Economics & Beyond with Rob Johnson

Paul Jay: Can Capitalism Deal with the Climate & Nuclear Threats?

Documentarian Paul Jay talks to Rob Johnson about how major investment fund managers, such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, exercise enormous control over public companies, where they use voting rights to stymie efforts to curb climate change.

David Sirota: Socialism in America

David Sirota, Jacobin Magazine editor-at-large and former speechwriter for Bernie Sanders, talks to Rob Johnson about the future of democratic socialism in America after the Sanders campaign.

Joe Boyd: Music in a Time of Social Change

Rob Johnson talks to music producer Joe Boyd about the musical inflection point of the 1960’s, and how social change affects art and artists.

Cathy O’Neil: Will Colleges Reopen?

Cathy O’Neil, founder of O'Neil Risk Consulting and Algorithmic Audit and author of the book Weapons of Math Destruction, talks to Rob Johnson about the crisis facing universities in the pandemic.

Alex Gibney: The Great Crimes of Our Society

Alex Gibney, documentarian and director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, talks to Rob Johnson about the crimes perpetuated by American government and society today, including systemic racism, police brutality, and neglect of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Elaine Brown Pt. 2: Music and Activism in the Struggle for Racial Justice

In the second of a two-part interview, Rob Johnson talks to author, activist, and former Black Panther Party chairwoman Elaine Brown about her music, her housing work and entrepreneurship in Oakland, CA, and the political moment.

Elaine Brown Pt. 1: The 400-year Struggle for Racial Justice in the US

In the first of a two-part interview, Rob Johnson talks to author, activist, and former Black Panther Party chairwoman Elaine Brown about the killing of George Floyd and the protests sweeping the U.S. in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.

Brian Barnier: The Future of the Central Bank

Brian Barnier, Director of Analytics at ValueBridge Advisors, talks to Rob Johnson about how the pandemic could change the mission of central banks.

Michael Pettis: Global Fracture - Nationalism on the March

Michael Pettis, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, talks to Rob Johnson about how trade wars really are class wars and how nationalist conflict is shaping US-China relations and fracturing Europe.

Wendy Brown: A Neoliberal Pandemic

UC Berkeley political theorist Wendy Brown talks to Rob Johnson about how the pandemic and protests against police brutality lay bare a crisis of neoliberalism.