Slate Money

Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and Elizabeth Spiers get together each week to hash out the biggest stories in business and finance, and the result feels less like a news recap and more like eavesdropping on three very smart people arguing at a dinner party. Each main episode runs about 45 minutes and usually tackles three or four topics -- a major corporate deal, a policy shift, something weird happening in markets, maybe a cultural angle on money. The hosts bring genuinely different perspectives. Salmon has the financial journalist's instinct for spotting what numbers actually mean. Peck focuses on labor and how economic forces hit real people. Spiers adds a sharp media and tech lens. They disagree often enough to keep things interesting but never in a performative, cable-news way. The show publishes twice a week, with the main roundtable episode plus a shorter bonus segment for Slate Plus subscribers. There's also an occasional "Money on Film" series where they analyze how movies depict wealth and finance, which is more fun than it sounds. What sets Slate Money apart from straighter financial podcasts is the willingness to connect money stories to broader culture. An episode about streaming service economics might pivot into a discussion about how Hollywood accounting actually works. A segment on housing costs might touch on remote work migration patterns. The production is clean and conversational -- no sound effects, no dramatic music stings, just three people talking with enough expertise to make complex financial topics genuinely accessible. If you want to understand what's happening in the economy without needing a Bloomberg terminal, this is one of the best weekly listens out there.