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For some sports, picking the winner is simple: It's the athlete who crosses the finish line first, or the side that scores the most goals. But for the new Olympic sport of breaking (if you want to be cool, don't call it breakdancing), the criteria aren't quite that straightforward. How do you judge an event whose core values are dopeness, freshness, and breaking the rules?

That was the challenge for Storm and Renegade, two legendary b-boys who set out to create a fair and objective scoring system for a dance they say is more of an art than a sport. Over the years, their journey to define the soul of breaking led them to meetings with Olympics bigwigs, debates over the science of dopeness, and a battle with a question many sports — from figure skating to gymnastics — have tried to answer: Can art and sport coexist?

This episode was hosted by Jeff Guo and Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. It was produced by Emma Peaslee and edited by Jenny Lawton. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez with help from James Willets and Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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If you’ve bought anything in the last decade -- or paid for a service -- there’s a decent chance you’ve received at least one class action settlement notice.

Powering your home with rooftop solar panels is great for the planet but isn't always a good deal for consumers. One of the problems might be with the way the industry was built in the first place.

The International Olympic Committee has developed a reputation over the years for stringently enforcing its trademarks during the summer games. It has good reason to, with brands like Coca-Cola and Visa paying top dollar for exclusive sponsorship rights. Today on the show, the lengths the IOC will go to protect its trademarks and how smaller brands try to avoid their dragnet.

Related episodes:
Why the Olympics cost so much (Apple / Spotify)
Peacock, potassium and other Paris Olympics Indicators (Apple / Spotify)

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

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The National Transportation Safety Board held a two-day hearing on the January "door plug" blowout aboard a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane flown by Alaska Airlines.

The National Transportation Safety Board has wrapped up a two-day hearing on the January "door plug" blowout aboard a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane flown by Alaska Airlines.

Episodes each Wednesday through labor day. Find all the episodes from this season here. And past seasons here. And follow along on TikTok here for video Summer School.

Trade has come up in all of the episodes of Summer School so far. An early use of money was to make trade easier. Trade was responsible for the birth of companies and the stock market. And trade was the lifeblood of the early United States.

Today's episode covers 250 years of trade history in three chapters. We start with one of the founding texts of economics, Wealth of Nations, in which Adam Smith argues a country's true value is not measured in gold and silver, but by its people's ability to buy things that enhance their standard of living. Then we'll watch American politicians completely ignore that argument in favor of protecting domestic industries – until one congressman makes a passionate case for free trade as the means to world peace. And finally we'll follow the trade debate up to the modern day, where the tides of American politics have turned toward regulation.

This series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Audrey Dilling. Our project manager is Devin Mellor. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark and fact-checked by Sofia Shchukina.

Subscribe to Planet Money+ for sponsor-free episode listening in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Globalization, as we once knew it, is dead ... well, that's according to the UK's new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves.

Chancellor Reeves has run the UK Treasury since July 2024. She's facing an economic backdrop familiar to many countries: hollowed-out industrial towns; climate change; global wars and conflicts.

Today on the show: Our conversation with Chancellor Reeves on her visit this week to the US. What she thinks went wrong with globalization, and the new economic map she's coursing.

Related Episodes:
From Brexit to Regrexit

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.