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Lessons learned and not learned from Bernie Madoff
...Tygstrup’s argument thus relies on setting Madoff’s normalcy off against a historically specific change in the overall level of...
Feb 6, 20242 min read

Calm Can Coexist with Fury:
A Conversation with Naomi Klein AT SOME POINT in 1999, I interviewed the author and journalist Naomi Klein about No Logo: Taking Aim at...
Sep 15, 20232 min read

Cathy Park Hong: Let's Be Neurotic Together
Back in April, I had a chance to speak with Cathy Park Hong at our fundraiser--published now to drum up interest in the next Luminary...
Sep 12, 20231 min read

Illicit, Offshore, Shadow, Invisible
In The LARB Quarterly Issue no. 38, EARTH, I wrote about financial thrillers and how you get people to care about tax loopholes and...
Aug 4, 20232 min read

Honoring Mike Davis's Legacy - MAY 21
This weekend, LA Review of Books is paying tribute to Mike Davis . Davis was mythically angry, but his work also made a shared history of...
May 15, 20231 min read

On Quitting and Getting Played by Annie Duke
At The Los Angeles Review of Books. In the postwar Fordist compromise, employers needed workers to master their jobs and stick around, at...
Feb 3, 20231 min read

A CONVERSATION WITH ANNIE DUKE, POKER CHAMPION
January 2023 Annie Duke, the winningest woman in poker, wants you to think about quitting your job.
Jan 31, 20231 min read

Dance of the Cash Dragons -- back in November!
I neglected to post this when it happened, but Matt Seybold's The American Vandal podcast gathered me, Sarah Mesle and Aaron Bady to talk...
Jan 10, 20231 min read


The Los Angeles Review of Books
If you can join us in person in January, I hope you will. Incoming EIC is me. In the LARB newsletter, my friend and the phenomenal...
Nov 24, 20221 min read


Didion - Where I Am From - Slouching Towards Los Angeles
I published this essay in Rare Bird Press's anthology of essays about Didion, Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and writing in...
Aug 11, 20221 min read

Lit Lit
The Lit Lit Fair at Hauser Wirth last weekend was super energizing. I spoke at LARB's panel about print and the Quarterly, picked up some...
Aug 3, 20221 min read

The Land
He has a lot of insight into how nostalgia is its own trap — about what it means to love a city that doesn't know how to handle its own...
Apr 14, 20221 min read

Twenty Five Years Later
It has taken me 25 years, in a way, to write this essay. The past few weeks—scratch that—the past few years have been triggering for many...
Feb 16, 20221 min read


The Chair, American Vandal and the future of the humanities
https://marktwainstudies.com/theshush/ My friend and colleague Matt Seybold invited me and Kyla Wazana Tompkins onto his truly excellent...
Sep 16, 20211 min read


Trust Me: A visit from Bob Woodward
I was part of a fantastic seminar at last March's ACLA, entitled "Consensus in Fragments: Literature, Normativity, and Social Trust after...
May 27, 20211 min read


American Vandal podcast
Robinhood, r/WallStreetBets, Who's Yellen Now, and the Game-Stopification of Finance In February, I was on Matt Seybold's excellent...
Feb 11, 20211 min read
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