The billion dollar war behind U.S. rum

This episode is packed with your best economic ideas from around the world and a penguin interview. It all comes together in this final session of Summer School 2026.Pack your parka, we’re headed to Antarctica.First, we’ll travel back in time to the late 1970s when NPR was a scra ...  Show more

There’s a room where the fates of retail products are decided. Will they make it onto the shelves of the big box stores? Usually the rest of us can’t get inside the room where decisions are made – until now! Today on the show, we pitch the Planet Money game, Sell Me a Sasquatch, ...  Show more

When family-run rum maker Bacardi was kicked out of Cuba in 1960, it vowed to go to extremes to get revenge on Fidel Castro. So when French spirits conglomerate Pernod Ricard cuts a deal with Castro’s government to share in the fortunes of Cuban-made Havana Club rum, Bacardi decl ...  Show more

Bacardi has one-upped Pernod Ricard by deploying a U.S. trade embargo to block imports of Pernod Ricard and Cuba’s rum. So Castro announces that Cuba will make copycat products of American companies, ignoring their U.S. trademarks.Listen to new episodes 1 week early and to all ep ...  Show more

Bacardi is now America’s favorite rum, but two former French spirits rivals -- Ricard and Pernod -- have joined forces to challenge Bacardi. And to gain the upper hand in security rights to Havana Club, the French company turns to Bacardi’s arch enemy for help: Fidel Castro.Liste ...  Show more

Bacardi manages to best Pernod Ricard by using both the courts and Capitol Hill to keep the embargo in place against Pernod Ricard’s rum of the same name, Havana Club. But as relations between the U.S. and Cuba warm, negotiations between Havana and Washington begin. On Castro’s w ...  Show more