Devin Kennedy on Computing and Capitalism
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
Release Date: 09/01/2026
Rebecca Kobrin on How Jewish Immigrants Remade American Banking
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
Sometimes, the most important stories in American history happen in languages besides English. That’s what our guest this month, Rebecca Kobrin, told me during our recent conversation. Her new book, , is a case in point. It tracks banking practices among Eastern European Jews, from the Pale of Settlement in Russia to the avenues of the Lower East Side—a whole world where business was most often conducted in Yiddish. But make no mistake: this isn’t a parochial tale about one immigrant community. In today’s episode, we address some big questions in banking regulation and real...
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A.J. Murphy on How the US Military Embraced Business and Managerialism
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
In his Farewell Address on January 17, 1961, delivered from the White House and aired on national television, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.” In the context of the Cold War, Eisenhower acknowledged the need for military preparedness at all times. “We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions,” stated Eisenhower. “Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.” Those implications were not limited to a new level of closeness between the US military and private industry, but...
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Devin Kennedy on Computing and Capitalism
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
So often, when we hear about computing or computers, we think about disruption—some technological advancement that signals a radical break with all that came before. But what if that’s wrong, or at the very least, incomplete? Today’s guest, Devin Kennedy, argues that the twentieth-century history of computing is marked just as much by continuity as change—even between eras, like Fordism and post-Fordism, that we usually separate with a bright line. I promise you: it’s the only book you’ll read this year that’ll take you all the way from Taylorism up to the 2010 Wall Street flash...
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Danielle Wiggins on Black Excellence and the Making of Modern Liberalism
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
The story of neoliberal capitalism's emergence in the United States typically begins with Ronald Reagan. By contrast, recent scholarship has emphasized the bipartisan nature of the rise of free market politics. Revisiting the history of mid-century liberalism, historians have shown how significant aspects of the New Deal relied on private sector actors and facilitated, as opposed to constrained, market activity. Moving forward in time, they have shown how New Democrats like Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) further repositioned the party in the late 20th century, moving...
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Charles Ponce De Leon on Rolling Stone and Hip Capitalism
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
Rolling Stone: just saying the words conjures a whiff patchouli and pot smoke, flashes of of Jim Morison, Janis Joplin, and Lester Bangs, and strains of the Grateful Dead and Sly and the Family Stone. But our guest this month argues that the magazine was so much more than that. Rolling Stone was in fact pivotal in the remaking of consumer capitalism since the 1960s. In our conversation, we talk about evolving taste cultures, the co-optation of radical politics, and the past and future of criticism. And don’t worry—Lester Bangs is in there too. So fire up your hi-fi, flip on your...
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Dylan Gottlieb on Yuppies, Financialization, and the New Inequality
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
The year was 1984, “The Year of the Yuppie,” according to Newsweek magazine. Yuppies may have been a classic 1980s stereotype, but they were also a very real demographic as revealed in this month's episode featuring our very own Dylan Gottlieb. Gottlieb explains how hundreds of thousands of highly-educated, young, urban professionals flocked to New York and other cities during the 1980s, transforming the US economy in the process. Yuppies, Gottlieb argues, were the footsoldiers of late twentieth-century financialization, writing the legal briefs and crunching the numbers for the...
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Justin Leroy on the Lowest Freedom, Racial Capitalism, and Abolition Democracy
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
The very dregs. Of the very lowest kind. This is how radical abolitionist David Walker described the freedom accorded Black people in the 19th century. In this month’s episode, Justin Leroy explores the economic thought of people like Walker, alongside Maria Stewart, William Apess, James McCune Smith, Frederick Douglass, T. Thomas Fortune, and Ida B. Wells. Despite their prominence in the field of African American history, these figures have rarely been taken up as economic thinkers or theorists of racial capitalism. Treating them as such, as Leroy does, offers an alternative narrative of...
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Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff on Muskism
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
For those in the Global North, the twentieth century was the Fordist century—an era of mass production and mass consumption. But as Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff argue in their new book, there’s another order afoot: . Elon Musk, they show, is an avatar for a whole range of phenomena that have shaped our world: from a vision of white supremacy fostered in South Africa; to a symbiosis between Silicon Valley and the warfare state; to a world where founders become technokings; to a dream of a posthuman future where man and machine have merged into a networked whole. Muskism, they...
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Jessica Levy on the Strange Career of Black Empowerment
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
Today, we welcome Jessica Levy, co-host of Who Makes Cents, onto the program—not as an interviewer, but as a guest. She’s here to talk about her remarkable new book, . This book traces the strange career of black empowerment: from civil rights protests to the boardroom, and from the streets of urban America to the townships of South Africa. Black empowerment, she reveals, was a protean concept, at once radical and conservative, that allowed different constiutencies to sometimes push for change, and at other times, to co-opt more transformative alternatives. Along the way, we’ll...
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Sean Vanatta Joins for a Banking Mega-Pod
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast
To many, banking remains largely invisible—a hidden circulatory system that allocates capital and credit throughout the economy. If it's worth paying any attention to at all, it’s only in moments of crisis—when things clot up, and circulation stops entirely. But in recent years, business and financial historians have reminded us that banks are far more than quiet functionaries. In fact, they are foundational to virtually every aspect of modern life: from public and private investment, to the relationship of the state to its citizens, to the distribution of wealth, to the geographical...
info_outlineSo often, when we hear about computing or computers, we think about disruption—some technological advancement that signals a radical break with all that came before.
But what if that’s wrong, or at the very least, incomplete? Today’s guest, Devin Kennedy, argues that the twentieth-century history of computing is marked just as much by continuity as change—even between eras, like Fordism and post-Fordism, that we usually separate with a bright line.
I promise you: it’s the only book you’ll read this year that’ll take you all the way from Taylorism up to the 2010 Wall Street flash crash.
Listen on to learn more.