Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi is a host and reporter for Planet Money, telling stories that creatively explore and explain the workings of the global economy. He's a sucker for a good supply chain mystery — from toilet paper to foster puppies to specialty pastas. He's drawn to tales of unintended consequences, like the time a well-intentioned chemistry professor unwittingly helped unleash a global market for synthetic drugs, or what happened when the U.S. Patent Office started granting patents on human genes. And he's always on the lookout for economic principles at work in unexpected places, like the tactics comedians use to protect their intellectual property (a.k.a. jokes).
Social Security's finances have improved slightly in the last year. But the popular retirement program still faces big challenges including the threat of automatic benefit cuts in less than a decade.
Monday is the Met Gala, known as fashion's grandest event, where celebrities from various realms come together at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to celebrate fashion and each other.