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by thricegr8 1639 days ago
Undoubtedly that personal award goes to Citations Needed Episode 73: Western Media’s Narrow, Colonial Definition of ‘Corruption’. You can read the transcript on Medium [1] or listen on Spotify [2].

It may seem a bit bromide for HN, but it really shattered my world view. Or at least was the impetus of a rather radical shift in how I viewed global power structures, old wealth, and the evil systems in place today that continue to perpetuate global inequality. In the episode, they dig into these popular "corruption" indices, why the Global South is always painted as the "most corrupt", true sources of institutionalized corruption, where the real tax havens and how they operate. It even highlights a (previously unknown to me at least!) stark and admittedly macabre distinction between London, the city in England and the ancient The City of London [3]. Yes there is a huge difference with the latter being a 1,000 British colonial-era holdover that's home to the largest tax haven hub in the world.

As a bonus, it features Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist who wrote The Divide [4]. Which, for reasons outlined above, is also one of my favorite books ever. If you find my poor attempt of summary or the article/podcast interesting, I'd implore you to buy the book and learn something new.

All the world is a stage and indeed we are merely players.

[1] - https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-73-western-medias...

[2] - https://open.spotify.com/episode/7cf3g7670FYKrD9OE6vHQd?si=v...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London

[4] - https://www.jasonhickel.org/the-divide

Edit: Just to clarify, this episode is from 2019. I did not interpret the question clearly and assumed it was in the spirit of "Favorite podcast episode you listened to this year". Hope this helps.

5 comments

The CGP Grey videos on the city of London are pretty great too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc
Thank you for recommending episode 73, it was very interesting. I had some idea from this book https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-of-Economic-Hitman-audiob... but this is even more interesting. I read this book more than 15 years ago, I suppose things are much more sophisticated, crooked and hidden now :(

This is all soooooo depressing :(

I’m guessing this is not the same citation needed as when Tom Scott does citation needed with the technical difficulties.

Here’s a link to one of their episodes: https://youtu.be/1nd5HsxWXTI

> Yes there is a huge difference with the latter being a 1,000 British colonial-era holdover that's home to the largest tax haven hub in the world.

In what sense is it a colonial-era holdover? Unless you mean Norman colonialism.

It just means it is in some meaningful sense unchanged since that time-frame. It says nothing about whether The City itself was colonized.
I'm intrigued, but this episode is from April 2019.
Ya know, you're right. I guess I assumed the OP meant more along the lines of "What was your favorite podcast episode you listened to this year" vs the more literal translation. I'll throw in an edit to clarify.