TED Radio Hour

We live in a society full of people who are obsessed with making sure that prices are right and supply meets demand. And then there's the live-music business. Concert tickets are often too cheap, and the supply is too limited. Scalpers are the proof: If tickets were more expensive to begin with, or if venues were bigger, scalpers wouldn't be able to charge more than face value...

The price of tires has risen by about 40 percent in the past five years. That's partly because rubber prices have gone up. But it's also due to a tariff that the U.S. on Chinese tire imports. As tire prices have risen, more people have been renting tires rather than buying them outright. And renting tires, it turns out, is often a bad deal in the long run. On today's show: How a celebrated attempt to help one group of people ended quietly hurting a much larger group. Also on the show: The Grizz.

Mike Smith lives by himself in a small house in a small town in Kentucky, near the Ohio River. He makes about $1,000 a month, owns his house outright, and doesn't carry any debt. He suspects that his brother and at least one but maybe all of his three grown children have stolen money from him. Over a period of about a year he made exactly six transactions that cost him over $100 — a property tax bill, an insurance payment, a couple big-ticket repairs...

Thomas Peterffy's life story includes a typing robot, a proto-iPad, and a vast fortune he amassed as one of the first guys to use computers in financial markets. On today's show, Peterffy tells us his story — and he explains why he's worried about the financial world he helped create. Also on the show: We talk with Simone Foxman of Quartz about high-speed traders paying to get a key financial indicator two seconds before everybody else.

After decades of isolation, Myanmar is reconnecting with the rest of the world. On today's show, we meet two people who are trying to take advantage of the changes going on there. One is launching a tiny startup. The other works for Coca-Cola — a company that left Myanmar decades ago, and only returned to the country last year. For more, see our stories "Can This Man Bring Silicon Valley To Yangon?" and "How To Sell Coke To People Who Have Never Had A Sip."

*Note: The country is only getting richer on paper, but that change may make a difference in the real world.* People talk about GDP as if it means something solid, as if it's a mathematically derived and agreed upon fact. But in conversations we've had in the last few weeks, we've become more convinced that GDP is a wobbly fact. It's malleable, and it's mushy. GDP can change in a day...

It's something you can see on every block in most major cities. You probably see it every day and never give a second thought to. But in Yangon, Myanmar, an ATM is a small miracle. For decades, Myanmar was cut off from the rest of the world. There were international sanctions, and no one in the U.S. or Europe did business there. But last year, when the international sanctions started to be lifted, companies like Visa and Mastercard were excited to come in...

Back in the nineties, Jim Logan started a company called Personal Audio. The concept was simple — people could pick out magazine articles they liked on the internet, and his company would send them a cassette tape of those articles being read out loud. The cassette tapes didn't catch on like Jim hoped, but he had bigger dreams for the idea behind them...

On today's show: Three short stories from the far flung shores of New Zealand, Ireland and New Jersey. First up, it's no secret that some Americans hide money offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Over the past decade, some 39,000 people have come forward voluntarily to tell the IRS about their offshore money. This group provides a small window into the world of people who are hiding money in offshore havens. Also: how a single page in a report written decades ago by U.S...

On today's Planet Money, we meet a single mother who makes $16,000 a year — and who managed to fund a vacation at a Caribbean resort with an interest-free loan from one of the world's largest banks. Edith Calzado gets credit cards with teaser zero-percent interest rates — then transfers her balance before the rate ticks up. She signs up for store cards to get discounts — then pays off her bill on time. She gets food stamps and lives in subsidized housing. Her son is doing well in school...