It's that time of gear again. Planet Money Summer School is back. This semester with help from professors,

policy experts, and yes, even a Nobel laureate, we're diving into how government and the economy

mix and asking the big questions like, what role should government play in our economy? Does government

intervention help or hurt and how big should the government be? That's on Planet Money Summer School from NPR, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey there, I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And today is President's Day. So we're bringing you an encore of one of our recent episodes on picking vice presidents.

We'll be back with a fresh episode in your feeds tomorrow. Enjoy the show.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign.

And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

And today I'd like to think of the podcast as the equivalent of if you

were sitting around and getting a beer with me, Mara, and Sarah, because today we're talking

veep stakes. The presidential primary is not over, but for most Republicans, it is. Donald Trump is

the likely nominee, and he's already indicated that he knows who his running mate will be.

We, of course, have no idea who it's going to be here on the NPR Politics Podcast, but we don't even know if he knows who it's going to be.

But we do know a lot about what goes into this guessing game.

So pour yourself a coffee, take a sip of a beer or your favorite non-alcoholic cocktail, and let's get into it.

So Mara, what are generally the calculations that a nominee puts into deciding who their

running mate should be?

Well, historically, the running mate was seen as a person who could balance the ticket,

bring a constituency or a state to a ticket.

Sometimes candidates looked at it in a completely opposite way. Remember,

Bill Clinton picked Al Gore, another young, centrist, Democrat from the middle of the country,

...