TED Radio Hour

In 2010, we reported on a poor town in Haiti, where school was held in a small, one-room church. Planet Money listeners were moved to donate some $3,000, which the principal of the school thought would be enough to build a school. A few months later, the money was gone, and all there was to show for it was a foundation, some concrete blocks and some rock and sand. We thought that would be the end of it...

On today's show: Three short Planet Money stories about trying to figure out what things are really worth. When Lady Gaga writes a song, does that count as economic output? Is a $20 worth $20 in Myanmar (Spoiler: Probably not.) And economists help a young college grad think through what to do with his life. Also: An update on our t-shirt project.

H&M, Zara, Wal-Mart and JC Penney all buy t-shirts from Bangladesh. Soon, Planet Money will too. As you may have heard, we're making a t-shirt and telling the story of how it's made. We decided a few months ago to work with Jockey to make our t-shirts. Our women's shirt will be made in Colombia. Our men's shirt will be made, in part, in Bangladesh. But horrifying news has been coming out of Bangladesh's apparel industry recently...

We're making a t-shirt that tells the story of its own creation. Part of that story — color. It took long meetings, late nights and endless discussion to choose the exact hues for our Planet Money t-shirt. On today's show, we'll explain what the color of our women's t-shirt has to do with this painting from 1976, and we'll tell you how unfinished buildings halfway around the world are shaping what we see on store shelves right now...

Nearly 20 states have legalized marijuana to some degree. As it turns out, this has profound economic consequences for dealers all across the country. On today's show, we meet a wholesaler who moves weed across the country, a California weed dealer seeking higher profits in New York, and a special agent who may be inadvertently helping the dealer out by trying to put him in jail. For More: See The Weed Trail, from WNYC

On today's show, we meet a Brazilian who took on the world's largest superpower; a Texas cotton farmer who's tired of hearing the Brazilians complain; and a guy named Renato — a.k.a. Retaliation Master. And we hear why U.S. taxpayers are paying Brazilian cotton growers nearly $150 million a year. This show originally ran in 2011, near the beginning of our quest to make a Planet Money t-shirt. We're re-playing it now because we just re-launched the t-shirt project...