Planet Money

You would never look at a map of the Hudson River, point to the spot where the Tappan Zee Bridge is, and say, "Put the bridge here!"The Tappan Zee crosses one of the widest points on the Hudson — the bridge is more than three miles long. And if you go just a few miles south, the river gets much narrower.Our question for today's show: Why did they build a three-mile-long bridge when they could have built a much shorter, cheaper bridge nearby?Our search for an answer leads us to a forensic engineer, the Statue of Liberty, and a governor who wanted to be an opera singer.This episode was originally released in August, 2011.

On today's show, we take a page from radio newscaster Paul Harvey and tell you "the rest of the story." We look back at the stories we've done in 2012 and tell you what we got right, what we got wrong and how everything turned out in Belize. Plus, we try to to figure out whether that Facebook ad did anything to help Pizza Delicious.

Gift-giving makes economists crazy. It's so inefficient!So we wondered: Is there a way to make the holiday season both more efficient and more joyful?On today's Planet Money, we try to answer that question by conducting a wildly unscientific experiment. We go into a seventh-grade classroom and give a bunch of kids some small gifts — candy, raisins, fig newtons.Then we ask them how much they value what they got, and if they can think of a way to make everyone better off, without buying any more gifts. They quickly arrive at a solution: trade.Behold, the power of economics!

Gift-giving makes economists crazy. It's so inefficient!So we wondered: Is there a way to make the holiday season both more efficient and more joyful?On today's Planet Money, we try to answer that question by conducting a wildly unscientific experiment. We go into a seventh-grade classroom and give a bunch of kids some small gifts — candy, raisins, fig newtons.Then we ask them how much they value what they got, and if they can think of a way to make everyone better off, without buying any more gifts. They quickly arrive at a solution: trade.Behold, the power of economics!

Gift-giving makes economists crazy. It's so inefficient!So we wondered: Is there a way to make the holiday season both more efficient and more joyful?On today's Planet Money, we try to answer that question by conducting a wildly unscientific experiment. We go into a seventh-grade classroom and give a bunch of kids some small gifts — candy, raisins, fig newtons.Then we ask them how much they value what they got, and if they can think of a way to make everyone better off, without buying any more gifts. They quickly arrive at a solution: trade.Behold, the power of economics!

The fiscal cliff, for all its grand theater, really comes down to people in a room trying to come to an agreement. People doing whatever it takes to get what they want from the other side. On today's show, three professional negotiators walk us through techniques that members of Congress may be using right now. They explain these techniques not with textbooks, but with examples from their everyday lives.

On today's show, we visit Fire Station Six in Contra Costa County, Calif.Firefighters don't go to fires as much as much as they used to. That's because, thanks to modern building codes, fires are not as common as they used to be. Yet the fire dept is still set up the same way: big trucks, lots of fire stations, and lots of firefighters who retire with lifetime pensions.Rather than close fire stations, the firefighters in Contra Costa County agreed to take a pay cut a few years back. But the county still couldn't afford the fire department.So the firefighters came up with a new plan: Ask the local citizens to support the fire department by paying higher taxes.

On today's show: Three Planet Money stories that aired on the radio but haven't yet made it into the show. Will A $1.9 Billion Settlement Change Banks' Behavior? Why The Falling Birthrate Is Bad News For My 2-Year-Old Son A Huge Pay Cut For Doctors Is Hiding In The Fiscal Cliff

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

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.

Last month, two states voted to legalize recreational marijuana. A bunch of others states have already legalized medical marijuana. Not surprisingly, there are legitimate, legal (at least under state law) marijuana entrepreneurs trying to start businesses around the country. On today's show, we discover the one big thing that's standing in their way: getting a bank account. And we learn how hard it is to run a business on cash alone.

Note: This week's Congressional hearing on dollar coins prompted us to re-run this episode today. It originally ran in April of this year.Legislation in Congress would get rid of dollar bills and replace them with coins. Proponents say coins are easier to use and save the country money in the long run. The bill people say none of this is true.So should we kill the dollar bill?On today's show we go deep into the nature of money itself, and we find a clear answer to this question.

On today's show: Four Planet Money stories that aired on the radio but haven't yet made it into the show.* A Sequester Is A 'Jelly-Like Mass,' And Other Notes On Fiscal-Cliff Jargon* Clear The Secret Genius Of Taylor Swift* The Weird Story Of Why Helium Prices Are Going Through The Roof* Energy Independence Wouldn't Make Gasoline Any Cheaper

One day in the early 1990s, a man walked into the U.S. embassy in Ecuador. He said he had information somebody would want to hear — information on how to go after some of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world.The man worked as a money changer. He said he was getting a lot of requests from traffickers who had a problem: They had so much cash that they didn't know what to do with it. They couldn't figure out how to launder their money.What they needed was an offshore bank to help them. On today's show, we hear how two U.S. agents — one IRS, one DEA — created a fake offshore bank to catch drug traffickers.

On today's show, we consider a world where everybody cheats and where you can't win unless you game the regulators: Professional cycling.Under the leadership of Lance Armstrong, the U.S. Postal Service cycling team was wildly successful, winning the Tour de France seven years in a row.According to a recent report, the team was running a high-tech, secret doping operation during those years. The operation was run like a business, and its leader was Lance Armstrong.