 |
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism PodcastAuthor: Jessica Levy and Dylan Gottlieb
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast is a monthly program devoted to bringing you quality, engaging stories that explain how capitalism has changed over time. We interview historians and social and cultural critics about capitalism's past, highlighting the political and economic changes that have created the present. Each episode gives voice to the people who have shaped capitalism by making the rules or by breaking them, by creating economic structures or by resisting them. Language: en Genres: History, Society & Culture Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
Listen Now...
Mike Glass on the Surprisingly Precarious Postwar Suburbs
Episode 121
Tuesday, 9 December, 2025
Few historical tableaus are more iconic than the midcentury suburbs of Long Island. I can see it now: rows of identical houses, subsidized by federal spending, inhabited by white middle-class heteronormative families 2.3 children, attending well-funded schools. If there's a stereotypical image of the "American Dream," this is it. But after reading Mike Glass' new book, Cracked Foundations: Debt and Inequality in Suburban America, I can promise you'll never think about the suburbs quite the same way. Glass reveals that the way we paid for those homes and those schools—through debt financing on the capital markets—left midcentury suburbs unstable, unequal, and racially segregated. Even in the so-called "golden age of capitalism," suburban life was more precarious than I'd ever imagined. If you're ready to demolish all of the things you thought you knew about postwar suburbia, listen to today's episode with Mike Glass.
