This summer on Planet Money Summer School, we're learning about political economy.

We're getting into the nitty-gritty of what government does with things like trade, taxes, immigration, and health care.

So politics and economics, which are taught separately, they shouldn't be separated at all.

I think you have to understand one to really appreciate the other.

So what is the right amount of government in our lives?

Tune into Planet Money Summer School from NPR.

Wherever you get, their podcasts.

This is Fresh Air.

I'm Terry Gross.

The history of rock and roll, really the history of most 20th century popular music,

is filled with stories of unscrupulous managers.

One of the men frequently near the top of the list is Elvis Presley's

longtime manager, Colonel Tom Parker. He had worked in carnivals and was considered to have a

slippery relationship with the truth and a flair for exaggeration, but a talent for making a profitable

business deal. Parker's name and his background were

fictions. He was really from Holland, not the U.S. He stowed away on a ship to the U.S. and never became

a citizen of America. He served in the military under his false identity, but was never a

colonel in the U.S. Army. Colonel was an honorific bestowed on him by the governor of Louisiana.

During the time my guest Peter Goralnik

was writing his definitive two-volume biography of Elvis Presley,

he got to see Parker's archive,

which included his letters, thousands of them.

...