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 and Bloomberg, the makers of The Shrink Next Door, comes a new story of incredible wealth, betrayal and what happens when “doing good” goes really really bad. Learn more here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spellcaster-the-fall-of-sam-bankman-fried/id1685258534

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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 DeSantis has defined them, involve preserving parents’ prerogatives, curtailing harmful discussions of race, gender and historical injustices (or “wokism,” in his description), and reasserting the state’s right to be an educational arbiter. DeSantis’s critics, including Tim, say Desantis’ policies are retrogressive and benighted – and undermine students’ understanding of their own bodies, minds, histories and place in the world. Today we’re going to focus on contentious debates around how two subjects are taught: African-American history and sex education. Marlon Williams-Clark is a high school social studies teacher in Florida, and Lisa Jarvis is a science columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

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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 nerve. There are so many tensions still at play in blue-collar and white-collar workplaces: work-from-home, wages, and balancing work and gratification – all in the shadow of a pandemic that took about seven million lives globally. Sarah Green Carmichael has written about work culture, including the “Pity City” boss, childcare, and the merits of hybrid work as a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. 

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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 prominent Texas businessman, Harlan Crow. Thomas also has a spouse who makes a living advocating for conservative causes that have also found their way to the court. How disinterested can the justices be ruling on weighty matters like corporate power, business competition, and the future of democracy when their own wallets are involved? Gabe Roth is the founder and executive director of Fix the Court, a nonpartisan advocacy group pushing for various court reforms, including new ethics guidelines.

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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 Systems and Smartmatic, at the center of a scam…that wasn’t a scam. That invited both companies’ wrath and they have sued Fox for libel. A Delaware judge, Eric Davis, recently allowed Dominion’s claim to proceed to trial – opening arguments were supposed to start this week but have been delayed. In moving the case along, Judge Davis indicated that he believed Dominion’s claims had substantial merit and Fox’s defenses might be built on sand. Joining Crash Course is David Folkenflik, the media correspondent for National Public Radio and the author of “Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires.” 

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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg recently charged former president Donald Trump with crimes related to multiple acts of fraudulent bookkeeping. The case sparked vigorous debates about when presidents are and aren’t fair game for law enforcement officials. Tim happens to believe that no one – including the president – is above the law, but there are good and diverse perspectives on all sides of this issue. To examine Trump’s collision with the rule of law, and the tarpit of legal cases and investigations engulfing the former president – in New York, Georgia, Washington and elsewhere – Tim invited Noah Feldman to our podcast. Noah is a Harvard Law professor, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, and a wildly graceful writer and thinker.

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Berlin is the epicenter of one of the most grotesque authoritarian moments in world history: the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, and all of the horrors that flowed out of that. To consider that history, and the possible threats from authoritarianism in the present, Tim asked his colleague Andreas Kluth, who writes about politics and national security for Bloomberg Opinion, to be his tour guide around the city. Together, they examined three landmark sites – the Reichstag building, Hitler’s bunker, and the Holocaust Memorial – to see what can be learned from the past.

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Imagine you couldn’t take another breath because oxygen disappeared. You gasp for air until your body shuts down. Money provides oxygen to our economy. When the money flow slows, so does the economy. If money stops circulating, the economy seizes. Like your body deprived of oxygen, it shuts down. That’s why banking crises freak out people. Banks are the lungs of a thriving economy, oxygenating everything with money. Silicon Valley Bank collapsed recently, a debacle that exposed fault lines running beneath a legendary financial ecosystem. But it was just one bank. Since then, though, other banks have run into trouble. Sitting atop that uncertainty is the Federal Reserve, the powerhouse that sets interest rates – and thus governs how easy it is for money to course through the economy. To help solve that mystery, Tim spoke with Paul Davies, a financial columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and somebody steeped in the chaos that can happen when banks and money collide with human frailty – and the power of the Fed.

Corrects audio to remove reference to Peter Thiel in discussion about the run on Silicon Valley Bank. 

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When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he intended to quickly subjugate the entire country. That, of course, didn’t happen. Ukraine – backed by a global alliance – fought back. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have died and tens of millions of people have been displaced, energy markets have been disrupted, diplomatic relationships have been reordered, Western Europe has rearmed, and NATO has been revitalized. Punishing sanctions have been imposed on Russia, but strangling its economy has been difficult. Still, Putin’s war machine has been exposed as disastrously inept, and he’s threatened to use nuclear weapons if necessary. To take stock of all of this, Tim is joined by Stephen Kotkin, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who is widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on Russia – its history, culture, and economy. 

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Remember the early days of COVID-19 lockdowns when, practically overnight, it seemed that every shop closed its doors? Do you remember how all of those small businesses you might have taken for granted – the ones that gave life and an identity to your community – suddenly felt essential to you? Tim watched lots of small businesses in his small town in New Jersey struggle, including his favorite local bakery, Montclair Bread Company. Three years later, he tracks the trials and tribulations this unimaginable public health and economic crisis threw at the bakery and its owner, Rachel Wyman. 

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