The new book “Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life” has just been released, and Scott Brocato recently spoke with lead author Alex Mayyasi and “Planet Money” co-host and author Sarah Gonzalez about the book.
Scott Brocato:
First let's talk about the podcast, the Planet Money podcast, which was launched in 2008. Tell me about its launch and its mission.
Sarah Gonzalez:
We launched during the financial crisis. That is our origin story. And our mission, I think, has always been to try to just like explain the world around you and the economic forces that shape your life, which is what the book is called. And I think one of Planet Money's signature, secret sauce kind of things, is that we do a lot of...like, when we want to explain something, we throw ourselves into the story. So when we wanted to understand the commercialization of outer space, we sent a satellite into space. When we wanted to understand how artists and songs make money these days, we became a record label and released a song for the purposes of being able to track for ourselves how many fractions of a penny came in from every stream that we got on a song.
And now with the book, in addition writing the book, we are also explaining what goes into writing a book. Like, how does a book deal even come to be? The book auction--we're like a fly on the wall during that whole process, the physical making of the book, we're there for it. And then my favorite part is, how do you even become a bestseller? What weeks are really important for book sales to get you on the bestseller list? Things that you might not know about.
Scott Brocato:
When is the best time to release a book?
Sarah Gonzalez:
Book releases are one thing, which is like around the holidays, around graduation, Mother's Day, Christmas--you know, there's certain times when you want the book to hit store shelves. But then the other thing is just like when do you want people to buy that book, right? And it's like week one, the week before the book launches, the week of the book launch--those are make it or break it weeks for a book. That kind of sets the path of the book. So those are kind of like insider things that you get on the Planet Money side of the making of the book, which is different from the actual making of the book, which Alex Mayyasi can talk a little bit more about.
Scott Brocato:
Well, let's segue into that right now. What are some of the economic topics covered in the book and what went into the compilation of it?
Alex Mayyasi:
So the book is structured into five sections. So some you might expect in an economics book or a book about money. There's a section about work and career. There's a section about saving and investing. But then we also have sections about leisure, or about love and dating. And so those sections that are a little more unexpected, those contain some of my favorite chapters.
Like one (chapter) compares weekends to these kind of networks like subways or telephone systems or social media or Facebook, where why are weekends valuable? Why are they important? Why are they this great invention? And it's because just in the same way that a telephone system or a subway system or a social media site is only valuable when there are lots of people on it, weekends are valuable because everyone else has the day off. And then they're this kind of platform you can build upon. That's where you get the world of concerts and movies and everything that's been designed around the idea that you have a period of time where the majority of people taking time off to relax.
So some (chapters), I love getting into, I loved working on the banking and inflation chapter. I think the inflation chapter almost broke my brain, but I loved it. But then getting to apply economic thinking to your love life and what advice would economists give if they were writing a dating column? That was all super fun and unexpected.
Scott Brocato:
What went into that? Earlier, Sarah was talking about the truly immersive experience of putting these stories together. What about the love chapter and economics?
Alex Mayyasi:
Well, I mean, I'd have to say that I have--I had, I can put this in past tense now, which is wonderful--quite a lot of experience with dating apps myself that was really fascinating. Sarah and I actually got to do some reporting on this together. Like a number of dating apps: the algorithms they use to decide like whose profile gets shown to whom. A number of those algorithms are based on Nobel Prize winning economics research. Like, economists are actually involved in dating markets. I think people have often joked if they break up about being “back on the market.” But there's a lot of truth there. Dating is a kind of market, and economic thinking has both helped design dating apps, which are now where a majority of Americans meet. But they can also, I think if you understand what's going on there and understand some economic ideas, it can actually really help you in your dating life and be really clarifying and empowering in what can be a very confusing muddle of a process.
Scott Brocato:
There's a chapter under Work and Career called “A Tale of Two Gig Workers,” discussing the pros and cons of being your own boss. What are some of those pros and cons?
Alex Mayyasi:
That was really interesting, because I think we often talk about gig workers as like an Uber driver and those kind of companies like Uber, Lyft. But we also see this as a huge trend in white-collar work, in other parts of the economy. There are fractional chief financial officers. A company, instead of hiring full-time designers, they'll go to a design firm. And this is just becoming more and more common over time.
I mean, I think some of those pros and cons, I think a lot of people see value in being your own boss, kind of setting your own hours, decide the kind of work you want to do. One of the cons that I think is really important is that when things take place within kind of the inner sanctum of a company, there is this kind of sense of fairness, right? So, there's actually research showing that in the past, at a really big successful like Fortune 500 company, of course the CEOs of that company were making like a lot more money than, CEOs and executives elsewhere. But actually the janitors and secretaries of that company were also making more money than the janitors or secretaries elsewhere. Not as much as the executives, but there is this sense of fairness within the company that can often kind of like boost people's wages.
But then over time, a lot of companies have instead preferred to hire independent contractors: the janitor, lots of support staff. They're not going to work for the company directly. And now the logic of the market kind of takes over. It's just like, what's the lowest price we can get? And that's the price we'll pay. You know, when you buy a product, you don't think, is this fair? You just pay the market price, the lowest price you can get. And so I think, if you're a worker whose work is really, your skill set is really in demand, that can be really powerful. You'll be treated well, you can demand a really high salary. But if your skill set isn't as in demand, it can be the case where that can be downward pressure on the amount of money you make, and there's not this kind of sense of fairness at play that would exist within a company.
Scott Brocato:
What do you want readers to take away from the book?
Sarah Gonzalez:
I think we'd like readers to recognize that the economy and understanding it is not that scary. If this is not something that you're naturally interested in, like this book and our show is honestly really for you because it's like storytelling. It's like meet a cool character, hear a cool story, and along the way you're learning things, right? So we have big brainy moments in the book; we have things like, what is a bank even? It's just like a confidence trick. It only works if you believe in it. What is a corporation? Which sounds like two simple questions. But the point is that you will be learning about like the cost of living and the world around you. And like, I think if you can understand how the economy works, you understand the world. So I think that's one of the things that we hope people take out of it.
