What started as Emily Nussbaum’s “guilty pleasure” of watching Big Brother became a deeper dive into the world of reality TV, leading to her book, Cue the Sun: The Invention of Reality TV. From its early, often morally questionable experiments with shows like Candid Microphone, to the strategy and drama of Survivor, Nussbaum traces the history of a…

This is the ninth official episode, breaking down the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Power Broker by our hero Robert Caro. This week, Roman and Elliott also sit down with Majora Carter, an urban revitalization strategist and real estate developer from the South Bronx. Growing up, she always viewed the neighborhood as a place she had to leave…

Karen MacDonough had paid her mortgage for years, raised her family, and lived a quiet life in her Quincy, Massachusetts home—until one day, a group of strangers appeared on her lawn, claiming her house was up for foreclosure. What followed was a surreal discovery of “zombie mortgages,” forgotten second loans from the housing bubble era that have c…

Once considered the most dangerous city in the world due to drug cartel violence, by the early 2000s Medellin had reinvented itself. But gentrification is allowing criminal gangs to reap large profits from a shadow economy powered by the tourist boom. Medellin, Revisited Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new epi…

The impacts of climate disasters are often measured in terms of property damage. But in places like Phoenix, Arizona, and in hot places all over the world, climate change is wreaking a very different kind of havoc – on living things. In the final episode of Not Built for This, we reckon with the biological limits of climate adaptation. Not Built Fo…

Most of the stories in this series have been about places that are ill-prepared for the extreme weather that is coming their way. But this story is about a place that managed to get the kind of infrastructure that will actually help it survive climate change. How after more than two decades of tireless work, the residents of Hamilton City, Californ…

All across the country thousands of people are living in locations that regularly flood, and many of these places will only get more flood-prone as the climate continues to change. Residents who live in these danger zones are often trapped in a demoralizing loop—flooding, rebuilding, and praying each time that the pattern doesn’t repeat. However in…