David J. Lynch, "The World's Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right)" (PublicAffairs, 2025)| Listen on Anghami

Sep 4

Santiago Zabala, "Signs from the Future: Philosophy of Warnings" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Returning to NBN is the philosopher Santiago Zabala, here to introduce his new book Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia University Press, 2025). Warnings, for Zabala, are not synonymous with predictions. They are instead as much about the present as the futu ... Show More

53m 45s

Sep 1

David Edmonds, "Death in a Shallow Pond: A Philosopher, a Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Imagine this: You’re walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around for her parents, but nobody is there. You’re the only person who can save her and you must act immediately. But as you approach the po ... Show More

55m 30s

Aug 30

Daniel Wortel-London, "The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981" (U of Chicago Press, 2025)

Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances depend on attracting wealthy firms and residents, municipal governments lavish public subsidies on their behalf. Whatever form this str ... Show More

30m 20s

Mar 2024

Inheritance - Rise Of The Affluent Middle Class

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has witnessed a significant increase in wealth inequality. One of the contributing factors to this disparity is inheritance. As the balance between the rich and poor widens, we are witnessing the emergence of a prominent affluent mi ... Show More

4m 26s

Feb 2025

Does class inequality still matter? The Great British Class Survey ten years on

Contributor(s): Aditya Chakrabortty, Clare MacGillivray, Professor Mike Savage , Zarah Sultana MP | It is ten years since the seminal Social Class in the 21st Century was published. We will revisit the findings, ask if the trends have changed, why class seems to have fallen off t ... Show More

1h 23m

Mar 2017

Do poor people make the rich richer?

Karl Marx argued that the bourgeoisie got rich by creaming their wealth off the proletariat who did all the work. But in this podcast Prof Steve Keen tells Phil Dobbie that it’s not the capitalists who are getting rich from the workers – it’s the often ignored “third class” of ci ... Show More

18m 24s

May 2024

Amy Schiller, "The Price of Humanity: How Philanthropy Went Wrong—And How to Fix It" (Melville House, 2023)

Amy Schiller's The Price of Humanity: How Philanthropy Went Wrong—And How to Fix It (Melville House, 2023) makes an attempt to rescue philanthropy from its progressive decline into vanity projects that drive wealth inequality, so that it may support human flourishing as originall ... Show More

38m 36s

Feb 2024

Making a case for the inheritance tax (with David Stasavage)

Over the next two decades, $30 trillion of wealth is expected to be transferred from Baby Boomers to their heirs. Journalists and financial experts have been referring to this event as the “Great Wealth Transfer,” and it's important that we understand the policies that make such ... Show More

41m 45s

Sep 2024

Jack Palmer, "Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)

Jack Palmer’s Zygmunt Bauman and the West: A Sociology of Intellectual Exile (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023) invites us to reconsider a figure who sociology thought it knew well. Presenting Bauman as occupying an ‘exilic’ position as ‘in, but not of, the West’ Palmer pres ... Show More

1h 20m

Oct 2024

Lennard J. Davis, "Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It" (Duke UP, 2024)

For generations most of the canonical works that detail the lives of poor people have been created by rich or middle-class writers like Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, or James Agee. This has resulted in overwhelming depictions of poor people as living abject, violent lives in f ... Show More

32m 24s

Jun 2023

Daniel R. Smith, "The Fall and Rise of the English Upper Class: Houses, Kinship and Capital Since 1945" (Manchester UP, 2023)

Who are the English upper class? In The Fall and Rise of the English Upper Class: Houses, Kinship and Capital Since 1945 (Manchester UP, 2023) Daniel Smith, a lecturer in sociology at Cardiff University, offers an analysis of the role and power of the upper class in English socie ... Show More

48m 52s

Jan 2025

Devin Fergus, “Land of the Fee: Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class” (Oxford UP, 2018)

Politicians, economists, and the media have put forth no shortage of explanations for the mounting problem of wealth inequality – a loss of working class jobs, a rise in finance-driven speculative capitalism, and a surge of tax policy decisions that benefit the ultra-rich, among ... Show More

45m 5s

Jan 2024

Matthew O. Jackson, "The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors" (Vintage, 2019)

Social networks existed and shaped our lives long before Silicon Valley startups made them virtual. For over two decades economist Matthew O. Jackson, a professor at Stanford University, has studied how the shape of networks and our positions within them can affect us. In this in ... Show More

1h 6m

David J. Lynch, "The World's Worst Bet: ...