Published on Feb 26, 2025, 11:00:00 PM
Total time: 00:36:49
As billionaires hoard more control over our politics, it seems more important than ever to ask: What makes them tick? Four reporters gather after hours at a wine shop to discuss – over drinks – what they’ve learned from covering billionaires for years, and how it can help us hoi polloi make sense of what the ultra-rich are doing right now.
Featuring Vicky Ward, who has covered the Kushner family and Trump, and who, in 2002, was the first journalist to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s finances in a profile for Vanity Fair; John Hyatt, who covers billionaires, with a focus on Elon Musk, for Forbes; Douglas Rushkoff, who has written about tech billionaires preparing for the end of the world; and Edward Ongweso, Jr., who covers the impact of the exponential growth of large tech companies for outlets like Vice and The Nation.
A small correction: Douglas Rushkoff said that his trip to a hedge fund conference in the desert happened in 2018, but the trip was actually in 2017.
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“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Propagandist? Truth teller? Influencer? Question Everything unravels the contested work of journalists and the moral complexities surrounding the stories that impact us all.