Planet Money

Ecuador's Yasuni National Park, a pristine corner of the Amazon rainforest, is home to jaguars, giant otters, and the golden-mantled tamarin. The park also sits on top of hundreds of millions of barrels of oil, worth billions of dollars. The government of Ecuador faces a choice: Should it protect the park, or go for the money? Until very recently, the country was trying to do both. The government said it would leave the rainforest untouched — if rich countries gave billions of dollars. We reported on the story earlier this year. Today, we find out how the story ends. Note: This is an update of an episode that was originally posted in February. Note #2: Starting next week, podcasts will be posted on Wednesday and Friday, rather than on Tuesday and Friday. Download the Planet Money iPhone App. Music: Mumford & Sons's "Below My Feet." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/ Spotify/ Tumblr.

Before the Civil War, there were 8,000 different kinds of money in the United States. Banks printed their own paper money. And, unlike today, a $1 bill wasn't always worth $1. Sometimes people took the bills at face value. Sometimes they accepted them at a discount (a $1 bill might only be worth 90 cents, say.) Sometimes people rejected certain bills altogether. On today's show, we figure out how this world worked. And explain how the Civil War — and the Union's need for money — changed everything. Note: This episode was originally posted last year. Note #2: Starting next week, podcasts will be posted on Wednesday and Friday, rather than on Tuesday and Friday.

As the Egyptian military cracked down on protesters last week, U.S.-made Apache helicopters flew overhead. The Egyptian military also uses American made tanks, fighter jets and bullets. This is the product of the $1.3 billion in military aid the U.S. provides to Egypt every year. In polls, a majority of Egyptians say they want that aid to end. And it's become unpopular among some powerful Americans as well. Yet, so far, the aid hasn't stopped flowing. On today's show: Why it's so hard for the U.S. to stop sending military aid to Egypt.

On today's show, we meet a woman who is trying to bring nuance and subtlety to a world of black-and-white rules: pregnancy. Emily Oster is an economist and the author of a book called Expecting Better. Like our own Chana Joffe-Walt — who takes a break from maternity leave to host today's show — Oster found herself confused and frustrated by all the rules of pregnancy. Unlike Chana, Emily Oster decided to read almost every study that had every been conducted on pregnancy and risk. Today, we talk to Oster about what she discovered. (Spoiler: A glass of wine is Ok.)

GiveDirectly is a charity that just gives money to poor people. The people who get the money can spend it on whatever they want. They never have to pay it back. On today's show, we hear from someone who got money from GiveDirectly, from one of the founder's of the group, and from a few other people in the charity world. But, really, today's show is just a quick introduction. For the complete Planet Money experience, allow us to direct your attention to This American Life, where our full story about GiveDirectly is airing this weekend. For ways to listen, see This American Life's aptly named Ways To Listen page.

On today’s show, three stories about what how products and people get branded and what happens when you peel back the label, and try to get the full story.

In most industries, competitors getting together to restrict the supply of a good would be illegal. But in the raisin world, it's the opposite. Competitors have to work together. They all decide as a group how many raisins to release to the public. What can get you in trouble in raisins, is going against that group.   Raisin farmer, Marvin Horne, is a raisin rebel, a raisin outlaw. He refused to follow the rules of the Raisin Administrative Committee and found himself under surveillance by Rocky Pipkin's detective agency. Now he's being sued by the federal government for hundreds of thousands of dollars.   On today's show, the upside-down world of raisins.

More than half of all Japanese women quit their jobs after giving birth to their first child. That's more than double the rate in the U.S., and it's a problem for Japan's economy. If more women returned to the workforce, it would go a huge way toward boosting growth in the country and solving a big demographic problem — not enough working people to support the nation's retirees. But finding childcare in Japan is even harder than finding childcare in the U.S. The long-term solution is robot nannies. (Really.) On today's show: How Japanese working moms can survive until the robots arrive. For More: Will Robot Nannies Save Japan's Economy?

Everybody likes free. But free can be dangerous, too. Today's show is sort of the flip side free. It is what happens when you take something that was free — and you give it a price, a decision many Internet companies face today. That is a highly risky move, it turns out. And the damage can be enormous. This week, free of charge, Chana Joffe-Walt and Alex Blumberg tell the story of the Red Cross and free doughnuts — that suddenly weren't free any more. It happened 70 years ago, and the Red Cross is still feeling the consequences. ***Note this episode originally aired in July 2012.***

*Not really. But sort of. On today's show, we bring you three Planet Money radio stories, each of which looks at something indicator-ish: 1. The Beige Book: The 'Ask Your Uncle' Approach To Economics 2. The price of gold: What A Falling Gold Price Means For Pawn Shops 3. The price of a pedi-cab ride: How To Spend $442 on a 15-minute cab ride

On today's show, we took a tour of Detroit with a local newspaper reporter and an urban planner. We go see what happened to all the big dreams Detroit has had over the years.

U.S. citizens who want to buy stuff from North Korea have to write a letter to the U.S. government asking for special permission. As regular listeners know, we're sort of obsessed with North Korea. So we decided to try to get those letters. Several months ago, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request. It worked! We recently got a stack of heavily redacted letters. On today's show: we try to figure out who sent the letters, why they wanted to do business with North Korea, and what that tells us about the North Korean economy.

On our show today, we tell you everything you need to know about the filibuster, including: What Schoolhouse Rock didn't tell us Why Aaron Burr and Jimmy Stewart are the two great villains in filibuster history How Senators can now filibuster bills without having to talk for hours on end * Note: Today's show is a rerun. It originally ran on December, 2012.

1. A Mashup Of Planet Money and American Top 40. 2. An econ summer mixtape. 3. How the top three songs in America explain the crazy transformation in the music business. Those three songs by the way, are by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Justin Timberlake and Icona Pop. They come from last week's America's Top 40. 

Climate change seems like this complicated, intractable problem. But maybe it doesn't have to be. On today's show, we talk to a couple economists about a very simple idea that could solve the climate-change problem: Tax carbon emissions. A carbon tax could be paired with cuts in the income tax. And it would drive down emissions without picking winners or losers, and without creating complicated regulations.