The continent nobody owns & everyone benefits from (Summer School)

This episode is packed with your best economic ideas from around the world and a penguin interview. It all comes together in this final session of Summer School 2026. Pack your parka, we’re headed to Antarctica. First, we’ll travel back in time to the late 1970s when NPR was a scrappy young network, with a synth soundtrack https://exchange.prx.org/pieces/208464?m=false, and tons of heart. Science reporter Ira Flatow took a trip to the South Pole that put NPR on the news industry map. We’ll hear an excerpt where he brings us along through what life is like on the ice, including a memorable interview with the wildlife. Then we look inside McMurdo Station, the largest human settlement and research base on Antarctica to hear from a listener who managed the store at the base back in the 1980s. Normal retail rules do not apply. We’ll also speak with an economist who has estimated the continent’s monetary value, while asking questions like “why put a price tag on this uninhabitable land”? She makes the case we should consider the environmental benefit as a service. But, we can’t let the episode and the series wrap without marking our achievements! You did it! As part of our graduation celebration, we hear from your fellow members of the summer school class of 2026. Listeners like you who have written in from around the globe with provocative economic ideas that could make life better for all of us if we just have the will to do it. Man did you all deliver on sending in ideas. We’ve curated our favorites. Way better than speeches. And don’t forget your totally real, but not legal, diploma by taking our short online test. https://www.npr.org/2026/08/26/g-s1-138847/planet-money-summer-school-quiz-2026 Don’t worry if you need a refresher, catch up on past seasons of Planet Money Summer School here. https://lnk.to/pV5FjKWE Featured Episodes: The unexpected sounds of Antarctica (1979) https://www.npr.org/2026/08/25/g-s1-140101/the-unexpected-sounds-of-antarcticaA visit to McMurdo Station in Antarctica (1979) https://www.npr.org/2026/08/25/g-s1-140102/a-visit-to-mcmurdo-station-in-antarctica Featured Terms: Ecosystem as a service Consórcios (a type of ROSCA, a Rotating Savings and Credit Association)Social housingNatural capital Support: NPR+ (sponsor-free listening & bonus episodes) https://n.pr/3HlREPzAnd please click “follow” in your podcast app so you don’t miss an episode. NPR+ https://n.pr/3HlREPzRead: Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life https://lnk.to/i3AukBdD (Audiobook here https://open.spotify.com/show/509P7k1QPcwgzOSCqVCDCZ) Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter https://n.pr/3zrFvUBOur weekly Indicator link round-up newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/indicator Follow: Instagram https://n.pr/3FqLuwsTikTok https://n.pr/3sGZdrqYouTube https://lnk.to/iCVDaW3CFacebook https://n.pr/3h92GwS This episode of Planet Money Summer School is hosted by Robert Smith. It was produced by Schuyler Swenson and Sophia Paliza-Carre and edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark. It was fact-checked by Charlotte Isidore and engineered by Annlie Huang. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. Planet Money's perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if, instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current, so you can win more deals. Learn more at hubspot.com.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  This is Planet Money from NPR.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  Welcome back, everyone, to Planet Money Summer School World Tour. Today is graduation day. We have drilled for oil in Norway, smuggled products into North Korea, traveled the bridges to nowhere in China, and bargained for water rights in Australia. We've met a paint entrepreneur in Nigeria, a shoe salesman in Argentina, and an inflation tamer in New Zealand. And all the while, we've been gathering up lessons in economics that we can put to use back here, back home. As part of today's graduation celebration, we will hear from your fellow members of the summer school class of 2026. Listeners like you who have written in from around the globe with their provocative ideas that could just make life a little better for all of us if we have the will to do it.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  We'll feature the very best ideas near the end of the show. And then all that's left is for you to take a short online test and receive your totally real, but not legal diploma. The test is at npr.org/summerschool. Before we play the pop and give our speeches and all, I do have a confession to make. When we started summer school, I came up with what I thought was a pretty clever tagline. Seven continents, eight weeks, 1,000 ideas. I think we've delivered on the eight weeks part and all the ideas, but we are missing a continent. We have gone all summer, and we have not talked about Antarctica. The problem I discovered is that Planet Money has never been to Antarctica. And I wasn't even sure

• 2:02Speaker 02

  there were economic ideas to talk about there. Can young penguins not afford to buy their own nests? Is the exchange rate of ice to snow out of whack? But after working all summer to find something, we discovered that there are some profound rules of economics at work on the continent waiting for us down on the ice, down on the glaciers. We even discovered an economist who did something remarkable. She figured out exactly what Antarctica was worth. She put a price tag on the whole continent. And she joins us as our professor today.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Natalie Stokel. I'm a professor of economics at the University of Tasmania.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  So you live off the southern coast of Australia. Are you the closest economist to Antarctica?

• 2:47Speaker 03

  I could be. There might be some down on the bottom of South America. So it could be that there are some that could be. There could well be some there, yes.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  So have you actually been there? Have you stepped on the ice?

• 2:59Speaker 03

  I have not stepped on the ice yet.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  They have all these scientists there. They need economists on the ground.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  Well, this is what I think we need to tell the world. Yes, I would agree.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  So what does an economist do when studying Antarctica? It doesn't have money. It has no private ownership. It seems like the one place where economics doesn't exist. Tell me I'm wrong.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely wrong. It means there's no markets that exist. But economics is about far more than markets. And it's trying to use insights from that to think about resources around the world. And I think Antarctica may not have many markets, but the goods and services that it supplies to the rest of the world are massive, really hugely important to the entire world economy.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  You, in fact, put a price on what Antarctica is worth to the planet. And we will get to that in just a moment. But before we do, I want to go back and just talk about this concept of Antarctica. Who owns it?

• 4:05Speaker 03

  I suppose philosophically, you could say that the entire world owns it in terms of it's a resource for all. Countries around the world have agreed not to have a massive land grab and to actually collectively look at how they can manage various operations that are being undertaken down there. So it's a collaborative form of governance through the Antarctic Treaty system.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  I looked this up. It is my understanding that the treaty says that Antarctica is reserved for peaceful purposes and scientific research. 46 countries have signed it. It's officially shared territory, no military bases or mining companies. But how exactly is this enforced? What would happen if a rogue country? And some countries do have old claims on the territory. What would happen if a rogue country decided they wanted to build a golf resort or a strip mining operation? Can anyone stop them?

• 5:01Speaker 03

  A system that relies very much on trust. It relies on that willingness to collaborate. It relies on having respect for the other partners who are in there. And it does rely on having some sort of sanction so that if someone does misbehave, you can actually slap them on the wrist. And I think in any collaborative system, there needs to be a way of making sure that the people who are playing the game are actually doing the right thing by everyone.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  I'm sort of amazed. It feels like something out of the 1950s when this treaty was signed. You're talking about trust and cooperation and gentle nudges? It doesn't seem like there's many places anymore in the world, and maybe this is my view from the United States, where those things still exist. There's enough trust to manage something that is immensely valuable.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  The world is going through, I think, a somewhat sad and depressing trend where the trust is breaking down. And I think we just need to work harder to say, no, trust is valuable. It's really important. And that's what keeps our world to be a wonderful place to live in.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  We will return with our professor in a moment, and we will visit this strange world of trust and cooperation. We'll take you inside McMurdo Station, the largest human settlement and scientific base on Antarctica. We had a listener write in who actually worked there in commerce for money, perhaps the only businessperson on the ice. We'll also have our professor return and give us a tally of the economic impact of the seventh continent. It's a lot after the break.

• 6:48Speaker 04

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• 7:16Speaker 00

  This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if, instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? No catching up on manual edits, no more guesswork. HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current and helps you understand what to do next. So marketing builds more demand, sales wins more deals, and customers keep coming back. Learn more at hubspot.com. This message comes from NPR sponsor Charles Schwab. Financial decisions can be tricky. Your biases can lead you astray. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/financialdecoder.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  OK, class, you have been issued a parka, boots, face covering, and protective goggles. Do not forget to sign the waiver forms because we are going to the South Pole. As I mentioned, Planet Money has never been there. But I did remember that back in the 1970s, NPR sent a reporter to Antarctica, and it was a really big deal at the time. NPR was just starting out as a national broadcaster in the 1970s. The theme song for our news program, you're going to love this, had this synthy vibe.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  So '70s, they should bring it back. NPR did not have a lot of money or access at the time. But science reporter Ira Flatow managed to score an invite to visit the South Pole. There's this famous photo of him standing on the ice, holding a microphone out to a bunch of penguins. I think it's one of the things that inspired me to become a radio reporter. Let's hear a little bit of Ira talking to NPR host Barbara Hockter Lynch after he returned from the South Pole. This is just a little taste of what the Antarctic Treaty is trying to protect.

• 9:07Speaker 05

  We saw the penguins sitting on the edge of an ice floe where the ocean meets the ice. And we came up to them. And as they approached us, they greeted us with these sounds. A very interesting.

• 9:29Speaker 06

  Penguin. That's right. Speak for me. Mr. Penguin, speak for me.

• 9:32Speaker 05

  That's another sound of Antarctica. That's a reporter trying to interview a penguin.

• 9:36Speaker 06

  My goodness, reporters will interview anything.

• 9:40Speaker 05

  On the, on the way from, uh, meeting the penguins, we ran into another very strange sound. Now, this sound here.

• 9:52Speaker 05

  Isn't that something?

• 9:52Speaker 06

  It sounds like something from outer space.

• 9:55Speaker 05

  Doesn't it? It sounds like synthesized music or something.

• 9:57Speaker 06

  Yes, electronic almost.

• 9:59Speaker 05

  Well, these are underwater sounds made by Weddell seals. These are thousand-pound seals that swim under the ice and they come up above the ground, onto the ice, above the ice, I should say, and then they have their puppies there and they bask in the sun and rest and sleep.

• 10:15Speaker 06

  Oh, my.

• 10:16Speaker 05

  There are 35 different sounds these seals make underwater, and they don't know what they mean.

• 10:21Speaker 06

  But they're communicating with one another.

• 10:22Speaker 05

  They think so. They think they may be ranging like, uh, whales and porpoises do, you know, sending out, listen to that, sending out sonar-type of sounds, but they cannot prove it yet.

• 10:34Speaker 05

  It's not a bird, it's a seal.

• 10:35Speaker 06

  That is unbelievable. It sounds like a symphony almost, like they're, they're in harmony with one another.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  So let me just break in here, Robert Smith here. That is the natural side of Antarctica. That's what the treaty is there to protect. But there's also the man-made part of the continent, McMurdo Station. That is the US-operated base for scientific research. And it's also essentially a small company town of 2,000 people who come and go throughout the year. And where you have workers, that means that business and economics come into play. Let's play a little bit of Ira's tour of McMurdo Station and the sound of life there in 1979, and we'll give you an update afterwards.

• 11:14Speaker 05

  McMurdo itself is unlike the rest of the continent. McMurdo is the New York City of Antarctica, noisier, dirtier, and more developed than any other base.

• 11:26Speaker 05

  A diesel-powered electric generator drones on incessantly. Diesel fuel trickles across the frozen soil. Pipes, cables, and telephone poles are all reminders that Americans have brought not only their science, but their society with them to this remote location. Here are movie houses, mess halls, a post office, general store, infirmary, and four drinking clubs. But regardless of how the Americans try to make it feel like home, there is always one reminder of exactly where you are. It is this. A huge door, actually a freezer door, made for a supermarket meat locker, but affixed to every building. A door with a huge round knob or long pull handles. Only this one is designed to keep the cold out, not in. Sometimes not only the door, but the entire meat locker is here,

• 12:11Speaker 05

  like the ones on the ice runway. A few meat lockers are strung together and into them are stuffed the cots, furniture, clothing, and people, the Navy personnel that manicure the runway and service the planes. For other servicemen, small canvas-covered Quonset huts, the James Ways, serve as their sleeping quarters. Another incessant sound at McMurdo is the roar of helicopter engines. McMurdo serves as the jumping-off point for hundreds of scientists who use helicopters, planes, snowmobiles, and sleds to take their research field parties to other parts of the continent. One of those places, the most coveted for both scientists and sightseers, is the South Pole. Tomorrow, we take a trip to the Pole, a place where very few people have ever been.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  That was NPR's Ira Flatow in 1979. As much as I would love to play all of his reports from the South Pole, we are going to stay at McMurdo Station for a few more minutes. 45 years later, the place still has a frontier, industrial-town feel, but they have much stricter environmental regulations about spilling fuel and recycling waste. I also hear the dormitories are much nicer than huts at this point, and they are heated. And you may remember that Ira mentioned a store at McMurdo, which got our attention here at Planet Money. We had a number of listeners write in recommending people we could talk to about this and found one that actually worked at the Navy's store down there for a few years in the 1980s, perhaps the sole businesswoman in the entire place.

• 13:35Speaker 07

  My name is Liz Walters. I was the dispersing officer and the ship's store officer.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  So I didn't know this, but there's a whole part of the Navy that runs general stores on all the big ships around the world, and they operated one out of McMurdo Station.

• 13:50Speaker 07

  People need to get paid, and people need to be able to buy snacks and ball caps and stuff.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  I mean, everyone needs stuff. Liz ran the Antarctic store, which means she ordered the merchandise, which could take six months to arrive. She organized the tiny, tiny space. She set prices. There were a couple weird things about running a store in such a remote place. One was that your customers already have everything they need for free. If you're a scientist there, the food is included, the lodging is included, the equipment and clothing are included. So what would people want to even buy in a store like this? Liz discovered when she got there that Antarctic shopping isn't a necessity. It's something you do when you are bored. Economics is all about scarcity,

• 14:42Speaker 02

  and the scariest resource in Antarctica is entertainment.

• 14:46Speaker 07

  It was an event. It was a way of killing time in a place where people are working six days a week and they get one day a week off, and they have evenings, and they still need to kill time because there is nothing to do. So the people would, would come to the ship's store and they would stand there in front of the door, waiting there, you know, for someone to leave so one more person could go in. And then they would come into the store, and it was like, not quite a scavenger hunt, but it was like, what's new? What's new in the store that I can look at?

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Liz had to figure out how she could amp up this sense of fun, this sense of entertainment. One thing she did when she arrived was to clear out all the merchandise that wasn't selling. They had stocked towels, for instance, and towels were included in other parts of the station, so no one needed more towels. She also found some pretty suspect 1980s novelty items.

• 15:43Speaker 07

  We had bikini panties, women's bikini panties, with a logo on the crotch that said, "The Coldest Place on Earth." Can you imagine anyone buying that as a Christmas present for their wife? I mean, less than 10% of the people on the ice were women.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Liz ditched the panties and started to commission new logos, something surprising that she could put on hats and T-shirts. People wanted entertainment and novelty and appropriate presents for the wife, and she had them made from scratch. And then, sure as she was, Liz didn't just let people see all her new merchandise at once. Remember, this is a show.

• 16:26Speaker 07

  So when I had new stuff, I wouldn't immediately bring in every new thing that came in. I would bring in one thing, and then I would let them search for it. I would just dribble it out as slowly as possible so that during the long weeks, especially at Christmas time, we could go like three weeks without an airplane. So I tried to put something new in the store every week, some new item, so that people could have a big discover moment. And then what I would do is I would rearrange the store. I would just move things around, especially the things that people would see while they were waiting to come into the store. That was kind of my featured things.

• 17:10Speaker 07

  So the things that I thought should probably sell better than they were, that's where I would put them so that people would have to stare at them while they were waiting to come into the store.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Liz Walters spent a few seasons on the ice, as they say, working the Navy store at McMurdo Station. It would not surprise you that after a Navy stint was finished, she went into business for herself. I feel like we're putting the Antarctic puzzle together here. We have our penguins and seals making their strange sounds. We have a tiny amount of buying and selling going on in novelty gifts. Can this be the sum, economic total, for an entire continent? Our professor that we talked to at the beginning of the show says no. No, there is something so big, so valuable there, that it is hard to even see it unless you really zoom out. But it totals up to billions of dollars in value. Let's bring Natalie Stokel back in here. Hey, Natalie.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Thanks so much for having me.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  I read a paper that you published a couple of years ago that crunched the numbers on the economic value of Antarctica and the ocean around it, the Southern Ocean, the economic value of Antarctica to the entire world. Before we get to that number... Why put a dollar figure on something like this? It makes me a little sad that we have to put a number on what this beautiful place is worth.

• 18:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, look, my heart bleeds a little every time I put a value on things also. But I agonize over this. And I think one of the reasons I put values on things is because I realized that so many of the world's core decision makers don't actually notice anything unless there's a price attached. Now, some of this is because people don't care. But I think also some of it is that the CEOs of corporations are hired to make sure that they focus on profit. A lot of politicians are elected to try to make sure that they grow GDP. So if something doesn't have a price attached to it, it's effectively invisible.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Markets don't see it and they just end up trashing it. So I suppose it's saying, look, I know a lot of people know that nature is deeply important. They recognize it. But unless we make the invisible visible, it will get hammered.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Well, let's break down how you put a value on an entire continent. We'll start with the most obvious one, which is tourism. I see people on Instagram who are on ships off the coast of Antarctica. So it definitely happens. It used to be in the thousands and now probably more than 100,000 people. Is that right?

• 19:54Speaker 03

  Indeed, it's 100,000 and rising. It's growing in popularity. Like most tourism destinations, you get the early explorers and over time you get more and more people coming.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  I am Googling this so that I can go there someday. It seems like you mostly stay on a cruise ship and you look at Antarctica, maybe some day trips to the shore to see the penguins and take selfies, that kind of thing. I think they tightly control access to the interior and the station. Even this just glimpsing of Antarctica is big business. In your research paper, you say the value of the tourism industry is worth around $820 million.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  Yes, it was pretty close to that. And it doesn't mean that that's how much people spend, but that's our best estimate of the value that people get from it over and above what's actually the cost of the resources used up to provide the tourism.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Okay, so that one makes sense. Another one that we're used to thinking about is fisheries. There are tons of fish caught in the region and you estimated that value too. 370 million US dollars a year. So along with tourism and fish, we're over $1 billion.

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so this is when it gets a little more interesting because you posit that Antarctica isn't just a place with things, that Antarctica is actually providing a service to the world. And like any service, you can put a price on that. What has Antarctica ever done for me?

• 21:30Speaker 03

  What is that? That's a lovely way of actually phrasing it. I think Antarctica provides these services that are all but invisible to most people throughout the world. If only 100,000 people ever visit the continent each year, then clearly most people don't see it. But for a start, it's got this massive ice cap and that ice is bright white, reflects the sun, and that helps to keep the planet cool. It also has these oceans which absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide. And again, that helps to keep the oceans cool.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  So if in fact Antarctica did not exist and we lost all those sort of regulating services, the climate regulating services, you could imagine that the climate would be much more unstable. There could potentially be much less agriculture. There could be many more extreme events. There'd be sea level rise and the damages that could arise if we didn't have those regulating services are massive.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  It's interesting. I will pay money for someone to store my crap in a storage unit. And essentially Antarctica is a storage unit for a lot of water in the form of ice. And by storing that water for me and everyone else on the planet, that means that water isn't lapping up to my apartment in Brooklyn, New York, where I am only a couple of miles from the ocean.

• 23:01Speaker 03

  That's a great way of explaining it. And it is interesting that we will store things when they're next to us, when we're close to them, when we see them, we'll pay money to be able to clean that up and get the crap out of the apartment and into a storage shed instead. But it's almost like Antarctica becomes an out of sight, out of mind.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  So we have found value in tourism, fish, and this environmental service that it provides to all of us. And to be clear, the way Antarctica produces this economic benefit is by staying the way it is, by not mining it or developing it, by remaining natural. If we total up all that we have talked about today about the value of Antarctica, what is the continent worth?

• 23:43Speaker 03

  Well, we collectively estimated at about 180 billion.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  180 billion US dollars.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Per annum, yes.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Oh, every year?

• 23:53Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Who do we send the check to?

• 23:58Speaker 03

  Wouldn't that be nice if we could actually put a trust in place? I was thinking when I was listening to your podcast earlier and they had the trust that was put in place for the oil in Norway. And if we could have a trust for Antarctica and somehow use that to protect Antarctica, the Southern Oceans and the other places, that would just be wonderful. And then maybe we could look after the place that's doing such a good job of looking after us.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Oh, by the way, I think we need to make sure that President Trump doesn't find out that Antarctica is six times larger than Greenland and is worth $180 billion. We got to keep it hush, hush.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  We'll keep it quiet.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Natalie Stokel is a professor of economics at the University of Tasmania. Thanks for calling us from down under.

• 24:46Speaker 03

  Thanks very much for having me. It's been fun.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  As for the rest of you, coming up, we have the moment you have been waiting for all summer, graduation, complete with a final exam, a diploma, and student speakers sharing their insightful tips from around the world. I'm going to put on my Planet Money green PhD robe and join you all back on the lawn of Planet Money University after the break.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from LinkedIn. Owning a small business comes with a lot of challenges and means juggling multiple things at once. It's even harder to do it efficiently. But with LinkedIn, you get all the tools you need to grow in one place. With LinkedIn, simplify your sales, marketing, and hiring so that you can actually run your small business. Learn more at LinkedIn.com/PlanetMoneyShow.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? No catching up on manual edits, no more guesswork. HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current and helps you understand what to do next. So marketing builds more demand, sales wins more deals, and customers keep coming back. Learn more at HubSpot.com. This message comes from Babson College. The world needs entrepreneurial leaders, and you can become one at Babson College. Gain the skills to lead, motivate, and inspire through a specialized master's or MBA program with full-time, part-time, and online options.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Turn ideas into action with a graduate program that caters to your professional needs and fits your lifestyle. Ranked number one in entrepreneurship by U.S. News and World Report, visit babson.edu/gradprograms.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Graduates, professors from around the world, kids listening in the back seats of your parents' Subaru, welcome to the Planet Money commencement ceremony for the degree of Master in International Economics. We have listened to the degree alone in our headphones, but hopefully we can come together today in celebration of what we have all achieved. You may not recognize your fellow students at first, but when you are laying on the beach somewhere and the person next to you starts to talk about the vulnerabilities of small open economies like the islands of the Caribbean, you will know that you have found a fellow member of the class of 2026. We have no grades, so our graduation speakers were chosen from the people who wrote into the show. Every week, we've asked you to tell us something clever from a country you're in or have visited

• 27:25Speaker 02

  that we could maybe steal and bring back to the US. And so many of you responded. We picked our favorites and they will be this year's graduation salutatorian, valedictorian, econotorian, whatever else they call it. First up, a listener from Japan with a clever lesson in the private use of public spaces.

• 27:46Speaker 07

  My name is Lang Craighill. I'm based in Tokyo, Japan, although I'm currently up in the mountains.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  What is that I hear behind you, Lang?

• 27:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, those are the cicadas.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Cicadas, okay. So you really are in the mountains.

• 28:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, you're hearing the sound of the summer in Japan.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  I called up Lang because he wrote in with an amazing fact. For the most part, there is no street parking in Tokyo. I live in New York City, so it is a constant battle to try to find a spot on the curb to park a two-ton piece of metal, especially for free. But in the narrow streets of Tokyo, they've mostly banned it.

• 28:21Speaker 07

  There's no on-street parking.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  No on-street parking. There's no place to park my car in front of my place.

• 28:26Speaker 07

  No.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  So most of the streets, you seem to be saying, in Tokyo are for driving. If there is a street, there is somebody driving on it, there's no room to put a car and park.

• 28:38Speaker 07

  There's no room to put a car. When a delivery vehicle comes to my house...

• 28:44Speaker 06

  They have to run up to the door and get back if a car comes up behind them.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Now, there are a lot of old cities with narrow medieval streets where parking is almost impossible, although if you've been to Europe, they will try to park anywhere they can. In Tokyo, the amazing economic part of this is not just the lack of parking, but how the government deals with people who want to buy a car.

• 29:05Speaker 06

  When you buy a car, you have to go down to the local police station and show a form that says you have an off-street parking space that you either own or that you are paying for to keep that car.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  You have to prove that you have the parking space before you can get the car?

• 29:23Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  This is genius.

• 29:27Speaker 06

  So that means that you always have a place to keep your car.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Do people hate this in Tokyo? This seems like a lot of bureaucracy and that you can't park your car in front of your house.

• 29:38Speaker 06

  No, it's just part of the environment, it's part of the terrain. Also, nobody expects to get around by car because the public transportation system is very good.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  We've talked a lot on summer school about the concept of externality, which is some free things have an actual cost. And the parking on your street may seem free, but it is not, in fact, free. Everyone pays for it. What you're saying is, in Japan, the people who pay for their parking are the people with the cars.

• 30:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Lane Craig Hill in the cicada-filled mountains of Japan. Okay, city administrators of America, the ball is in your court. Hopefully, you're not up for reelection. Our next graduation speaker and provocative idea comes from Vienna, Austria. Lots of cities around the world have tried to tackle affordable housing. Even here in New York, we have public housing for the poorest families and rent control for the lucky. But I will tell you, this has not kept the rents down for the rest of us New Yorkers. Our next graduation speaker wanted to suggest the way that Vienna handles this problem.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  So, hi, I'm Heini. I'm 24. I'm an architecture student.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Heini has studied what is called social housing in Vienna. It's like public housing for vast swaths of the middle class. It's estimated that around half of the people in Vienna live in either government-supported housing or nonprofit cooperatives or are covered under rent control, including Heini herself.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  I moved into an apartment on my own for the first time back in October 2025.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  The key to Vienna's system is that the government builds a lot of housing. It takes land from things like the old city airport and unused train stations and builds large and very nice apartment complexes. As a student, Heini was able to browse a website with hundreds of options, tell the city how much she was making in income, and choose an apartment with a reasonable rent. The only catch was she had to choose from the list without seeing the place. So she did something clever. Before she picked, she did a little snooping.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  I would go to these buildings. I would just randomly knock or try to get in. And I'm like, hi, I'm an architecture student doing a survey on social housing. Like, can you tell me what it is like to live here? Do you like living here? Do you like neighborhood? What is it like?

• 32:04Speaker 02

  She made her choice. And when she was offered that apartment, she got to say yes or no.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  There's no second chance. You go in, you're like, yes, I want to take the apartment. You sign a paper, and then you wait for them to change the locks.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  It turned out great. Cute place, cheaper rent than the private apartment she was paying, but not by that much. Because nonprofit housing is so common in Vienna, that pool of real estate competes with private apartments and keeps the rate of the private places in check. One study showed that if you have a 10% increase in nonprofit housing, rents in the for-profit buildings go down 5%. The biggest controversy about the system is even though there are income limits to get in the apartment, you can keep staying there, even if your income goes up.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  You're a student and you're working part-time in a café as a barista or something, but you're going to medical school, you become a well-earning doctor, you still keep living in your social housing apartment with all the other workers and academics and people like that. There has been some critique of this because people who are well-earning politicians or CEOs of big companies paying 200 euros a month for their first district central apartment, which they took over in the 80s, is kind of fierce unfair for some people. But I think in general, this is a very well-done system.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Congratulations to summer school student Heini Miklos in Vienna. It seems to illustrate the economic instinct that if you build more housing, the prices can remain steady and even perhaps become more affordable. Our final graduation speaker today has an interesting twist on a finance system used around the world.

• 33:47Speaker 06

  I'm Alex Malfutani. I'm a finance executive and I live in São Paulo, Brazil.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  And in his country, if you want to make a big purchase, you can, of course, get a loan, but the interest rates are high, so people have come up with another way.

• 34:00Speaker 06

  So one interesting feature that we have here in Brazil is the consorcio.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Consorcio, is that how you say it?

• 34:07Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  And what is the literal translation of that word?

• 34:11Speaker 06

  I guess it's kind of like a consortium, right? It gives you that impression of something that you're putting together a group to do something as that group.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  A consorcio is what is known as a group self-financing system. There are versions of this around the world called all sorts of different things, rascals, susus, cheat funds, and they work similarly. Let's say you want to buy a car and your friend wants a down payment on a house and another wants to remodel their kitchen. You all agree to pay into a group fund, and then maybe the first month, you get to take the money out for the car. You keep paying into this fund, and the next month, your friend gets the kitchen remodel with his fancy stove. The interesting thing about Brazil's version of this system is, in that country, it doesn't have to be informal. Banks themselves offer this service.

• 35:00Speaker 06

  The banks will essentially organize these groups and, you know, they kind of put their institutional name and reputation behind these groups.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  So that when people pool their money, it isn't just sitting in a coffee can somewhere, it's in an actual bank account with some measure of accounting for it.

• 35:18Speaker 06

  Exactly. It's some regulation, you know, the central bank has put rules about how this can work. And the bank obviously don't do this for free, so they charge a fee to manage the group.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  So if you're in Brazil and you go into one of these consorcios, do you sign a contract? Are these people necessarily your friends that you're sharing money with, or can it be with total strangers?

• 35:41Speaker 06

  Total strangers, you sign a contract, and that's one of the things, you're locked in, right? And so you actually have to keep paying the consorcio until, you know, the end of that group, until you pay. So if we're talking about, let's say, you know, a 36-month consorcio, even if you get your good or your item in the first month, you have to continue paying, obviously, until the last month, and you're obligated, and that's part of the contract that you sign.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  So if you sometimes have to wait to get your big chunk of money, why is it popular? Alex says a traditional loan in Brazil could have an annual interest rate of, say, 25%. But these consorcios charge a one-time administrative fee that can range from 10% to 20%. It's not compound interest, so it ends up being much less expensive. It can also be indexed for inflation.

• 36:33Speaker 06

  And so even though you got your house already, you may be paying inflation for somebody else's future house.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  I wonder if there is something about this that makes it emotionally better than just borrowing money from a bank. Is there some sort of feeling that you're in it together? Are you more likely to pay this because you know that there's somebody like you who's also paying?

• 37:01Speaker 06

  I think maybe what I would venture is there is the lottery aspect, right? Because if we formed a group with 50 other people, right? Somebody is going to get their letter in month one.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Sorry, I forgot to mention that you get a letter of credit from the bank when it's your turn, not cash.

• 37:20Speaker 06

  Somebody is going to get their letter in month one. Somebody's going to get their letter in month 50, right? How do you decide? By doing a random drawing of names. And, you know, if you're lucky enough to be the number one, or two, or three, you're going to feel really good. If you're number 48, 49, 50, you're going to feel lousy. And I think, you know, I think we all like to think we're lucky, especially if we like... Drawings, right? And so I think there is that luck aspect or, you know, award aspect that I think helps. And people say, you know what? I'm feeling lucky. I think I'm going to be awarded the letter very soon. So this is much better than saving because then I would have to wait until the end.

• 38:06Speaker 06

  Or, you know, my end is going to be much cheaper than getting a loan.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  That is a very smart analysis because if you pay $100 the first month, $100 the second month, and then you get your $10,000 check to buy the thing you want, that is going to feel like you have won the lottery.

• 38:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think like anything, right? You know, there is a contract. There are obligations. You have to know exactly what you're getting into. But there are millions of people participating in consortiums in Brazil. I think this is a product that has found an audience, that has found a customer base.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Alex Malfatani, summer school graduate, lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And this idea from Brazil, the consortiums, seems totally doable in the United States. If you can split a burrito lunch over four easy payments, I think banks can make this happen. It builds community, saves you money, and it feels like a lottery. What could be better? JP Morgan Chase, this is your moment. Thanks, everyone who wrote in. I will say that many of your suggestions were intriguing enough that they may spark future episodes of Planet Money. Stay tuned. And stay with us after the break for the granting of diplomas and the links to the final exam. I think all graduation ceremonies need intermissions.

• 39:26Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 39:30Speaker 04

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• 39:57Speaker 00

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• 40:18Speaker 02

  I just want to say a few words to the graduates in the audience today. You sit here in a world that gets more international by the day, a world where there are trade barriers, sure, but there are no tariffs of the mind. I'm not even sure what that means, but but let the man cook. I know you signed up for this totally free and fake university for the imaginary travel and fascinating stories, but we hope you learned a little something along the way. You now know what the flying geese are carrying. It's industrial knowledge and factory investment. You know your oil curse from your Dutch disease. They're the same thing. You can throw out the term multiple equilibria at dinner parties. It means multiple things that can reasonably happen.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  But these are just vocabulary words that will help you on your final exam. What we really hope you got from the season, well, what I got anyway, is the sense that there are lots of different ways to create prosperity and happiness. There are multiple equilibria, if you will. The principles of economics are the same from Oslo to McMurdo Station, where all humans make trade offs every day, who follow incentives. But every country has a different way of using those principles to hopefully create the most good for the most number of people. We've had a few cautionary tales along the way, from the repressive government of North Korea to the currency misadventures of Argentina. But mostly, we live in a world where people do get richer, where there is less poverty and more technological marvels.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  The secret to international economics is an open mind and the feeling that things can get better if we just learn the right lessons. I want to bring back our Antarctica professor for a moment, Natalie Stokel. Any final words for the graduating class? They're worthy of the honor, I would say.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  What a fabulous course it's been. I think probably one of the most interesting courses in international economics I've heard of before. And it's been such fun to be part of it. Huge congratulations to the students. And I think and hope that they've enjoyed it as much as I have.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Excellent. Thank you so much. That was really nice. We're gonna, we're gonna put that on the, on the label.

• 42:21Speaker 03

  Very happy for you to do so.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  I will now read off every listener's name, from Aaron Aronson to Zoe Zouinsky, after I turn off the microphone, of course, and present you with a handshake and an empty folder. The actual diploma to put inside the folder will take one more step. The final exam. It is at npr.org/summerschool. Eight challenging questions to see if you have the right stuff to be an international economist. If, sorry, when you pass, you will get an electronic diploma suitable for printing and framing. That's at npr.org/summerschool. Plus, there's a link in the show notes. Again, npr.org/summerschool. If this is your first fake degree, may I suggest the six other seasons of summer school?

• 43:09Speaker 02

  We have courses in micro and macroeconomics, a short season on investing. In one course, we do the entire economic history of the world. And in another, you could get your Planet Money MBA. Whew. That should keep you occupied until next summer season. They're all collected, by the way, in their own podcast feed, where you can listen for 32 hours or more. No double speed allowed. And of course, I wouldn't be a professor unless I mentioned that the textbook for the course is available now. It's called Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life. Now that you can take a well-earned summer vacation, check out page 254 on the economics of leisure. Or is it the economics of leisure? We're gonna ask our fact checker.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Summer School is produced by Sophia Palisacar and Skylar Swenson. It's edited by Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Charlotte Isidore. This show is engineered by An Li Huang. I'm Robert Smith. Until next time, you can find me on my new podcast called Business History, a show about the history of business. This is NPR. You may throw your caps in the air. Thanks for listening.

• 44:21Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Capella University. You know that feeling when there's a spark building inside you, that you were meant for more? That's your own drive, pushing you towards what's next. Capella University gets that. With their FlexPath learning format, you can set the pace and earn your degree without putting life on pause. You've built experience and know what you're capable of. Now, this is your time to turn that momentum into more. The only real question is, what can't you do? Learn more at capella.edu. This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini.

• 45:02Speaker 04

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