Shows
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastLeigh Claire La Berge on Why Capitalism Might Be A JokeIf 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 very feeling? Leigh Claire LaBerge’s new book—which is part memoir, part history, with a heavy dash of dark comedy and a sprinkling of Marx—attempts to do exactly that. Drawing on her time working inside of a corporate conglomerate, LaBerge alternatively revels in and eviscerates the inanity of day-to-day white collar life. Late capitalism, she shows, might just b...
2025-10-0136 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastBench Ansfield on Arson-for-Profit, Insurance Brownlining, and the BronxArson - 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...
2025-09-0939 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastKendra Boyd on Black Business and Racial Capitalism during the Great MigrationTake a moment and picture the average person who came North during the Great Migration. Chances are good that you conjured someone who was African-American and working-class, bound for a city in search of a job, say, in a factory or in domestic service. But as Kendra Boyd’s new book, Freedom Enterprise, reveals, the Great Migration also saw entrepreneurs moving to the urban North in search of opportunity. Once they arrived in places like Detroit, these businesspeople had to navigate a fraught landscape that was profoundly structured by race and racism. Today's epis...
2025-08-0431 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastTrish Kahle on Energy Citizenship and Coal-Fired Democracy in the 20th Century U.S.What do energy consumers owe energy producers? What does it mean to be a citizen in a coal-fired democracy? In this month's episode, guest Trish Kahle reckons with the costs and benefits of coal from the perspective of American coal miners in Appalachia. Starting at the turn of the 20th century, Kahle outlines miners efforts to articulate and, later, revise a coal-fired social contract, one capable of delivering them the benefits of citizenship. Thus, Kahle shows how miners, throughout the 20th century, endeavored to leverage their position as energy producers to make claims on the U.S. government and...
2025-07-1145 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastIan Kumekawa on Globalization As Told Through One ShipHow do you write the history of something as abstract, as placeless, and as vast as the globalization that has remade our world over the past several decades? If you’re Ian Kumekawa, you make those immaterial forces concrete by telling the story of one object: a hulking 94-meter-long steel barge he calls “The Vessel.” From housing for oil roughnecks in the North Sea, to a barracks for British soldiers in the Falklands, to a jail docked on a Manhattan pier, the Vessel reveals how the murky world of offshore capitalism is in fact embodied in tangi...
2025-06-0231 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastKoji Hirata on Steel, Industrialization, and Chinese SocialismThis month's episode looks at the history of Chinese industrialization by focusing on Anshan Iron and Steel Works or Angang, located in Manchuria. Long portrayed as the quintessential model of Mao-era socialist industrialization, Angang, as Koji Hirata shows, was, in many ways, built on the material and ideological foundations laid by imperial Japan and nationalist China. Moving forward in time, Hirata analyzes Angang’s role in the making of socialist China, including revealing the relativley understudied political tensions that existed within China's largest state-owned enterprise (SOE) between factory directors, who answered to Beijing, and local party officials in Anshan; th...
2025-05-0233 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastLIVE! @ BHC 2025It's now been over a decade since the New York Times declared that the history of capitalism was in full swing at American universities. This podcast also just celebrated its 10 year anniversary. With those milestones in mind, we wanted to take the temperature of the very folks driving the field forward into new and exciting directions. To do that, your co-hosts hit the road, interviewing attendees at the 2025 Business History Conference in Atlanta. Listen to find out what's on the mind of some of the leading historians in our field.
2025-04-0121 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastJustene Hill Edwards on the Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank In this month's episode Justene Hill Edwards leads listeners on a deep dive into the rise and fall of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, also known as the Freedman's Bank. Among the topics explored are the bank's relationship to the similarly named Freedman's Bureau, the ways the bank’s administrators worked to gain African Americans’ trust, and, notably, how these same administrators betrayed African Americans’ trust by squandering, and, at times, outright stealing their savings to fuel their own risky ventures with longterm consequences for the racial wealth gap and African Americans’ relationship with American capitalism.
2025-03-0541 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastErik Baker on the Entrepreneurial CenturyBack in high school, my social studies teacher—who was, of course, also the football coach—told my class that entrepreneurs were the heroes of American history. If we enjoyed a dynamic economy and good jobs, it was all thanks to their genius for innovation and risk-taking. And if we wanted to get ahead, he said, we’d need to foster the same sort of entrepreneurial spirit in ourselves. You are probably rolling your eyes right now. I certainly remember doing the same back in 10th grade. But Erik Baker’s new book, Make Your Own Job How the...
2025-02-0339 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastMary Bridges on Bankers and the Dawn of American EmpireLooking back from our contemporary vantage point, the United States’ global capitalist empire looks both omnipresent and inevitable. Much of the world’s trade is denominated in dollars. American financial institutions are at the helm of international investment and capital transfers. And US military might enforces this order, either implicitly—or sometimes quite explicitly. But as Mary Bridges argues, America’s financial dominance was neither pre-ordained nor monolithic, particularly in its early days at the start of the twentieth century. In her new book, Bridges’ follows the foot soldiers on the imperial frontier: everyday bankers, working at overseas b...
2025-01-0236 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastSeth Rockman on Slavery's Material HistoryA simple leather shoe. A scratchy shirt made of cotton or wool. A roughly-hewn axe. A leather whip, braided in New Jersey. Southern slavery did not just depend on an extractive economic system, or a highly-unequal racial and social order, or a brutal regime of labor exploitation—even though it needed all of those things. It also required a vast array of goods: real, tangible tools and garments that were usually made in the North and used in the South. Seth Rockman’s new book follows those everyday objects: from their production, to their sale, to their distrib...
2024-12-0252 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastAndrew Kahrl on Inequality, Theft, and Taxation in Modern AmericaTaxes. Is there anything Americans like to complain about more? This episode takes a deep dive into the U.S. tax system, paying particular attention to the property tax. Exploding a popular myth that purports Black Americans pay little to no taxes, historian Andrew Kahrl reveals how Black Americans have long paid more than their fair share of property taxes amid and after the rise of the Jim Crow fiscal order. Along the way, we also discuss the role property taxes play in local government, movements for equitable taxation, and the exploitative tax lien industry and its role in...
2024-11-0551 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastAndrew McKevitt on Gun Capitalism450 million. According to our best estimates, that’s how many guns there are in the United States. To put that in perspective: if you gave a firearm to every single person in the nation—including babies and young children—you’d still have at least 100 million guns left over. Why did we amass such a large stockpile of guns? How did the US become an outlier among nations when it came to civilian gun ownership? On this month’s episode, Andrew McKevitt reveals the history of what he calls “gun capitalism” in the decades after World War II...
2024-10-0148 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastRachel Gross on How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America In 2022 and 2023, an estimated 50 million Americans went camping. Many others participated in outdoor recreation activities ranging from mountain-climbing to sailing. According to the U.S. Department of Congress, in 2022, the outdoor recreation economy was worth $563.7 billion or 2.2 percent of GDP. In this episode, historian Rachel Gross takes us on an adventure through the outdoor industry’s rise, from Teddy Roosevelt's famous buckskin jacket to the ascendance of companies like Eddie Bauer and L.L. Bean, to the use of synthetic materials like GoreTex, and much much more. Along the way, we discuss an important question: Why is it...
2024-09-0241 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastMargot Canaday on Queer Workers in Modern AmericaIn today's episode, Margot Canaday reveals the not-so-hidden history of LGBT workers in modern America. In the absence of state protections, she finds, some employers actually appreciated queer workers precisely because they were contingent, unattached, and exploitable. In many ways, that employment relationship augured the way all workers would come to be treated in the era of post-Fordism. And it would set the terms for queer peoples’ struggles for recognition and protections on the job in the closing decades of the twentieth century.
2024-08-0151 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastElizabeth Ingleson on the Past and Present of Made in China Today, China is the U.S. third largest trading partner and second-largest source of imports. This wasn’t always the case. Indeed, in the 1970s, when the United States first began trading with communist China after several decades, few could have foreseen such a scenario. In this episode, guest Elizbeth Ingleson reveals the surprising story of how two Cold War foes found common cause in transforming China’s economy into a source of cheap labor. Along the way, we discuss some of the key policy decisions and Chinese and American actors, including U.S. business, that facilitated China’s conver...
2024-07-0149 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastTeresa Ghilarducci on the Past and Future of RetirementWhen we study capitalism, we usually focus on the active time in people’s lives: the moments where things like work, consumption, production, trade, accumulation, and exchange all happen. But Teresa Ghilarducci, the guest on this week’s episode, argues that capitalism also shapes what happens next, in that period after people’s working lives have come to an end. Teresa’s new book, Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy tells the story of how retirement—just like work—has become much more precarious over the past several decades. It’s a story about po...
2024-06-0344 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastCheryl Narumi Naruse on Singapore, Postcolonial Capitalism, and Becoming Global Asia In this month's episode, co-host Jessica Levy and guest Cheryl Narumi Naruse examine popular narratives surrounding Singapore's "miraculous" journey from Third to First world nation, currently ranked third in the world in terms of Gross Domestic Product per capita. The episode takes a particular look at the period leading up to and following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, during which this tiny island city-state underwent a massive rebranding campaign to transform its reputation from a culturally sterile and punitive nation to an alluring location for economic flourishing. Topics discussed include Singapore’s relationship with a core constituency of Global Asia, nam...
2024-05-0531 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastBen Waterhouse on the Dream and Reality of Self EmploymentOne recent study found that 81% of businesses in the United States have zero employees. That is, they are run by sole proprietors, working for and by themselves, The ideal of self-employment has become dominant in our culture, too. More Americans than ever dream of becoming an entrepreneur, an independent owner, a founder. But for all of its prevalence in our economy and in our imaginations, the origins of this impulse are a bit hazy. When did so many of us begin to idolize self-employment? What might it reveal about broader shifts in the employment landscape in the 20t...
2024-04-0239 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastBrent Cebul on Business, Inequality, and American LiberalismMost scholars would date the origins of neoliberalism to the 1970s, when a range of crises gave rise to new forms of market-oriented governance. But Brent Cebul, our guest on this month's episode, argues that liberalism’s sharp turn towards neoliberalism wasn’t so sharp after all. In fact, as early as the New Deal, liberals tried to realize their policy goals through market means. And officials in Washington worked hand-in-hand with otherwise conservative business and municipal elites on those development programs. Throughout the entirety of the long twentieth century, liberals have bound their visions of progress to th...
2024-03-0545 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastTim Keogh on Suburban Poverty and the Roots of Postwar InequalityIn 2022, roughly one in 10 suburban residents lived in poverty (9.6%), compared to about one in six in primary cities (16.2%), according to a recent study by the Brookings Institute. The issue of suburban poverty has garnered significant attention, prompting more than a bit of nostalgia for the good ole days of when suburbs were prosperous, living proof of the American dream. This narrative of postwar suburbia as prosperous, if also exclusive places, has been reinforced by historians and other scholars who, over the years, have shown how the federal government via FHA-insured mortgages and other programs facilitated a dramatic rise in...
2024-02-0646 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastPremilla Nadasen on the Care Economy and the Potential for Radical CareToday, discussions of care are ubiquitous. From employer-programs promoting self-care to the $800 billion healthcare industry, care forms a central part of our lives and the economy. But, are the systems and structures currently in place to care serving those who need it the most? This month's episode, featuring historian and activist Premilla Nadasen, takes a close look at the care economy and its relationship to racial capitalism and the reconfiguration of the welfare state. Along the way, we talk about the rise of the care-industrial-complex, wherein private corporations and non-profits benefit from public investment in care; what it's like...
2024-01-0841 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastHannah Forsyth on the Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglophone World Are you a professional living and working in an English-speaking country? If so, this episode is for you. Teachers, doctors, nurses, accountants, engineers, lawyers, social workers, the list goes on, professionals play an important role in our society. This wasn't always the case. This episode explores the rise of the professional class in the Anglophone world, including engaging in a decades-old question of whether or not professionals constitute a class. Topics covered include the role that professionals played in the rise of Anglo-settler colonialism; the relationship between the professions and virtue; racial, gendered, and class identities among...
2023-11-0746 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastBart Elmore on Southern Companies Remaking our Economy and the Planet An iced cold Coca-Cola. A cross-country flight on Delta to visit friends. A much-needed medication overnighted via Fed-Ex. Bulk toilet paper purchased at Wal-Mart. What do these items have in common? In today’s modern economy, each of these can be purchased from the comfort of the couch, frequently with a credit card pioneered by Bank of America. They are all also from companies headquartered in the American South. In this month's episode, historian Bart Elmore explains how corporations from the American South helped make it possible for us to satisfy our desires from the convenience of our home and...
2023-09-0436 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastMark Erlich on the Way We Build and Restoring Dignity to Construction WorkThis month's episode gives a nod to one of the figures in our logo: the construction worker. Our guest, Mark Erlich has worked in the construction industry as a carpenter and union leader for a half century. In this episode, he shares his insights on the industry's past, present, and future, paying particular attention to the politics and material conditions surrounding construction work. In response to those who argue that today's labor shortages in the construction industry are the result of societal preferences, Erlich points to the decades-long degradation of construction work, including declining pay and protections. Fix those...
2023-08-0231 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastChelsea Schields on Oil, Intimacy, and the Offshore In this month's episode, guest Chelsea Schields discusses oil refining and intimacy, illuminating the social ties and affective attachments engendered by oil in the Dutch islands of Aruba and Curaçao. Known today for their gorgeous beaches and sunny weather that attract tourists year-round, during the mid-twentieth century these islands were home to some of the largest oil refineries in the world. Along the way, we cover topics such as the role of race and gender in structuring labor relations; inter and intra imperial politics; migration; anti-colonial and anti-welfare movements; the 'offshore'; and much much more.
2023-07-0349 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastJoan Flores-Villalobos on How Black Women's Labor Made the Panama Canal When it was completed in 1914, the Panama Canal nearly halved the travel time between the U.S. West Coast and Europe and revolutionized trade and travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It’s construction, overseen by the U.S. government-Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC), has long been hailed as a marvel of American ingenuity. Less well-known was the project’s dependence on the labor of Black migrant women. In this episode, Joan Flores-Villalobos demonstrates how Black West Indian women’s intimate lives and labor were at the center of the Panama Canal’s construction, explaining how they built a provisio...
2023-05-0449 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastChristy Thornton on Mexico, Development, and Governing the Global Economy In this month's episode, Christy Thornton discusses the surprising influence of post-revolutionary Mexico on some of the twentieth century's most important international economic institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Triangulating between archives in Mexico, the United States, and Great Britain, Thornton traces how Mexican officials repeatedly led the charge among Third World nations campaigning for greater representation within and redistribution through multilateral institutions created to promote international development and finance. In doing so, she recovers the crucial role played by Mexican economists, diplomats, and politicians in shaping global economic governance and U.S. hegemony during...
2023-04-0542 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastSpecial Episode on the Military and the MarketThis month, we welcomed Jennifer Mittelstadt back to the show, joined by Mark Wilson, to discuss their new edited volume, The Military and the Market. Moving beyond familiar topics like defense spending, the volume takes an expansive approach to examining military-market relations in a wide range of contexts--from family business in the Civil War to managing post-World War II housing construction for U.S. soldiers and their families, and much more. Alongside Jennifer and Mark, listeners will hear from Kara Dixon Vuic, whose chapter explores the U.S. military's managment of markets for sex. Taken together, The Military and th...
2023-03-0746 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastAllan Lumba on Monetary Authorities in the American Colonial PhilippinesIn this episode, historian Allan Lumba explores how the United States wielded monetary authority in the colonial Philippines, including the role of money as a tool for countering decolonization, entrenching racial and class hierarchies, and directing the profits of colonialism towards the U.S. and Wall Street, in particular, with long-lasting consequences for Filipinos and Americans still dealing with the aftermath of what Lumba calls conditional decolonization.
2023-02-0238 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastChad Pearson on Klansmen, Employer Vigilantes, and Labor Suppression in the Long Nineteenth CenturyThis month’s episode takes listeners back in time to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time of significant labor unrest. At the time, employers, often with government support, went to great lengths to put down dissent, including employing violent tactics such as whippings, kidnappings, shootings, and imprisonment. Among those that helped to spear-head this violent suppression of workers and their allies were groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Law & Order Leagues, and Citizens Alliances. Though usually discussed separately, all of these groups used similar language to tar their lower-class challengers as menacing villains and deployed comparable ta...
2022-12-0535 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastGhassan Moazzin on Foreign Banks and the Making of Modern ChinaThis month’s episode picks up on a theme previously explored on the podcast: international finance. Drawing on a broad range of German, English, Japanese, and Chinese sources, Ghassan Moazzin traces the rise of foreign banking in China during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period that saw a dramatic increase in international trade and investment in the country. Particular attention is paid to the role of foreign banks in integrating China into global financial markets, including marketing China's sovereign debt, and their involvement in the 1911 Revolution and other events in modern Chinese history.
2022-10-0333 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastClaire Dunning on Nonprofit Neighborhoods and Urban InequalityIn this month's episode, Claire Dunning explains how and why non-profits came to play such an important role in U.S. cities after World War II. In doing so, she explores the emergence of non-profit neighborhoods amid various changes in urban policy, starting with urban renewal and continuing through the War on Poverty and the rise of community development corporations. While acknowledging all of the important work done by non-profits, the book also draws attention to a central paradox of our reliance on non-profits to address a range of social issues: the dramatic expansion in non-profits has coincided with...
2022-08-0249 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastMircea Raianu on Tata and Global Capitalism in IndiaIn this episode, Mircea Raianu traces the rise of the Tata Group, one of India's largest and oldest companies, from its early days involved in cotton and opium trading to multinational conglomerate invested in everything from salt to software, and, notably, steel. Among the topics discussed, include Tata’s involvement with colonial and anti-colonial developments; international networks of finance capital and scientific management; and Cold War geopolitics. Ultimately, Raianu offers a model for how to study global capitalism in the global South, explicating Tata’s connections to the world and India, while also avoiding the traps of exoticism and over...
2022-07-0749 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastHolger Droessler on Coconut Colonialism, Labor, and Globalization in SamoaThis month's episode centers Samoa, including the Pacific islands comprising the present-day independent country of Samoa and American Samoa, examining capitalism, globalization, and coconut colonialism at the turn of the 20th century. In doing so, it pays close attention to the lives of workers, including plantation laborers, ethnographic edutainers, and service workers, revealing how Samoans navigated colonialism and capitalism, contesting exploitative labor conditions, while, at the same time, articulating their own forms of Oceanian globality.
2022-05-2746 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastKeith Wailoo on Racial Marketing and the Rise of Menthol CigarettesIn 2020, George Floyd was killed by police outside a store in Minneapolis known as “the best place to buy menthols.” Of Black Americans who smoke, eighty-percent smoke menthol cigarettes. In this episode, Keith Wailoo explores the history of menthol cigarettes and their marketing to Black Americans. In doing so, he ties together the history of tobacco companies and the disproportionate number of Black deaths at the hands of police violence, COVID-19, and other forms of racial violence and exploitation, giving new meaning to the cry: “I can’t breathe.”
2022-04-0547 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastJason Resnikoff on the Automation Discourse and the Meaning of WorkThis month's episode takes a deep dive into the history of work and automation in the post-World War II era. It traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the factory to its wide-ranging implications in political and social life. Countering automation's proponents, who prophesize that robots will soon replace human labor, Jason Resnikoff reveals how the automation discourse has tended to obscure the human beings who continue to labor, often in sped up and intensified manners, alongside machines.
2022-03-0745 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastGregg Mitman on Firestone's Rubber Empire in LiberiaThis month's episode focuses on a popular commodity, namely rubber. Despite consuming a large share of the world's rubber supply, the United States has long relied on the global market to meet American demand for rubber. During the early twentieth-century, this dependence on foreign rubber led the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company to the West African nation of Liberia, where the company built one of the largest rubber plantations in the world. What follows is a tale of land expropriation, medical racism, and corporate power that stretches from the 1920s to the 2020s.
2022-02-0448 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastDestin Jenkins on Municipal Debt and Bondholder PowerIndebtedness, like inequality, has become a ubiquitous condition in and beyond the United States. Yet few have probed American cities’ dependence on municipal debt. Focusing on San Francisco, this month's guest, Destin Jenkins, traces the evolving relationship between cities, bondholders, banks, and municipal debt from the Great Depression to the 1980s. In doing so, he sheds new light on the power arrangement at the center of municipal finance, and offers some suggestions on how to contest it.
2022-01-0457 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastElizabeth Tandy Shermer on Student Loans and Higher Education FinancingIt is no secret that the United States is facing a crisis with regards to higher education. In this month's episode, historian Elizabeth Tandy Shermer explains the long history that gave rise to the current situation in which many institutions are struggling financially, while students and their parents are often the ones left to pay the bill with the help of loans.
2021-10-0447 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastJustene Hill Edwards on the Slaves Economy and the Limits of Black CapitalismBuilding on and complicating recent scholarship on slavery and capitalism, Justene Hill Edwards takes listeners on a journey through the slaves' economy. From bustling urban marketplaces to back-country roads, she highlights the myriad ways enslaved people participated in South Carolina's economy from colonialism to the Civil War. In doing so, she never loses sight of the limitations of the slaves’ economy, revealing how enslaved peoples’ investments in capitalism, while providing temporary relief, ultimately benefited the very people who denied them freedom.
2021-08-0434 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastJoshua Greenberg on the Rage for Paper Money and Monetary Knowledge in Early AmericaFor many Americans, the question--What is a dollar worth?--may sound bizarre, if not redundant. Fluctuating international exchange rates, highly volatile crypto-currencies, counterfeit money, these are all things the average American hears about on the news, but rarely thinks about on a day-to-day basis. Even the most enthusiastic Bitcoin supporters will likely readily admit they prefer to conduct the majority of their daily transactions in a currency whose value is relatively stable, and backed by the government. And while fewer and fewer of those transactions take place using actual paper money, the fact is, the U.S. dollar remains...
2021-07-0651 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastGabriel Winant on the Rusting of 'Steel City, USA' and the Rise of HealthcareToday, healthcare workers account for the largest percentage of U.S. workers. Yet, their power pales in comparison to the unionized industrial workforce that preceded them, and whom it is their job now to care for. In this episode, Gabriel Winant explains how these two worlds--the post-war industrial economy and the post-industrial service economy--came together in 'Steel City, USA,' where during the late twentieth century the healthcare economy emerged to take advantage of the social hierarchies engendered by the American welfare state.
2021-06-0352 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastCristina Groeger on the Education, Labor, and Inequality in BostonDespite the rising cost of tuition and a recent slump in college enrollment, many Americans continue to look to education to improve their social and economic status. Yet, more and more degrees have not led to reduced levels of inequality. Rather, quite the opposite. Inequality remains the highest its been in decades. In this episode, Cristina Groeger delves into the history of this seeming contradiction, explaining how education came to be seen as a panacea even as it paved the way for deepening inequality. Starting in the late 19th century—at time when few Americans attended college, let alone hi...
2021-05-0339 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastRonald Schatz on the Labor Board Vets and the Rise of Industrial-Labor RelationsIn this episode, labor historian Ronald Schatz speaks about the National War Labor Board. Recruited by the government to help resolve union-management conflicts during World War II, many of the labor board vets went on to have long and illustrious careers negotiating conflicts in a wide-range of sectors from the steel industry to public sector unionism. Some were recruited to mitigate unrest on college and university campuses in response to student unrest. While not a traditional labor history, the history of the labor board vets is one worth paying attention to both for what it tells us about past...
2021-03-2735 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastRebecca Marchiel on Redlining, Financial Deregulation, and the Urban Reinvestment MovementThe history of red-lining is one increasingly well-known within and beyond the academy. In the 1930s, as part of an attempt to shore up the struggling economy by underwriting home mortgages, the government’s Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), developed a series of guidelines and criteria for assessing the risk of lending in urban areas. HOLC criteria drew heavily on the racial logics employed by lenders, developers, and real estate appraisers. Thus, “A-rated” neighborhoods, those associated with the least risk for banks and mortgage lenders, tended to be exclusively white. While, “D”-rated areas, deemed the most-risky, included large numbers of b...
2021-02-1445 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastKatie Hindmarch-Watson on London's Telecommunications Work and Serving a Wired WorldIt is common these days to bemoan the amount of personal information companies like Amazon, Facebook, and other modern telecommunications goliaths collect about us. For many, this invasion of privacy exists as a necessary consequence of our growing dependence on the internet. With every click of the mouse—making it possible to have products manufactured half-way around the world delivered to our doorstep—there is a reluctant awareness of the risk that our private lives might be made public. That sense of the potential of our private lives being made public is all the more real when we a...
2021-01-0443 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastShennette Garrett-Scott on Black Women in FinanceIn this episode, Shennette Garrett-Scott explores black financial innovation and its transformative impact on U.S. capitalism through the story of the St. Luke Bank in Richmond, Virginia: the first and only bank run by black women. Garrett-Scott chronicles both the bank’s success and the challenges this success wrought, including shedding light on the bureaucratic violence that targeted St. Luke's and other black banks. Through the St. Luke Bank, Garrett-Scott gives black women in finance the attention they deserve.
2020-12-0234 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastAaron Jakes on Colonial Economism and Egypt's OccupationThe history of capitalism in Egypt has long been synonymous with cotton cultivation and dependent development. In Egypt's Occupation: Colonial Economism and the Crisis of Capitalism, Aaron Jakes challenges longstanding conceptions of Egypt as peripheral to global capitalism through revealing the country's role as a laboratory for colonial economism and financial innovation amid the turn of the twentieth-century boom and bust. In doing so, Jakes offers a sweeping reinterpretation of both the historical geography of capitalism in Egypt and the role of political-economic thought during Britain's occupation of Egypt.
2020-11-0244 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastCasey Lurtz on Globalization from the Grounds UpThe history of globalization is one that has often been told as a story of elites. There are a number of truths to this narrative. Yet, as Casey Lurtz shows, it also ignores some things. In From the Grounds Up: Building an Export Economy in Southern Mexico, Lurtz tells the history of how a border region, the Soconusco, became Mexico’s leading coffee exporter. She does so not by focusing on the Mexican politicians and foreign capitalists who came to the Soconusco with dreams of grandeur. Rather, as the title suggest, Lurtz digs below the surface of these visions to r...
2020-09-0448 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastCaleb McDaniel on Slavery and RestitutionThanks to the work of activists and intellectuals like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jamelle Bouie, Black peoples’ demand for reparations have garnered growing attention among politicians, business leaders, university officials, and journalists. For those that argue that reparations are not possible or that too much time has passed, today’s guest has an important story to tell about a formerly enslaved woman named Henrietta Wood who sued for restitution in 1870 and won; paid $2,500, what is likely the largest sum ever awarded by a court in the United States in restitution for slavery. Wood’s story, which crosses multiple boundaries between lower...
2020-08-0340 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastEpisode 68: Augustine Sedgewick on the Dark Empire of CoffeeMany of us are familiar with the negative health effects of coffee, which include insomnia, nervousness, upset stomach, and increased heart rate. Yet, this hasn’t seemed to stop many Americans from reaching for a cup, or two or three, of coffee to help them make it through the day. One estimate puts coffee consumption in the United States at 400 million cups of coffee a day, or more than 140 billion cups a year, making the United States the world’s leading consumer of coffee. Yet, for all the coffee we consumer, we spend little time thinking about how this reli...
2020-07-0242 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastPaige Glotzer on How the Suburbs Were SegregatedIt will come as little surprise to most listeners that America’s metropolitan areas are racially segregated and unequal. While the suburbs surrounding American cities tend to be relatively affluent and white, many urban areas, especially those with large non-white populations, remain under-resourced and under-served in comparison to their white suburban counterparts. Even as gentrification and other forces have increasingly forced poorer non-white residents to seek housing on the city’s periphery, suburbs continue to be associated with wealth and whiteness. Existing explanations for this political geography tend to focus on governmental policies and consumer behavior during the...
2020-06-0244 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastMarcia Chatelain on McDonalds and Black AmericaWe’ve all heard the statistics regarding Americans and fast food. According to the National Health and Nutrition Survey, one third of Americans consumed fast food on any given day. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the fast food industry employed nearly 3.8 million Americans, many in minimum wage jobs. Not everyone has the same relationship with fast food. In this episode, we speak with Marcia Chatelain about the dramatic impact one fast food company, McDonald’s, has had on black communities and black politics over the last half century. In doing so, she provides us with fresh insight on the relati...
2020-05-0129 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastBig Changes at Who Makes CentsDavid and Alex are retiring from the show! But a new host is joining to take the reins. Listen to hear the founding co-hosts reflect on the past six years of the show and to meet our new host, Jessica Levy.
2020-04-0336 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastZach Carter on Keynesianism and COVID-19Today, we have a special episode. We speak to Zach Carter about COVID-19 and Keyesnianism. Zach is the author of the upcoming book The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes. On Wednesday March 18th, he published an op-ed on Keynes's ideas for today. If you like this episode, please donate to Mariame Kaba's redistribution, mutual aid fund: https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8npOgwIczH Zach Carter is a senior reporter at HuffPost, where he covers Congress, the White House, and economic policy. He is a frequent guest o...
2020-03-1830 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastDara Orenstein on the Economic Geography of WarehousesDara Orenstein on the Economic Geography of Warehouses If you’re like many people throughout the country and world, you’ve purchased something on Amazon. As a result, you’ve been incorporated into a set of supply chain relationships that inevitably pass through warehouses. On this episode, we return to topic we’ve discussed in past episodes—how logistics shapes capitalism. We speak to Dara Orenstein about the history of bonded warehouses specifically and foreign trade zones. We consider how taxes, tariffs, and legal locations have been a critical component in many of the products we buy and make.
2020-03-0358 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastKeeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on Predatory InclusionOften, analyses of the intersections between race and capitalism consider how capitalism harms dispossessed communities of color because excluding or neglecting them is profitable. But what if serving those communities could be both very profitable and very damaging to the people in them? We speak with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor about what she calls “predatory inclusion,” in which financial institutions and real estate interests sought to build black homeownership. In the process, they reaped tremendous profits and devastated the lives of black homeowners.
2020-01-1040 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastEileen Boris on the Construct of the Woman WorkerEileen Boris on the Construct of the Woman Worker What is work? Who are workers? Which activities are considered work, and which ones are excluded? These questions are some of the most critical questions in political and economic analysis. And how they are answered—both personally and by political institutions—is vital to how people spend their time and thus their lives. On this episode, we investigate this question specifically through the international debates about the “woman worker” as a unique kind of worker. To do this, Eileen Boris looks at the International Labor Organization—the intern...
2019-12-0359 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastAdom Getachew on Anti-colonial WorldmakingStudents in U.S. history surveys come away from their lessons on World War I with one conflict fresh in their minds: How could Woodrow Wilson, a president who advocated segregation and famously screened the racist film Birth of a Nation in the White House, also have been an architect of the League of Nations and a champion of the self-determination of colonized people in Africa and Asia? In this episode, we speak with Adom Getachew, who casts Wilson in a different light. She argues that the people who developed ideas of self-determination were instead anti-colonial elites...
2019-10-0953 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastNan Enstad on Multinational Cigarette Corporations and Jim Crow CapitalismNan Enstad on Multinational Cigarette Corporations and Jim Crow Capitalism The multinational corporation is a pervasive institution. For example, it’s nearly impossible to listen to this show without interacting with one. But what is the history of this thing we call the multinational corporation? And who gets to count as its constituents? Today, we investigate this topic and how it has been shaped by cigarettes—from the workers who grew the tobacco to those who governed the tobacco companies. And we discuss what this history can tell us about race, gender...
2019-09-0659 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastEpisode 58: Chris Dietrich on the Energy Crisis and the Anticolonial EliteWhen we talk about the 1973 energy crisis, we tend to cast it as a moment when Americans questioned assumptions about how the domestic economy worked and the U.S. role in the global economy. We don’t always spend as much time thinking about why the crisis happened, or what it represented in the Global South. OPEC’s decision to cut production and raise prices stemmed from a longer history of anti-colonial activists demanding a fundamental change in how the global economy operated. As countries with oil reserves pushed out colonial powers, local elites demanded sovereignty over their new natio...
2019-08-0139 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastLiz Montegary on the Political Economy of LGBT FamiliesWe’ve just ended pride month and both the victories and limits of GLBT politics were on view. In San Francisco, protesters engaged in civil disobedience action against the growing corporatization of pride. Activists in San Francisco and elsewhere questioned the role of police in pride, emphasizing that “Stonewall was a riot.” Our guest today traverses these debates by emphasizing the politics of LGBT families. She documents the rapidly changing political landscape over the past two decades and what this has to do with the history of capitalism during this period. Liz Mont...
2019-07-0358 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastPeter Cole on the Power of DockworkersWe talk a lot about logistics on this show – the industries, like Amazon or FedEx, that have made fortunes managing the movement of goods from one place to another. Logistics companies undergird the globalized economy, making it possible for companies to benefit from low wages and labor abuses in the global South by moving finished products quickly and cheaply to markets all over the world. Our guest today explains how dock workers have been another force enabling the global economy to function and examines the power they wield even in the era of the container ship.
2019-05-0746 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastBernice Yeung on The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable WorkersThe Me Too movement has brought much needed attention to sexual violence and harassment both in and outside the workplace. It has challenged patriarchal norms and practices and illuminated entrenched power hierarchies. It also drew strength from longer struggles against the many manifestations of patriarchal power. On this month’s show, we speak to Bernice Yeung about how some of the U.S.’s most precarious workers experienced and have fought back against workplace sexual violence. She takes us into office buildings and farm fields. And she shares lessons about what can be done to overc...
2019-04-1353 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastJuan De Lara on Logistics and Urban SpaceAmazon's withdrawal from New York City has sparked big conversations about companies' impact on urban space, but less attention has been paid to the fact that, as logistics companies, corporations like Amazon have a particular spatial impact. Juan De Lara discusses how the logistics economy has remade urban regions and racial politics since the 1980s.
2019-03-0640 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastRandy Shaw on the Housing Affordability CrisisIn major cities across the country, skyrocketing rents and housing prices have pushed out workers and everyday people who are no longer able to afford the cost of living. In Los Angeles, this has led to a spike in homelessness and the increased precarity that comes from living on the streets. Since 2017, at least 1200 homeless people in LA have died, many from treatable illnesses like cardiovascular disease, pneumonia, and diabetes. What are some of the causes and solutions to this housing crisis? On today’s episode we speak to Randy Shaw about his new book Gen...
2019-01-0638 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastGavin Benke on Enron and the Neoliberal EraGavin Benke on Enron and the Neoliberal Era Frauds. Grifts. Swindles. Scams. These are hardly new things when it comes to the history of capitalism. But that doesn’t mean they each one don't reflect its specific era of capitalism. Instead they both shape and are shaped by their unique historical moments. On today’s show, we speak to Gavin Benke about Enron—the energy company that collapsed in 2001 amidst a massive fraud. What does the story of Enron reveal about neoliberalism? Was it a warning of the systemic risk that rocked t...
2018-12-0747 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastLouis Hyman on the Rise of the Gig EconomyWe tend to think about the "gig economy" as a new development - brought into being by Uber and our smartphones. But Louis Hyman shows us the deep roots of casualized and contract labor, tracing the centrality of temps, day laborers, and consultants from the post-World War II years through the present. Louis Hyman is Associate Professor of History at the ILR School of Cornell University and the Director of the Institute for Workplace Studies in New York City. He is the author of Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary. He w...
2018-11-0342 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastDevin Fergus on the Rise of Financial FeesOver the past few decades, financial companies have begun charging more and more hidden fees. Devin Fergus explains why Americans pay so many fees and how these fees function to redistribute wealth from ordinary Americans to the wealthy - and how this strategy has especially impacted black Americans.
2018-10-0444 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastSpecial Episode on Intersectionality and CapitalismAll too often recently, some have claimed that an analysis that is intersectional militates against one that focuses on class. Well, we’re very excited to bring you a special program this month. Rather than our normal interview format, we’re featuring a panel that took place at the University of California-San Diego. David was able to participate in this exciting symposium on the topic of race, gender and the contradictions of capitalism. All the speakers also have recently released books. Ula Taylor is Professor and H. Michael and Jeanne Williams Department Chair of African American Studies at t...
2018-09-0154 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastJennifer Le Zotte on the Sale and Consumption of Second-Hand ClothingFor decades, consumers of second-hand goods have argued that purchasing used items allows buyers to opt out of capitalism, saving money and environmental resources in the process. As one thrifty advice blog puts it, “Buying used goods cuts down on manufacturing demands and keeps more items out of the landfill!” But what exactly is the relationship between the purchase and sale of second-hand goods and capitalism more broadly? On this episode, Jennifer Le Zotte tells us about the sale and consumption of second-hand clothing in the twentieth century. Jennifer Le Zotte is Assistant Professor of Histo...
2018-08-0138 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastJeremy Milloy on the Political Economy of Workplace ViolenceJust last week in the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the court undermined the power of organized labor in the public sector by making it, for all intents and purposes “right to work.” As our former guest, Sarah Jaffe wrote in the New York Times about the decision: “the corporate class … and its allies on the Supreme Court have dealt labor another body blow.” On this episode, we speak about the literal violence that can manifest on the job if oppressive workplace conditions are left unaddressed...
2018-07-0446 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastRaj Patel and Jason Moore on Capital, Nature, and Cheap ThingsWhen we think about the relationship between capitalism and the environment, it’s all too easy to see them as separate spheres bouncing into one another – capitalism devouring nature, like when a forest is razed for development, or nature threatening capitalist progress, like when a natural disaster later wipes out that development. Raj Patel and Jason Moore see the relationship as much more complicated, while also arguing that the environmental crises we face today are the inherent products of the way that capitalism operates. They trace the relationship between capital and the environment through seven cheap things: nature, money, work...
2018-06-0253 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastMehrsa Baradaran on Black Banks and the Racial Wealth GapThe racial wealth gap is among the most dire problems in contemporary society. As of 2014, Black households had fewer than seven cents for every dollar owned by white households. This situation of racial wealth inequity is disturbingly similar to the one that existed at the end of slavery. Today, we welcome back to the show Mehrsa Baradaran, our guest from episode 30. We speak to Mehrsa about her recent book about the history of the racial wealth gap and how Black banks—a solution that is often suggested—have instead operated as a decoy, and distracted from more far...
2018-05-0245 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastMalcolm Harris on Millennials and the Economy That Made ThemTired of reading endless clickbait articles about which industry millennials are killing today? Our guest Malcolm Harris explains how economic restructuring and the ideology of human capital helped to create the millennial generation - and continue to shape the choices they have in the present.
2018-04-0437 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastKeona Ervin on Black Women's Activism in St. LouisIn the summer of 2014, activists in Ferguson, Missouri helped catalyze a cycle of struggle against racist policing, extractive fines and fees, and myriad other injustices that are rooted in racial capitalism and the state. Decades before this in nearby St. Louis Black women activists propelled another vibrant movement for justice and equity. On today’s show, however, we speak with Keona Ervin about St Louis’s actually existing working class and the role of Black women activists played in shaping the struggle for economic dignity in the city. Keona K. Ervin is assistant professor of Hist...
2018-03-0541 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastMelinda Cooper on Neoliberal Family ValuesWe often think of neoliberalism as operating at odds with the traditional family. Our guest, Melinda Cooper, shows why neoliberals and social conservatives have enjoyed an alliance over the past forty years, and how neoliberalism has long had anxiety about family and morality at its core.
2018-02-0640 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastBryant Simon on the Hamlet Fire and the Politics of ChickenConsider the chicken nugget. Many of us can see its round shape in our minds, and recall its salty taste. But what is its history? And what does this history have to tell us about food and capitalism, and about one of the most devastating industrial accidents in recent U.S. history? On today’s show, we speak with Bryant Simon about the 1991 fire at a chicken processing factory in Hamlet, North Carolina. For Bryant, this tragic accident has political and economic causes. And it reveals a tremendous amount the last few decades of U.S...
2018-01-0249 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastLaura Briggs on Reproductive PoliticsPopular discussions of U.S. politics often distinguish "social" issues from "economic" issues. Laura Briggs shows us how looking at recent U.S. history through the lens of reproductive politics challenges this division.
2017-12-0247 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastLane Windham on Union Organizing in the 1970sSince the most recent election, we’ve heard a lot of news about the so-called working class. But all too often, this term seems to refer to white men instead of the diverse group of people who actually comprise the working class. Similarly, in the years since the 2008 recession, more and more attention has been given economic inequality that has grown ever larger over the past few decades. On today’s show, we speak with Lane Windham about union organizing in the 1970s and how these efforts reveal necessary context to understanding the many struggles of the actual working clas...
2017-11-0248 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastJosh Davis on Activist Business in the 1960s and 1970sBefore Amazon bought Whole Foods, the shopping chain got its start as an activist business more focused on politics than profits. Join us to discuss the rise and fall of activist small business in last third of the twentieth century.
2017-10-0342 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastSteve James on Abacus BankIt has become well known that none of those most responsible for the 2008 recession have faced significant prosecutions or gone to prison for their actions. But one bank did face a severe prosecution in the wake of the recession. On today’s show, we speak to Steve James, the director of a new film about Abacus bank—a small bank that serves New York’s Chinatown community, and how they found themselves facing a harsh prosecution, and how they fought back.
2017-09-0131 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastEmily Hobson on the Gay and Lesbian LeftWe often talk about "economic conservatism" and "social conservatism," as if they're entirely divorced topics. Emily Hobson tells us about gay and lesbian activists from the 1960s through the 1990s who understood sexuality and anti-capitalism to be inextricably linked.
2017-08-0148 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastNancy MacLean on the Radical Right and James BuchananIn Nancy MacLean’s new book—Democracy in Chains—she unveils a long history of efforts by right-wing officials and intellectuals to undermine democracy. She foregrounds the importance of the economist James Buchanan to this story. She shows us the historical context of how Buchanan came to be a key intellectual for those opposing school desegregation, unionization of workers, and much more. Nancy MacLean is the William Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University and the award-winning author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry and Freedom is Not Enough.
2017-07-041h 06
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastKim Phillips-Fein on the Fiscal Crisis and Austerity Politics in New York CityWhy do budgetary crises tend to lead to politicians and business leaders calling for governments to tighten their purse strings? How can we understand austerity as politics, not just common business sense? This week, we welcome back Kim Phillips-Fein to discuss her new book, Fear City, on the fiscal crisis in New York City in the 1970s.
2017-06-0138 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastGeoff Mann on the Keynesian Sensibility in a World of Ecological and Economic InequalityThe name John Maynard Keynes is an important one in the history of economic thought. Keynes’s ideas became popular between during the interwar period, between World War I and II, as many sought to navigate the tumult of social and political upheaval elicited by World War I and the Great Depression. But our guest today, traces a longer tradition of a Keynesian sensibility—characterized by the need to maintain society—that goes back more than 100 years before this period to the French Revolution. We speak to Geoff Mann about his new book, that considers what this Keynes...
2017-05-0253 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastJennifer Haigh on Fiction and FrackingIn our first interview with a novelist, we speak with Jennifer Haigh about Heat & Light, her novel about fracking in rural Pennsylvania.
2017-04-0141 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastRyan Murphy on Flight Attendant ActivismThe 1980s were a time of transformation for workers across the U.S., and flight attendants were on the front line of the struggles of the era, as they saw the impacts of deregulation, the breaking of the air-traffic controllers union, and the rising power of stockholders over everyday management of firms. Our guest today, Ryan Murphy, shows how all of the elements coalesced with broader changes in sexual and gender relations. Murphy’s history of flight attendant activism shows how important it is to see all these elements working together. Both workers and bosses had different co...
2017-03-0539 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastMehrsa Baradaran on Banking for Lower Income AmericansHow does the fact that banks do not have to make their services accessible for all of us impact ordinary people? Why should we see banks as institutions that must be accountable to the public, and what would change in American life if we did? Listen to find out!
2017-02-0142 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastBrooke Harrington on Wealth Managers and the One PercentIn April, the high volume leak of the Panama Papers revealed an often unseen world of money and power. The leak of 11.5 million files came from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, which helps facilitate movement of money across accounts and borders, frequently with the goal of evading taxation and legal judgments. The leak placed the financial dealings of global celebrities and politicians, including Simon Cowell and Pedro Almodovar, under scrutiny. Vladimir Putin, though unnamed in the leak was connected to upwards of $2 billion of assets. And the revelations provoked such controversy for the Prime Minister of Iceland that...
2017-01-0354 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastChristy Chapin on the Centrality of Insurance Companies to American Health CareWhy is health care in the United States so expensive? Why does the United States find it so difficult to provide quality, affordable health care to most of its citizens? What is the relationship among the government, doctors, and insurance companies? Christy Chapin explains how insurance companies became so central to the provision of health care in the United States.
2016-12-0245 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastSarah Jaffe on Social Movements and the 2008 RecessionThe recent years since the 2008 recession have seen a growth of protest movements. Sarah Jaffe’s book, Necessary Trouble, describes how people have been fighting back against bank bailouts, budget cuts, police brutality, and much more. Today, we reflect on this recent history of capitalism and what it might indicate about the future. Sarah Jaffe is a Nation Institute fellow and an independent journalist covering labor, economic justice, social movements, politics, gender, and pop culture. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Salon, the Week, the American Prospect, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and many other publications. Sh...
2016-11-0440 minWho Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastLaShawn Harris on Black Women and the Informal EconomyLaShawn Harris discusses how black women in the early twentieth century engaged in the informal economy - performing work that wasn't entirely legal - to get by and get ahead.
2016-10-0140 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastSandy Hager on Public Debt and InequalityWho owns the U.S. public debt? Why is it such an important commodity in global capitalism? Why does public debt provoke such intense political debate? And how can the quantitative data on the ownership structure of public debt provide insights into these topics? Our guest today, Sandy Hager reveals answers to all of these questions and more. Sandy Brian Hager is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He is author of Public Debt, Inequality, and Power: The Making of a Modern Debt State.
2016-09-0141 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastDaniel Amsterdam on the Business Campaign to Expand Government Spending
2016-08-0241 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastDavid Harvey on A Brief History of NeoliberalismNeoliberalism. It is a vexing term, especially for many in the United States. But it means to call attention to the policies that emphasized so-called free markets as well as the increased market regulation of society since the 1970s. Few texts have been as important for popularizing the analysis of the politics and economics of neoliberalism as David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Published a little more than decade ago, we decided to speak with him about his important book and his reflections about the past decade’s political economy, and what has changed and what has not...
2016-07-0141 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastSujani Reddy on Nursing and EmpireThe history of nursing is inextricable from the history of capitalism and imperialism. Our guest today, Sujani Reddy, helps us understand the history of nursing through the lives and experiences nurses who migrated to the U.S. from India, and what this reveals about gender, religion, and corporate philanthropy. Sujani Reddy is Associate Professor of American Studies at SUNY Old Westbury. She is author of Nursing and Empire: Gendered Labor and Migration from India to the United States.
2016-06-0247 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastSherene Seikaly on Economic Thought in British Mandate PalestineHistorian Sherene Seikaly uncovered a group of elite
Palestinian men in 1930s and 1940s who articulated a national
economic vision for Palestine before the founding of
Israel. Listen to learn more about how debates about Palestinian
independence from British rule hinged on pan-Arab ideas about
class, trade, and profit during these decades in a story
that moves beyond our contemporary understanding of Israel and
Palestine.
2016-05-0234 min
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastKeeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on Black Lives Matter and Black LiberationFew social justice struggles have captivated recent political history like the broad Black Lives Matter movement. From the streets of Ferguson and Baltimore to campaign rally interruptions of leading politicians, we have seen people speak up in outrage about injustices of policing, racist violence, wealth inequality and much more. What does this cycle of struggle have to do with the history of capitalism?
In addition to these questions, our guest today, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, asks "Can the conditions created by institutional racism be transformed within the existing capitalist order?”.Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an Assistant Professor in th...
2016-04-0145 min