# The Indicator from Planet Money book recommendations

> Every book mentioned on The Indicator from Planet Money, most mentioned first, with the strongest quote for each. Compiled by Podshelf from episode transcripts.

- Show page: https://podshelf.io/podcasts/the-indicator-from-planet-money
- 11 books, 11 mentions and 0 top picks across 71 episodes since 2026-08-03

## Books

- [Nudge](https://podshelf.io/books/9780143137009) by Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein, Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein: 1 mention
  > “For those who don't know Richard Thaler, Nobel Prize winning behavioral economist who coined this term choice architecture. And I couldn't help, after reading your email, thinking of this because choice architecture is basically this idea that there is no such thing as neutral design. And like a process can be designed with ways that help people, which Thaler calls nudges. Or these processes can be designed to hinder people, which he calls sludge.” — A rebate runaround, a car rental rip-off and … roaches?! (2026-10-14)
- [Medicare for All: A Citizen's Guide](https://podshelf.io/books/9780190056629) by Abdul El-Sayed, Micah Johnson: 1 mention
  > “Still, the promise of a nationalized health system with no more health insurance premiums, that's a key part of Abdul El-Sayed's campaign. He just won Michigan's Democratic Senate primary. And he's also an epidemiologist who co-authored a book called Medicare for All, A Citizen's Guide.” — Medicare for All is not Medicare for All (2026-08-25)
- [Great Plains](https://podshelf.io/books/9780312278502) by Ian Frazier: 1 mention
  > “…ade bison hides commercially viable in Europe when they hadn't actually been before. So this change in technology created, I mean, you might have heard of a gold rush. Well, this created a hide rush. And settler hide hunters flooded to the Great Plains, Rocky Mountain regions, where the bison were in the thousands and slaughtered the bison in the millions. There's really horrific stories, and I'm sure many people have seen classic images of settlers standing next to a pile of bison skull…” — The echo of the bison (Encore) (2026-10-12)
- [American Buffalo](https://podshelf.io/books/9780385526852) by Steven Rinella: 1 mention
  > “…son. For over 10,000 years, many peoples in what's now known as North America had relied on bison. 30 million of the creatures stretched from Canada all the way down to Mexico. And to people like Evan Carlson's ancestors, the bison, or the American buffalo, were family. It was a part of their way of life.” — The echo of the bison (Encore) (2026-10-12)
- [Moneyball](https://podshelf.io/books/9780393324815) by Michael Lewis: 1 mention
  > “Adrian, the World Series starts tomorrow. Baseball! Baseball! I marked the occasion by re-watching Moneyball, the movie based on the Michael Lewis book about economics and data analytics in Major League Baseball.” — Can a "moneyball" system work for campaign funding? (2026-10-22)
- [The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States](https://podshelf.io/books/9780465010141) by Alexander Keyssar: 1 mention
  > “Voting rights have a complicated history in the U.S. So we wanted to check in with an expert, Alex Kesar. He's a professor of history and public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. His book, The Right to Vote, The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.” — Did you know companies can vote in Delaware? (2026-08-17)
- [The Enchanted Places](https://podshelf.io/books/9780525292937) by Christopher Milne: 1 mention, 1 critical
  > “Well, it might not surprise you to learn I've read all the books by A.A. Milne multiple times. I read the autobiography of Milne's son, the real-life Christopher Robin. That was a huge bummer, by the way. Yeah, I am kind of a super fan.” — Supercore inflation, Bumble valuation and Pooh's repatriation (2026-10-16)
- [Winnie-the-Pooh](https://podshelf.io/books/9780525430346) by A. A. Milne: 1 mention
  > “All right. My indicator is 100 years. That is the anniversary being celebrated this week by the classic children's book, Winnie the Pooh. Have you guys read it?” — Supercore inflation, Bumble valuation and Pooh's repatriation (2026-10-16)
- [Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are](https://podshelf.io/books/9780593243671) by Mona Chalabi: 1 mention
  > “This is why our personal relationship with money is the subject of Mona's upcoming book. It's called Ten Lives, How What We Have Shapes Who We Are. And in her book, she uses interviews, statistics, and a ton of hand-drawn charts to paint a detailed portrait of class in America.” — The case for sharing your salary (2026-10-21)
- [No Exit](https://podshelf.io/books/9780679725169) by Jean-Paul Sartre: 1 mention
  > “What if Sartre went to business school? Everything would be different. That would be what was one of his famous sayings? He's an existentialist. He wrote, you know, no exit. No exit. So he said, like, you are life is what you make of it. I thought that was the Muppets. Was that the Muppets? Oh, he was hell as other people.” — Is it time to abolish the MBA? (2026-10-28)
- [The Nobel Factor](https://podshelf.io/books/9780691196312) by Avner Offer, Gabriel Söderberg: 1 mention
  > “But Gabriel's criticism of this award goes beyond just the name. In The Nobel Factor, he and his co-author, Oxford economic historian Avner Offer, they argue that the prize ended up helping give a sort of scientific gloss to fundamentally political ideas, ones that favored unbridled capitalism.” — How did we get a Nobel Prize in economics? (2026-10-13)