About these summaries
Octagon has summarized 9 episodes of Planet Money published between Oct 16, 2026 and Nov 14, 2026. Each summary lists key takeaways, short timestamped quotes and the companies and tickers mentioned, with a link to the full episode.
Episodes
- Are wildfires making the future uninsurable?
Homeowners in wildfire-prone Paradise, California, are being pushed out of the private insurance market even after spending years hardening their houses.
- How bodegas led to the Yemeni coffeehouse explosion | Planet Money
Yemeni-Americans have long clustered in bodegas and small grocery stores, and that business base is now helping fuel a newer wave of Yemeni coffee houses across the U.S. The host…
- Inside the insurance industry’s destruction lab | Planet Money
The episode examines how the insurance industry funds experimental research that tries to make homes and neighborhoods less vulnerable to fire, hail, wind, and wildfire.
- The history of light (classic) | Planet Money
The episode argues that the history of artificial light is a clean way to see economic progress: over time, the same amount of work buys vastly more light, which means more…
- Is this how the great international borrowing spree ends? | Planet Money
Rich countries have been borrowing on a scale that would have looked reckless a generation ago, and France has become the clearest warning sign.
- Politicians are afraid to fix taxes. So 100 citizens tried. | Planet Money
About 100 randomly selected Connecticut residents spent months trying to solve the state’s broken property tax system, a problem that has persisted for decades and helped make…
- How surveillance crept up on us | Planet Money
The episode traces how the NYPD built a sprawling surveillance apparatus after 9/11, turning cameras, license plate readers, databases, facial recognition, and other tools into a…
- We try to fix election polling (update) | Planet Money
Polling is in crisis because fewer people answer the phone, fewer still complete surveys, and the old telephone model no longer produces the random, representative samples…
- Anatomy of a movie market | Planet Money
Independent films often reach audiences only after surviving a separate market at Sundance, where sales agents try to turn festival buzz into distribution deals.
Planet Money, its episodes and artwork belong to NPR. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; these pages are independent summaries.
