Money Talks: Under the Spell of Someone Else’s Wealth
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2024
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For this Money Talks, Emily Peck chats with Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind. His new novel Entitlement explores what happens when normal people enter the lives of the super-rich. Rumaan and Emily discuss class, opportunity, and how the ego and conceit of wealth can be contagious.
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Podcast production by Jared Downing and Cheyna Roth.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This ad-free podcast is part of your Slate Plus membership. |
| 0:13.7 | Hello and welcome to Money Talks, a special extra podcast from Slate Money where we chat |
| 0:19.1 | with brilliant and interesting people. I'm Emily Peck. |
| 0:22.2 | I'm a co-host of Slate Money and I'm here today with Ruman Alam. He's the author of the New York |
| 0:27.4 | Times bestselling novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and |
| 0:32.2 | made into a great Netflix movie starring Julia Roberts. More impressive, he's been a podcaster for Slate. And this |
| 0:39.0 | week, his latest novel Entitlement is out. Ruman, welcome to Money Talks. Thank you so much, |
| 0:44.3 | Emily. We don't often talk about fiction or novels on Slate Money, but I thought entitlement |
| 0:49.9 | really gets to the heart of so many things we're talking about on a business and finance |
| 0:54.2 | podcast. If you can believe it, we talk about inequality all the time. We talk about like |
| 0:59.3 | the weird proclivities of billionaires and how wealth and class can distort relationships |
| 1:05.1 | and people. And I mean, that's where this book I think really shines. So we'll get into all |
| 1:09.8 | that and more when we come back on |
| 1:11.5 | Money Talks. |
| 1:16.7 | Okay, so, Raman, the book centers on Brooke Orr. She's a 33-year-old black woman, and she has this |
| 1:23.2 | new job at the Asher and Carol Jaffe Foundation. And this is a nonprofit started by the billionaire |
| 1:30.3 | Asher Jaffe. And I guess he intends to give away all or maybe just some of his money. |
| 1:35.8 | What made you want to write about a billionaire giving away his money? You know, I really wish I were |
| 1:40.5 | able to isolate the real, like the impetus for this particular idea, |
| 1:45.1 | because maybe if I could do that, I could sort of create those conditions the next time I have |
| 1:50.5 | to write a book and say like, okay, this is how you get inspired. I think artists always sort of |
| 1:55.2 | distill what's happening culturally. And this particular moment that we live in right now, I |
... |
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