EP9: The Founding Grift [Rebroadcast]
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Note: Hey all, We’re on break this week as we rest up and prepare for more top-notch programming, so this week’s episode is a rebroadcast of one of our favourites.
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First (@4:30), Lyta Gold is a writer with Current Affairs. Each year, the magazine recognizes the most audacious grifts. This year, Lyta presented the 2020 “Griftie Awards.” She takes us into the world of the grift, the allure and the appeal, and runs down a big year for grifers: from Covid, to never Trumpers, and on to identity thieves. Plus, she reveals the 2020’s big winner and speculates about what the future might hold in 2021.
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Then, (@26:56), Gordon’s friend, let’s call him “Bill Faulkner,” writes papers for hire. Undergraduate term papers, master’s papers, even PhD dissertations. He talks about what his scheme tells us about higher education—and how we ought to change it. As we might say, borrowing from Marx: ‘Thus far the grifter has only cheated the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
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Finally, (@58:36) Catherine Liu is a professor of film and media studies at UC Irvine and the author of Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class. She takes the “professional managerial class”—or PMCs—to task for being disconnected from the working class and for failing to get to the root of our problems: capitalism.
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Abebe, Nitsuh. “Why Are We Suddenly Surrounded by Grift?” The New York Times Magazine. Dec. 4, 2018.
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Mishan, Logaya. “The Distinctly American Ethos of the Grifter.” The New York Times Style Magazine. Sept. 12, 2019.