Stacey Vanek Smith

How something that's all around us came to be worth millions of dollars.

Three worrying indicators to keep an eye on — less complicated than the yield curve, but something you can talk about at the water cooler.

As more companies announce bans on plastic straws, NPR's Planet Money talks to one of the originators of the campaign against plastic straws to learn the strategic choices that made this campaign catch on.

It may be too late to avoid a trade war between the U.S. and China, but there might be a simple way to stop the trade wars of the future.

Women invest far less of their paychecks than men do. Sallie Krawcheck spent her career on Wall Street and she says this is a problem we need to solve.

Japan's population is shrinking. It's harder and harder to find qualified people to fill a lot of jobs. Including ninjas.

We respond to your letters, tweets and messages: We talk Iran, yield curve and how to pronounce Hyundai.

Starbucks, Ikea, Vancouver, Scotland: They've all banned plastic straws. The movement is meant to help reduce plastic waste in the ocean. But will it work, or will it backfire?

Banks and other financial institutions have their own banking accounts at the Federal Reserve. Morgan Ricks argues that regular folks should have access to Fed accounts, too.

President Trump recently announced strict economic sanctions in Iran. Today on the show, we talked to a young Iranian man about what it's like to live in the Iranian economy right now.

Every time the yield curve has inverted since 1970, the economy has fallen into recession. It's getting close to inverting now, but it may no longer be the recession predictor it once was.

Two stories from our Indicator team. One province in China makes many of the world's flags. It's a unique window on global trade. And we find out why so few teenagers are working summer jobs.

A quirk in French labor law makes it especially difficult for a company to lay off its employees. It's a system designed to protect workers, but it also has consequences for the rest of the economy.

Flags: symbol of a country, patriotic rallying cry, and a telling economic indicator. Today on the show, a factory in China that makes American flags, and what it tells us about the modern economy.

The unemployment rate is already below the Federal Reserve's estimate for maximum employment. But former Fed Governor Sarah Bloom Raskin says it may still have further to fall.

Every year, the nation's biggest banks are subjected to stress tests, hypothetical disaster scenarios designed to test their balance sheets. But the stress tests could soon be getting less stressful.

We look at the reasons why the number of teenagers looking for summer jobs has dropped over the past few decades.

The price of oil continued climbing throughout this year, catching forecasters and consumers by surprise. What happened, and what might make it move in the second half of the year?

Movie Pass — which lets people go see one movie per day for $10 a month — has new competition. AMC theatres is now offering three special format movies a week for a set monthly price. But Movie Pass has always had competition from Netflix. The question really is do you want to go out or stay in tonight?