Erika Beras
Stories
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How the war on drugs helped stock our grocery store shelves
A few decades ago, finding blueberries in a grocery store out of season was a rarity. Not so much these days, due to an initiative in South America aimed at curtailing cocaine production.
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Farmers will be hit hard by the dismantling of USAID
A pause on the release of $2 billion in foreign aid could affect the government's longest-running permanent program for international food assistance -- Food for Peace.
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The way we track who owns a property or holds its title gives an opening to scammers
When buying and selling homes, there is no national record of who owns a property, who has a title to it. The Planet Money team has the story of a new kind of villain trying to exploit that system.
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A cautionary tale of new online banking systems
When a little-known tech company failed, thousands of people couldn’t access the millions they deposited into financial technology companies. Here's what the industry reveals about banking regulation.
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What happened to the glamorous days of airline travel? You pay for what you get
Airline travel used to be glamorous, lavish even. How did the experience of flying coach become so widely disparaged? It's a five decade long story of deregulation. And in the end, we customers may just be getting exactly what we asked for.
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Amateur art detectives used modern tools and the law to return stolen artifacts
Thirty years ago, two copper gilded Bhairav masks were stolen from a temple in Nepal. The mask's owners thought they were gone for good – but they ended up in two American museums.
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The moment the steel industry changed in the U.S.
Last year U.S. Steel announced it would be sold to Nippon Steel, a Japanese steel company. U.S. Steel's journey from its perch as the biggest company in the country to this moment started decades ago.
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A Uruguayan physicist cracked a major code for renewable energy
In an unlikely country, Uruguay, a particle physicist figured out how to convert energy grids to renewable energy. We tell the story of how he did it.
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Big ports are congested, so smaller ports are ramping up their operations
The Los Angeles and Long Beach ports are the point of entry for more than a third of the goods imported into the U.S. Since they're backed up, smaller ports are helping relieve some of the congestion.
