Like many anxious party hosts before him, Alex Goldmark, the executive producer of the economics podcast “Planet Money,” was stunned to discover the guests that he’d invited had actually shown up.
Roughly 100-150 well-wishers, including several prominent financial journalists, last week squeezed into T.J. Byrnes — a venerable, wood-paneled tavern and media-world hangout near Manhattan’s financial district — to celebrate the new book adaptation “Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life.”
“There’s, like, three generations of the business press here,” said Goldmark, sounding star struck.
The book, written by Alex Mayyasi with “Planet Money” staff, is the latest offshoot of the popular NPR podcast, which has aired more than 1,500 episodes since it premiered in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis. In the intervening years, the show has been considered among the brightest lights in the podcast sky, known for playful narrative journalism about heady financial subjects that has earned a shelf-full of awards and the envy of its peers.
In 20-to-30-minute episodes, its rotating cast of nerdy yet affable hosts has escorted listeners into the weeds of such topics as hyperinflation, the antitrust movement, short selling and the prisoner’s dilemma. Many of the most memorable stories have involved reporters’ participating in the economy as a way of illuminating how it works. They have bought and refined 100 barrels of crude oil from a well in Kansas, manufactured a T-shirt in Bangladesh, acquired the intellectual property rights to a comic book character and started a record label, among other endeavors.
In addition to providing fresh content, the show’s expansion into novel product categories suggests one model for financing ambitious, on-the-ground journalism at a time when many media companies have focused their resources on relatively quick and cheap video and chat podcasts. New revenue streams are particularly meaningful for NPR, which lost millions of dollars in federal funding (between 1 and 2 percent of its annual budget) after an act of Congress last year.
Consumer products have long been a part of the business for many video podcasts, including “Call Her Daddy” (Unwell energy drinks) and “Club Shay Shay” (Le Poitier cognac), which feature the goods prominently in the camera frame. The food podcast “The Sporkful” has spawned multiple original pasta products and documented their creation in a “Planet Money”-like series.
This summer, “Planet Money” will release its first original board game, called “Sell Me a Sasquatch,” in partnership with the games company Exploding Kittens. NPR received a licensing fee and will be paid a cut of the game’s sales.
Yolanda Sangweni, NPR’s interim vice president of podcast strategy, said that although the network hopes for a return on its investments, it plans to continue primarily funding “Planet Money” through a traditional mix of sponsorships, listener contributions and grants. The show — which, along with its sister podcast, “The Indicator,” employs a 25-person staff — is profitable and makes a majority of its revenue through sponsorships.
“At the end of the day, the nonaudio products we make are about engaging and educating listeners and hopefully reaching new audiences,” Sangweni said.
Goldmark was initially skeptical about taking on a project as resource-intensive as a book. But he was persuaded by the chance to infiltrate a major industry the show hadn’t yet explored.
“If we can do a thing that lets us learn about a new industry but also spread our work farther, and we can find a way to pay for it, we try to do it,” he said.
As listeners learn in a new podcast series about the making of the book, reported and hosted by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, the show’s bet paid off. The publisher W.W. Norton & Company paid NPR an advance of more than $1 million. Norton does not share printing figures, but Horowitz-Ghazi reports that the first run may be around 100,000 copies.
Even when the podcast’s experiments don’t make money — and most don’t — they draw attention that can breed new listeners. Some sign up for Planet Money+, a $4-per-month premium subscription that includes exclusive episodes, among other perks, and accounts for a growing share of the show’s budget.
“We’ve seen it turn casual listeners into champions of ‘Planet Money,’” Sangweni said of this approach. “They get really invested, they’re rooting for these projects to be successful.”
At the book party in the financial district, many champions of “Planet Money” availed themselves of catered chicken wings and mozzarella sticks. Felix Salmon, the veteran financial writer and a Bloomberg columnist, chatted with Jesse Eisinger, a journalist at ProPublica and Jeff Cane, an editor for Axios, in the bar’s dimly lit dining room. Several party guests, including Joe Weisenthal of “Odd Lots,” Zoe Chace and Sean Cole of “This American Life” and Mike Pesca of “The Gist,” were hosts of long-running podcasts with cult followings of their own.
To Salmon, who hosts the podcast “Slate Money,” the appeal of making a book was simple.
“A book is permanent — it’s going to be on someone’s shelf for decades,” he said. “You can’t say that about podcasts.”
Reggie Ugwu is a Times culture reporter.
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