"Wanna see a trick? Give us any topic and we can tie it back to the economy." That is the bold promise in Planet Money's tagline. And we believe the show does live up to it. Over the last year, we've told stories about breakdancing, rum, pagers, buffets, colors, and heartbreak. But then one host wondered: what if we really held ourselves to that promise? What if we challenged ourselves to find economic meaning in the most esoteric and far-flung topics imaginable? That's when we turned to you, our listeners. And boy did you deliver. You sent in ideas so obscure, so banananas, so guaranteed to stump and bamboozle that our host maybe started to regret her life choices...but she was resolved to give it a try. This episode was hosted by Sally Helm and Keith Romer. It was produced by James Sneed. It was edited by Molly Messick and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Kwesi Lee. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer. Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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KeIth ROEMER, Sally Helm, I recently noticed something that I have never noticed before, and it is that planet money has a tagline.
Yes, we have had that tagline for, I'm going to say, two years now.
I missed it.
Well, it's like a little description of planet money that you can see in Spotify or apple or whatever it says.
Want to see a trick?
Give us any topic and we can tie it back to the economy.
Exactly.
And Keith, as you and I have been discussing, that what you just said is a big promise, a very bold.
Very public promise to all of our listeners.
Any topic, any topic we can tie to the economy.
It is like a gauntlet we have thrown to ourselves.
And Keith, you know, I can't resist a gauntlet.
It's almost a character flaw how much you love gauntlets.
I just, I love them.
So I decided, all right, let's do it.
Let's put out a call to our listeners, get them to send us their most obscure, esoteric topics so that we can try to tie those topics back, back to the economy.
What could go wrong?