Planet Money

We visit a little-known "lost and found" to find out how your money gets in there, and how you can get it back.

President Vladimir Putin recently proposed changes to the Russian Constitution in an attempt to consolidate power. Throughline asks, "How did he come to power in the first place?"

On today's show, we head to Germany to meet the person who kickstarted the green energy market and learn about the wonky policy tool that helped him do it.

You can see billboards, and, increasingly, they can see you. We explore the power of billboards, and we put up our own in Times Square.

We asked a bunch of economists at the American Economic Association's annual conference one question: What is the most useful idea in economics?

Free is a powerful concept. Everybody likes free things, but free can backfire. On today's show: What happens when you take something that is free, and give it a price?

With limited slots and high demand, the NYC Marathon has had to create a clever system to allocate a scarce resource as fairly as possible. Four lessons in fair allocation.

In the 1990s, inflation in Brazil was so high that, for a very long time, prices had been increasing every day. Until four drinking buddies from grad school found a way to fix it.

We check in on the Universal Postal Union, what happened to the plane that got stuck in Iran, how much Mattress Mack lost betting on baseball, and more.

In an era of peak television, screenwriters and their talent agents are fighting over the money. In April, 7,000 screenwriters fired all their agents on the same day.