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Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

"The Secret Economic History of the World" with Pulitzer finalist Sven Beckert

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

Society & Culture, Comedy Interviews, Self-improvement, Comedy, Education

4.5905 Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Is faith in our economic system cracking up? From Mayor Mamdani's win to Elon's trillion-dollar payday, from Instagram infuluencers embracing communism to Bernie and AOC, from Trump's tariffs to Chinese communism. Critiques abound of the neoliberal order that has dominated the past half century. But those assumptions - not just about policies, like free trade and low taxes, but about the very structure of we live our lives, how we produce stuff, and get stuff; assumptions like the existence of money and markets and wages - are not inescapable facts of reality. They evolved, over the course of the last thousand years. They made us very rich. And they could've been otherwise. Professor Sven Beckert is a professor of history at Harvard University and one of the world's leading historians of capitalism. He's not a free-market cheerleader, not a libertarian economist defending unfettered capitalism. He's a historian who studies how, in the real world, violence, coercion and empire were foundational to capitalism's rise... but how capitalism remains the indispensable system that made you richer than most people who ever lived. Beckert got his PhD in history from Columbia University and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. His new book is Capitalism: A Global History, and he joined Josh to shed light on what capitalism is, how it came about, and how might we re-anchor capitalism in moral and ecological limits... without extinguishing the creativity that has made it the most productive engine of all time. Go to https://surfshark.com/joshs or use code JOSHS at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey humans. You know, putting on your pants is a lot like using a VPN. It keeps the important

0:08.0

staff private, and if you don't get around to doing it before you need to, you find yourself

0:12.4

unexpectedly exposed. Hallelujah, Surf Shark VPN is giving you four extra months of their military grade encryption at surfshark.com

0:24.0

slash Josh S or by using the code Josh S at checkout.

0:28.9

You know, without a virtual private network, you're a sitting duck for snoopers and trackers

0:33.3

and identity theft and fraud, especially on public Wi-Fi, which I use a lot at libraries

0:39.1

and airports and such, which is one reason I use Surf Shark VPN.

0:44.6

That's not the only reason, though, the privacy stuff.

0:47.1

Speaking of airports, you should take a look at what happens when you turn on Surf Shark VPN

0:51.9

and you start browsing flights and hotel reservations from

0:56.5

different regions. There are location-based price differences. This is a little secret travel

1:02.9

hack to save you money. Hotels and airlines and travel booking sites offer different prices to

1:09.3

different countries. And with surfshark.com

1:11.9

slash Josh S, you can be anywhere you want to be. Plus, wherever you are, a Surfshark VPN

1:18.4

also enables you to stream your favorite shows or access websites that are geo-blocked from the

1:23.5

region that you're actually in. With Surfshark, you can break through all the online barriers

1:27.4

and access content from all

1:28.9

over the world.

1:29.4

So don't let online threats catch you off guard, take control of your online security with a 30-day

1:35.5

money-back guarantee, go to surfshark.com slash Josh S, or use the code Josh S at checkout

1:42.5

to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN and secure your digital life.

1:51.2

G'day, humans.

...

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