Keith Romer
Keith Romer has been a contributing reporter for Planet Money since 2015. He has reported stories on risk-pooling among poker players, whether it's legal to write a spin-off of the children's book Goodnight Moon and the time one man cornered the American market in onions. Sometimes on the show, he sings.
Romer has also worked as a producer and story editor at ESPN's 30 for 30 Podcast where he reported on WNBA players who played overseas for a former KGB spy and — more gamblers — the World Series of Poker that launched the international poker boom. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker and Rolling Stone.
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Debates about who should pay for the U.S. Postal Service go back 50 years. It's a story of the long fight about whether the Postal Service should rely on Congress for funding or pay for itself.
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At the time Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, a new social science was just taking root: economics. Dickens did not like it. NPR visits a high school performance of the play to understand the economic commentary laced throughout this holiday classic.
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As the Federal Reserve considers whether or not to raise interest rates, they have a growing complication to factor in: raising interest rates doesn't seem to have the same effect on the economy that it used to.
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Charlie Shrem went to prison for his involvement in Bitcoin trading. Now he's out and part of the next evolution of Bitcoin's future, investments that trade using Bitcoin's underlying technology.
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It's illegal for casinos in Nevada to take bets from out of state. But that didn't stop one subsidiary of a Wall Street firm from trying.
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There's an art and a science to running a business that has to pay out money, like a casino or insurance firm. See how game shows craft the appearance of risk while trying to limit it.
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Our reporter wanted to write a prequel to Goodnight Moon. He ended up on the phone with lawyers.
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When the federal government gives out social benefits such as food stamps, if you qualify, you get them. But housing vouchers are often distributed through a lottery.
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Employers often rule out applicants with felony convictions. Data show when the military made an exception and allowed people with felony convictions to enlist, they performed better than their peers.
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Big league poker tournaments put millions of dollars at stake for the players. But behind the scenes there is another money game going on, something of a mini-Wall Street.