Via "The Investor's Field Guide" podcast | I’ve often heard that good investors are a bit like journalists: doggedly collecting evidence and building an understanding of how all the pieces of a company or investment fit together. My guest this week is one of my favorite writers and journalists, Bethany McLean. Across her career, Bethany… more
Via WNYC | For this week's Please Explain, Emily Witt, journalist and author of Nollywood: The Making of a Film Empire, explains all things Nollywood. Nollywood began in Nigeria in the 1990s and has grown into one of the most recognized cultural centers of the world, producing more movies every year than Hollywood. Witt's book takes readers on a… more
Via WNYC, Guest host Arun Venugopal speaks with journalist Will Doig about his new book, High-Speed Empire: Chinese Expansion and the Future of Southeast Asia. Today, China owns a network of 14,000 miles of high-speed rail, far more than the rest of the world combined, and it is now pushing its railway expansion further into Southeast Asia. The… more
The Democratic Republic of Congo is known best for its robust but troubled mining sector, which attracts 80 percent of the country’s Foreign Direct Investment but generates only 10 percent of its tax revenue. But far less attention is paid to Congo’s agriculture, which generates 42 percent of its GDP and involves the majority of… more
Less than a decade ago, China did not have a single high-speed train in service. Now, the Pan-Asia Railway portion of the One Belt One Road initiative could transform Southeast Asia. Will Doig traveled through Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore to chronicle the dramatic transformations taking place. Do ordinary people have a voice in this… more
Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen is an outspoken critic of Putin and Trump, and was just named one of the Five Most Important Intellectuals in America Today by The Washington Post. Her new book "Never Remember" with photos by Misha Friedman, commemorates those who died in the gulags and explains how Putin’s totalitarian state is whitewashing… more
On this week's episode of UNDERREPORTED, Nicholas Lemann sits down with Helen C. Epstein to talk about her new book ANOTHER FINE MESS: AMERICA, UGANDA, AND THE WAR ON TERROR. Is America to blame for decades of war in eastern Africa? Who is Yoweri Museveni? And where is Trump on all of this?
Critics called it the “sleep campaign” because Angela Merkel did everything in her power to send voters into a slumber. Her tactic in the German federal election, termed “asymmetric demobilisation,” was designed to depress turnout amongst opposition parties by making a maximally inoffensive pitch to the electorate. It successfully pushed her main opponents, the Social… more
The lifecycle of the populist movement is well-known. In opposition, where they may whinge at leisure about corrupt elites and the bias media, populists flourish and multiply; but once they win power, they almost always suffer an identity crisis. It’s tough to lambaste the establishment if you are the establishment. Just ask Syriza, the radical… more
