Nick Fountain
Nick Fountain produces and reports for Planet Money. Since he joined the team in 2015, he's reported stories on pears, black pepper, ice cream, chicken, and hot dogs (twice). Come to think of it, he reports on food a whole lot. But he's also driven the world's longest yard sale, uncovered the secretive group that controls international mail, and told the story of a crazy patent scheme that involved an acting Attorney General.
Before this job, he worked at NPR's Morning Edition as a producer and director. The hours were terrible, but the work was fun: He produced interviews with world leaders, witnesses to history, musicians, authors, and directors. He also chose the music that went between stories and directed the live show. He's reported from Haiti, Mexico, and the U.K. Before NPR, he worked at WBUR Boston, KQED San Francisco, KUSP Santa Cruz, a farmers market, a fancy cabinet shop, and a baseball stadium. He's the reigning world champion of Belt Sander Racing. He's glad you asked.
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When unwanted gifts are returned, they often don't go back to the original seller. We get a behind-the-scenes look at two women who make a living off of returned merchandise.
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The United Auto Workers union is showing the power of surprise as they threaten future strikes. That tactic was pioneered by a different union. Flight attendants.
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Duke professor and behavioral scientist Dan Ariely has been accused of using falsified data in research into ways to make people more honest. New info makes the case against him look stronger.
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Experts are calculating when the deadline is for Congress to come up with a debt limit solution in order to keep the U.S. solvent and paying its bills.
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Nick Fountain, co-host of NPR's podcast Planet Money, reports on the rise and fall of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and its former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.
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It's gotten a lot tougher to poll voters these days. People aren't picking up the phone, nobody wants to talk to pollsters and it's becoming a crisis for the polling industry.
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There's an online scam where the scammer acts as a secret middleman between unsuspecting shoppers and the good. Here's how it works and what you should look out for.
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When an American company named ABRO learns their goods are being counterfeited in China, they pursue lawsuits, extraditions, sting operations and more to make it stop.
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We're back for our annual tradition: Channeling another year's worth of jealousy and self-loathing into a whole episode just for you. Happy Valentine's Day!
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On today's show, we follow a commercial flight that made an emergency landing in Iran last December. And we discover that landing in Iran would be easy. Getting out – much, much harder.