Whether your holiday season comes with flight delays, a long road trip or a rare day with space on your calendar, chances are you’ll have some free time.
If you want to use it to get a little smarter about deals and the economy — and maybe even enjoy yourself in the process — you’re in luck: Here are our favorite books and podcasts from this year (plus a game) that will help you do that.
An investigative reporter opens up about the crypto industry
“Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall” by Zeke Faux
Cryptocurrency has its detractors, including JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon, who told a congressional hearing this month that the government should ban digital assets. But few crypto critics are as committed to trying to understand the technology and thoroughly explore the industry — which sometimes seems to make money out of nothing — as Bloomberg investigative reporter Zeke Faux. In his book, “Number Go Up,” he travels the world for two years meeting people who are fueling enthusiasm for digital tokens — and exposing corruption, greed and exploitation.
The book was released about a month before the criminal trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of crypto exchange FTX, who was convicted of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy last month. Faux begins by admitting that she didn’t see past Bankman-Fried’s billionaire wunderkind facade when they met. But Faux had his suspicions about the crypto industry and promises from digital asset enthusiasts that blockchain would democratize finance, and he met many of the people selling these ideas. “From the beginning, I thought crypto was pretty dumb. And it turned out to be dumber than I thought,” he wrote.
Global trade, the online game
Tradle
Quiz time: Which country’s outbound trade will be about $597 billion in 2021? A hint: Its top export categories are cars, refined petroleum, liquor, and valves.
A. Japan
B. Argentina
C. United States
D. Italy
The answer is D, Italy.
That is according to Tradlethe Wordle-style game about global trade that has become a daily habit for economics buffs, global policy geeks and even a DealBook editor.
Developed by the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a trade data visualization specialist, Tradle brings players around the world every day. The clues could lead to a developing island economy whose main exports are recreational boats (for example, the Cayman Islands) or to a Group of 7 giant like Canada (Spoiler: major exports include crude oil, sawn timber and fertilizers).
Gilberto García-Vazquez, an economist said the company is behind the game Marketplace this summer Tradle’s global popularity was a big surprise. The site attracts “close to a million visits per month,” he said, another sign that everyone loves a good game — even when it comes to global trade.
If only Hollywood had a sports podcast
“The country”
Who is in the media business and who is down? Tinseltown’s main industry has an image built on art and glamor, but Matt Belloni’s podcast about its inner workings treats it like sports, with an AM talk-radio vibe (no surprise, due to its roots in The Ringer podcast network) and a smartly casual approach to the subject. Belloni rose through the Hollywood trades and is the author of Puck’s flagship newsletter, What I’m Hearing, but on the podcast he takes an approach that is acceptable to more casual news media followers. However, close industry watchers will still appreciate interviews with newsmakers like Ted Sarandos, a Netflix chief executive, and Mark Shapiro, president of Endeavor, on hot topics like the streaming wars, actors and writers strike and why superhero. movies stumble.
A glance at a climate statement
“Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World” by John Vaillant
Wildfires are all over the news in 2023. Burning forests in Canada shrouded New York in smoke, deadly fires broke out in Maui, and extreme heat caused the worst fire in Greece on record. In “Fire,” reporter John Vaillant writes about an earlier wildfire that gave a hint of what was to come.
In 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, was engulfed in flames, forcing 90,000 people to evacuate. The city is the center of Canada’s oil sands industry, which means it relies on the production of fossil fuels that contribute to global warming. Vaillant calls it a “bifurcated reality,” with executives acknowledging the threat of carbon dioxide emissions but still profiting from the industry despite the damage it causes.
The contradictions will not end soon. Some of the world’s biggest energy companies have signaled this year that they are doubling down on fossil fuels through a series of shale oil patch deals. July was the hottest month on record. And the United Nations climate conference in the United Arab Emirates — a petrostate — was the first to publicly declare that the world needs to move away from fossil fuels.
We are not done with the production and use of fossil fuels, and our world is already warming. Those two trends will inevitably collide again, and Vaillant’s book is a useful look at how that might happen.
A warning about the geopolitical challenges that threaten market democracy
“The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism” by Martin Wolf
Martin Wolf, the chief economic commentator at the Financial Times, believes in the marriage of liberal democracy and the market economy. The combination, he said, created the most successful society in history, generating prosperity and freedom.
In “The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism,” he argues that that is changing because the system is failing to deliver economically and politically, leading to the rise of populists and self-defeating political movements. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump as president and the rise of rentier capitalism are all bad for democratic societies and the institutions they rely on, he wrote. And that has alarming consequences for free societies and the businesses that operate within them.
The case is personal for Wolf. He is an economist and his parents were refugees from the Nazis, who gained power because of the Great Depression. History, he said, is a warning that political mistakes can be very destructive when combined with economic disasters.
A podcast that describes the drama of big deals
“The Closer”
Reporting on deals often centers around numbers. That approach can miss the drama behind them and the aftermath. “The Closer,” a podcast hosted by journalist Aimee Keane, reveals the rich stories behind the headlines, which often reveal unexpected consequences.
In its first episode, it explored the 2013 merger between American Airlines and US Airways, which created the world’s largest airline, and the role that labor unions played in the deal. Since then, the podcast has explained how an action from the Department of Justice led to Modelo’s rise to become the top beer in the US; why a failed deal in 2018 led to WeWork’s bankruptcy this year; and how private equity investors and Walmart killed Toys “R” Us (an episode featuring DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch, who broke the story that the company was considering bankruptcy).
The trick show shows the continued relevance of old deals, and how the cascading events they unleash can reshape industries.
A podcast for true deal nerds
“got”
Tech investors Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal take listeners behind the scenes of some of the world’s most famous companies: Costco, LVMH, Porsche. Their extensively researched episodes run for several hours (Nike’s one is about four hours) and explain the strategies and unique twists of fortune that enabled the founders of these companies to build stable business. Gilbert and Rosenthal devoted several stages to guests, including Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and Berkshire Hathaway executive Charles Munger, who were interviewed about a month before he passed away in late November.
