 2026 1929 sec.

• Wanna slow down AI? These biologists can help.

  Fifty years ago, scientists pioneering a terrifying gene-splicing technology figured out a way to collectively hit pause. Can we do it again with AI?  We ask because some top AI industry leaders are saying the technology they’re...

  14 okt 2026 1750 sec.

• Should we all be getting tariff refunds right now?

  Companies are getting billions of dollars back. How about us?  It seems simple, right? We paid higher prices for imported goods because of tariffs. Then the tariffs were ruled illegal. Courts said the money paid to the U.S. government...

  9 okt 2026 1803 sec.

• Charles Ponzi's scheme (plus a new scam)

  Charles Ponzi was down on his luck. In 1919, the Italian immigrant had spent a decade and a half in the U.S. He was looking for a way to get rich and tried his hand at everything — including bookkeeping, sign painting, grocery clerk,...

  7 okt 2026 1530 sec.

• Where all those weird new drinks are coming from

  It's getting pretty wild in the beverage aisle these days — from the rainbow wall of seltzers, to the increasingly strange flavors of Pepsi, to the new "functional" sodas with added fiber or supplements that supposedly offer health...

  3 okt 2026 1780 sec.

• Who’s gonna pay for your Social Security?

  Very soon, Social Security may not have enough money to make full payments to retirees. Very soon. Like by 2032, just six years from now. So what are we gonna do about it?  Today on the show, we look at some of the most talked about...

  30 sep 2026 1753 sec.

• Middlegarchs are the new Oligarchs

  Wanna know who is really in the top 1%? And how they use their influence? It may not be who you think. Look beyond Silicon Valley. Look beyond Wall Street. Look beyond the “oligarchs”. There's a much larger class of wealthy Americans...

  25 sep 2026 1843 sec.

• Is our national debt finally too much? (update)

  (Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2024 .) $40,000,000,000,000. Four commas. Thirteen zeroes. It’s an eye-popping, almost infinite-sounding pile of money. And every time the debt passes a big round number, almost...

  23 sep 2026 1789 sec.