NPR.

This is the indicator from planet money.

I'm Daryan Woods.

And I'm Whalen Wong.

We were watching this weekend as the US military struck Venezuela and extracted its leader Nikolaz Muduro.

At the indicator, we've been following the conditions in Venezuela over the years.

And so as we start to investigate some of the economic questions that are now swirling around

around what comes next, we wanted to play you our most recent episode on

Venezuela from early 2024. This is the economic background that the rest of the coverage out

there often skips past. What has been like to live there, why the economy went into freefall

and then actually stabilized a little. And at the end, we have an update from

our regular guest who was on the ground in Caracas last night during the strikes. Here's our

episode from May 24. Venezuela's economy has been in free fall for over a decade. It's an oil-rich

country that struggles to drill oil.

Its currency, the Bolivar, has suffered brain-bending levels of hyperinflation. We're talking

65,000 percent in 2018. Belivarez just crumbling in your hands.

The seeds of the trouble began under President Hugo Chavez around 25 years ago.

He was a leftist populist who made decisions that had some benefits like boosting education

and reducing poverty. But some of his actions slowly chipped away at the country's prosperity.

He seized control of farms and oil companies' assets.

He weakened Congress and suppressed his opponents. Towards the end of his rule, the economy

faltered, and it then nosedived under his successor, Nikolaas Maduro, who doubled down

...