More Embarrassing Than Sex: Alex Mayyasi on Why Money Talk Makes Us So Nervous

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's Wednesday, April 8th, 2026. Yesterday, we had the New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber on the show talking about the rise and revolt of the college-educated working class. Things are tough out there on the economic front. He has a new book, which we talked about yesterday, called Mutiny. We talked about everything from the long-term unemployment of college graduates to the $25,000-a-year family of three living in Queens driving Uber cars. In other words, everything isn't quite right in America, at least on Planet Money. And as it happens, we're talking Planet Money today. You're all familiar with a very popular podcast — I think it's the most popular economics podcast — called Planet Money. Well, they have a new book out. It came out yesterday. It's called, appropriately enough, Planet Money, and it's by my guest, Alex Mayyasi, who is a frequent commentator, presenter, and contributor to Planet Money. Alex, congratulations on the new book. Would it be fair to say that things aren't quite right on Planet Money these days?

00:01:47 Alex Mayyasi: I think that's fair. There's a kind of unfortunate reality we recognize at Planet Money — that often when people are most eager to seek out economic news and explanation, when people are most eager to hear from Planet Money, is when there's a lot going on: a trade war, a real war, high inflation, things that move the economy off a smooth track. But I think in good times and bad, we're eager to help people better understand the economy. And it was certainly motivating to work on this book at a time when it felt like people were really trying to understand a lot of big economic forces that were impacting them in their careers.

00:02:33 Andrew Keen: And of course, I'm sure it's not entirely uncoincidental that the book is out the week before Tax Day, April 15th, when we all have to declare our incomes. Hopefully most of us do have incomes. Of course, the press these days is full of the price of gas as a consequence of the current situation in the Middle East. Have there ever been good times in economics, Alex? It always seems as if everyone's always complaining — they don't have enough money, inflation's too high, interest rates are too high, nothing is affordable anymore. Do you think there was ever a time where we actually celebrated economics and Planet Money?

00:03:18 Alex Mayyasi: I think so, and I'll answer in two different ways across two different time horizons. When inflation started increasing just after the pandemic, for a lot of Americans like myself, that was really our first experience with higher levels of inflation. What we experienced — about 9% inflation — is something that many people in parts of the world, certain countries in South America for example, would dream of as what they'd consider very low inflation. But it was our first experience with what felt like high inflation. And the fact that we hadn't experienced high inflation during basically my entire lifetime is kind of incredible. Economists often call this the Great Moderation — a period of multiple decades where inflation was quite modest. You could trust that if you had a dollar in your pocket, a year later or five years later it would still be worth essentially a dollar. That is a fantastic and amazing run, economically speaking. That doesn't mean every single thing during that period was perfect economically, but a long sustained period of low inflation is a pretty fantastic accomplishment. And I'd also say, on a longer time horizon, there are two very different thoughts I think we need to keep in our heads at the same time. The period of the last two hundred years, where the economy has grown and grown and grown — if you look at a GDP chart of either global GDP or the GDP of countries like the United States, Britain, and Japan — it's that hockey stick growth chart where, for most of human history, incomes just did not rise that much, and then they take off and the world has gotten richer and richer. Year to year during the past two hundred years there have been many periods that feel uncertain, periods like now where people feel anxious about the economy. It's not all rosy, but the long-term trajectory has just been incredible and beyond people's wildest dreams. Even economists making optimistic predictions fifty or so years ago often famously underestimated how high living standards would be in places like Britain and the United States today.

00:05:49 Andrew Keen: How long has Planet Money been going? I don't mean the podcast, but this economic system. Modern economics was, of course, born in the work of Adam Smith. Some people call it the dismal science. But the idea of Planet Money — even the idea of economics — would have been completely foreign to people from the sixteenth, fifteenth, or fourteenth century, wouldn't it, Alex?

00:06:20 Alex Mayyasi: Yeah, absolutely. A point my colleague made really brilliantly was that if you ask someone a hundred years ago, "How's the economy looking? How's the economy doing?", you'd probably just get a strange look back. That's not a question people asked. There wasn't really a concept of "the economy." That was really an invention of the Great Depression, because there was a problem during the Depression where the president and his advisers, politicians, businessmen and businesswomen, didn't really know if the economy was getting better even as the government was doing all these things to try and turn things around. There's a story in the book about an economist who was tasked with figuring out how to track the state of the economy. It sounds like this incredible, Don Quixote-type task of counting every single transaction that happens in the economy so that you can come up with one figure — GDP, gross domestic product — to represent the state of the economy each year. That's one of those moments where we start living in a world of Planet Money, where people are suddenly aware of the growth rate year to year in terms of GDP, living standards, and all these economic statistics that we now bathe in on a regular basis, but which really had to be invented relatively recently — in the Great Depression and interwar period.

00:07:52 Andrew Keen: I'm not sure "bathing" is the right word because it implies it's a lot of fun. I don't think we ever choose to go swimming in a Planet Money pool. Oh — I mean, they may they may —

00:08:01 Alex Mayyasi: — be wading through it. Yeah.

00:08:02 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Although for some of us, I guess, it can be fun — especially for you guys. There's that old saying: if your neighbor is unemployed, it's a recession; if you're unemployed, it's a depression. Economics is always personal, isn't it? And I take your point about the emergence of modern economics. But even in the most sophisticated economy, if you're not doing well, then the economy isn't doing well.

00:08:28 Alex Mayyasi: Yeah. How people first used the word "economy" — it was almost like the economy of your household, which speaks to the way it's always been very personal. Aristotle. Yeah. The word "economy" — I'm forgetting the exact Greek, but it was something like "oikonomia," and it referenced the management of your household. So economics started out, and has always been, about your pocketbook to some extent. It always hits home.

00:08:52 Andrew Keen: Yeah. So we've had many economists on the show. I called them the miserable scientists — or more appropriately, it's the dismal science. Why are you guys so popular? I know that's a softball question, Alex. But what do you do that most economists don't do? How do you make economics and money accessible to ordinary people without a PhD in economics?

00:09:20 Alex Mayyasi: There are a few things in the Planet Money DNA that people have really responded to. One is a storytelling approach. The platonic ideal Planet Money episode — or now chapter of the Planet Money book — often involves a central character, someone who's really experiencing these economic forces or big changes in the economy. That's a big instinct of ours. When I went looking to write about automation and AI, I decided to write about a case study of bank tellers experiencing ATMs — automated teller machines meant to automate their job — and went and talked to someone who was a bank teller in the 1970s as ATMs were being installed. That's a big part of what makes Planet Money approachable: looking for people who are really experiencing these forces, because otherwise economics can feel very hand-wavy, full of jargony terms that need defining. Things are a lot more interesting and compelling when you can see individuals grappling with them. And I also hope that Planet Money, both the podcast and now this book, can make economics less intimidating for people who aren't always inclined toward it — and also for people who are in finance and already think a lot about economics. I think there's a lot of value in seeing these other stories, these great examples of economic principles. They've often gotten to enjoy Planet Money too.

00:11:28 Andrew Keen: You're talking about intimidation, Alex. Were you intimidated when you were given this job? Maybe you drew the short straw — or the long straw. I'm not sure on this one.

00:11:38 Alex Mayyasi: I asked for it. I asked for it.

00:11:40 Andrew Keen: I mean, everyone would love it. It's a fun writing project, and I'm sure a reasonably lucrative one. But it must be a bit of a challenge to turn an extremely popular podcast — which isn't a book, and in many ways is the opposite of a book — into a book. How did you go about that?

00:12:00 Alex Mayyasi: I had some natural advantage here in that I'm someone who's worked with Planet Money before, reported episodes and co-hosted episodes, but also has a background in print and books and has worked on some book projects before. One of the early key tasks was thinking about the structure. The book is divided into five sections, each about different parts of one's life — your working career, saving and investing — and also some sections that might be a little less expected, like leisure, and love and family. Planet Money has reported about the economy for more than fifteen years, and I did original reporting for this book too. It was kind of like a big blank canvas. Coming up with the structure was one of the most important decisions — something almost like a field guide to big forces you experience in your life. That helped me decide what big ideas really need to be in here, and then think about what great stories and examples could make those economic forces compelling and a great read as well.

00:13:23 Andrew Keen: Alex, I suspect that one of the reasons Planet Money is so popular is because money makes everybody nervous — whether or not you have it. We all get a sense of vertigo sometimes. Our minds swirl. I mean, I guess there are some people who just naturally understand money — investors, entrepreneurs, bankers. But most of us, and I would certainly include myself, don't really understand money. Do you think one of the reasons Planet Money is so popular is because it makes people less nervous about money?

00:14:06 Alex Mayyasi: I think so. There are definitely parts of the business and finance world that are invested in making these things seem intimidating and scary. There are people who work in finance where it is to their benefit — they are talking their book when they make things seem as complicated as possible. We really enjoy making things more approachable and simple. There were times when I was reporting this book where my head was spinning as I grappled with the big ideas, but I absolutely think that a lot of really powerful economic concepts are fairly simple. I've had the experience with friends of mine who are clearly talented, smart people doing hard and complicated things in medicine or other fields, and they sometimes say to me apologetically, "Oh, I don't really know how to invest or manage my money, so I'm going to go get advice from someone." Seeking out good advice can be a good thing, but I also want those people to know: you are very smart, capable people. A lot of these basics are huge and important and powerful, but they're things you can grasp, and I think they're well within anyone's reach.

00:15:34 Andrew Keen: Yeah. We've done many shows on crypto, and I know you cover crypto in great detail on Planet Money and in the book. And sometimes people say, "I'm not smart enough to understand crypto — I don't understand how it has value or how it can represent an alternative to money." Do you talk about crypto in Planet Money? Do you believe it could be a bit of a scam?

00:16:02 Alex Mayyasi: That was one of my big questions — to what extent I wanted to write about crypto in this book. Planet Money the podcast has absolutely covered crypto and had multiple episodes on different aspects of it. Ultimately I didn't make it a focus of this book. There isn't a lot on crypto. I can't claim it was some masterminded decision, but it was during the course of writing this book that OpenAI came out with ChatGPT, and you saw such a switch in energy within the tech world from crypto to AI. That doesn't necessarily mean that AI is the most important thing and there's nothing to crypto. But I did spend more pages on AI than on crypto. I'm hopeful that was a good decision, though as always I'm prepared to be wrong — I'm always keeping an eye on crypto for interesting applications. I'm glad I spent more words on AI.

00:17:18 Andrew Keen: And AI always comes out — you can't do a show these days without talking about AI. When we talked to Noam Scheiber yesterday, we talked about the way technology and AI are replacing the old middle class — lawyers, engineers, and so on. How is AI affecting the economic forces that shape our lives? It doesn't seem as self-evident as the way it might affect jobs.

00:17:49 Alex Mayyasi: Do you mean specifically how AI is affecting the economy, or —

00:17:53 Andrew Keen: What do you say in Planet Money about AI? You mentioned you were thinking of writing about crypto, and then AI came along and you wrote about that instead.

00:18:06 Alex Mayyasi: The role economists have often played in this moment is not necessarily being bearish on AI, but bringing a longer perspective to the conversation. You'll often see Silicon Valley boosters making big statements about fifty percent of white-collar jobs going extinct within a single-digit number of years. Many economists are thinking seriously about AI and believe policymakers should be thinking about how to help workers whose jobs could be disrupted — how they transition and adapt. In the book I talk about a number of case studies of moments where automation really changed types of work — bank tellers and ATMs being one of them. There are other case studies: the internet, electrification, these other big moments of transformation. One thing a lot of economists have on their mind is how familiar they are, from these case studies, with how long implementation actually takes. There's a famous example: factories didn't really change when electricity arrived, because if you just tried to put electricity into a factory built without that assumption, the impact wasn't huge. Things really start changing when you build factories from the ground up assuming electricity will be there and abundant. Economists are more aware of those bottlenecks and the time involved. But that doesn't mean they're all sanguine about AI's impacts. Certainly, they recognize it could be very disruptive — with painful disruptions for people — and also the possibility of higher economic growth and greater prosperity.

00:20:03 Andrew Keen: What are people going to be most surprised about in Planet Money, in terms of the advice you give? We all know the conventional wisdom about saving your money, being careful, not overspending, not falling into debt. Do you challenge any of that? You could call it almost a Protestant ideology of not spending. Do you suggest that sometimes it's good to go into debt? That sometimes it might even be good to spend money you don't have?

00:20:33 Alex Mayyasi: In the book we absolutely tell you about the power of compounding growth and therefore how powerful it is to start saving today rather than later. But we also have the perspective that that's just one form of financial time travel. The financial markets give us the ability to move money through time — into the future, or from the future to the present. A very relatable version of this is student loans. What people are doing with student loans is taking their income from the future and moving it back in time to today, to fund themselves and get the human capital they need to earn a higher salary. If you need money now to do something productive — start a business, go to college — there are ways to fund it with money from the future. We don't always talk about it that way, but it's a powerful perspective. I'm also here for the idea of consumption smoothing: your income will vary over time. People often make less when they're young in their career, then hit their highest earnings, then maybe it goes down. There's absolutely a valid case for spending a little more during a leaner period if you know you'll be making more in the future. You have to be careful with it — don't assume you're going to make such a huge salary in the future that you can spend a ton now. But having a holistic perspective on the life cycle of your income and your spending is totally valid.

00:22:40 Andrew Keen: How do you address the issue of gambling and risk? Just as AI is incredibly popular these days, so are these meta-gambling applications online where you can bet on anything. I'm sure people could bet on this conversation. How do you explain those in Planet Money? Do you suggest we should embrace risk when it comes to money? I'm not suggesting we all become gambling addicts, but the occasional flutter isn't such a bad thing.

00:23:17 Alex Mayyasi: When I started writing this book, the ways the stock market could sometimes look like gambling now seem almost quaint — people taking a ride on GameStop. That seems quaint a mere four or so years later when people are making complicated parlay bets on sports or betting on whether a certain word will be in the State of the Union. It's helpful to distinguish between productive risk and pure gambling. One message of the book — that savvy listeners are likely already aware of — is that risk is not inherently bad. Higher risk, higher reward: it's a continuum. Often the way you get to a great career is by taking some calculated, smart risks. Financial traders have that mindset, and it'd be helpful for the rest of us to have it too. But I'd certainly distinguish that from the more nihilistic kind of gambling — just letting the flip of a coin decide.

00:24:41 Andrew Keen: Yeah. In other words, we shouldn't all become wolves of Wall Street. Alex, what about the old adage that money doesn't make you happy? Do you deal with the issue of happiness in Planet Money? Do you think people with money are happier than people without?

00:24:56 Alex Mayyasi: Some of my colleagues made a great Planet Money episode on this some time ago. For a number of years, there was a very famous finding that at a broad societal level, as countries and individuals got wealthier, happiness would rise — but then hit a plateau. Once individuals reached something like $60,000 annually, their happiness tended to plateau, and was no longer really correlated with increasing incomes. But then different research dug into that and found it doesn't really hold — you do often see happiness continue to increase with income beyond that $60,000 point. That's potentially not terribly surprising to economists, because we also see that GDP correlates highly with the things that matter most — as GDP goes up, as countries get wealthier, child mortality tends to go down, poverty tends to go down, malnutrition goes down, longevity goes up. It's still an individual quest to be happy even if you have a high income. But over the long run, GDP growth does seem to matter more than almost anything else for giving us the foundations of a good life. GDP growth really does correlate with lots and lots of good outcomes in terms of health, and even happiness when surveyed at a national or collective level.

00:27:20 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And when it comes to the consequences of GDP, environmentalists in particular are —

00:27:25 Alex Mayyasi: — very —

00:27:25 Andrew Keen: — suspicious of it. The title of your book is Planet Money. Lots of people focus on the planet without thinking very much about money. Do you address the tradeoffs between wealth and prosperity — GDP — and environmental costs, the longer-term costs that many environmentalists are so concerned with?

00:27:52 Alex Mayyasi: You can look at that hockey stick growth chart of GDP going up and up since the industrial revolution and feel very good about a lot of our market and global economy. But certainly the biggest challenge is big externalities, and chief among them is global warming and other forms of pollution. One of the ways I tried to grapple with that most in this book is thinking about the nature of corporations. Why is it that businesses seem so rarely concerned about the costs they impose on society in terms of pollution and global warming?

00:28:46 Andrew Keen: Except for some notable exceptions, of course.

00:28:48 Alex Mayyasi: Yeah. I am interested in cases where companies have done really interesting things — like advanced market commitments for carbon capture. Companies saying: we don't just want to plant some trees and do something that we all really know won't move the needle on global warming. We want to do something real. You've seen some companies — I believe Stripe is a big proponent of this — essentially saying: if a company is able to do carbon capture, take carbon out of the air to help prevent or even undo global warming, we are ready to spend this much money. It's almost like firing a starter pistol for companies interested in this, saying there's a goal, and you know that this will be a certain level of profitability if you achieve it. So there are companies doing interesting things. But for the most part, companies often operate in a way that's seemingly so selfish and unconcerned about the rest of us — and there are ways that's baked into the DNA of corporations and corporate law. That is somewhat dispiriting, but it's also helpful to realize that corporate law, the rules and regulations that shape the behavior of corporations, are within our control to change. There are ways we could experiment and try to make corporations inherently care more about the collective costs they impose on society.

00:30:15 Andrew Keen: As I said earlier, a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about money or understanding it — it makes their head spin. And it would seem, from my personal and anecdotal experience, that people are also very uncomfortable talking about money with their husbands, wives, children, parents, close friends. Do you advise in Planet Money that we should be a little more open — when we're dating seriously, for example — about how much money we do or don't have? It's not the most romantic of subjects, of course.

00:30:55 Alex Mayyasi: That's a good question, because it is — I spend so much time thinking about the economy and money, and then honestly I find myself as well not necessarily more open to talking about —

00:31:12 Andrew Keen: — money? With a husband, a wife, kids, all that sort of thing?

00:31:16 Alex Mayyasi: I have a girlfriend. No kids.

00:31:18 Andrew Keen: Oh, no mention of money yet. Did she ask for your advice?

00:31:23 Alex Mayyasi: She doesn't ask for my advice so much, I think. But I do think this career has made me much more of an advocate for people seeking out and sharing information about their salaries. If you've got a job offer and you're thinking about negotiating, it can be really powerful to have objective facts: here are similar jobs to the one you've offered me, and here's what the salary is. That's objective criteria you can use to advocate or negotiate for a higher salary. I'm generally in favor of people sharing that information. But I'd have to admit — I sometimes think it's strange how much I and my friends and peers won't talk about money openly with a spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, or parents. It's a different culture.

00:32:30 Andrew Keen: Maybe the financial world needs a Freud to liberate us — because we talk a lot about sex these days, we should also talk about money. You mentioned knowing other people's salaries. There are some societies — Sweden comes to mind — where everyone has to publish their income, or it's quite easy to find out how much people earn. In America it's much more private. There's a kind of darkness to knowing how much people make — you'd have to guess from the car they drive, the house they live in, the clothes they wear. And people can be quite deceptive there — they can appear wealthier than they are, or poorer than they are.

00:33:19 Alex Mayyasi: People who have specialized in Hollywood finance have done really interesting reporting about how it's almost a boon in Hollywood that the accounting is so, let's say, creative — in part because it gives actors the ability to claim very inflated figures in terms of how much they're making per movie. There's some benefit to being able to be flexible with how much you say you earned. But salary transparency is interesting. There are case studies of companies that have switched to full salary transparency — everything available in a spreadsheet that anyone in the company can access. Companies that have done it after not being transparent find it leads to uncomfortable conversations. There are cases where, certainly, women were making less than men.

00:34:16 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And race as well. I mean, I'm sure gender and race both get very —

00:34:21 Alex Mayyasi: — fraught. And I think that's one reason people have advocated for salary transparency — the way it can help prevent discrimination. But those cases also show that it led to conversations that were probably uncomfortable, though maybe helpful, where people asked: "My salary is lower than this person's." And it led to a conversation with a manager where it's like: "We don't think you are working at the same level as that person." That's a hard conversation, but also useful. Not all of our work can be boiled down to a single number, but there's a reason prices are so powerful — they boil so much down to a single number. It can be clarifying in ways that are very helpful. And also in ways that could be hard — maybe your boss is right that your salary is lower, and you can improve. Or maybe they're just wrong and underestimating you — in which case you should leave. You've gained clarity on the fact that they're —

00:35:24 Andrew Keen: — undervaluing you. Go out and find someone who'll pay you more.

00:35:27 Alex Mayyasi: Yeah. Someone else will pay you more.

00:35:29 Andrew Keen: One of the interesting things about money is that while we're all a bit uncomfortable about it — probably more uncomfortable talking about it than sex, which we used to be very uncomfortable talking about — maybe it's because there's a degree of honesty to it. You can't be half-pregnant with money. You earn X, and that somehow reflects your value, determines your lifestyle, where you live, how you live. So maybe one of the reasons we're a little uncomfortable with money is that it's a little too close to the bone.

00:36:05 Alex Mayyasi: I think that's absolutely true. I'm here as an economics reporter, and I think there's a lot of value in those single numbers — they're clarifying and edifying. But I also think maybe we need better alternative measures, because the more ways we can gain status that's recognized by others, or just recognition, the less your salary or wage will feel like a verdict on your entire existence. I think economics is powerful and interesting — I've worked on this Planet Money book for years — but we are in a bad place when people's net worth or salary feels more and more like the only valid verdict on their worth. There should be all sorts of kinds of status and sources of satisfaction and meaning.

00:37:08 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I'm not sure you can quantify that. I mean —

00:37:10 Alex Mayyasi: Harder to quantify, but meaningful nonetheless. Planet Money is about economics, but it's not just about money. People have all sorts of goals they pursue in different ways, and economics is a helpful way to think about those. Not every incentive is just profit maximization.

00:37:30 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. From my experience, the only thing more annoying than someone obsessed with money is someone who is overtly disinterested and articulates a profound ignorance. I don't think either extreme is healthy. And, obviously, particularly for people who are disinterested, Planet Money is a good beginning — to start learning and being a little less childish about the economic forces that shape our lives.

00:38:05 Alex Mayyasi: Yeah, absolutely. Money often reflects things we care a lot about. It's not the be-all and end-all, but there's a reason "follow the money" is such a powerful phrase — used in powerful criminal investigations, but also powerful for understanding where big, important things are happening. It can reveal all sorts of fascinating ways the world works and how they impact our daily lives.

00:38:42 Andrew Keen: Well, I don't know about "follow the money" — "follow the Planet Money," I think, is the wisdom from this show and this book. Let's end with a couple of very concrete questions. You don't have kids yet — you've got a girlfriend. Kids may be in the pipeline in the near future. What advice would you give parents — my kids are now in their twenties, and they're reasonably responsible. I didn't give them any financial advice at all because I'm not a financial type. But what advice would you give parents about bringing up financially literate and responsible kids, kids who aren't obsessed with money but recognize its value?

00:39:29 Alex Mayyasi: It feels like that might be a question beyond economics. A lot of it is probably about — thinking ahead to what it might be for me — showing a lot of —

00:39:48 Andrew Keen: — and reading your book.

00:39:49 Alex Mayyasi: Yeah, I would hope they read the book and listen to the show and get excited about economics in a way that's not just about money, but about understanding how the world works. But I also think modeling behavior for children — appreciating and respecting things that don't necessarily bring in the most money — is really important. In this book we think about public goods and externalities: things that are really valuable aren't always recognized by the market. I work in journalism, and local news is one of those areas — the business model for it has gotten very challenging. It's not greatly valued in the sense of people making tons of money from it. But it's incredibly important, and there are obviously lots of parts of our lives like that — things the market doesn't put a huge price tag on, but that parents could model for their children: respect, appreciation, and excitement for them.

00:40:57 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I think one of the things parents do, often without being aware of it, is they pass on their phobias and fetishes about money. Some parents are obsessed with money, not because they want to be wealthy, but because they're very nervous about it — and then their kids turn out to be incredibly nervous, which isn't necessarily healthy. Let's end with some selfish advice. My kids are in their twenties, which means I'm getting close to retirement age. What advice would you give to people who are thinking about retirement — and what stories do you tell in Planet Money about escaping the work life and living off money you already have?

00:41:47 Alex Mayyasi: One of the most fun stories in this book is about Bobby Bonilla, who was a slugger —

00:41:53 Andrew Keen: Oh, yes. Yes.

00:41:55 Alex Mayyasi: — famous for the so-called "worst contract in sports history." But I think it's actually a fantastic example of saving for retirement. The message is fairly simple: save when you're young and can, because when you invest and compound interest kicks in, the effects of compounding can grow so much more than you'd ever expect. Compounding interest kind of breaks our brains — the power of a dollar to grow and grow when it's invested. So that's partly about reinforcing the importance of saving. But —

00:42:35 Andrew Keen: — it's all about story. Not everyone will be familiar with Bobby Bonilla, the former —

00:42:39 Alex Mayyasi: So Bobby Bonilla —

00:42:41 Andrew Keen: — the vampire.

00:42:42 Alex Mayyasi: Amazing slugger, great baseball career. Near the end of his career, he's playing for the Mets and making $6 million a year. He has a season where he's no longer the huge slugger he once was, and the Mets would prefer to part ways with him — but they don't want to keep paying him the $6 million they'd owe him. So Bobby Bonilla and his agent come to an agreement with the Mets: "I'll go to another team. You're off the hook for the $6 million you need to pay me right now — but you won't have to start paying me until several decades in the future." Of course, Bobby Bonilla is agreeing to not get paid for years and years, so he says: "I need to be paid more than $6 million. You've got to pay me for the time value of money." And so what happens, even today, is that once a year Bobby Bonilla gets a check for just over $1 million from the Mets — which kind of drives people insane. Mets fans hate it: "We're paying this guy who's been retired for decades more money than some of our starters." It seems boneheaded. But it's completely reasonable. This is how every successful retirement plan works. You give up some money and consumption now to enjoy it in the future. And since it's invested and put to productive use, it grows — potentially a lot over many years, more than you might expect. That's the power of compound interest: Bobby Bonilla gave up that $6 million and got to enjoy something like $30 million in 30 different $1 million checks in the future. I don't have $6 million of income to give up right now to enjoy in retirement, but this is what we can all do — put aside some money now to enjoy in the future. Bobby Bonilla, and his contract, we're big fans of —

00:44:50 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Bobby Bonilla.

00:44:51 Alex Mayyasi: — of his contract.

00:44:53 Andrew Keen: Who wouldn't be? Bonilla played on the same Pittsburgh team as Barry Bonds, and I'm sure he has a lot more money than Barry Bonds. And I think Shohei Ohtani — the Los Angeles Dodgers are doing something similar with Ohtani, except the numbers are even larger. On that great note, because I know you've got to run, Alex — what about life insurance? I pay it, and once you're on the hook you can't really get out of it. Well, you can, but it doesn't seem particularly wise. Is life insurance, in Planet Money's view, a good deal or a bad deal?

00:45:28 Alex Mayyasi: I may be one of the few people who's gone on record saying positive things about insurance. I also don't like paying money every month or every year and then often getting nothing back — which is what it can feel like.

00:45:48 Andrew Keen: On life insurance, of course, you only get it back when you —

00:45:50 Alex Mayyasi: — right, right. You're really getting it then.

00:45:51 Andrew Keen: You know?

00:45:54 Alex Mayyasi: But the way to think about it is that what you are buying — and I think it's very much an industry phrase to say this — is peace of mind. But I think there's something to that. Insurance can be an enabler. I can be anxious — I'm patting my pockets multiple times a day to make sure my phone, keys, and wallet are still there. When I think about buying a house, the idea of putting the majority of my net worth plus a bunch of my future income into something that could just burn down — without insurance, that's just impossible. People should absolutely think about insurance, especially as you get into a position where you have children or people who depend on you. It's absolutely something to think seriously about.

00:47:00 Andrew Keen: Well, that's all the free advice and money wisdom you're going to get from Alex Mayyasi. His new book, Planet Money, is out — it came out yesterday. You have to pay for that. Although I'm sure, Alex, it's a smart investment, isn't it?

00:47:14 Alex Mayyasi: I would think so. Yeah. I believe so.

00:47:16 Andrew Keen: Hope so. It better be. Anyway, best of luck with the book, Alex. That was a really fun conversation about money that makes everybody nervous. Hopefully people will be a little less nervous after this conversation. Thank you so much.

00:47:28 Alex Mayyasi: I hope so. Thanks so much. It was really fun.