Fox News – at least the part represented by the network’s powerhouse evening talk shows – is often an unfettered disinformation machine. It has propagated myths, far-right talking points, and conspiracy theories with unencumbered gusto. Until that is, it helped circulate the Big Lie about electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election. It placed two voting machine companies, Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, at the center of a scam…that wasn’t a scam. That invited both companies’ wrath and they have sued Fox for libel. A Delaware judge, Eric Davis, recently allowed Dominion’s claim to proceed to trial – opening arguments were supposed to start this week but have been delayed. In moving the case along, Judge Davis indicated that he believed Dominion’s claims had substantial merit and Fox’s defenses might be built on sand. Joining Crash Course is David Folkenflik, the media correspondent for National Public Radio and the author of “Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires.” 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg recently charged former president Donald Trump with crimes related to multiple acts of fraudulent bookkeeping. The case sparked vigorous debates about when presidents are and aren’t fair game for law enforcement officials. Tim happens to believe that no one – including the president – is above the law, but there are good and diverse perspectives on all sides of this issue. To examine Trump’s collision with the rule of law, and the tarpit of legal cases and investigations engulfing the former president – in New York, Georgia, Washington and elsewhere – Tim invited Noah Feldman to our podcast. Noah is a Harvard Law professor, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, and a wildly graceful writer and thinker.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Berlin is the epicenter of one of the most grotesque authoritarian moments in world history: the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, and all of the horrors that flowed out of that. To consider that history, and the possible threats from authoritarianism in the present, Tim asked his colleague Andreas Kluth, who writes about politics and national security for Bloomberg Opinion, to be his tour guide around the city. Together, they examined three landmark sites – the Reichstag building, Hitler’s bunker, and the Holocaust Memorial – to see what can be learned from the past.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imagine you couldn’t take another breath because oxygen disappeared. You gasp for air until your body shuts down. Money provides oxygen to our economy. When the money flow slows, so does the economy. If money stops circulating, the economy seizes. Like your body deprived of oxygen, it shuts down. That’s why banking crises freak out people. Banks are the lungs of a thriving economy, oxygenating everything with money. Silicon Valley Bank collapsed recently, a debacle that exposed fault lines running beneath a legendary financial ecosystem. But it was just one bank. Since then, though, other banks have run into trouble. Sitting atop that uncertainty is the Federal Reserve, the powerhouse that sets interest rates – and thus governs how easy it is for money to course through the economy. To help solve that mystery, Tim spoke with Paul Davies, a financial columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and somebody steeped in the chaos that can happen when banks and money collide with human frailty – and the power of the Fed.

Corrects audio to remove reference to Peter Thiel in discussion about the run on Silicon Valley Bank. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he intended to quickly subjugate the entire country. That, of course, didn’t happen. Ukraine – backed by a global alliance – fought back. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have died and tens of millions of people have been displaced, energy markets have been disrupted, diplomatic relationships have been reordered, Western Europe has rearmed, and NATO has been revitalized. Punishing sanctions have been imposed on Russia, but strangling its economy has been difficult. Still, Putin’s war machine has been exposed as disastrously inept, and he’s threatened to use nuclear weapons if necessary. To take stock of all of this, Tim is joined by Stephen Kotkin, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution who is widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on Russia – its history, culture, and economy. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Remember the early days of COVID-19 lockdowns when, practically overnight, it seemed that every shop closed its doors? Do you remember how all of those small businesses you might have taken for granted – the ones that gave life and an identity to your community – suddenly felt essential to you? Tim watched lots of small businesses in his small town in New Jersey struggle, including his favorite local bakery, Montclair Bread Company. Three years later, he tracks the trials and tribulations this unimaginable public health and economic crisis threw at the bakery and its owner, Rachel Wyman. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Artificial intelligence, or “AI” – the foundation of decades of science fiction and movies – has gone mainstream. It’s here. ChatGPT, a chatbot launched in late 2022, is a free, ask-me-anything tool that can write seemingly perfect essays and accurately answer most questions users throw at it. Its AI is built atop a vast reservoir of digital information and languages. Sydney, a glitchy and trippy Microsoft chatbot, recently told a New York Times reporter that it loved him, wanted to be alive and harbored destructive impulses. It's cool. It’s disturbing. It’s empowering. It’s vaguely threatening. It challenges us to wonder whether we’ll stay in control of the bots or whether they’ll control us. 

For this episode, Tim spoke with both Parmy Olson, a Bloomberg Opinion technology columnist who is an AI guru, and Tyler Cowen, a genius economist and Bloomberg columnist, to help sort through all of this.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Winklevoss twins are known for walking away from Facebook with tens of millions in stock and other payments. More recently, they’re known for a new project: An asset management firm and a digital currency exchange that made them marquee players in the recent cryptocurrency boom and meltdown. There are other, more significant crypto players (think Sam Bankman-Fried) but the twins fascinate Tim O’Brien because they embody the sort of collision Crash Course lives for: between innovation and possible hucksterism, and between authenticity and possible manipulation. Crypto is one of the most revolutionary and over-hyped inventions of the 21st century and how the Winklevii intersected with that market is a tale that sheds light on finance and on financial bubbles – and on what happens when everybody thinks they can get rich quickly. 

Joining Tim to discuss all of this is Lionel Laurent, a financial columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and someone who has spent a lot of time watching crypto evolve. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s hard for little companies to take on huge competitors – especially an industry like Big Milk, which has a longstanding grip on consumers’ diets and lifestyles. It takes attitude to consider yourself a revolutionary force rather than just a carton of milk. It takes courage and vision to create a whole new food category. Oatly is one of those companies: It’s a pioneer, but it has struggled with growth and competition recently. Oatly’s story will make you think about what food you put in your body, how the milk industry markets its wares, and whether Oatly can live up to its promises.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

U.S. police officers shoot and kill more than 1,000 people annually. According to a Washington Post study, half of those people are White, but Blacks are shot at more frequently, even though they represent just 14% of the population, and are killed at more than twice the rate of Whites. The same is true of Hispanic Americans and Latinos. This is a collision of the rawest and most brutal sort and it raises myriad questions about safe streets and public safety; crime, racism and institutional violence; police training and the increased militarization of US police forces.

This week on Crash Course, Tim O’Brien interviews two guests: Radley Balko, a journalist and the author of “The Rise of the Warrior Cop,” and Laurence Ralph, an anthropology professor at Princeton University and the director of the Center on Transnational Policing.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.