On Background: A History of Bankruptcy in the US

There’s one kind of expert whose role is enshrined in law: that of the expert witness, who’s called on to bolster one side of a case. But courtrooms are not great places for nuance. Overconfident expe...

3 Touko 202240min

Experts know more now than ever before. And we’re more critical of them than ever before, too. But one kind of expert really gets us riled up: the type who deals in probabilities. We hear from meteoro...

19 Huhti 202233min

The right kind of expert, at the right time, can change everything. While working as a security guard at a pork-and-beans cannery in Kansas, Bill James started writing about baseball. But writing abou...

12 Huhti 202234min

Athenahealth was just another healthcare provider facing the biggest problem US doctors face: not treating patients, but getting insurance companies to pay their bills. But then the company figured ou...

5 Huhti 202242min

Why can’t we see the experts right in front of us, even when they're saving our lives? Maybe it's because the specialized knowledge of many experts defies good storytelling. We hear from a nonprofit t...

5 Huhti 202238min

In “Against the Rules,” journalist and bestselling author Michael Lewis takes a searing look at what’s happened to fairness—in financial markets, newsrooms, basketball games, courts of law, and much m...

22 Maalis 20222min

After the surprise success of Liar’s Poker, publishers urged Michael Lewis to try his hand at fiction. It was a bad idea. But even award-winning fiction authors have struggled with failure. Michael sp...

8 Maalis 202228min

Michael Lewis did not rest long on his laurels after publishing Liar’s Poker. In the 1990s, he hit the presidential campaign trail, writing a series of magazine pieces. Some of his dispatches got adap...

1 Maalis 202226min