Jacob Goldstein
Jacob Goldstein is an NPR correspondent and co-host of the Planet Money podcast. He is the author of the book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing.
Goldstein's interest in technology and the changing nature of work has led him to stories on UPS, the Luddites and the history of light. His aversion to paying retail has led him to stories on Costco, Spirit Airlines and index funds.
He also contributed to the Planet Money T-shirt and oil projects, and to an episode of This American Life that asked: What is money? Ira Glass called it "the most stoner question" ever posed on the show.
Before coming to NPR, Goldstein was a staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, the Miami Herald, and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. He has also written for the New York Times Magazine. He has a bachelor's degree in English from Stanford and a master's in journalism from Columbia.
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On today's show: Snuggies, printer toner, and a banking road trip. Three stories about what happens when you actually read the fine print.
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Picture an organic farm, with thousands of free-range chickens roaming wide-open land. Now picture it from above, from the vantage of a soaring bald eagle. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet.
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Ed Thorp used math to become the first person to beat the casinos at blackjack. Then he changed the way Wall Street thinks about investing.
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At 35, Neel Kashkari was in charge of the bank bailout program. He's now the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and has a plan to make future bank bailouts much less likely.
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Free trade is taking a beating in this election year. But the man who created the free-trade world we live in now, thought free trade was the way to world peace. He even won the Nobel Peace Prize.
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Members of our "Planet Money" team recently got into the oil business. They learned one of the most basic questions about the business is: who sets the price of oil? Speculators are often blamed.
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Economists call it the social cost of carbon. A single number that is supposed to reflect all of the costs society incurs when people burn fossil fuels. That number is now part of federal regulations, and some industries aren't happy.
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Atlanta company SoftWear is trying to create a robot that can sew. If the project succeeds, it could have a huge effect on the global economy, and clothing manufacturing could return to the U.S.
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Many developed countries are issuing bonds at negative interest rates. That means people are buying them expecting to get paid back less than they invested. Why then are people buying them?
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In the campaign leading up to the Brexit vote, economist Tim Harford played the role of independent fact checker. Now that it has passed, he's letting out some strong feelings.