Meet The Underground Economy

Alice Goffman

The underground economy is where drug wars and police lockdowns meet urban America. America’s underground economy includes an estimated $2 trillion in off-the-books work and trade. Much of it is in tough neighborhoods where the formal economy is very thin and the hand of the law is very heavy.

Alice Goffman finds an urban economy and culture so shadowed by police and incarceration that it lives “on the run.” Alice Goffman spent six years living in Philadelphia, and her close observations and often harrowing stories reveal the pernicious effects of drug wars and police lockdowns.

"A dramatic record of how race is still a key predictor of whether or not some young Americans will have a chance at a 'pursuit of happiness.'" ~ Los Angeles Review of Books

Alice Goffman, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison talks to Tom Ashbrook. Alice is the author of “On The Run: Fugitive Life In An American City”.
Source: On Point: Life ‘On The Run’ In America's Big Cities

Elizabeth Kolbert on Species Extinction

Elizabeth Kolbert talks to Sasha Weiss about the species extinction that is apparently caused by humanity's activities.
Source: New Yorker's Out Loud: Elizabeth Kolbert on extinction

Download or Play Meet The Underground Economy Part 1
Download or Play Meet The Underground Economy Part 2
Download or Play Meet The Underground Economy Part 3
Download or Play Species Extinction


Music includes Compassionate Conservatives - In The Garden Of Eden, Matisyahu - One Day (New Album Version), FDR 1-20-1937, Dave Puls - The Mother Earth Destruction Blues, Devendra Banhart - Heard Somebody Say (original music video), Hair - Air, David Rovics - Here At The End Of The World, The Kinks - 20th Century Man, Champion Jack Dupree - I'm Going to Write the Governor of Georgia, Annette Hanshaw - Happy Days Are Here Again, Dala Girls - Levi, Hair - Three-Five-Zero-Zero, Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention - Concentration Moon, Johnny Paycheck - Take This Job And Shove It, Jimi Hendrix - Castles, Armik - Tango Flamenc