Planet Money In Book Form!
Slate Money
Slate Podcasts
4.1 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week: Beloved NPR podcast Planet Money is now a book too! Author and Planet Money contributor Alex Mayyasi joins Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck to give us a peek into the upcoming Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life. Pulling from their favorite chapters of the book, the hosts get into how Argentina’s attempt to foster manufacturing mirrors Trump’s recent efforts, why the Argentinian Blackberry just didn’t cut it, the hidden forces of market design, the reverse-robin hood effect of high credit card fees and more.
In the Slate Plus episode: Childcare and Baumol's Cost Disease
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Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello. |
| 0:10.0 | Welcome to Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. |
| 0:17.0 | I'm Felix Allen of Bloomberg. |
| 0:18.0 | I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of the New York Times. Hello? I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of New York Times. |
| 0:24.7 | Hello. I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios Markets. |
| 0:32.8 | Hello, hello. And we have a very special, amazing crossover event. We Slate Money Elite have decided to join forces with Planet Money. And specifically with Alex, may I see? Alex, welcome. |
| 0:38.8 | Thank you so much, Felix. It's great to be here. |
| 0:40.6 | Planet Money is not only popular podcast available through NPR. It is also a book with your name on it. |
| 0:47.2 | That's right. This is our first book, which I think will be familiar in terms of tone to many who know the podcast. |
| 0:53.4 | But we've been working hard on it. |
| 0:55.0 | This has been the last several years of my life. The subtitle of the book is a guide to the |
| 0:59.4 | economic forces that shape your life. And so as much as possible, we want to make this something |
| 1:03.6 | that feels really comprehensive. This is the only book you ever need to read to understand |
| 1:09.3 | the economic forces that shape your life, read this book |
| 1:11.9 | and you're done. You could listen to Planet Money still. You can listen to Slate Money on occasion |
| 1:16.5 | still. But I do think something that's really special about this is since this was not just |
| 1:20.5 | me on my own writing a book. This was me working with the incredibly talented Planet Money team |
| 1:26.4 | that has been reporting on the economy, |
| 1:28.9 | finding great stories to illustrate what's going on the economy for more than 10 years. |
| 1:33.4 | And so that, I think, allowed us to cover a lot of ground in a way that would have just been |
| 1:37.7 | impossible if it was just me and a garret, maybe with some of the wine that Felix likes to drink. |
| 1:42.3 | Are we going to talk about wine? I hope we get to talk about wine. |
... |
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