The Bob Zadek Show

Conventional wisdom extols the virtues of investing in mutual funds and maximizing 401(k) contributions. Based on the size of the industry that exists to guide these decisions, one would assume there is value in the myriad options given to workers for deferred compensation. But not all savings plans are created equal, says Terry Allen, the serial entrepreneur behind 20 business ventures and the author of Coffee Can Investing: A Better Idea than Mutual Funds in an IRA or 401(k). Terry will join Bob live this Sunday to talk about his provocatively titled new book. They also discuss how special interests on Wall Street have created an unlevel playing field in investing, and how new possibilities for entrepreneurship may represent a silver lining on some unsettling trends.

Conventional wisdom extols the virtues of investing in mutual funds and maximizing 401(k) contributions. Based on the size of the industry that exists to guide these decisions, one would assume there is value in the myriad options given to workers for deferred compensation. But not all savings plans are created equal, says Terry Allen, the serial entrepreneur behind 20 business ventures and the author of Coffee Can Investing: A Better Idea than Mutual Funds in an IRA or 401(k). Terry will join Bob live this Sunday to talk about his provocatively titled new book. They also discuss how special interests on Wall Street have created an unlevel playing field in investing, and how new possibilities for entrepreneurship may represent a silver lining on some unsettling trends.

Double-entry bookkeeping doesn't exactly have a reputation for excitement. Indeed, who among us spends weekends and evenings painstakingly tallying our assets against our liabilities when there are so many delightful distractions around? Jacob Soll, a historian and accounting professor at the University of Southern California, thinks accounting needs a makeover, if not a renaissance. Soll has demolished the boring accountant stereotype with his new book, "The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations." Soll's research takes us behind the scenes to reveal the ways that bookkeeping practices have shaped and been shaped by different cultures during critical historical periods. Find out whether modern governments and financial institutions can survive in a society that neglects the task of "keeping the books balanced." Or, are we prone to yet more financial crises—or worse, a moral reckoning with our debts?

The debate over the United States’ exit from Iraq is back, with the new wave of violence after a brief (relative) calm. Clearly, the vision of a peaceful, unified, and democratic Iraq has not worked out as proponents of the invasion hoped. But could this relapse have been avoided if we had only stayed longer? Not according to Ivan Eland, Director of the Independent Institute’s Center for Peace & Liberty and the guest for the full hour.

Just before the draw-down of troops began in 2009, Eland penned a short, prescient tract on what a successful exit strategy for Iraq would entail. Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq argued against the Bush administration’s attempt to cast the country in the democratic image of the United States. His book laid a foundation for a more realistic political agreement: a negotiated partition of the country among the major factions that would grant each faction autonomy under a weak central government. The Obama administration got the “exit” part right, but its desire to maintain a unified Iraq continues to do damage, as de facto partition and civil war erupt in the absence of negotiation. Learn how the West’s misguided political correctness and short-sighted interventions over the past century have set the stage for the latest struggle in the Middle East.

For decades, the North Korean regime has kept its oppressive rule hidden from the rest of the world. But slowly, the truth has been emerging. Defectors like Yeonmi Park—who left the country in 2007 at the age of 15—have lived to tell the stories about their escape, and of the changing political landscape they left behind. Yet in spite of the continuing famines and desperate poverty, there are rays of hope, as markets slowly work their way into the North Korean social fabric. Bob speaks with Yeonmi Park about her previous way of life as one of the rising "black market generation" that is finally experiencing the power of spontaneous voluntary cooperation. Can the trend toward freer markets and trade be stopped now that it has a foothold? Or will North Korea's isolationist "juche" ideology hold fast against the rest of the world? You won’t want to miss this inside look into a country that appears to be slowly coming out of the shadows.

Alice Goffman is no Ivory Tower academic. The author of a harrowing new field study, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, Goffman spent the better part of a decade immersing herself in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Philadelphia. Once established, she began to study people’s lives in light of certain trends in law enforcement that are shattering communities with deep existing fractures. New quotas for certain kinds of arrests, combined with increasingly efficient methods of policing the drug war, have set the stage for a real-life drama that rivals Shakespeare's darkest tragedies. While this struggle unfolds outside the view of most Americans, the conflicts and social ills being amplified by the modern criminal justice system should be of concern to everyone. Family members are turned against one another; children view arrest and detention as a rite of passage; and market forces show up in strange places as entrepreneurial energy is channeled into running from the law. Bob gets the inside scoop on Goffman's breathtaking research, as the two discuss the causes and consequences of institutionalized poverty.