from KQED.

Welcome to Forum. I'm I'm I Kim. The economy. Everyone contributes to it and everyone is shaped by it,

says Alex Miyasi and the host at NPR's Planet Money. So it's probably not a bad idea to learn about

the forces that drive it, as the Planet Money podcast has long helped people do,

and now a new book is doing that too. Called Planet Money, a guide to the economic forces that

shape your life. It tells fun and relatable stories to harness the economic lessons that can

help us make sense of the world, and maybe even a little more confident about the decisions we make.

This hour, we dive into some of those stories

with Alex Miasi, lead author of the new book

and a longtime Planet Money contributor.

Alex, welcome to Forum.

Thank you so much for having me.

Also with us is Kenny Malone,

co-host of Planet Money. Kenny, glad to have you on too.

Thank you so much. We're so excited to be here.

Yay. So I just said a tiny bit, Kenny in my intro about why it's worth learning about economic forces.

But I just love to get a better sense from each of you about what it's done for you, what this deeper understanding has done for you personally.

Yeah, well, I can start there.

I think one for me is just like it's been really fun and satisfying.

I think there's some like big economic ideas that we might get into in a bit that you kind of see them in one place and they understand lots of things across the economy and I just find that really fascinating. And then I think also it's just this really it can be this really calming process to better understand the economy because they are, you know, uh, recessions,

boom periods, AI automation, you know, there are these big forces that can feel, feel very

scary if you're kind of like, is this, is this a tidal wave coming and you're not quite sure?

...