Crash Course

Have voters, politicos, analysts, and the media focused before with such intensity on a presidential race in the US more than a year before the actual vote? Perhaps. But I’m willing to say: Probably not. The reasons why this race is so magnetic are overt. Trump and Trumpism are in the air. Democracy is on the table. Pivotal policy issues are in play: reproductive rights, immigration, jobs and the...

Ever since Vladimir Putin sent Russian tanks rolling into Ukraine in early 2022, assumptions about the possibility of war in the 21st Century have been turned on their heads. A long absence of conflict in Europe gave way to a bloody and sustained ground war. Russia has even warned it might unleash nuclear missiles. China, rattling its own saber in Asia, looms large in the background – just as it d...

Silicon Valley is the centerpiece of a very specific kind of bro culture – a culture that has had a certain winner-take-all mojo over the years, but which may be running its course. To test this thesis, I present you with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, founders of such landmark companies as Tesla, SpaceX, and Meta (aka Facebook). They are both innovators, admirable risk-takers, and bazillionaires....

Weather is fickle and climate-related catastrophes have become all too common – in the US and around the globe. Deadly, rain-induced flooding, interspersed with deadly, heat-induced fires have also visited the Koreas, Ethiopia, Australia, Pakistan, India, Brazil, the UK, Canada, Greece, and other countries during this still new 21st century. We now live in a climate-changed world in which every se...

Any time Tim O’Brien sees a Republican presidential candidate (other than Donald Trump) on television, he’s reminded that they and their party look like they’re in a hostage video. They are all trapped by Trump, and none of them have convinced Tim that they can escape. Trump's Republican challengers held their first national debate recently, offering an array of pols trying to make a case for them...

“Barbie,” the summer blockbuster about the world’s most famous doll, has a lot to say about the intersection of art, commerce, gender, identity, and a life well lived. But one reason it has raked in more than $1 billion in global box office sales is because it offers a provocative and funny send-up of mind-numbing, soul-crushing corporate conformity. Barbie is totemic and has had the power to brai...

The U.S. is now in the unprecedented position of having a man who has thus far been charged with 78 crimes being the clear front-runner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2024. There is a swamp of issues to unravel around all of this – including Trump’s legal perils, the character and policies of a Republican Party he owns, and the future of American democracy. Joining us today...

Kenya is home to some of the planet’s most glorious – and most threatened – wildlife. Like everything else on Earth, the animals that once thrived in this Eden are suffering through the cataclysm of climate change. Long droughts interspersed with violent and irregular flooding have altered migration patterns and essential sustenance. Local farmers and semi-nomadic herders are struggling to preserv...

Americans bet about $165 billion a year, but here’s something Tim O’Brien worries about: When there’s billions of dollars on the line, how likely is it that your favorite sport is going to get corrupted? Gamblers and criminals have been trying to rig games since the Olympics first began – it still goes on all the time if you look for it. Enter SportRadar, where former intelligence operatives, poli...

Wall Street can be a minefield for any competitive or ambitious person seeking a rewarding career, a name for themselves, and handsome paydays. They quickly find themselves surrounded by other competitive and ambitious people looking for exactly the same things. For women, the challenges can run even deeper and for them, the world of Wall Street is particularly fraught. What’s it like to fight thr...

Semiconductors allow for massive, accessible, and ubiquitous computing and they are such stuff as dreams are made on. They’re pivotal components of the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry, and they now power everything from cars and appliances to missile defense systems and nuclear weaponry. Chips are so central to the consumer world, the shape of economies, and national security that they...

Every generation produces a financier or businessperson who personifies how easy it can be to part fools from their money, part smart people from their senses, and part the media from skepticism. There’s a long list of exhibits of that genre, from Charles Ponzi to Bernie Madoff. Does Sam Bankman-Fried belong in that pantheon? There’s lots of evidence suggesting he does. He – and the crypto-currenc...

Winemaking may seem entirely glamorous but it’s really just another version of farming: It’s hard, unpredictable work, and farmers everywhere are wrestling with the onslaught of climate change. Climate change may make some of the world’s most fertile wine regions inhospitable to grape production. Winemaking was a competitive and unpredictable business long before climate change’s escalating challe...

When British voters decided back in June 2016 to end their 43-year membership in the European Union, it seemed the most surreal political and economic event imaginable. The European Union was a statement of purpose as much as a trade relationship: It symbolized European countries putting centuries of hostility and two world wars behind in the interest of economic cooperation, and it represented Eu...

We all take for granted that nifty little miracle that happens when we flip a switch on our walls or lamps – the lights go on. Electricity is a modern marvel. It’s the juice that fuels much of what people mean when they talk about “civilization.” When we lose access to electricity, we feel the pain immediately. What we’re used to doing collides with what we suddenly can’t do. Now consider South Af...

Former President Donald Trump will walk into a federal courtroom in Miami today and face criminal charges for the second time in as many months. The indictment handed up last week charges Trump with misappropriating classified federal documents containing nuclear and military secrets, and obstructing government efforts to both collect them and investigate their disappearance. It’s an utterly devas...

Robert Netzly is an Evangelical Christian trying to realize his values and stay true to his own beliefs while working in investing – and he personifies a bigger war going on in the investment world and American politics over a little acronym called ESG. In the last year, there’s been a Republican backlash to the trillions of dollars committed to investing practices that take environmental, social,...

The media business has been home to experiments ever since the invention of paper. It’s hard to make money from those experiments, fuel the experiments with the right blend of content that attracts audiences, and turn those experiments into enterprises that can survive for years. Six prime experiments from digital media’s modern era all debuted in close proximity to one another in the early 2000s...

Last year – ten years after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut – one of the country’s biggest gunmakers, Remington Arms Co.,the manufacturer of the Bushmaster assault weapon used in the murders, agreed to pay $73 million to settle a lawsuit some victims’ families filed against it. It was a landmark settlement that opened a gap in the formidable legal and financial arm...

Artificial intelligence has arrived courtesy of ChatGPT, the large language model software that already has more than 100 million users. ChatGPT’s debut signals that any number of jobs could be disrupted (and replaced) by bots, including money management – the science and art of successful investing for institutions and individuals. Investing has already been transformed over the last several deca...

Coming soon: When nerdy gamer Sam Bankman-Fried rocketed to fame as the world’s richest 29-year-old, he pledged to donate his billions to good causes. But then his crypto exchange FTX collapsed Billions of dollars were missing, and Sam was in handcuffs. Those who knew him were left wondering — who was Sam really? A well-meaning billionaire who made a mistake? Or a calculating con man? From Wondery...

Name a flashpoint in the US culture wars – and then think about how it intersects with education – and you’re sure to find Florida. The state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, is a devoted and ubiquitous culture warrior who has put the public education of Florida’s children, teenagers, and college students on the front lines of a battle over what is and isn’t appropriate for the classroom. The stakes, as...

Andi Owen, the CEO of MillerKnoll, recently went viral for telling employees not to ask about bonuses during a company-wide meeting, adding, “You can visit pity city, but you can't live there.” The company said Owen’s comments were taken out of context and that she is committed to her team. But in a still newly post-Covid world and workplace, Owen’s advice about traveling to Pity City struck a ner...

The Supreme Court justices get lucrative book deals, luxe travel junkets, and the freedom to invest in almost anything they want – all with limited and forgiving disclosures. And one justice, Clarence Thomas, has routinely offered evidence of some of the Court’s most glaring conflicts of interest. ProPublica recently revealed a goldmine of gifts and financial favors Thomas has received from a prom...

Fox News – at least the part represented by the network’s powerhouse evening talk shows – is often an unfettered disinformation machine. It has propagated myths, far-right talking points, and conspiracy theories with unencumbered gusto. Until that is, it helped circulate the Big Lie about electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election. It placed two voting machine companies, Dominion Voting Sys...