Bryant Simon on the Hamlet Fire and the Politics of Chicken

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...

1 Apr 53min

Today, we welcome Jessica Levy, co-host of Who Makes Cents, onto the program—not as an interviewer, but as a guest. She's here to talk about her remarkable new book, Black Power, Inc: Corporate Americ...

4 Mars 42min

To many, banking remains largely invisible—a hidden circulatory system that allocates capital and credit throughout the economy. If it's worth paying any attention to at all, it's only in moments of c...

2 Feb 48min

Popular histories tend to locate capitalism's origins in Europe, only later moving outward to other parts of the globe. Not so says historian Sven Beckert. Capitalism, he argues, was born global, forg...

4 Jan 39min

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...

9 Dec 202542min

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 Jettisoning outdated modes of analysis that emphasize race vs. class, guest Rudi Batzell illuminates the materialist underpinnings of ...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

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...

1 Okt 202536min

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 busin...

9 Sep 202539min