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T-shirts, Candy, and Candlelight: How Planet Money Makes Sense of the Economy

John Pemble
/
Iowa Public Radio
David Kestenbaum and Jacob Goldstein will speak at ISU tonight at 8 PM.

Economics teachers across the country use blackboards and chalk to teach people about supply and demand. The Planet Money team hands out candy to seventh graders.

Planet Money, a twice weekly podcast from NPR, sprung from an episode of This American Life that explained the subprime mortgage crisis. For the past six years, they’ve covered everything from the history of light to toxic assets, all to make the economy and finance more understandable to the average person.

“A lot of stories you read make this assumption: ‘Oh, we all know what a bond is, we all know what money is.’ […] And lots of people don’t really know what they are. Even the people writing these stories, they don’t always ask the questions to get to the bottom of it," Jacob Goldstein, one of the show's producers, says.

On this episode of River to River, Ben Kieffer talks with Planet Money producers David Kestenbaum and Jacob Goldstein about play money, t-shirt creation and asking ‘stoner-esque’ questions like “What is money?” They will be speaking at Iowa State University in the Memorial Union Great Hall tonight at 8 PM. 

Ben Kieffer is the host of IPR's River to River