Cited Podcast

We’re beginning a mid-season break. If you’re new to Cited, this is a good time to explore our large archive. On this episode, we re-post part one of our award-winning series, the (ir)Rational Alaskans. After the unprecedented Exxon Valdez oil spill, a jury of ordinary Alaskans decided that Exxon had to be punished. However, Exxon fought back against their punishment. They did so, in part, by supporting research that suggested jurors are irrational. This work came from an esteemed group of psychologists, behavioural economists, and legal theorists–including Daniel Kahneman, and Cass Sunstein. That series came out in the summer of 2024. Recently, it was honoured with a Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association. If you’ve already heard it, you could check out some of our other environmental-focused episodes deeper in the Cited archive, including: the Battle of Buxton, America’s Chernobyl, and Modifying Maize. Plus: Live in Toronto? Come out to our live event, October 2nd.

A cowboy hat-wearing Goldwater conservative named Dave Foreman got religion and then founded the most radical environmental group of recent memory, Earth First! They dreamed of a ‘deep ecology’ that recognized the inherent value of nature, and they committed to protecting that nature at almost any cost. Yet, in putting the earth first, did Dave Foreman relegate humanity to a distant second place? This is the third episode of our new season, Green Dreams. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page. Plus: Live in Toronto? Come out to our live event, October 2nd.

An Albertan oil man and a socialist policy wonk from Saskatchewan banded together to think up “eco-development,” a precursor to today’s sustainable development. This unlikely duo forged a global consensus at the United Nations, effectively codifying the reigning orthodoxy of liberal environmental governance. They told us that capitalism and sustainability are indeed compatible. Might that be the most utopian of all green dreams? If you want to learn more about this history, we recommend the work of Dr. Steven Bernstein of the University of Toronto, whose was formative in the shaping of this episode. We recommend his excellent book The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism. This is the second episode of our new season, Green Dreams. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page. There, you will find information about next week’s episode: The Green Monkey Wrench. Plus: Live in Toronto? Come out to our live event, October 2nd.

In the 1970s, Gerard O’Neill drew up detailed plans for large space colonies. The Princeton physicist claimed that these colonies could beam limitless energy back down to Earth, solving all our environmental problems. As climate change accelerates, O’Neill’s once-forgotten green dream has become influential again; many of today’s corporate space evangelists refer to themselves as “Jerry’s Kids.” For solutions to Earth’s problems, should we look to the stars? Plus, in the back half, we talk to Mary-Jane Rubenstein about the religious and colonial language of the early space evangelists, and why that language persists into the present day. This is the first episode of our new season, Green Dreams. In Green Dreams, we tell stories of radical environmental thinkers and their dreams for our green future. Should we make those dreams reality, or are they actually nightmares? For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page. Check out that page to see a preview of episode two, The Green Wonks.

Introducing our new season, Green Dreams. Accepting the reality of climate change is just the beginning. What comes next? In Green Dreams, we tell stories of radical environmental thinkers and their dreams for our green future. Should we make those dreams reality, or are they actually nightmares? Starting September 9, 2025, with weekly episodes through October.

The MAGA movement scores big wins by taking cheap shots at experts. Now, some worry that Donald Trump could try to oust Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The typical centrist position is to defend the supposedly impartial, apolitical expertise of such figures. Yet, we know that is not exactly right. Is there a better way to imagine a better bank? In our first segment, we speak with Frances Coppala, author of The Case for People’s Quantitative Easing. It’s something of a case study in Fed politics, revealing how their decisions post-Global Financial Crisis served the rich, and not working people. Yet, saying that these experts are political does not mean we have to be hyper-partisan reactionary hacks. Instead, democratizing the bank could offer a better way forward. That’s according to Annelise Riles, a professor of law and of anthropology, and author of the book Financial Citizenship: Experts, Publics, and the Politics of Central Banking. Riles is also host the Foreign Policy podcast Everyday Ambassador, which its new second season out now. What would democratizing the Fed look like, and would that really counter the powerful financial interests that have so thoroughly captured the institution? Programming Note: This is the final episode of Use & Abuse of Economic Expertise, a season that tells stories of the political and scholarly battles behind the economic ideas that shape our world. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page. We will back with a new season focussed on environmental politics in early 2025, so make sure you are subscribed to our podcast (Apple, Spotify, manual RSS).

For much of the 20th century, few economists studied inequality. “Watching the study of inequality was like watching the grass grow,” is the way inequality scholar James K. Galbraith put it to us. Yet, the inequality studies grass is growing today–really, it’s something of a lush jungle. Arguably, the return of inequality studies is biggest change that has happened in economics over the last decade or so. Why did it return? Just as importantly, how could it have possibly disappeared? On this episode, we survey the broad political and intellectual history of inequality studies in economics. First, economist Branko Milanovic, author of Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War, introduces us to a few of the reasons why inequality was marginalized, including the mathematization of the economic mainstream. In short, we sidelined the political in political economy. Then, political theorist Michael Thompson, author of The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequality in America, introduces us to the work of Frank Knight and other market-friendly economists who provided ideological justification for widening inequality. Finally, inequality scholar Poornima Paidipaty, speaks to us about the return of inequality studies, particularly through the landmark work of Thomas Piketty. Yet, Paidipaty and her co-author Pedro Ramos Pinto highlight some of the limits of Picketty’s vision in their article “Revisiting the “Great Levelling”: The limits of Piketty’s Capital and Ideology for understanding the rise of late 20th century inequality.” This is episode three of the Use & Abuse of Economic Expertise. This season tells stories of the political and scholarly battles behind the economic ideas that shape our world. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page.

We’re on break this week as everyone gears up for, and puzzles through, the results of this week’s US election. We’ll be back with new content next week. However, we have an episode from the Darts and Letters archive that is especially relevant to our ongoing Cited season, the Use and Abuse of Economic Expertise. It’s about the shifting political discourse around global financial elites. The World Economic Forum has become the bugbear of the right-wing in Canada, and beyond. Conspiracies swirl about how this shadowy, globalist cabal that wants us to live in pods, eat bugs, and “own nothing, but be happy.” It’s tempting to dismiss these impulses as mere conspiracy theory and faux populism. Even if that’s true, there are many things wrong with the WEF–as any good leftist would (or should) tell you. Yet, it seems that we have let up a bit. The WEF is yet another example of the scrambled ideologues of our moment. Conservatives condemn the WEF, and news organizations like Rebel cover it doggedly; at the same time, left-leaning NGOs speak there, and progressive news organizations say little. What’s going on? On this episode, we examine the shifting political discourse surrounding our global financial elites. How can the left operate in this ideologically confusing moment? First, we take it back to the heyday of the 90s global justice movement. Activist, author, and academic Raj Patel revisits the Battle in Seattle. Then too, there were some reactionary forces pushing an anti-globalization line against the WTO. However, the real politics there were different: it was built on global justice and global solidarity. Could we bring back the spirit of the 90s? Then, we go to Davos and look for left-leaning protesters organizing against the WEF. Each year, there is a planned “protest hike,” quite far from the actual WEF site, because Swiss authorities push demonstrates away. Yet, the WEF also invites individual activists in. Producer Marc Apollonio speaks with three Swiss organizers — from Strike WEF, the Young Socialists of Switzerland, and from Greenpeace — to learn about how they are pushed and pulled by the WEF. Finally, academic and documentarian Joel Bakan is well-known for his hit documentary The Corporation, which was released in 2003–not long after the Battle in Seattle. Today, he tells us the politics are completely different: corporate leaders, including those at WEF, tell us they’re actually the good guys. His new follow-up film The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel says that this new warm-and-fuzzy branding makes the corporation even more dangerous.

We look at the shifting landscape of economic thinking within the Democratic Party. First, historian Lily Geismer, author of Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality, tells us the story of how the Democrats became captured by the Clintonian ‘Third Way.’ The Third Way argued that economic policy should move away from the sunset industries, like the unionized industrial labour that typically made the Democratic base, and move towards the sunrise industries of tech and finance. Then, the Biden team came to see this thinking as precipitating the rise of Trumpism. So free-wheeling trade and industrial policy is out, and the Clinton-era neoliberal consensus just is not a consensus anymore–some even claim neoliberalism is dead. Bidenomics replaced it, whatever that is. Yet, Bidenomics was a political dud, and now it looks like it might be on the way out. Where is the US’ economic policy thinking going on November 5th, and beyond? We try to figure that out, with the help of political economist Mark Blyth, author of the forthcoming Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers. This is episode two of the Use & Abuse of Economic Expertise. This season tells stories of the political and scholarly battles behind the economic ideas that shape our world. For a full list of credits, and for the rest of the episodes, visit the series page.

Economics sometimes feels like physics–so sturdy, so objective, and so immutable. Yet, behind every clean number or eye-popping graph, there is usually a rather messy story, a story shaped by values, interests, ideologies, and petty bureaucratic politics. In our new mini-series, the Use and Abuse of Economic Expertise, we tell the hidden stories of the economic ideas that shape our world. For future episodes of our series, and a full list of credits, visit our series page. On episode one, we begin at the beginning: the invention of the modern economy, or at least the idea of the economy. It starts with one measure: the GDP, or gross domestic product. It’s a measure that comes to define what we mean by ‘the economy.’ Before GDP, we did not really speak in those terms. Cited producer Alec Opperman talks to sociologist Dan Hirshman, who brings the story of the man who pioneered the GDP, Simon Kuznets. Yet, the GDP was not the measure the Kuznets hoped it would be. It’s a story that reveals the surprisingly contentious politics of counting things up. Plus, what about alternatives to GDP? The Genuine Progress Indicator, the Human Development Index, the Green GDP, and so on. These measures are said to be more progressive, as they often capture things we value (like, care work for instance), and subtracting out things we could use less off (like, environmental degradation). Scholars and policy wonks have been raging about these types of measures for decades, but they have not taken off. Why? Economic historian Dirk Philipsen, author of the Little Big Number: How GDP Came to Rule the World and What to Do About It, talks to Alec about why a good number alone is never enough to change the world.