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The World Trade Organization is an international organization that regulates global trade. Established in 1995, the WTO oversees trade disputes among 164 member nations agree to abide by its decisions. The goal is to create a level playing field in international trade. Critics of the WTO complain that, among other things, adherence to an international organization is a threat to a nation’s sovereignty. President Donald Trump has been a vocal critic of the WTO and America’s participation in it. This audio story explores the tension between the Trump administration and the WTO, with its potential global consequences.

Government policies designed to prevent overfishing inadvertently made halibut fishing in Alaska very dangerous. Fishermen pushed back, and a new policy was put in place that has made the industry safer. It regulated competition by making the fishing more efficient. Listen to this story to understand how government mandated changes in the market structure had unintended consequences.

Many people need organ transplants, but there are not enough organs for all of them. Doctors have had to develop criteria for deciding who gets the organs that are available, knowing that those who don’t get the organs they need may die. Listen to hear how the allocation of available organs puts doctors in the position to make life or death decisions, and who keeps them honest about it.

The Industrial Revolution changed forever both the way goods are made and the lives of the workers who make them. In the early years, workers did not like the changes. They challenged the factory owners, sometimes violently destroying the machinery that was transforming their lives. These protesters were called Luddites. Listen to learn about how these protestors tried to keep their world from changing.

Farming in California has become more difficult in recent years as there aren’t enough people to do the arduous work involved in farming. Incentives of higher pay don’t always work to attract enough workers. So the owner of one California farm has adjusted to this labor shortage in a few different ways and reached a conclusion about the cause of his problem and the best way to solve it. Listen to find out about the surprising decision he has made.

The Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, measures the worth of all the goods and services produced in a country. Knowing the GDP helps countries monitor how strong or weak their economies are. When the GDP gets bigger, conventional wisdom says that the economy is healthy and growing, while a shrinking GDP means that something is wrong. The GDP provides a way to see the fluctuations in a nation’s economy over time. But the usefulness of the GDP is limited. Listen to this story to find out why.

Many people in Dakar, Senegal, choose the least expensive way to dispose of the raw sewage that collects in their septic systems. The result is that sewage contaminates their neighborhoods and makes people sick. The healthier option is more expensive, and it stays expensive because sewage collection companies have agreed not to compete with each other. They set a price that makes the cost too high for most people to pay. Listen to learn about how an economist implemented a new program to bring down prices and clean up the local environment.

Many Internet services are free: email, Internet search, and maps, for example. But what if you had to pay to use them? An economist sets out to discover how much people value various Internet services by asking how much they would need to be paid to give them up. It’s an example of a core economic principle: decision making. Listen to find out which Internet services people value most.

In the developed world, a lot of money changes hands without anyone actually touching it. That’s because many people get paychecks, do their shopping, and pay their bills electronically. When you put your debit card into an ATM, you assume that the machine is connected to a trusted institution and knows how much is in your account and will, in fact, give you the amount of cash you asked for. In other words, you trust the process and the bank. But what if you couldn’t? Listen to find out how people in Myanmar are trying to adjust to banking electronically in a setting where it’s not always reliable.

In the early 2000s, housing prices in the U.S. rose quickly, and many people paid high prices to buy houses. In 2008, the housing market collapsed and prices fell fast. Many of the folks who had bought homes couldn’t make their monthly mortgage payments and couldn’t sell the houses for anywhere near what they paid for them. Many lost their homes to foreclosure. In 2012, an enterprising 14-year-old girl in Florida saw a business opportunity from the housing crisis. She started selling things that people had left in their foreclosed homes, eventually saving enough money to buy a house herself, which she rents out. Listen to learn how a 14-year-old became a real estate entrepreneur.

To work in many occupations, people need to get a license. Licenses are issued by states and usually require some kind of education or training, test, and/or fee. Licensing exists to protect consumers from untrained, unqualified workers. But there’s another side to licensing. Listen to learn about how licensing also offers economic benefits to people in licensed professions as it keeps others out of the job market.

This story looks at a small island in the Pacific Ocean called Yap to answer a big question: What is money? On Yap, limestone is considered valuable, much like gold and silver in other places. But because limestone is very heavy, people can’t move it easily. As a result, money has become more abstract. People agree to its value, but don’t necessarily have the limestone itself. Listen to learn what money is and to explore how people in our society, too, buy and sell by using something (coins and bills) that represents something valuable, rather than using the valuable thing itself.

Taxing imports makes imported goods more expensive for consumers. So why aren’t all seemingly similar items taxed the same? This audio story focuses on imported suits for Santa Claus impersonators. These red suits with white firm trim are worn by thousands of Santa Clauses around the Christmas holidays. Some of these outfits are taxed, others are not. Listen to learn more about the sometimes complicated laws that determine why not all Santa suits are taxed equally.

Venezuela has one of the world’s largest oil reserves, but its economy has collapsed, and its government isn’t doing too well either. The country is beset by shortages—of everything. Listen to this story to find out how a country rich in natural resources has descended from wealth and democracy into financial and political chaos.

This story explores an important economic question: When a kid loses a tooth, how much should the tooth fairy pay? That may sound like a joke, but the tooth fairy’s payoff provides an example of inflation—the amount the price of goods increases each year—and of the economic principle called “income elasticity of demand.” Listen to the story to find out what teeth are going for these days, and what economists have to say about it.

How people have made artificial light over the past 4,000 years reflects the history of economic growth in the world. One economist has explored the cost of light, starting in ancient Babylonian times and ending in the 1990s. He discovered that for most of the past four millennia, light was very expensive. Then, in the past 200 years, scientific advances caused the cost of light to drop precipitously, and economies grew with a speed and intensity unknown before. Listen to hear how light became cheap and how its cost helps show how economic growth happens.