Planet Money

Chef vs. Robot

Robby the chef has lots of endearing qualities. He can make over 5000 dishes, he’s a consistent cook, and he’s never late for work. But he’s not a human. It is a 750 lb. stainless steel robot. With a rotating wok at its center. It’s a wok-bot.  Automation has changed many industries. But automation only started entering restaurant kitchens in the past couple decades. Which raises the question – what will robots mean for the restaurant industry? How will automation change jobs and how will it change the very food we eat? Today on the show, we talk with a Nobel prize-winning economist, Daron Acemoglu [https://economics.mit.edu/people/faculty/daron-acemoglu], about when automation is complementing or displacing workers. And we decide to put this wok-bot to the test. We pit a human chef against Robby the wok-bot in a head-to-metalhead smackdown.  Further Listening/Reading: * How AI could help rebuild the middle class [https://www.npr.org/2023/05/16/1176516094/artificial-intelligence-david-autor-chatgpt-labor]  * The Big Red Button [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/07/29/427467598/episode-642-the-big-red-button]  * Check out our AI series: Planet Money makes an episode using AI [https://www.npr.org/series/1178395718/planet-money-makes-an-episode-using-ai] * Why Nations Fail, America Edition [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/01/19/957240511/why-nations-fail-america-edition] (newsletter) * A New Way To Understand Automation [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/06/22/1008354992/a-new-way-to-understand-automation] (newsletter) Get your book tour tickets here. [https://tix.to/pm-book-tour] / Pre-order the Planet Money book and get a free gift [https://www.planetmoneybook.com/]. Subscribe to Planet Money+ [https://n.pr/3HlREPz] Listen free: Apple Podcasts [http://n.pr/PM-digital], Spotify [https://n.pr/3gTkQlR], the NPR app [https://n.pr/3Bkb17W] or anywhere you get podcasts. Facebook [https://n.pr/3h92GwS] / Instagram [https://n.pr/3FqLuws] / TikTok [https://n.pr/3sGZdrq] / Our weekly Newsletter [https://n.pr/3zrFvUB]. This episode was hosted by Erika Beras and Justin Kramon. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Jess Jiang. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Robert Rodriguez with help from Cena Loffredo. Interpretation help from Huo Jingnan. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer. To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below: See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices] NPR Privacy Policy [https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy]

The laws of the office revisited

Live event info and tickets here. [https://tix.to/pm-book-tour] If something is going wrong in your workplace, there's probably a law that explains why. Meetings always seem long, and never end early? There’s Parkinson’s Law, which says work expands to the time allotted, or, restated: meetings will always take up all the time blocked on Outlook calendars. Is your boss bad at managing? Check the Peter Principle, which says people are promoted to their level of incompetence. A good worker does not a good manager make. And yet … here we are. Once you hear these laws, and a few others, you start to spot them everywhere.  Today on the show, we picked a few of the most famous and powerful ‘laws of the office’ and tested them out on each other.  Pre-order the Planet Money book and get a free gift [https://www.planetmoneybook.com/]. / Subscribe to Planet Money+ [https://n.pr/3HlREPz] Listen free: Apple Podcasts [http://n.pr/PM-digital], Spotify [https://n.pr/3gTkQlR], the NPR app [https://n.pr/3Bkb17W] or anywhere you get podcasts. Facebook [https://n.pr/3h92GwS] / Instagram [https://n.pr/3FqLuws] / TikTok [https://n.pr/3sGZdrq] / Our weekly Newsletter [https://n.pr/3zrFvUB]. This episode was hosted by Kenny Malone, Sarah Gonzalez, and Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. It was produced by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. Bryant Urstadt edited this show. Planet Money’s executive producer is Alex Goldmark. To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below: See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices] NPR Privacy Policy [https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy]

Planet Money vs. the NBA’s tanking problem

What do we want from sports? The very best athletes competing as hard as they know how, putting all their effort and training and natural ability to the test against their opponents. But this time of year, that’s not the product the NBA is putting on the court. Instead, teams at the bottom of the league are competing … to lose, because it could help them get a top pick in next year’s draft. It’s called tanking — it’s bad for fans, and it’s bad for the league. Tanking has gotten especially egregious this year. Even NBA Adam Silver has called out teams for tanking [https://www.nba.com/watch/video/adam-silver-press-conference-v2]. He recently announced that league bigwigs are considering “every possible remedy” to “align incentives.” Today on the show — Planet Money fixes the NBA’s tanking problem by … fixing the NBA draft. We get solutions from Hockey Hall of Famer Jayna Hefford [https://www.hhof.com/induction_archives/ind18Hefford.shtml], World Cup Champion Sam Mewis [https://www.meninblazers.com/the-women-s-game], and long-time NBA analyst Zach Lowe [https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/the-zach-lowe-show].  Handles for the NBA fans in the episode: thevoiceofevan [https://www.tiktok.com/@thevoiceofevan/video/7604256573078113566?_r=1&_t=ZT-93mTp0nKiZq], fullcourtblitz [https://www.tiktok.com/@fullcourtblitz/video/7604210050353188109], ashleynevel [https://www.tiktok.com/@ashleynevel/video/7604556955096599821?q=nba%20tank%20ashley%20nevel&t=1772636454584], igotnxtpodcast [https://www.tiktok.com/@igotnxtpodcast/video/7605276905276820767], finesse.wes [https://www.tiktok.com/@finesse.wes/video/7609457324943527181], basketballsavant [https://www.tiktok.com/@basketballsavant/video/7595383074884504863], and mikedaddino__ [https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUe22nhjl4A/]. Live event info and tickets here [https://tix.to/pm-book-tour] / Pre-order the Planet Money book and get a free gift [https://www.planetmoneybook.com/]. / Subscribe to Planet Money+ [https://n.pr/3HlREPz] Listen free: Apple Podcasts [http://n.pr/PM-digital], Spotify [https://n.pr/3gTkQlR], or the NPR app [https://n.pr/3Bkb17W] Facebook [https://n.pr/3h92GwS] / Instagram [https://n.pr/3FqLuws] / TikTok [https://n.pr/3sGZdrq] / Our weekly Newsletter [https://n.pr/3zrFvUB] This episode was hosted by Keith Romer and Erika Beras. It was produced by James Sneed with an assist from Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Jess Jiang and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below: See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices] NPR Privacy Policy [https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy]

The Business of Heated Rivalry

Heated Rivalry, the steamy hockey romance show, was made for about $2 million per episode.  That is remarkably cheap for an hour-long drama. Today on the show, a conversation with Heated Rivalry creators Jacob Tierney and Brendan Brady about their television miracle on ice. It’s not just that the show was made efficiently and cleverly. Heated Rivalry comes from a Canadian economic system of making TV and movies that is completely different from how we do things in the US. In this episode of Planet Money, in partnership with the Pivot podcast [https://podcasts.voxmedia.com/show/pivot] co-hosted by Kara Swisher, we hear about a Canadian production model for making TV and movies and how it’s different from the U.S. model. And we learn what the experience of making Heated Rivalry teaches us about the current state of both industries. Live event info and tickets here. [https://tix.to/pm-book-tour] Pre-order the Planet Money book and get a free gift [https://www.planetmoneybook.com/]. / Subscribe to Planet Money+ [https://n.pr/3HlREPz] Listen free: Apple Podcasts [http://n.pr/PM-digital], Spotify [https://n.pr/3gTkQlR], the NPR app [https://n.pr/3Bkb17W] or anywhere you get podcasts. Facebook [https://n.pr/3h92GwS] / Instagram [https://n.pr/3FqLuws] / TikTok [https://n.pr/3sGZdrq] / Our weekly Newsletter [https://n.pr/3zrFvUB]. The original Pivot episode from New York Magazine and The Vox Media Podcast Network was hosted by Kara Swisher, produced by Lara Naman, Zoë Marcus and Taylor Griffin and engineered by Brandon McFarland. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's Executive Producer of podcasts. This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Kenny Malone, produced by James Sneed, edited by Jess Jiang and fact-checked by Lara Naman. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below: See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices] NPR Privacy Policy [https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy]

Don't hate the replicator, hate the game

The world of science has been stuck in an existential crisis over whether we actually know the things we thought we knew. Re-running an old study today doesn't always yield the same result. Same with re-enacting old experiments. Collectively, this is known as the “replication crisis.”  Economist Abel Brodeur has come up with one way to help fix this crisis: he’s invented an internationally crowdsourced surveillance system, designed to keep social scientists honest. He calls it the “Replication Games.”  Further Listening: * Fabricated data in research about honesty. You can't make this stuff up. Or, can you?  [https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190568472/dan-ariely-francesca-gino-harvard-dishonesty-fabricated-data] * The Experiment Experiment  [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/01/15/463237871/episode-677-the-experiment-experiment] * How Much Should We Trust Economics? [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/19/177999020/episode-357-how-much-should-we-trust-economics] This episode was hosted by Mary Childs and Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. It was produced by James Sneed and Emma Peaslee, with help from Willa Rubin. It was edited by Jess Jiang, fact-checked by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, and engineered by Ko Takasugi-Czernowin. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.  Find more Planet Money: Facebook [https://n.pr/3h92GwS] / Instagram [https://n.pr/3FqLuws] / TikTok [https://n.pr/3sGZdrq] / Our weekly Newsletter [https://n.pr/3zrFvUB]. Listen free at these links: Apple Podcasts [http://n.pr/PM-digital], Spotify [https://n.pr/3gTkQlR], the NPR app [https://n.pr/3Bkb17W] or anywhere you get podcasts. Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts [http://n.pr/PM-digital] or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney [https://n.pr/3HlREPz]. To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below: See pcm.adswizz.com [https://pcm.adswizz.com] for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices [https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices] NPR Privacy Policy [https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy]