Marianne McCune

Wealthy Chinese woman are hiring Americans to be surrogate moms. We explore how the relationship between a Chinese woman and her American surrogate changed during a particularly difficult pregnancy.

One farmer's improper use of an herbicide damaged another's field and led to a shooting. The dispute reveals divisions among neighbors and economic tradeoffs over the right way to farm.

A battle with a weed divides neighbors and leads one farmer to shoot another dead. Today's show: The hunt for a better pesticide gets way out of hand.

The Planet Money men's T-shirt was made in Bangladesh, by workers who make about $3 a day, with overtime. The Planet Money women's T-shirt was made in Colombia, by workers who make roughly $13 a day, without overtime.

The wages in both places are remarkably low by U.S. standards. But ...

Over the past couple years, violence in Ciudad Juarez has fallen from its peak levels, but the city (along with its neighbor across the border, El Paso) is still trying to revitalize its image. Marianne McCune talks to the mayors of El Paso and Juarez about what they're doing to accomplish this, the 2010 decision to leave Juarez off of an El Paso tourism map, and the recent decision to add it back to the map.

Just across the border from El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juarez is notorious for the violence that has accompanied a long war between cartels. Marianne McCune goes to Juarez to see how the once-epicenter of Mexico’s drug violence has changed the city and the reporters who risk their lives to cover it.