Erika Beras
Currency Chaos in Argentina (Summer School) adds Beras as part of the Planet Money reporting team in Argentina during the 2023 election year. Her reporting with Amanda Aronczyk follows tango travel, Saya Date’s exchange-rate timing, Juan Pablo Gospino-Gomez’s repeated salary adjustments, and Neo Tango’s constant repricing.
Chef vs. Robot adds Beras as the Planet Money participant visiting Instafoods and encountering Robby Wokbot in Philadelphia Chinatown. Her role is source framing: the episode uses the visit to make Restaurant Automation concrete before moving into taste, staffing, and labor-economics analysis.
Erika Beras appears in Betty Boop, Excel Olympics, Penny-isms: Our 2026 Valentines as the Planet Money participant giving a Valentine to the U.S. penny. Her segment calls the penny “the one that got away” and treats it as an object of memory and language even as the source says new penny minting is ending.
The episode uses Beras to separate Coin Retirement Economics from cultural attachment. The penny may be costly to produce and less needed in a digital-payments economy, but it still survives in sayings, tactile memory, and everyday idioms.
Who decides what big box sells? Our GAME got us answers adds Beras as the reporter who enters the Retail Line Review room for Sell Me a Sasquatch. Her pitch role makes Audience-Backed Retail Pitch concrete: Exploding Kittens wants her to translate Planet Money’s audience, project history, and launch support into buyer confidence, while the source keeps the actual meeting unrecorded and the retailer unnamed.
Connections
- Planet Money and NPR - show and network context.
- Amanda Aronczyk, Argentina, Saya Date, Juan Pablo Gospino-Gomez, and Neo Tango - Argentina field-reporting branch added by Planet Money.
- Currency Risk, Menu Costs, and Monetary Volatility - concepts tied to the Argentina reporting.
- Instafoods, Robby Wokbot, and Restaurant Automation - robot-chef visit added by the newer episode.
- U.S. Mint and U.S. Treasury - institutions tied to minting policy.
- Coin Retirement Economics - economics and cultural-afterlife concept.
- Kenny Malone - host connecting the penny segment to the broader episode.
- Sell Me a Sasquatch, Exploding Kittens, Retail Line Review, and Audience-Backed Retail Pitch - board-game retail pitch branch added by Planet Money.