Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer
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Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer
We are living through a paradigm shift from trickle-down neoliberalism to middle-out economics — a new understanding of who gets what and why. Join zillionaire class-traitor Nick Hanauer and some of the world’s leading economic and political thinkers as they explore the latest thinking on how the ec...
Recent Episodes
449 episodes
Chains of Command: How Franchising Turned Control Without Responsibility Into a Business Model (with Brian Callaci)
When you walk into a McDonald’s, it looks like one company. But legally, the person making your fries probably doesn’t work for McDonald’s at all. Bri...
The Joy of Money (with Carrie Joy Grimes)
Most personal finance advice starts with the same basic premise: you’re doing money wrong. But Carrie Joy Grimes, founder of WorkMoney and author of T...
What Happened to Liberal Democracy (with Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu)
Nobel Prize-winning MIT economist Daron Acemoglu joins Nick and Goldy to discuss his new book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy? Remaking a Politics...
What Happens When the Other Washington Stops Enforcing Antitrust? (with WA State Attorney General Nick Brown)
Paramount Skydance wants to merge with Warner Bros. Discovery in a $111 billion deal that would put even more of Hollywood—and two major newsrooms—und...
The Good Life Economy (with Elizabeth Wilkins)
What is the economy for — GDP, corporate profits, or people?
This week, Nick and Goldy talk with Elizabeth Wilkins, President and CEO of...
Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics: Productivity Doesn’t Trickle Down (with Preston Mui)
Some of the world’s richest executives are selling AI as the engine of a yet-to-be realized “historic” productivity boom — while warning that it will...
Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics: Austerity Politics (with Clara Mattei)
This week, we’re continuing our archive miniseries, Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics, with the myth that austerity is responsible economic poli...
Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics: Zombie Economics (with Paul Krugman)
This week, we’re continuing our archive miniseries, Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics, with the myth that bad economic ideas die once the eviden...
Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics: Shareholder Value (with William Lazonick and Lenore Palladino)
This week, we’re continuing our archive miniseries, Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics, with the myth that corporations exist to maximize shareho...
Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics: Regulations Kill Growth (with Robert Reich)
This week, we’re kicking off our archive miniseries, Myths That Built Trickle-Down Economics, with one of the most persistent myths in American politi...
AI Job Loss Is Real. The Catastrophe Is Optional (with Kathryn Edwards)
AI doomsdayers want us to believe mass job loss would be unprecedented. But Kathryn Anne Edwards has a sharp reminder: In the first five weeks of the...
The Policy Choices That Suppressed American Wages (with Josh Bivens and Larry Mishel)
Why have wages for working Americans stagnated for decades—even as productivity, corporate profits, and the wealth of the people at the top continued...
Market Humanism: A New Operating System for the Economy (with Nick Hanauer)
For the first time in Pitchfork Economics history, Nick Hanauer is on the other side of the mic.
Goldy and Paul sit down with Nick to dis...
What Comes After Neoliberalism? (with Nick Hanauer & Eric Beinhocker)
This week, we’re sharing a special episode from Washington Monthly featuring Pitchfork Economics co-host Nick Hanauer and Oxford professor Eric Beinho...
The Worker Power Missing From the Abundance Debate (with Kate Andrias and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez)
Everyone wants more housing, more clean energy, more transit, more care infrastructure, and more of the things people need to live good lives. But too...
How the AI Oligarchy Went Hyperscale (with Tim Murphy)
The AI “cloud” sounds weightless. But behind every chat bot, every prompt, and every promise of a coming AI revolution is a massive physical footprint...
Why Philanthropy [STILL] Isn’t the Answer with (with Anand Giridharadas)
Billionaires are shaping everything from elections to education to climate policy—and they want us to believe it's generosity.
That’s why...
Crypto, Cryptocurrency Scams, and the Illusion of Easy Money (with Ben McKenzie)
Crypto is back—new hype cycles, rising prices, and fresh promises that this time cryptocurrency is changing the financial system for good. But the que...
From Safety Net to Power Base: Reclaiming Economic Power for Working People (with Jamie Keene)
The social safety net wasn’t supposed to work like this.
Decades of neoliberal choices from politicians in both parties reshaped it—turni...
The Second Estate: Where Billionaires Don’t Pay. You Do. (with Ray D. Madoff)
Would it be a surprise if we told you the rich don’t actually live in the same tax system as everyone else?
Tomorrow is Tax Day, when mil...
The Wage Standard: What’s Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It (with Arin Dube)
Corporate profits are booming. So why haven’t most workers gotten a raise?
For decades, we’ve been told a simple story: work harder, beco...
The Boomcession: Booming on Paper. Brutal in Real Life. (with Matt Stoller)
What happens when the economic data says one thing, but people’s lives say another?
This week, Nick and Goldy talk to Matt Stoller about...
The $79 Trillion Price of Inequality (with Carter Price)
Over the last 50 years, nearly $79 trillion that could have gone to the bottom 90%…didn’t.
Where did it go—and what did that cost you?
Swiftynomics: Who’s Afraid of Women’s Economic Power? (with Misty Heggeness)
What Is Swiftynomics—and Why Does It Matter?
Taylor Swift didn’t just break records—she broke the way economists think about the economy....
Same Cart, Different Price: When the Invisible Hand Becomes an Algorithm (with Lindsay Owens)
The price you see online might not be the real price.
A new investigation found that Instacart was quietly running pricing experiments—ch...
Should There Be a Limit to Wealth? (with Ingrid Robeyns)
Economic debates often focus on poverty — how to raise wages, strengthen safety nets, and ensure people don’t fall too far behind. But what if fairnes...
AI Won’t Decide the Future of Work—We Will (with David Autor)
Every wave of new technology has come with the same promise: productivity rises, and everyone benefits. That’s not how it usually plays out.
LIVE FROM DC: The Magic Wand Question — Policy Pitches for Working People
If you could order a presidential administration to do one specific thing to improve the lives of working people — what would it be?
At D...
LIVE FROM DC: Abundance and Social Democracy: Enemies or Allies?
Can we build an economy that delivers abundance without abandoning democratic accountability and economic equity?
Recorded live at Democr...
A Government Built to Stall—and What That Means for Democracy (with Hannah Garden-Monheit)
If democracy is going to survive, it has to deliver.This week, Goldy and Civic Ventures president Zach Silk are joined by Hannah Garden-Monheit, a for...
Revisiting Reimagining Capitalism (with Rebecca Henderson)
As inequality deepens, democratic institutions strain, and climate risk accelerates, it’s becoming impossible to ignore a basic question: What is capi...
Revisiting the Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order (with Gary Gerstle)
Every era runs on an economic story. For the last half-century, ours has been neoliberalism — the belief that if you free markets from constraints, pr...
Revisiting How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic Against Workers (with Elizabeth Anserson)
Americans have been told that working harder is the path to dignity, security, and success. But what if that promise was hijacked?
This w...
The Story That Built Today’s Economy (with George Monbiot and Binyamin Appelbaum)
Most people buy the fiction that markets are “natural,” inequality is inevitable, and government should step aside — but where did that idea come from...
How Economists Cause Harm Even as They Aspire to Do Good (with George DeMartino)
For more than a century, economists have told us they’re simply “describing the world as it is.” But what if their theories aren’t neutral — and are q...
If America Is “Winning,” Why Does the Economy Feel Like This? (with Talmon Joseph Smith)
America has never been wealthier—so why does it feel so hard to get by?
New York Times economics reporter Talmon Joseph Smith joins Nick...
The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding (with Osita Nwanevu)
Extreme inequality and democratic decline aren’t separate crises—they’re the same crisis. This week, Osita Nwanevu joins Paul and Goldy to explain how...
From Abundance to Enshittification: 2025’s Must-Read Economics Books
This week, Paul and Goldy look back at the most notable economics books of the year. They discuss Ezra Klein and David Thompson’s Abundance, Cory Doct...
CORE Econ: Rewriting Econ 101 for the Real World (with Suresh Naidu and Wendy Carlin)
Econ 101 shapes how millions of people understand the economy—but what if the textbooks are teaching a worldview that’s outdated, oversimplified, and...
The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America (with Mehrsa Baradaran)
Law professor Mehrsa Baradaran joins Nick and Goldy to reveal how neoliberalism wasn’t just a misguided economic theory—it was a “quiet coup” that rew...