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Civic Ventures

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Law professor Mehrsa Baradaran joins Nick and Goldy to reveal how neoliberalism wasn’t just a misguided economic theory—it was a “quiet coup” that rewired our laws, courts, and institutions to elevate capital above democracy. Drawing from her new book The Quiet Coup, Professor Baradaran explains how this ideology became like the air we breathe: a pervasive worldview that shapes our politics, our markets, and even the way we understand ourselves. They explore how elite power captured the machinery of government, why the market has become a runaway algorithm fueling inequality, and what it will take to break free from an ideology so deeply embedded we mistake it for common sense.

Mehrsa Baradaran is a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and one of the nation’s leading experts on banking law, inequality, and the racial wealth gap. She is the author of The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America, The Color of Money, and How the Other Half Banks. Her research traces how financial policy, legal structures, and political power shape inequality in the United States.

Social Media:

@mehrsab.bsky.social

Mehrsabaradaran

@MehrsaBaradaran

Further reading: 

The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America

The Color of Money

How the Other Half Banks

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The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America (with Mehrsa Baradaran)

For nearly a century, GDP has been the world’s go-to measure of economic success—but what if it’s been telling us the wrong story? It treats cigarette sales and cancer treatments as equally “good” for the economy, while caring for your kids, volunteering, or creating art don’t count at all. This week, economist Diane Coyle joins Nick and Goldy to discuss her new book, The Measure of Progress, and explain why GDP increasingly fails to capture the reality of modern economies—and how we can measure real progress instead.

Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. She is also the Research Director at the Bennett School of Public Policy, a member of the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy Council, and author of the new book, The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters.

Social Media:

@dianecoyle1859.bsky.social

@DianeCoyle1859

Further reading: 

The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters

Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries and Time

The Economics of Care with Nancy Folbre 

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The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters (with Diane Coyle)

Actor and author Ben McKenzie didn’t set out to become one of crypto’s fiercest critics—but when the pandemic hit and Hollywood shut down, his curiosity turned into a full-blown investigation. The result was the bestselling book, Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, a blistering exposé of the crypto craze as “casino capitalism” at its dumbest.

In this episode, McKenzie joins Nick and Goldy to explain how the industry turned hype and libertarian fantasy into a trillion-dollar bubble, why the true believers won’t let go, and how fake “innovation” and corporate lobbying are putting the entire financial system at risk. They dig into the cult psychology of crypto, the rise of legalized gambling as an addiction economy, and why letting corporations issue their own “money” could end in disaster.

Ben McKenzie is an actor, author, and director best known for his roles on The O.C., Southland, and Gotham. He holds a degree in economics and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia. McKenzie has become one of the most prominent critics of the cryptocurrency industry, co-authoring the book Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud with journalist Jacob Silverman.

The premiere of Everyone is Lying to You For Money is on Sunday, November 16, 2025, in New York City. Get tickets at DOCNYC.net.

Social Media:

@benmckenzie.bsky.social

mrbenmckenzie

@ben_mckenzie

Further reading: 

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud

When Prophecy Fails

Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me)

New York Magazine: ⁠Congress Just Injected Crypto Directly Into the Most Stable Part of the Economy What could go wrong?

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Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud (with Ben McKenzie)

Corporations are on track to spend more than $1.3 trillion on stock buybacks this year—money that could have gone toward higher wages, innovation, or community investment. That’s the real-life Trillion Dollar Heist at the center of our new comic from Civic Ventures, which follows Marta, a janitor who interrupts a corporate board meeting just as executives plot their next billion-dollar buyback spree.

This week, we’re resharing our 2019 conversation with Senator Cory Booker, who explains how stock buybacks went from illegal market manipulation to one of the biggest drivers of inequality. 

Read the Trillion Dollar Heist Comic: https://bindings.app/read/7mINYO2H

This episode originally aired February 26, 2019. 

Senator Cory Booker is a Democratic lawmaker from New Jersey who has served in the U.S. Senate since 2013. A Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law graduate, he began his career on the Newark City Council before serving as mayor from 2006 to 2013. In the Senate, Booker has focused on criminal justice reform, economic opportunity, climate action, and protecting civil and LGBTQ+ rights.

Social Media:

Marta 

Paul Constant 

Sarah Star Litt

Alan Robinson 

Pippa Bowland

AndWorld Design

Mary P. Traverse

Further reading: 

Trillion Dollar Heist Comic

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Stock Buybacks and the Trillion Dollar Heist (with Senator Cory Booker)

In the final episode of our Trade series, Nick and Goldy talk with Thea Lee, former Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor, to challenge the core assumption behind decades of U.S. trade policy: That trade is about efficiency, not power.

Lee explains how past trade deals were written to protect capital while ignoring worker exploitation abroad—a model that suppressed wages overseas and undercut American workers at home. She also makes the case that worker-centered trade isn’t hypothetical anymore by pointing to the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA), where labor rights were finally enforced with the same seriousness as intellectual property, resulting in real wage gains and democratic union elections in Mexico.

This conversation lays out the choice clearly: Trade can strengthen middle classes, democracy, and supply chain resilience, or it can deepen inequality and instability. This episode makes the argument for choosing the first option on purpose, not by accident.

Thea Lee is an economist and longtime advocate of pro-worker trade policy who most recently served as Deputy Undersecretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor, where she focused on global labor protections, including enforcing labor rights under trade agreements and combating forced and child labor worldwide.

Todd Tucker is a political scientist, author, and the Director of Industrial Policy and Trade at the Roosevelt Institute and Roosevelt Forward, where he leads work on how national and global institutions shape economic transformation. He’s the author of Judge Knot: Politics and Development in International Investment Law.

Social Media:

@theameilee.bsky.social

@TheaMeiLee

@toddntucker.com

@toddntucker

Further reading: 

The New US Trade Agenda: Institutionalizing Middle-Out Economics in Foreign Commercial Policy

Judge Knot: Politics and Development in International Investment Law

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Competing Visions on Trade: A Race to the Bottom Vs. Building the Middle Class (with Thea Lee featuring Todd Tucker)

In the sixth episode of our trade series, Pitchfork Economics producer Freddy Doss talks with Mexican economist Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid about how NAFTA — and now the USMCA — reshaped Mexico’s economy in ways that those of us north of the Rio Grande almost never hear about. Yes, exports skyrocketed. But wages stagnated, domestic industry hollowed out, and Mexico became structurally dependent on the United States — even as political rhetoric in the U.S. grew more hostile toward Mexican workers. Moreno-Brid explains why the promised “shared prosperity” never arrived, why Mexico got stuck in an export-without-development trap, and what a truly fair and resilient U.S.–Mexico trade relationship would actually require. It’s a perspective rarely heard in Washington, and an essential one for understanding the real stakes of North American trade.

Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid is a professor of economics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and one of Latin America’s leading experts on trade, industrial policy, and economic development. A former Deputy Director of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) office in Mexico, he has spent decades analyzing the impacts of NAFTA and Mexico’s transition to an export-led model. His research focuses on inequality, industrialization, and the structural challenges facing emerging economies.

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South of the Border: A Mexican Perspective on the Free Trade Era (with Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid)

In the fifth episode of our series on trade, journalist and author Luke Savage joins Pitchfork Economics Producer Freddy Doss to unpack how decades of “free trade” between the U.S. and Canada have reshaped both economies—entrenching corporate power, hollowing out manufacturing, and weakening democratic control over economic policy. Savage traces how policies sold as mutually beneficial instead fueled inequality and deindustrialization—eroding the livelihoods of working people. He argues for a new kind of trade built to serve the interests of workers and communities, not multinational corporations. 

Luke Savage is a Canadian journalist, author, and political commentator whose work examines the failures of liberalism and the possibilities of democracy. A staff writer at Jacobin and co-host of the podcast Michael and Us, Savage has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New Statesman. He is the author of The Dead Center: Reflections on Liberalism and Democracy After the End of History and co-author of Seeking Social Democracy with the late Ed Broadbent. 

Social Media:

@lukewsavage.bsky.social

@LukewSavage

Lukewsavage

Further reading: 

Luke Savage | Substack

The Dead Center: Reflections on Liberalism and Democracy After the End of History

Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality

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North of the Border: A Canadian Perspective on the Free Trade Era (with Luke Savage)

What if global trade isn’t really a fight between nations—but between classes? In the fourth episode of our Trade series, Nick and Goldy talk with economist and writer Matthew C. Klein, co-author of Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace. Klein argues that the real story behind trade imbalances isn’t about countries “winning” or “losing”—it’s about how elites hoard profits while workers everywhere pay the price. From China’s suppressed wages to Wall Street’s endless appetite for financial assets, this conversation exposes how the true conflict in trade is between labor and capital—and what it would take to build a more equitable global economy.

Matthew Klein is an economist, writer, and co-author of Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace. He writes The Overshoot, a publication focused on global economics and financial markets, and his work has appeared in the Financial Times, Barron’s, and The Economist.

Social Media:

@M_C_Klein

Further reading: 

Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace

THE OVERSHOOT: Making sense of the global economy and financial markets

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Trade Wars Are Class Wars (with Matthew C. Klein)

Tariffs won’t save America’s economy—but knowledge might. In the third episode of our Trade series, Nick and Goldy sit down with physicist César Hidalgo to explore how prosperity really grows—not through tariffs or trickle-down promises, but through the accumulation of knowledge and know-how. Hidalgo explains why digital exports don’t show up in trade data, why tariffs fail, and why the future belongs to countries that invest in research, strategy, and human talent.

César Hidalgo is the director of the Center for Collective Learning, with offices at the Toulouse School of Economics and Corvinus University of Budapest. A physicist by training, he is also the founder of Datawheel, a company specializing in data visualization and distribution systems. Hidalgo is the author of Why Information Grows, a groundbreaking book on the relationship between knowledge, innovation, and economic prosperity, and his forthcoming book, The Infinite Alphabet and the Laws of Knowledge, explores the dynamics of how knowledge evolves and diffuses globally.

Social Media:

@cesifoti.bsky.social 

@cesifoti

Further reading: 

Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

The Infinite Alphabet and the Laws of Knowledge

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You Can't Tariff Knowledge (with César Hidalgo)

In the second episode of our Trade series, Nick and Goldy talk with author Nat Dyer about his book Ricardo’s Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray. Dyer reveals how David Ricardo’s famous theory of comparative advantage—long touted as proof that free trade is always a win-win—was built on unrealistic assumptions and a false history.

They trace how this elegant but misleading model fueled globalization, masked exploitation, and locked nations into centuries of stagnation. From Trump’s tariff tantrums to Biden’s “small yard, high fence” strategy, their conversation challenges the myths of free trade and asks: when does trade strengthen societies, and when does it doom them to decline?

Nat Dyer is a writer and researcher specializing in global political economy and author of the book Ricardo's Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray. He is a Fellow of the Schumacher Institute and the Royal Society of Arts. He has worked for Global Witness and for Promoting Economic Pluralism, and his stories have been reported on by the BBC, the New York Times, and Bloomberg.

Social Media:

@natjdyer.bsky.social

@natjdyer

Further reading: 

Ricardo's Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray

Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do about It

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How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray (with Nat Dyer)

It’s Nick and Goldy’s summer reading list! 

We want to know what you’re reading, too. Let us know on Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics. 

Remember to shop local and small when you can, or order from IndieBound or Bookshop.org—both of which support independent bookstores! All of these books are also likely available at your library. 

Every book mentioned in this episode: 
The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich 

Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity by Walter Scheidel

The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel

Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Merit by Robert H. Frank

The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Democracy, Race, and Justice: The Speeches and Writings of Sadie T. M. Alexander by Nina Banks 

Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright

Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham 

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee

1491 by Charles C. Mann

Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic by Matthew Stewart

The Second World War by Winston Churchill 

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell 

Debt by David Graeber 

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com/
Twitter: @PitchforkEcon
Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics
Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Summer Reading List!

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