Episode summary: Come for the churrasco. Stay for the economic deep dives across Latin America.

Episode summary: Hitler’s Olympics Part 1: The Blue-Eyed Tornado

Episode summary: From the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama to colonial conquest and the Atlantic Slave Trade, to the privatization of land in western Europe: humanity’s turn toward the capitalist world we live in now.By John Biewen, with co-host Ellen McGirt. Interviews with Jayati Ghosh, Jason...

Episode summary: What’s a bigger honor, a Nobel Prize or being immortalized on a mural with the Jackson 5?

Episode summary: he US has been portrayed as in the grip of a maternal mortality crisis. In contrast to most other developed nations, the rate of maternal deaths in the US has been going up since the early 2000s. But why? With the help of Saloni Dattani, a researcher at Our World in Data, Tim Harfor...

Episode summary: In this episode, David and Rosemary are joined by Paul Kafasis from Rogue Amoeba to talk about automating audio, as well as his personal magic.

Episode summary: To fully grasp capitalism, it helps to understand the system it replaced – and the most meaningful differences between feudalism and capitalism. We visit the British Isles of the Middle Ages. By John Biewen, with co-host Ellen McGirt. Interviews with Karen Dempsey, Ben Jervis, and E...

Episode summary: For the final episode in the current series, David discusses Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), her unforgettable dystopian vision of a future American patriarchy. Where is Gilead? When is Gilead? How did it happen? How can it be stopped? From puritanism and slavery to Ir...

Episode summary: Intelligence scholar Hugh Wilford’s excellent new book grapples with the paradox at the heart of America’s covert intelligence agency. Many of the CIA’s founding fathers were staunch anti-imperialists, but during the Cold War, the US took up the mantle of Europe’s colonial projects....

Episode summary: Don’t call her an oracle. She prefers foreseer.