Art of Citizenry

The creator economy promised an alternative to the traditional 9-to-5 that offered fame, autonomy, and money (lots of it). But the usual barriers to success never really disappeared, they simply changed. Now, content creators depend on algorithms and advertisers that determine who gets seen, who gets paid, and increasingly, how much of yourself you have to give away to stay relevant.

Manpreet sits down with New York Magazine features writer Rebecca Jennings to unpack what she calls the “influencer recession” and the increasingly complicated economics of making a living online. We talk about the power of social media algorithms, AI and manufactured virality, shifting ideals of desirability, rage bait content, and the growing pressure for creators to turn more and more of their lives (and themselves!) into content. 

In this episode of Art of Citizenry Podcast, we discuss: 

• The “influencer recession,” particularly why so many influencers are struggling even as influencer marketing continues to grow as a brand strategy
• Who holds power in the creator economy (spoiler: it’s not just the platforms!) 
• The commodification of the self and what we give up when our bodies, relationships, identities, and private lives become content in exchange for attention.
• AI generated content and how it is intensifying competition despite being sloppy and problematic
• Manufactured virality and clipping (the marketing campaigns behind moments that have felt organically viral).
• What is up with all the rage bait content these days. 
• Shifting standards of beauty, femininity, and desirability, from GLP-1s and declining opportunities for plus-size creators to tradwives, Love Island, and the Bop House. These stories reveal so much more about society and how political ideas (particularly conservative ideology) can spread through lifestyle content without presenting as explicitly “political” (aka everything is political!)

At the center of everything is arguably the world’s most scarce and valuable commodity: our attention.

Rebecca Jennings is a features writer at New York Magazine covering internet culture. Previously she worked at Vox, where she covered social platforms and the creator economy with a focus on how social media is changing the nature of fame, fashion, money, and human relationships. Her work has explored everything from the joy of reality television to the rise of TikTok and why it feels like suddenly everyone’s an influencer now. She is the author of Be the Bombshell: What Love Island Teaches Us About Dating.

📌 Support the Podcast: Art of Citizenry is proudly independent. Support us as we critically explore, challenge, and unravel mainstream narratives by empowering listeners with accessible, nuanced perspectives.

• Contribute via PayPal: https://visit.artofcitizenry.com/paypal
• Become a Paid Subscriber on Substack: https://artofcitizenry.substack.com/
• Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofcitizenry
• Follow Manpreet on Instagram: https://instagram.com/manpreetkalra

For more, you can find the full show notes of every episode at https://www.artofcitizenry.com/episodes

Detaining and deporting immigrants has become a lucrative business, and private equity is financing the infrastructure behind it.

In this episode, Manpreet Kaur Kalra and Anna Canning follow the money behind Omni Air International, a charter airline operating ICE deportation flights, and Stonepeak, the private equity firm that owns it. In true Art of Citizenry fashion, we trace Omni’s role in long-haul deportation flights linked to gross human rights violations, pulling back the curtain on Stonepeak’s acquisition, how public pension funds financed the deal, and why voluntary ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) commitments can fall apart when there are no meaningful mechanisms for accountability.

We explore:

• How Omni Air became part of the U.S. deportation infrastructure, including its role in unlawful ICE removals.
• The human rights abuses linked to deportation flights, including prolonged restraint, torture, denial of due process, and violations of the principle of non-refoulement (learn more in the episode).
• Stonepeak’s acquisition of Omni Air’s parent company and how much private equity can profit from privatizing government functions (including our waterways!).
• How public pension funds in progressive states like Washington, Oregon, California, and New York helped finance Stonepeak’s investment in Omni Air – despite their public commitments to immigrant and human rights.
• Why layers of contractors, corporate ownership, private equity funds, and voluntary ESG commitments can obscure accountability even when the underlying harm is well documented.

Tune in as we examine the various ways state violence gets obscured by layers of contracts and ask a larger question: when governments outsource state power, who is ultimately responsible for the harm?

Content Warning: This episode contains discussions of immigration detention and deportation, torture, physical restraint, solitary confinement, self-harm, and other forms of physical and psychological mistreatment. Please listen with care.

About the Series

Private Equity Playbook is a series by Art of Citizenry that examines how private equity is reshaping our everyday lives. In each episode, host Manpreet Kaur Kalra and long-time collaborator Anna Canning investigate private equity in another corner of everyday life, digging into where it’s headed and what that means for us.

Suggested Listens and Reading:

• Art of Citizenry Podcast Episode 34 – Big Beautiful Bill - How Private Equity is Profiting from Immigrant Detention
• Mother Jones – ICE Deportation Flights Are Getting Longer and Crueler
• Art of Citizenry Podcast Episode 19 – Profiting From Detention and the Criminalization of Immigration
• UW Center for Human Rights – Abuses in the Air: Sports Travel and the Deportation Industry

📌 Support the Podcast: Art of Citizenry is proudly independent. Support us as we critically explore, challenge, and unravel mainstream narratives by empowering listeners with accessible, nuanced perspectives.

• Contribute via PayPal: https://visit.artofcitizenry.com/paypal
• Become a Paid Subscriber on Substack: https://artofcitizenry.substack.com/
• Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofcitizenry
• Follow Manpreet on Instagram: https://instagram.com/manpreetkalra

For more, you can find the full show notes of every episode at https://www.artofcitizenry.com/episodes

For much of U.S. history, people harmed abroad by American corporations have had few meaningful pathways into U.S. courts. Wage theft, child labor, trafficking, land grabbing, union busting – corporate impunity has long been insulated by the complexity of global supply chains. Even when the company was headquartered in the U.S., profited in the U.S., or made decisions in the U.S., the law often treated the harm as too distant, too foreign, or too complicated.

In this episode of Art of Citizenry, host Manpreet Kaur Kalra speaks with Charity Ryerson, Executive Director and Founder of Corporate Accountability Lab. Together, they examine the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a single sentence passed in 1789 that became one of the few legal pathways for people harmed by corporate impunity abroad to seek accountability in U.S. courts.

Over the past two decades, the Supreme Court has narrowed the ATS case by case. Then, in June 2026, the Court closed the door even further in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe I, a case alleging that the U.S. tech giant helped build a surveillance system used to identify, track, detain, and torture Falun Gong practitioners in China.

This episode traces the history of the ATS and examines what its further narrowing means for corporate accountability in an era of globalization and outsourced harm. We look at how corporations use subsidiaries, suppliers, contractors, and jurisdictional complexity to deflect responsibility, and we ask what pathways remain when one of the few tools for transnational accountability is closed even further.

We explore: 

At its core, this is a conversation about power: who gets access to justice, whose suffering is recognized by the courts, and what happens when corporations can profit across borders while accountability stops at the border.

📌 Support the Podcast: Art of Citizenry is proudly independent. Support us as we critically explore, challenge, and unravel mainstream narratives through accessible, nuanced perspectives.

For more, you can find the full show notes of every episode at https://www.artofcitizenry.com/episodes

What happens when the way we make sense of the world is mediated by platforms designed to reward speed, outrage, and attention?

In this episode of Art of Citizenry, host Manpreet Kaur Kalra speaks with Dr. Kate Starbird, professor at the University of Washington and co-founder of the UW Center for an Informed Public. They discuss rumors, misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, AI-generated content, and the fragile state of trust in our communication ecosystem.

Every day, we’re confronted with an overwhelming volume of information. Breaking news alerts, viral videos, social media posts shared by friends, influencers, politicians, and strangers. We scroll through competing claims about everything ranging from elections to natural disasters, and increasingly, content generated by artificial intelligence. 

But misinformation is not only a problem of falsehoods. It is also a problem of uncertainty. Rumors spread because it is human nature to try to make sense when things are not clear. And social media platforms have transformed that deeply human process into something more dangerous, more fragmented, and easier to manipulate.

Together, we explore: 

This conversation asks us to consider the bigger question: can a society govern itself if people no longer believe they can know what is happening? And if we want to hold social platforms accountable for the worlds they help create, we also have to ask who has the power to enforce that accountability, and whose definition or truth is protected when they do.

Meet Our Guest

Kate Starbird is a Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington and co-founder of the UW Center for an Informed Public. Her research sits within the fields of human-computer interaction and crisis informatics — or the study of how social media and other digital technologies are used during crisis events. Currently, she focuses on the spread of online rumors, misinformation, and disinformation during crises, elections, and breaking news events. In particular, she investigates the *participatory* nature of rumors and online disinformation campaigns, exploring both top-down and bottom-up dynamics.

📌 Support the Podcast: Art of Citizenry is proudly independent. Support us as we critically explore, challenge, and unravel mainstream narratives through accessible, nuanced perspectives.

Contribute via PayPal: https://visit.artofcitizenry.com/paypal

Become a paid subscriber on Substack: https://artofcitizenry.substack.com/

Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofcitizenry

Follow Manpreet on Instagram: https://instagram.com/manpreetkalra

For more, you can find the full show notes of every episode at https://www.artofcitizenry.com/episodes

Patagonia is a vast region spanning southern Chile and Argentina. It is also the name of a multibillion-dollar outdoors company that has spent more than 50 years turning the region’s landscapes and mythology into a symbol of wilderness and adventure. Now, Patagonia Inc. is suing drag queen and climate activist Pattie Gonia for trademark infringement and dilution. But beneath all the legal questions lies a more complicated one: How did a U.S. corporation acquire the power to control the commercial meaning of a geographical area in the first place?

This episode is an invitation to think beyond whether Pattie Gonia’s name is too similar to Patagonia’s trademark and to instead delve deeper into who defines the meaning of a place and what happens when that power becomes privately owned.

In this episode of Art of Citizenry Podcast, host Manpreet Kaur Kalra is joined by Professor Alexandra Roberts, a scholar of trademark law at Northeastern University, to unpack the legal questions at the center of the case and the deeper ethical questions hiding beneath them.

Together, they examine the mechanisms that underpin trademark law, the colonial logic of commodification, corporate personhood and what it would mean if nature were to be granted similar rights. 

In this episode, we explore:

📌 Support the Podcast: Art of Citizenry is proudly independent. Support us as we critically explore, challenge, and unravel mainstream narratives through accessible, nuanced perspectives.

Contribute via PayPal: https://visit.artofcitizenry.com/paypal

Become a paid subscriber on Substack: https://artofcitizenry.substack.com/

Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofcitizenry

Follow Manpreet on Instagram: https://instagram.com/manpreetkalra

For more, you can find the full show notes of every episode at https://www.artofcitizenry.com/episodes

Instant Pot didn’t just go bankrupt, it became another casualty of private equity’s complex financial maneuvers. In this episode of our series The Private Equity Playbook, host Manpreet Kaur Kalra and collaborator Anna Canning trace how one of the most beloved kitchen gadgets of the 2010s became a textbook case of everything private equity does to the things we own, the places we live, and the communities we call home.

From its origins as an internet phenomenon to its collapse under millions in manufactured debt, the Instant Pot story hits every ingredient of the private equity recipe: roll-ups, debt-loading, dividend recaps, antitrust, factory closures, and even a bizarre MAGA branding scheme. We connect Instant Pot’s story to the shuttering of the Pyrex factory in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, anti-immigrant scapegoating during the 2024 election, and the increasingly surreal overlap between political influence, lobbying, and consumer brands.

In this episode, we explore:

📌 Support the Podcast: Art of Citizenry is proudly independent. Support us as we critically explore, challenge, and unravel mainstream narratives by empowering listeners with accessible, nuanced perspectives.

Contribute via PayPal: https://visit.artofcitizenry.com/paypal

Become a Paid Subscriber on Substack: https://artofcitizenry.substack.com/

Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofcitizenry

Follow Manpreet on Instagram: https://instagram.com/manpreetkalra

For more, you can find the full show notes of every episode at https://www.artofcitizenry.com/episodes

We're taught to think of economics as an objective truth. But what if economics isn't neutral at all? What if it's a story shaped by power and by a history that has been carefully edited? A story that celebrates innovation and progress while quietly erasing extraction, exploitation, and the violence behind how wealth became concentrated geographically.

In this episode of Art of Citizenry Podcast, Manpreet Kaur Kalra speaks with economist Carolina Alves about colonialism, capitalism, development economics, and the Eurocentric foundations that continue to shape global economic policy today.

Together, they unpack how mainstream economics often separates markets from history, obscuring the role colonial extraction, slavery, and unequal trade played in building modern wealth. From informal labor markets to communal economic models rooted in reciprocity, this conversation challenges the idea that Eurocentric economic systems represent a universal path toward prosperity.

📌 Note: Due to some audio quality challenges during the recording, we’ve included transcript excerpts to help listeners follow the conversation and engage with the ideas discussed in the episode — visit: artofcitizenry.com/podcast/decolonizing-economics

We explore:

"Decolonizing economics is about something more foundational than representation. It’s about repositioning the vantage point entirely.” – Carolina Alves

Carolina Alves is Associate Professor in Economics at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at University College London, and a Fellow in Economics at Girton College, University of Cambridge. 

Read: “Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction” by Devika Dutt, Carolina Alves, Surbhi Kesar, and Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, 

📌 Support the Podcast: Art of Citizenry is proudly independent. Support us as we critically explore, challenge, and unravel mainstream narratives by empowering listeners with accessible, nuanced perspectives.

Contribute via Paypal: https://visit.artofcitizenry.com/paypal

Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofcitizenry

Explore past episodes of Art of Citizenry Podcast: https://www.artofcitizenry.com/podcast

For more, you can find the full show notes of every episode at https://www.artofcitizenry.com/episodes

In December 2025, the University of Utah became the first major college athletic program to take private equity investment, spinning off its commercial operations into a for-profit company. Half a billion dollars and a public university now answering to Wall Street. In this episode of our series The Private Equity Playbook, host Manpreet Kaur Kalra is joined by collaborator Anna Canning to trace how college athletics went from extracurricular programs serving educational missions to financialized assets in a private equity portfolio.

This is a story about what happens when the logic of investor returns takes the wheel at a public university, and ultimately, who gets left behind. Spoiler: it's not the programs already generating millions. It's women's sports and all those other sports that may no longer make financial sense to a firm looking to make quick returns on their investment.

For decades, the NCAA built a billion-dollar industry on the backs of athletes classified as "amateurs," barring them from receiving fair compensation while coaches pocketed millions and broadcast deals soared. That system only cracked when courts forced it to. NCAA v. Alston. The House v. NCAA settlement. We trace how a wave of legal pressure cracked open the system and how private equity arrived right on cue to profit from the chaos.

In this episode, we explore:

📌 Support the Podcast: Art of Citizenry is proudly independent. Support us as we critically explore, challenge, and unravel mainstream narratives by empowering listeners with accessible, nuanced perspectives.

Contribute via PayPal: https://visit.artofcitizenry.com/paypal

Become a Paid Subscriber on Substack: https://artofcitizenry.substack.com/

Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofcitizenry

Follow Manpreet on Instagram: https://instagram.com/manpreetkalra

For more, you can find the full show notes of every episode at https://www.artofcitizenry.com/episodes

Starbucks built its brand on the idea of the “third place.” But over the past decade, the company has quietly unraveled the very conditions that made that promise possible.

In this episode of Art of Citizenry Podcast, Manpreet Kaur Kalra speaks with Megan Erickson, a Philadelphia-based barista and member of Starbucks Workers United, about the growing labor movement inside Starbucks. Together, they examine the widening gap between the company’s “third place” narrative and the working conditions faced by baristas across the United States.

From unpredictable scheduling and low wages to stalled union contract negotiations and ongoing allegations of union busting, this conversation examines how Starbucks became one of the most prolific labor law violators in modern U.S. history and how organizing by Starbucks Workers United has helped reignite the labor movement across the United States.

This podcast episode breaks down what union organizing looks like in practice, what “good faith bargaining” requires under U.S. labor law, and why thousands of Starbucks workers have gone on strike demanding fair pay, reliable hours, and workplace protections.

In this episode, we explore:

“When the systems in place fail to care for the people who make them run, solidarity gives us the power to build our own systems of care.” – Megan Erickson

How to take action:

📌Support the Podcast: Art of Citizenry is proudly independent. Support us as we critically explore, challenge, and unravel mainstream narratives by empowering listeners with accessible, nuanced perspectives. 

Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofcitizenry

Follow Manpreet on Instagram: https://instagram.com/manpreetkalra

Explore Past Episodes of the Art of Citizenry Podcast with Manpreet Kalra: https://www.artofcitizenry.com/podcast

For more, you can find the full show notes of every episode at https://www.artofcitizenry.com/episodes

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often framed as a technological breakthrough. But behind the headlines is a deeper question: who owns the infrastructure shaping how we communicate, create, and understand truth?

In this episode of Art of Citizenry Podcast, we slow down the AI conversation to ask harder questions – not just about what these systems can do, but who built them, who profits from them, and what we give up by using them. Manpreet Kalra is joined by Vauhini Vara, author of Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age and longtime journalist covering Big Tech, to unpack the structural forces at play behind the AI boom.

Together, we explore how AI is less a neutral technology than a mirror of the economic and ideological forces that built it. A social system shaped by corporate incentives, embedded bias, and the quiet erosion of our ability to define truth for ourselves and what it means for all of us when the infrastructure shaping that truth is privately owned, profit-driven, and constantly learning from us.

This isn't a conversation with easy answers. It's about sitting with complexity, and the uncomfortable reality that opting out is rarely simple.

In this episode, we explore:

AI isn’t just a technical system. It’s a social and economic one. The outputs we see reflect the data they’re trained on, the incentives of the companies building them, and the broader political economy of the internet. If we want different outcomes from AI, the conversation must expand beyond engineering fixes to include questions of ownership, accountability, and power.

Vauhini Vara is the author of Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, named a best book of the year by Esquire, Slate, and Publisher’s Weekly and a winner of the Porchlight Business Book Award. Her previous books are This is Salvaged, which was longlisted for the Story Prize and won the High Plains Book Award, and The Immortal King Rao, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also a journalist, currently working as a contributing writer for Businessweek.

📌Support the Podcast: Art of Citizenry is proudly independent. Support us as we critically explore, challenge, and unravel mainstream narratives by empowering listeners with accessible, nuanced perspectives. 

Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofcitizenry

Follow Manpreet on Instagram: https://instagram.com/manpreetkalra

Explore Past Episodes of the Art of Citizenry Podcast with Manpreet Kalra: https://www.artofcitizenry.com/podcast

For more, you can find the full show notes of every episode at https://www.artofcitizenry.com/episodes