Planet Money
NPR explains economic mechanisms through stories; numbers and comparisons check out
30:43America's Real Power Brokers Aren't Billionaires—They're 3 Million Hidden Millionaires
3 million pass-through business owners collectively hold wealth 13 times greater than the Forbes 400, occupy a quarter of congressional tax-writing seats, and are the true architects of US tax code and market rules.
29:49US Debt Tops $40 Trillion: Even the Doves Are Calling Themselves Hawks Now
The 2010 paper claiming growth halves once debt passes 90% of GDP was used by politicians as a red line for over a decade; now even the dove economist who argued for spending boldly calls herself a hawk, but nobody can say where that line is.
32:22The Pizza Tracker: How We Were Trained to Pay for Fake Progress Bars
Domino's pizza tracker started as an internal management tool and became a global app standard. It works because it turns waiting into visible work; and once companies discovered we love watching progress bars, they started faking them.
18:05Margin debt hits a record, and retail is trading with borrowed money
Margin debt at US brokerages now exceeds total US credit card debt, and a leveraged ETF crash in Korea forced the liquidation of 360,000 accounts, most of them belonging to people under 35.