We often view paradise as a place of safety, beauty, tranquility. It’s an ideal we long for, but one we can rarely find. This hour, TED speakers search for utopia and come to terms with reality. Guests include wildfire expert George Whitesides, author Pico Iyer, physicist Ramón Méndez Galain, and tech entrepreneur Ramona Pierson. We also hear from two residents of Paradise, California, Richard and Zetta Gore.

Original broadcast date: November 10, 2023

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Writing can help you process thoughts, preserve memories, chronicle the stories of you and your loved ones. But that’s only if you can get past the blank page. In this bonus episode, best-selling memoirist Kelly Corrigan offers advice for putting pen to paper. Corrigan has written four New York Times-bestselling books about her life and family in the last decade, including Tell Me More and The Middle Place. She was featured in the episode, “A guide to being brave in relationships.”

To get access to more bonus episodes like this one, sign up for TED Radio Hour+. When you do, all your episodes also become sponsor-free. That’s because you are directly supporting our work at NPR. Learn more at plus.npr.org/ted

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This year, there was some economic good news to go around. Inflation generally ticked down. Unemployment more or less held around 4-percent. Heck, the Fed even cut interest rates three times. But for a lot of people, the overall economic vibes were more important. And the vibes… were still off.

We might have achieved the soft landing the Fed was hoping for, but we saw some wackiness in the relationship between unemployment and job vacancies. Meanwhile, Bitcoin went to the moon. We have covered all of that in this past year, but which of these economic stories really defined the year?

Fortunately, we don’t have to decide. You all do.

On today’s show, a collaboration with our daily podcast The Indicator, we have Indicator Family Feud! Two Planet Money hosts enter, one Indicator host… also enters. And all three leave, having had a great time with lively discussion and light ribbing. Plus, some mild scheduling issues. But, we can’t stress enough that no hosts were harmed in the making of this podcast.

Then, we look ahead to 2025 to see what indicators we think will define the coming year – the future and the past, on our latest episode!

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Our planet is in serious trouble. There are a million species of plants and animals in danger of extinction, and the biggest cause is companies destroying their habitats to farm food, mine minerals, and otherwise get the raw materials to turn into the products we all consume.

So, when Mauricio Serna was in college, he realized his family’s plot of land in Colombia, called El Globo, presented a unique opportunity. Sure, it had historically been a cattle ranch. But if he could get the money to turn it back into cloud forest, perhaps it could once again be a habitat for the animals who used to live there — animals like the yellow-eared parrot, the tree ocelot, and the spectacled bear (of Paddington fame).

On today’s show, Mauricio’s quest to make a market for a new-ish financial instrument: the biodiversity credit. We peek under the hood to try to figure out how these credits actually work. Is the hype around them a bunch of hot air? Or could they be a critical tool for saving thousands of species around the world?

Today’s episode was hosted by Stan Alcorn and Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi. It was co-reported by Tomás Uprimny. It was produced by James Sneed, edited by Jess Jiang, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.

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NASA’s expert in exploration architectures discusses how the agency stays on track to take humans farther into deep space through reviews such as the Architecture Concept review. HWHAP 366.  

To understand AI, you need to hear Mustafa Suleyman’s story. From youth hotline founder to DeepMind creator and Microsoft AI chief, his journey explains AI’s evolution and his plans for its future.

TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at: plus.npr.org/ted.

Correction: This story incorrectly states that DeepMind was one of the first AI companies. DeepMind was not one of the first AI companies, it was one of the first AGI—artificial general intelligence—companies.

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Sports gambling isn’t exactly a financial market, but it rhymes with financial markets. What happens on Wall Street somehow eventually also happens in sports gambling. So in the 1980s, when computers and deep statistical analysis entered the markets, it also entered the sportsbooks and changed the world of sports gambling in ways we see every day now.

On today’s episode, we have a story from Michael Lewis’ new season of his podcast Against The Rules. We hear from a bookie who was able to beat the odds using statistical analysis, and the other bookie who managed to beat those odds, using an even more subtle science: behavioral analysis. Plus, how it’s harder than ever to win against the house, and why those offers of free bets in TV ads are maybe not such a good idea.

This episode was hosted by Michael Lewis and Mary Childs. Our version of the podcast was produced by Emma Peaslee and edited by Martina Castro. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money‘s executive producer.

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A new year is a fresh opportunity to take control of our time, but a lot of hacks don’t actually help us prioritize and focus. In this special bonus episode, time management expert Laura Vanderkam shares her best strategies for making decisions with more intention—so you have time for the things that truly matter. Laura Vanderkam was featured in the episode “Flip the Script.”

To get access to more bonus episodes like this one and hear the show sponsor-free, sign up for TED Radio Hour+. That’s because you are directly supporting our work at NPR. Learn more at plus.npr.org/ted

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Why do some nations fail and others succeed?

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, three economists formed a partnership that would revolutionize how economists think about global inequality. Their work centered on a powerful — and almost radically obvious — idea: that the economic fate of nations is determined by how societies organize themselves. In other words, the economists shined a spotlight on the power of institutions, the systems, rules, and structures that shape society.

We spoke with two of the Nobel-winning economists about their research on why some countries are rich and others are poor, why it took so long for economics to recognize the power of institutions, and what the heck those even are.

This episode was hosted by Jeff Guo and Greg Rosalsky. It was produced by Willa Rubin with help from James Sneed. It was edited by Martina Castro and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Gilly Moon with help from James Willetts. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money‘s executive producer.

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