As the Wu-Tang Clan once put it: “Cash moves everything around me... Get the money. Dollar dollar bill, y’all.”

I grew up not wanting to believe this. All the stuff that seemed worth having was hard to put a price tag on. but in a global capitalist world, there’s a lot of hard, sad truth to it. As an American child of the 1980s, I absorbed the message “find yourself!” “Follow your passions!” But there are powerful economic forces at work, shaping our lives and opportunities.

My guest today experienced this in the most intense way imaginable, wrangling with the European Union over the economy of his country, Greece, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown. He saw firsthand what a house of cards global capitalism can be, and what can happen to the ones on the bottom. Yanis Varoufakis is Greece’s former finance minister and the author of two recent books: Adults in the Room and Talking to My Daughter About the Economy.

Surprise conversation-starter clips in this episode:

Slavoj Zizek on the problem with happiness

Steven Pinker on why there are no libertarian countries

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