Ginseng is a prized root in demand for it's wide use in traditional Chinese medicine. Some of the most valuable ginseng grows wild in Appalachia, but supplies are dwindling.

Amazon and Walmart each want to sell you groceries as part of their plan to sell everyone everything. So now Walmart is inventing new kinds of foods to lure customers into the store.

GiveDirectly is a group trying an approach to rebuild Houston modeled from anti-poverty work in Africa. Just give away cash, no strings attached — but there's hopeful logic behind the method.

To help evacuees from Hurricane Irma drive a little further, Telsa sent an upgrade to some of it's cars that made the battery last longer. This raises the question: if they could do it with software remotely, why didn't they do it before? Many companies try to differentiate between identical or nearly identical products to sell them to some people for more and others for less. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

It's not so easy to get rid of a historic bridge. Washington state has one and doesn't know what to do with it. Historic preservation is butting up against safety and infrastructure needs, so the state is offering $1 million for anyone who will come and take the old bridge off their hands.

Our Planet Money team looks back on the early days of the Internet when buying with one click seemed novel enough to warrant a patent, and how this gave Amazon an advantage.