In defense of gift giving

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2022

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Cold economic reasoning says, supposedly, that gifts are inefficient transfers of wealth. But Planet Money host Jeff Guo believes in the economic virtues of gift giving. On today's show, Jeff tries to win over Planet Money's resident Scrooge, Kenny Malone, by going on a quest to find him the perfect gift. Along the way, they're visited by the spirits of three Nobel prize-winning economic theories that can explain why gift-giving is actually good. And by the end, Kenny's heart may just grow three sizes larger. Subscribe to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:04.0	Alright.
0:07.0	Are any of these breakable?
0:09.0	Stop shaking it. Stop shaking it.
0:11.0	I lost track of what's going on right now.
0:13.0	What are we doing?
0:14.0	The other day, I organized the first ever Planet Money Secret Santa.
0:18.0	GIF! So maybe you should wait to open yours.
0:20.0	Wait, before we get started. I just wanted to say, I'm very excited.
0:24.0	I'm very excited that we're doing this.
0:26.0	I have guessed. Because I wanted it all to be a surprise, even for me,
0:30.0	I wrote a little computer program to secretly assign all the gift givers and recipients.
0:35.0	What is it?
0:36.0	First up, the algorithm told Greg Rizalski to give a gift to Sarah Gonzalez,
0:41.0	who you should know is always talking about how freezing it is.
0:44.0	Let's just say that I originally thought snuggie.
0:48.0	Oh my god!
0:50.0	What is it?
0:51.0	What is it?
0:52.0	The bear hooded blanket!
0:54.0	What? Oh my god!
0:56.0	It's perfect!
	...

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