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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With the Federal Reserve pumping trillions of dollars into the economy the past several years, why has inflation remained so low?
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A typical UPS truck now has hundreds of sensors on it. That's changing the way UPS drivers work — and it foreshadows changes coming for workers throughout the economy. -
The creation of America's central bank includes a bunch of bankers locked in a private library and a secret trip to a place called Jekyll Island. -
Over the past 50 years, both the way the federal government spends money and what the government spends money on has changed a lot.
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Clothes donated to charity in the U.S. often wind up for sale in African markets. Here's the story of one shirt that started out at a bat mitzvah in Michigan and wound up in a market in Nairobi.
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The book lists the tax that importers have to pay on approximately every single thing in the universe — and raises a key question about the Planet Money T-shirt.
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Three economists won the Nobel for their work on the prices of stocks and other assets. Two of the winners have very different views about bubbles. -
The solution, according to the Coase Theorem: Pay them to stop annoying you. Ronald Coase, who came up with that idea, died Monday at the age of 102. -
There are no strings attached. People can spend the money on whatever they want, and they never have to pay it back. -
See average hourly wages and how many jobs have been lost (or gained) in health care, manufacturing and other big industries.
