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Dry Cleaners, Housing, The Stock Market And Rip It

NPR

We love getting listener mail! Seriously. And on today's episode, we're taking on some of your latest questions. For example: why does a dry cleaner in Maryland have its customers pay when they drop off their laundry, not when they pick it up? Is it better to buy a house or invest in the stock market? And we have more on the "Rip It" energy drink mentioned in our recent episode about dollar stores.

Some of the work we referenced in this piece:

Dan Ariely, "The Pain of Paying: The Psychology of Money," Duke University's Fuqua School of Business' YouTube channel.

Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick and Alan M. Taylor, "The Total Risk Premium Puzzle," National Bureau of Economic Research.

Phyllis Korkki, "Paying With Cash Hurts. That's Also Why It Feels So Good," New York Times.

Wil Fulton, "How an Energy Drink You've Never Heard Of Took Over the US Military," Thrillist.

Jake Rossen for Van Winkle's, "How the US Military Got Hooked On Rip Its," Task & Purpose.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.

Subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, PocketCasts and NPR One.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.
Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.
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