Planet Money: Zombie 2nd Mortgages

One study from 2018 found that Major League Baseball umpires blow about 14 calls every game. That’s 34,000 bad calls every year. And it makes a difference. A blown strike call can decide a win or a loss, a championship or six months at home, wondering what could have been. And wh ... Show More

A missing car reveals the confusing rules, murky fees, and private actors behind modern towing. What infrastructure mystery keeps you up at night? Submit your Service Request by recording a voice memo with your question and emailing it to servicerequest@99pi.org. Service Request ... Show More

In a place where losing power can turn deadly, keeping the lights on is a high-stakes balancing act. What infrastructure mystery keeps you up at night? Submit your Service Request by recording a voice memo with your question and emailing it to servicerequest@99pi.org. Service Req ... Show More

Karen McDonough of Quincy, Mass., was enjoying her tea one morning in the dining room when she saw something odd outside her window: a group of people gathering on her lawn. A man with a clipboard told her that her home no longer belonged to her. It didn't matter that she'd been ... Show More

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates to get inflation under control. One side effect is that taking out a mortgage to buy a home has gotten very expensive. That's especially a problem for some homeowners who managed to get a lower mortgage rate years ago. They have a sort of ... Show More

Ray and Becky Queen live in rural Oklahoma with their kids (and chickens). The Queens were able to buy that home with a VA loan because of Ray's service in the Army. During COVID, the Queens – like millions of other Americans – needed help from emergency forbearance. They were to ... Show More

Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School. When we last left the United States of America in our economic telling of history, it was the early 1900s and the country's leaders were starting to feel l ... Show More

Real estate begins at 20:49. The twentieth episode of The Lebanese Politics Podcast sees presenter Benjamin Redd joined by guest presenter Jeremy Arid to discuss news of the past week, including a controversial street name in Ghobeiry, the new Saudi ambassador, more refugee retur ... Show More

Some of the most influential and beloved novels of the last few years have been about money, finance, and the global economy. Some overtly so, others more subtly. It got to the point where we just had to call up the authors to find out more: What brought them into this world? Wha ... Show More

Would you spend a night in the Screaming House? How about 13 nights? That’s the number of nights the LaChance family made it before running for their lives. And yes, the house really does scream.  This episode highlights the dark history of the land on which the Screaming House ... Show More

Episode 392: Neal and Toby examine the struggling housing market which is reflected in the latest earnings report by Lowe’s and Home Depot. Then, a roundup of the biggest headlines: What happened to Mike Lynch and the yacht? Disney walks back on its attempt to block the wrongful ... Show More

In the first true scary story from Paul, a family moves into a century-old farmhouse and begins experiencing unsettling, unexplained phenomena. As they learn more about the house’s past, the strange events take on deeper meaning.Our second account from Jessica, while staying at h ... Show More

Wall St. veteran, crypto advocate, and CEO of Custodia Bank Caitlin Long returns to the podcast to ask the questions and get to the bottom of what's really going on inside of the changes to the US Treasury and global dollar plumbing markets.  This is one of those episodes where m ... Show More