Keith Romer
Keith Romer has been a contributing reporter for Planet Money since 2015. He has reported stories on risk-pooling among poker players, whether it's legal to write a spin-off of the children's book Goodnight Moon and the time one man cornered the American market in onions. Sometimes on the show, he sings.
Romer has also worked as a producer and story editor at ESPN's 30 for 30 Podcast where he reported on WNBA players who played overseas for a former KGB spy and — more gamblers — the World Series of Poker that launched the international poker boom. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker and Rolling Stone.
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Lower costs for trucking mean savings at the cash register for consumers. But it may also be why some truckers are being paid less and less.
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Debates about who should pay for the U.S. Postal Service go back 50 years. It's a story of the long fight about whether the Postal Service should rely on Congress for funding or pay for itself.
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At the time Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, a new social science was just taking root: economics. Dickens did not like it. NPR visits a high school performance of the play to understand the economic commentary laced throughout this holiday classic.
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It's illegal for casinos in Nevada to take bets from out of state. But that didn't stop one subsidiary of a Wall Street firm from trying.
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Our reporter wanted to write a prequel to Goodnight Moon. He ended up on the phone with lawyers.
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Big league poker tournaments put millions of dollars at stake for the players. But behind the scenes there is another money game going on, something of a mini-Wall Street.
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Not everything can be sold like a box of cereal with a price tag on the side. If something needs to be sold right away, an auction might be the right approach. For buyers, auctions can be a great chance at a bargain, but only if they are wise to the tricks of the trade. Planet Money goes to an auction to scout out techniques.
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Farming is unpredictable. So many farmers count on complicated financial agreements to ensure they have a steady source of income. But one time, these futures markets led to two investors owning almost all of the onions in the Midwest. And the legacy of that wild tale helps us understand the essential intersection of farming and finance.
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It wasn't always illegal to bet on presidential elections. Before polling, the practice used to be so commonplace that it actually increased public engagement with elections.