Business

Many people get range anxiety thinking about taking a long car trip in an EV. But a lot of money has gone into improving roadside chargers. We tried them out for ourselves during a 1,000-mile drive.

The Fed kept interest rates unchanged at the highest in more than two decades. Investors are betting it will start to lower rates at its next meeting in September.

The Federal Reserve has once again opted to leave interest rates unchanged. That appears to be creating a big challenge to one part of the economy: housing prices. Today, we look at how elevated interest rates may actually be keeping home prices and rent high. Plus, we see how one community is taking the issue of housing affordability into its own hands.

Read the research paper co-authored by Julia Fonseca, Lu Liu, and Pierre Mabille.

Related episodes:
When mortgage rates are too low to give up (Apple / Spotify)
The housing shakeup (Apple / Spotify)
The highs and lows of US rent (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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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.

Planet Money Summer School has arrived at the birth of the United States and the chance to set up a whole new economy from scratch. Should there be a centralized bank? Should there be a single currency? We'll travel to two moments in the country's early history when the founders said "nope" to these questions and see what happened.

First we'll witness one of the great economic battles in U.S. history – the president of the United States versus the president of the Bank of the United States – and see how the outcome ushered in an age of financial panics. Then we'll drop in on a time before the U.S. dollar existed as we know it, when you could buy things using one of about 8,000 forms of money circulating in the country. We watch as the Civil War leads to the first standard currency. Along the way, we'll learn why the cycle of economic booms and busts persists to today despite efforts to centralize America's economy throughout history.

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.

British police are reviewing allegations that Washington Post CEO Will Lewis obstructed justice when he worked for media mogul Rupert Murdoch in the U.K. 13 years ago.

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.

Planet Money Summer School has arrived at the birth of the United States and the chance to set up a whole new economy from scratch. Should there be a centralized bank? Should there be a single currency? We'll travel to two moments in the country's early history when the founders said "nope" to these questions and see what happened.

First we'll witness one of the great economic battles in U.S. history – the president of the United States versus the president of the Bank of the United States – and see how the outcome ushered in an age of financial panics. Then we'll drop in on a time before the U.S. dollar existed as we know it, when you could buy things using one of about 8,000 forms of money circulating in the country. We watch as the Civil War leads to the first standard currency. Along the way, we'll learn why the cycle of economic booms and busts persists to today despite efforts to centralize America's economy throughout history.

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.

Illinois is the 8th state to adopt a law making it illegal for employers to hold mandatory religious, political or anti-union meetings, a move aimed at helping workers trying to unionize.