Planet Money: A Guest Post by Alex Mayyasi

The voices behind the hit podcast share their tips, tricks, and entertaining anecdotes to help readers make economic decisions, build wealth and feel financially confident. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Alex Mayyasi on writing Planet Money. 

From the world’s leading economics podcast comes an irresistible guide to the hidden world of everyday economics.

I first felt the thrill of finding a great story when I was a young journalist in Cairo. It was 2011. The Egyptian Revolution was in full swing, and I was interviewing Ahmed Salah, a prominent democracy activist.

During our second interview, Salah talked about growing up on the campaign trail—his father had been a politician in the liberal opposition party. At one point, I interrupted him and asked, almost incredulously, “So your father’s last words to you were, ‘Don’t waste your life in politics like I did?’”

When Ahmed replied, “Basically, yes,” I felt like I’d stumbled into a movie script. The Egyptian Revolution was the biggest news story in the world, and here was a protagonist whose relationship with his father embodied a universal tension: how the hope and determination required to be an activist—during years of frustrating setbacks, when change seems impossible—is borderline irrational.

This may not sound like the origin story of a business and economics reporter. But since 2011, the NPR podcast Planet Money has sought to explain and demystify money and markets by finding people with stories of how they grappled with economic choices and forces.

This approach of explanation-through-storytelling is why I wanted to write a Planet Money book. I thought it could help people better understand the global economy and the often-surprising ways economics shapes our daily choices—and be gripping and funny and poignant.

Once I started writing and researching, this became a key challenge: finding great stories that could exemplify the biggest economic ideas and principles.

I had one huge, unfair advantage. The Planet Money team has been reporting on business and economics for more than a decade. For certain chapters, our archives contained a story that could serve as a narrative throughline. One example: I realized that one of my favorite episodes—about how Desi Arnaz of I Love Lucy invented the rerun and the business model of modern television—was a perfect case study of an economic phenomenon called the Superstar Effect.

For other chapters, I went looking for people who’d been at the heart of big transformations. For a chapter about AI, I was drawn to economic research on a counterintuitive example of automation: When banks installed ATMs, the number of bank tellers they employed went up, not down. That’s how I found myself speaking with a banker who started working as a teller in the 1980s—when “Livin’ on a Prayer” dominated the radio and her employer installed its first ATMs.

For other chapters, I had to keep my antenna up. I knew I wanted to write about housing costs, and most economists agree that zoning laws are the main culprit behind rising rents and housing shortages. But it’s hard to see the apartments and homes that don’t get built. Eventually my research led me to Vancouver, Canada, to see a 10.5 acre piece of land in the heart of the city. Since it’s the sovereign land of the Squamish Nation, city laws don’t apply there, and by touring the daring project they were building, I could very literally see the kind of development being held back by zoning.

Economics has a reputation as being boring and intimidating. My hope is that this book will change that. My hope is that readers will come to see the economy and economics as a source of endless fascination and approachable ideas that can improve not only their work and career, but their leisure time and even their romantic life.