Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
Detajet e Kanalit
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast is a monthly program devoted to bringing you quality, engaging stories that explain how capitalism has changed over time. We interview historians and social and cultural critics about capitalism’s past, highlighting the political and economic change...
Episode të Fundit
119 episode
Leigh Claire La Berge on Why Capitalism Might Be A Joke
If you work at a so-called laptop job, there are moments every day when your work feels silly, pointless, absurd, even fake.
What if you wrote a...
Bench Ansfield on Arson-for-Profit, Insurance Brownlining, and the Bronx
Arson - which frequently involves the destruction of property - and business are not typically thought to be compatible. Indeed, there is a whole indu...
Kendra Boyd on Black Business and Racial Capitalism during the Great Migration
Take a moment and picture the average person who came North during the Great Migration.
Chances are good that you conjured someone who was Afric...
Trish Kahle on Energy Citizenship and Coal-Fired Democracy in the 20th Century U.S.
What do energy consumers owe energy producers? What does it mean to be a citizen in a coal-fired democracy? In this month's episode, guest Trish Kahle...
Ian Kumekawa on Globalization As Told Through One Ship
How do you write the history of something as abstract, as placeless, and as vast as the globalization that has remade our world over the past several...
Koji Hirata on Steel, Industrialization, and Chinese Socialism
This month's episode looks at the history of Chinese industrialization by focusing on Anshan Iron and Steel Works or Angang, located in Manchuria. Lon...
LIVE! @ BHC 2025
It's now been over a decade since the New York Times declared that the history of capitalism was in full swing at American universities. This podcast...
Justene Hill Edwards on the Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank
In this month's episode Justene Hill Edwards leads listeners on a deep dive into the rise and fall of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, also k...
Erik Baker on the Entrepreneurial Century
Back in high school, my social studies teacher—who was, of course, also the football coach—told my class that entrepreneurs were the heroes of America...
Mary Bridges on Bankers and the Dawn of American Empire
Looking back from our contemporary vantage point, the United States’ global capitalist empire looks both omnipresent and inevitable. Much of the world...
Seth Rockman on Slavery's Material History
A simple leather shoe. A scratchy shirt made of cotton or wool. A roughly-hewn axe. A leather whip, braided in New Jersey. Southern slavery did not ju...
Andrew Kahrl on Inequality, Theft, and Taxation in Modern America
Taxes. Is there anything Americans like to complain about more? This episode takes a deep dive into the U.S. tax system, paying particular attention t...
Andrew McKevitt on Gun Capitalism
450 million. According to our best estimates, that’s how many guns there are in the United States. To put that in perspective: if you gave a firearm t...
Rachel Gross on How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America
In 2022 and 2023, an estimated 50 million Americans went camping. Many others participated in outdoor recreation activities ranging from mountain-clim...
Margot Canaday on Queer Workers in Modern America
In today's episode, Margot Canaday reveals the not-so-hidden history of LGBT workers in modern America. In the absence of state protections, she finds...
Elizabeth Ingleson on the Past and Present of Made in China
Today, China is the U.S. third largest trading partner and second-largest source of imports. This wasn’t always the case. Indeed, in the 1970s, when...
Teresa Ghilarducci on the Past and Future of Retirement
When we study capitalism, we usually focus on the active time in people’s lives: the moments where things like work, consumption, production, trade, a...
Cheryl Narumi Naruse on Singapore, Postcolonial Capitalism, and Becoming Global Asia
In this month's episode, co-host Jessica Levy and guest Cheryl Narumi Naruse examine popular narratives surrounding Singapore's "miraculous" journey f...
Ben Waterhouse on the Dream and Reality of Self Employment
One recent study found that 81% of businesses in the United States have zero employees. That is, they are run by sole proprietors, working for and by...
Brent Cebul on Business, Inequality, and American Liberalism
Most scholars would date the origins of neoliberalism to the 1970s, when a range of crises gave rise to new forms of market-oriented governance.
...
Tim Keogh on Suburban Poverty and the Roots of Postwar Inequality
In 2022, roughly one in 10 suburban residents lived in poverty (9.6%), compared to about one in six in primary cities (16.2%), according to a recent s...
Premilla Nadasen on the Care Economy and the Potential for Radical Care
Today, discussions of care are ubiquitous. From employer-programs promoting self-care to the $800 billion healthcare industry, care forms a central pa...
Hannah Forsyth on the Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglophone World
Are you a professional living and working in an English-speaking country? If so, this episode is for you.
Teachers, doctors, nurses, accountan...
Bart Elmore on Southern Companies Remaking our Economy and the Planet
An iced cold Coca-Cola. A cross-country flight on Delta to visit friends. A much-needed medication overnighted via Fed-Ex. Bulk toilet paper purchased...
Mark Erlich on the Way We Build and Restoring Dignity to Construction Work
This month's episode gives a nod to one of the figures in our logo: the construction worker. Our guest, Mark Erlich has worked in the construction ind...
Chelsea Schields on Oil, Intimacy, and the Offshore
In this month's episode, guest Chelsea Schields discusses oil refining and intimacy, illuminating the social ties and affective attachments engendered...
Joan Flores-Villalobos on How Black Women's Labor Made the Panama Canal
When it was completed in 1914, the Panama Canal nearly halved the travel time between the U.S. West Coast and Europe and revolutionized trade and trav...
Christy Thornton on Mexico, Development, and Governing the Global Economy
In this month's episode, Christy Thornton discusses the surprising influence of post-revolutionary Mexico on some of the twentieth century's most impo...
Special Episode on the Military and the Market
This month, we welcomed Jennifer Mittelstadt back to the show, joined by Mark Wilson, to discuss their new edited volume, The Military and the Market....
Allan Lumba on Monetary Authorities in the American Colonial Philippines
In this episode, historian Allan Lumba explores how the United States wielded monetary authority in the colonial Philippines, including the role of mo...
Chad Pearson on Klansmen, Employer Vigilantes, and Labor Suppression in the Long Nineteenth Century
This month’s episode takes listeners back in time to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time of significant labor unrest. At the time, employer...
Ghassan Moazzin on Foreign Banks and the Making of Modern China
This month’s episode picks up on a theme previously explored on the podcast: international finance. Drawing on a broad range of German, English, Japa...
Claire Dunning on Nonprofit Neighborhoods and Urban Inequality
In this month's episode, Claire Dunning explains how and why non-profits came to play such an important role in U.S. cities after World War II. In doi...
Mircea Raianu on Tata and Global Capitalism in India
In this episode, Mircea Raianu traces the rise of the Tata Group, one of India's largest and oldest companies, from its early days involved in cotton...
Holger Droessler on Coconut Colonialism, Labor, and Globalization in Samoa
This month's episode centers Samoa, including the Pacific islands comprising the present-day independent country of Samoa and American Samoa, examinin...
Keith Wailoo on Racial Marketing and the Rise of Menthol Cigarettes
In 2020, George Floyd was killed by police outside a store in Minneapolis known as “the best place to buy menthols.” Of Black Americans who smoke, eig...
Jason Resnikoff on the Automation Discourse and the Meaning of Work
This month's episode takes a deep dive into the history of work and automation in the post-World War II era. It traces the discourse around automation...
Gregg Mitman on Firestone's Rubber Empire in Liberia
This month's episode focuses on a popular commodity, namely rubber. Despite consuming a large share of the world's rubber supply, the United States ha...
Destin Jenkins on Municipal Debt and Bondholder Power
Indebtedness, like inequality, has become a ubiquitous condition in and beyond the United States. Yet few have probed American cities’ dependence on m...
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer on Student Loans and Higher Education
It is no secret that the United States is facing a crisis with regards to higher education. In this month's episode, historian Elizabeth Tandy Shermer...