Stacey Vanek Smith

Dinosaur fossils are often found along the U.S.-Canada border. But what happens after someone discovers them on their land depends on what the rules are about ownership, scholarship and preservation.

There's always been a fringe market for dinosaur bones among paleontologists and collectors. Now suddenly that market is booming.

As migrants pour into Europe, there's a debate about the impact they'll have. To help inform that discussion, here's a look at the economic history of the 1980 Mariel boat lift from Cuba to Florida.

The U.S. has long made it easier for businesses to declare bankruptcy and move on than most of Europe. Many other countries thought these laws were too risky, but now they're copying those laws.

To business owners the word bankruptcy can mean failure. We visit a retailer in Charlotte, N.C., which tried to avoid the big failure. But bankruptcy might be the secret weapon of the U.S. economy.

For a farm, water means crops and money. But as we hear in this Planet Money report, one group of California farmers has found a novel but simple solution to use less water.

Some California farmers are turning to more profitable crops — like pistachios and almonds — in order to fund the drilling of deeper wells to cope with the long drought. Those crops, ...

Trade negotiations, such as talks on the Trans Pacific Partnership, are done in secret. To understand what those negotiations are like, the Planet Money podcast looks at the last big trade deal.

Service jobs were a refuge for people when robots took factory jobs. But robots are moving in there too. The latest group of workers getting replaced by machines: food servers.

The computer doesn't pay attention to what you say. What matters is how you say it.

Machines are taking on jobs that once seemed robot-proof. But can a machine replace radio reporters? We pit a human against a machine to find out.

We recently did a story that began with this sentence:

"The housing market has recovered in many parts of the country, but the government still owns the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."

After the story aired, we got a bunch of messages from a listener, Andrew ...

People make buying decisions based on something that is really hard to measure: how we feel. Our Planet Money team reports on the holy grail of economics: knowing what consumers are going to do.

What is recyclable and what is trash? There is an economic line between the two, and it's a line that can move around a lot. Our Planet Money team explains why it's a tough time to be a recycler.

If you've gotten a mortgage recently, you probably got some help from the government. The 2008 takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was supposed to be temporary, but it hasn't turned out that way.

Chocolate is increasingly popular and under assault from diseases that infect cocoa plants. Scientists are working to find varieties that will resist diseases and keep the world's sweet tooth happy.