External projects
In 2012, Planet Money asked five economists (Dean Baker, Russ Roberts, Katherine Baicker, Luigi Zingales and Robert H. Frank) from across the spectrum to put together a "No-Brainer Economic Platform". The policies were:
In 2017, The Indicator, hosted by Planet Money 's Stacey Vanek Smith and the Financial Times' Cardiff Garcia, was launched as Planet Money 's first spin-off podcast.[15] With a similar storytelling approach, it delivers faster, shorter, more frequent podcasts. The podcast, which publishes every weekday, breaks down big ideas using Planet Money 's style of witty entertainment-journalism. Each episode is approximately 10 minutes or less.
On February 28, 2018, the first episode of Planet Money Shorts was released.[16] Planet Money Shorts is a monthly video series created by Bronson Arcuri and Ben Naddaff-Hafrey and published by NPR. It can be streamed from their webpage or watched on their YouTube channel.
In 2020, Planet Money began posting videos on TikTok and also joined the platform's #LearnOnTikTok initiative which paid creators and publishers to post education content on the platform.[17][18][19] In 2021, the account was nominated for a Webby Award in the "Education & Discovery, Social Video (Social)" category.[20]
Planet Money has launched unique projects such as buying 100 barrels of crude oil and following it from ground to gas tank, launching a satellite, and building an algorithmic trading Twitter bot.[1] Inspired by the book The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy by Pietra Rivoli, the Planet Money team made a t-shirt and followed the shirt in a step-by-step journey from resource production to manufacturing.[21] The design for the shirt was a squirrel holding a martini glass, which was meant to reference the economist John Maynard Keynes' phrase for the human elements in economics, the "animal spirits."[21] More than 25,000 of the shirts were sold online. The t-shirts were sold as part of a Kickstarter campaign became an unexpected runaway hit, raising more than 10 times their original goal of $50,000.[22] Executive producer Alex Blumberg worked with Pietra Rivoli as project advisor, and Kainaz Amaria, Brian Boyer, and Joshua Davis were managing producers.
The Planet Money team also attempted to buy the rights to lesser-known Marvel Comics character Doorman for $10,000.[23] After meeting with Gene Luen Yang to talk about his reboot of the public domain character Green Turtle, the team decided to adapt the fellow public domain character Micro-Face.[24] A 24-page comic was written by Alex Segura, with interior art by Jamal Igle, lettering by Taylor Esposito, coloring by Ellie Wright, and cover art by Jerry Ordway.[25]
- 1) Eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, as it distorts the market and drives up housing prices.
- 2) Eliminate the deduction for employer-provided health insurance, as it drives up health care costs.
- 3) Eliminate the corporate income tax.
- 4) Eliminate all income and payroll taxes, as they reduce the incentives to work and to hire, respectively.
- 5) Tax carbon emissions, as it gives people an incentive to stop polluting.
- 6) Legalize marijuana, as arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating marijuana users is a waste of resources, and the war on drugs drives up drug prices.[13][14]
