Planet Money

Planet Money is not a traditional investing podcast, and that is exactly why it belongs on a list for beginners. NPR's twice-weekly economics show uses narrative journalism to explain how money, markets, and economies actually work, and that foundational understanding is what separates investors who make informed decisions from those who just follow tips. The team -- including Kenny Malone, Erika Beras, Jeff Guo, and Mary Childs -- has a gift for finding stories that make abstract economic concepts feel tangible and specific. They once bought a toxic asset to explain the 2008 financial crisis. They set up an actual shell company to show how corporate secrecy works. They invested in gold to trace the global commodity supply chain. Each episode runs about 25 minutes and the storytelling is tight, funny, and surprisingly informative. Recent episodes have covered how patent pools affect innovation, the economics of public domain intellectual property, and dispatches from Brazil's economy. You will not learn how to read a stock chart here, but you will start to understand why interest rates move markets, how trade policy affects your portfolio, and what inflation actually does to purchasing power. For a beginner investor, that economic literacy is the foundation everything else builds on. Planet Money has been doing this since 2008 and has won multiple Peabody Awards for its work.