The rise of the credit card airport lounge

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We are back to answer your questions, listeners. Today on the show, we tackle three big questions: Are airport lounges worth it for credit card companies? How effective have carbon taxes been for Canada? Why is gasoline getting more expensive over the last few months as the price of crude oil has sunk?

If you want to submit your OWN question to be considered in a future episode, send us a message at [email protected].

Related episodes:
Can cap and trade work in the US? (Apple / Spotify)
A Quick History Of Slow Credit Cards
Breaking down the price of gasoline (Apple / Spotify)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:12.0	Daryn Woods.
0:12.9	Waylon Wong.
0:14.1	Adrian Ma?
0:15.7	That's you.
0:16.5	The gang's all here today.
0:17.5	And we've got a special episode because it is listener questions.
0:24.2	This is the indicator from Planet Money, and we are here with listener questions where we
0:28.9	answer your queries about all things economic and financial in your lives. So today on the
0:34.8	show, why oil prices are down, but gas prices are up, why airline lounges have gotten so popular, and whether Canadian carbon taxes actually work.
0:46.3	All that's after the break.
0:52.2	There's a lot going on right now.
0:54.6	Mounting economic inequality threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air.
1:02.9	I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media.
1:06.7	Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass?
1:15.1	That's on the media specialty.
1:17.1	Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.
1:21.0	All right, listener questions.
1:22.5	Our first one is Fawalen.
1:24.5	It comes from Michael Locklear.
1:26.4	My name is Michael from Salt Lake City. What's behind the rapid expansion of lounges
1:31.5	under reward credit cards? And how do they even make sense for the credit card companies?
	...

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