This podcast sounded a lot different back when it started. Times were different too. In early September, 2008, the housing crisis was underway, but Lehman Brothers was still in business. It was an economy on the brink, fraught with menace and foreboding, but still standing. Nobody knew how bad it would get during that particular week.
That's when Planet Money launched with an episode about something we're still talking about today: The trade deficit with China. The episode gets at how exactly money moves from account to account across borders, and the danger of China buying so much American debt at the time.
Today on the show, we bring you Planet Money's very first episode, with an update.
Since that first episode, we've done over 900 episodes, which have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times, maybe billions — we honestly don't know because we don't have stats going back even half of our history. We've uncovered fraud at Wells Fargo. We made a T-shirt and bought oil. We've dug into the secret history behind the minimum wage and open offices. And we're so grateful you've been listening all along.
If you want more vintage Planet Money, here's a list of 10 of our favorite episodes from the last 10 years.
Music: "Groovy Bassline," "Swamp City" and "Blues Swagger"
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