Bench Ansfield on Arson-for-Profit, Insurance Brownlining, and the Bronx

Bench Ansfield on Arson-for-Profit, Insurance Brownlining, and the Bronx

Arson - which frequently involves the destruction of property - and business are not typically thought to be compatible. Indeed, there is a whole industry - the insurance industry - whose stated business is the mitigation of risk, including the risk of fire. Over the course of the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, fire insurance and fire prevention became untethered. This, combined with other developments, created the circumstances for arson to become profitable for some landlords. In this month's episode, guest Bench Ansfield details the local, national, and international circumstances that helped fuel the rise of arson-for-profit in U.S. cities. In doing so, they show how the Bronx and other urban areas like it served as crucial sites of late twentieth-century financialization via a ground-up history of finance told from the perspective of Bronx residents and community activists. Along the way, we discuss insurance brownlining, community-developed arson-fighting algorithms, and disco.

Episoder(125)

Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff on Muskism

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For those in the Global North, the twentieth century was the Fordist century—an era of mass production and mass consumption. But as Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff argue in their new book, there's ano...

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Few historical tableaus are more iconic than the midcentury suburbs of Long Island. I can see it now: rows of identical houses, subsidized by federal spending, inhabited by white middle-class heterono...

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This month's episode offers a fresh perspective on an old debate. Jettisoning outdated modes of analysis that emphasize race vs. class, guest Rudi Batzell illuminates the materialist underpinnings of ...

5 Nov 202549min

Leigh Claire La Berge on Why Capitalism Might Be A Joke

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If you work at a so-called laptop job, there are moments every day when your work feels silly, pointless, absurd, even fake. What if you wrote an entire book that tried to inhabit and analyze that ver...

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