Robert Smith

The origin story for those duty free shops in airports go back to a port town in Ireland trying to cash in on the early days of air travel. Since then, the bargains have become much harder to believe in.

We meet the man who invented duty free shopping and find out if these tax free stores are really saving us any money.

Today on the show: How a cheese cartel abandoned the rules of economics and convinced the world to eat fondue.

Today on the show: the economics of drought, and why the rational thing to do in California right now is use more water.

We're in a full-fledged trade war with China. We dig into the list of Chinese tariffs on American products. It gets weird...and delicious.

A tariff is not a targeted strike. China has not placed a tariff on U.S. soybeans, but the mere suggestion that it might, has already begun shifting the global flows of the crop across four continents, creating arbitrary winners and losers well beyond U.S. soy producers.

Today on the show: how an economic fix helped made the deadliest job in America safer, and why people are angry about it.

What happens when you put someone who wants to close an agency, in charge of that agency? Today on the show, we find out.

In the final part of the three-part series, the Planet Money satellite gets placed on top of a rocket and the countdown begins. There is a lot that can go wrong when going to space, and it's a nail-biting ride for everyone on launch day.

Once you get a satellite, you need to find a large tube filled with explosive fuel to take your satellite to space. Luckily, there is fierce competition among rocket makers to give you a lift. In the second of three-part series, Planet Money travels from California to New Zealand to see which rocket with blast their satellite to the stars.

Getting to space is easier and cheaper than ever in a new age of tiny satellites one can hold in their hand. With that ease, NPR's Planet Money podcast wanted in, so in this first episode of three, they went on a mission to adopt a satellite. Along the way, they meet the man behind the revolution of tiny satellites and meet their new spacecraft.

Many people go to the fair to ride the tilt-o-whirl or eat funnel cake. NPR's Planet Money team traveled to the Ohio State Fair to witness the ancient art of product salesmanship.

We answer one of the most important questions in finance: What actually happens at the end of Trading Places?

News moves fast. Some of our best stories from this year have new chapters. Here, we catch up on three: Dirty trademarks, trading bots, and the war against the bald eagle.

That meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer was two decades in the making. It began in 1996, when an adventurous American went to Russia, trying to make a buck.

We visit a company where people work on figuring out how to make stuff get cheaper.

We visited a libertarian summer paradise. What we found: People paying in gold. Exotic bacon dishes. A nine-year-old selling alcohol.

President Trump's budget proposal assumes the U.S. economy will grow at 3 percent a year. Most economists call that improbable. We try to figure out what it would take to hit the magic 3 percent.

Qatar was on top of the world. Seemingly overnight, it became a pariah. On this episode, we drill into a rift years in the making: It's a tale of falcons, kidnapping, and a glowing Saudi Arabian orb.

The president's budget promises 3% growth. Is that doable? Yes, but he won't like what it would take.