Podcasts about omidyar

Mike Michalec shares his journey from molecular research to outdoor adventure guiding and eventually into education consulting in Southeast Asia. He discusses the region's diverse education landscape, the challenges of scaling edtech businesses, and the impact of China's regulatory crackdown on the sector. He explains why many education startups fail, how funding and business models shape the industry, and why Chinese companies are now expanding into Southeast Asia. He also shares his thoughts on technology and children, emphasizing the importance of balancing screen time with real-world learning experiences. 1. Mike's career pivots: Mike started in molecular research but left the lab for outdoor adventure guiding before becoming a science teacher and later moving into international development and education consulting. 2. Why he moved to Southeast Asia and stayed: He first came to Bangkok in 2007 for a short-term UNESCO assignment, initially expecting to be in Paris, but decided to stay in 2009 due to the region's diversity and opportunities in education. 3. Education in Southeast Asia: A fragmented but dynamic market: The region has vastly different education systems, from strong public education in Singapore to accessibility issues in rural Indonesia, with a mix of public, private, and international models. 4. Why Edtech startups struggle to scale: Many Edtech founders enter the market without realizing similar solutions already exist, and education's highly localized nature makes scaling across countries far more difficult than in other sectors. 5. How China's crackdown changed its edtech sector: In 2021, China's Double Reduction Policy forced major tutoring firms like TAL Education and New Oriental to go nonprofit, leading some Chinese edtech companies to expand into Southeast Asia. 6. The impact of AI and technology in education: Mike believes edtech is already "solution-saturated" and that the industry should focus on improving existing products rather than creating new ones, citing research he contributed to from the World Bank and Omidyar. 7. Technology and kids: He supports limiting screen time for young children, noting that many Silicon Valley tech founders do the same, emphasizing the importance of real-world learning and human connection. Watch, listen or read the full insight at https://www.bravesea.com/blog/vc-education-tech-gamble Get transcripts, startup resources & community discussions at www.bravesea.com WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VakR55X6BIElUEvkN02e TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@jeremyau Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyauz Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremyau LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bravesea English: Spotify | YouTube | Apple Podcasts Bahasa Indonesia: Spotify | YouTube | Apple Podcasts Chinese: Spotify | YouTube | Apple Podcasts Vietnamese: Spotify | YouTube | Apple Podcasts

In this enlightening episode, you''ll learn how a growing group of funders is thinking about wellbeing – for grantees and themselves. Laura Bacon, strategy lead and facilitator of the Funders and Wellbeing Group, discusses how this new global group of a dozen foundations is working to transform philanthropic culture with regard to wellbeing. Through regular virtual meetings and annual in-person gatherings, the group explores ways to support both individual and organizational wellbeing in the social sector. Their recent retreat in Malaysia highlighted how many nonprofit staff challenges related to wellbeing are universal, from shrinking civic spaces to staff burnout and retention issues.The conversation emphasizes the critical importance of maintaining focus on wellbeing initiatives during challenging times, particularly in the current political climate where social justice work and the nonprofit sector face significant pressures. Laura advocates for funders to be more flexible and generous in their support, while ensuring that wellbeing remains a priority rather than an optional add-on in grantmaking practices.Laura shares her journey from musician to social change advocate, and her extensive experience in philanthropy and wellbeing initiatives. As the former founding director of the Partner Support Program at Luminate (an Omidyar foundation), she established wellbeing stipends for grantee organizations, allowing them to address their staff's needs with maximum flexibility. The program distributed about 71 grants totaling $350,000, which organizations used for various purposes from team retreats to mental health support.Biography:For more than two decades, Laura Bacon has designed programs and led projects and teams to achieve social impact around the world. She's currently an independent consultant, partnering with clients on a host of cool initiatives. One of her roles includes Strategy Lead and Facilitator of the Funders + Wellbeing Group at The Wellbeing Project, where she facilitates peer-learning and convenings among a dozen funders to enhance wellbeing for individuals, organizations, sectors, and communities.Previously, Laura was founding director of the Partner Support program at Luminate, a global philanthropic organization that is part of the Omidyar Group, where she supported over 300 grantee partners to achieve their goals of being more resilient, healthy & inclusive, and well-networked.Before working at Luminate / Omidyar Network, Laura was a White House Fellow focused on clean energy.Resources: laura.m.bacon@gmail.com LinkedIn Funders & Wellbeing Group Website Wellbeing Project website The Wellbeing Project - Global Hearth Summit in Slovenia College course: Personal Choice and Global Transformation Global Values 101, a book based on the above course, edited by Brian Palmer, Kate Holbrook, Ann S. Kim, Anna Portnoy   Rights and Dignity Working Group (piloted Wellness stipends - a cross-Omidyar Group initiative) Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice (inspiration for wellness stipends) https://astraeafoundation.org  - Healing Justice stipend General Service Foundation (inspiration for wellness stipends): https://generalservice.org/whatwefund/healingjustice/  - Fund the People podcast interview with Desiree Flores Priya Parker book “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters” Deepa Iyer's Social Change Ecosystem Role Map Prospera, the International Network of Women's Funders, doing great work on wellbeing Laura's Blog posts on Partner Support, Coaching Stipend, Wellbeing Stipends: Luminate & Omidyar Group (philanthropy I worked with for 10+ years) * Here's more info about thePartner Support program of which I was the founding director Blogs (first andsecond) about Luminate's wellbeing stipend Luminate's coaching stipend Grantee Perception Reports (2020 and2023) Funders & Wellbeing Group "FundWell" newsletter about our funders' retreat in Malaysia

What would a personalized high school curriculum centered around global challenges look like? In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast, hosts Dr. Matthew Worwood and Dr. Cyndi Burnett sit down with Raya Bidshahri, an accomplished entrepreneur and educator who is the founder and CEO of the School of Humanity. Raya sheds light on her frustration with traditional education systems and shares her innovative approach to personalized, project-based learning, which forms the backbone of her school. Unlike conventional methods reliant on standardized tests, the School of Humanity emphasizes low-stakes knowledge checks and project-based assessments, encouraging students to engage in interdisciplinary challenges such as food security and the future of the internet. Raya's passion for education reform, grounded in her own positive experiences with project-based learning and entrepreneurship, fuels her vision to create a more effective, curiosity-driven educational system. The episode dives deep into the implementation of challenge-based learning and how AI can play a constructive role in education, with Raya differentiating between its ethical uses and potential for misuse. A techno-optimist at heart, she discusses a structured AI policy that encourages AI for tasks like brainstorming while banning it from generating entire essays to avoid academic dishonesty. The conversation is enriched with insights on flexible learning environments, the importance of scaffolded assessments, and the Human Literacies Framework that integrates traditional and innovative skills. With around 60 students and plans to double enrollment, Raya's School of Humanity is a testament to her effective educational approach.    About Raya Bidshahri: Raya Bidshahri is a serial entrepreneur and award-winning educator. Raya is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the School of Humanity, an award-winning online high school with an innovative learning model and interdisciplinary curriculum. At School of Humanity, learners from over 10 countries across 5 continents develop their skills, mindsets, and behaviors by tackling real-world challenges. Raya has been featured by the BBC as one of the 100 most influential and inspiring women globally. She was the main award winner for the Next Generation Foresight Practioner's Award, organized by the School of International Futures and supported by the Omidyar network. The awards recognize those whose leadership efforts shape the future and improve lives. Eager to bring more creativity into your school district? Check out our sponsor Curiosity2Create.org and CreativeThinkingNetwork.com What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?  Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to understand how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.  Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!

In today's episode Arion, Rebecca and Olly look into the founding of the massive multinational e-commerce company eBay. On the day it went live it was named AuctionWeb, and was just one project among many being built by its creator, Pierre Omidyar. In fact, a significant part of the site was dedicated to information about Ebola, which happened to be a pet interest of Omidyar. In this episode, The Retrospectors put to bed the myth that eBay was short for “EbolaBay”; list all the things that you cannot sell on the site; and reveal Olly's first ever eBay purchase… Further Reading: ‘The Small-Scale Story Behind eBay's Big Bucks' (Time magazine, 2015): https://time.com/4013672/ebay-founded-story/ ‘25 years on since the birth of eBay, a true giant of modern computing' (The National, 2020): https://www.thenational.scot/news/18693304.25-years-since-birth-ebay-true-giant-modern-computing/ ‘eBay - How It Started' (Company Man; 2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkEorxAxFXo This episode first premiered in 2023, for members of

Megan Basham, culture reporter at The Daily Wire and author of the new book, "Shepherds For Sale," joins us to discuss the infiltration of the Evangelical church by leftist ideas. - - -  Today's Sponsor: Policygenius - Get your free life insurance quote & see how much you could save: http://policygenius.com/Klavan

Snakes in the Ganga - http://www.snakesintheganga.com Varna Jati Caste - http://www.varnajaticaste.com The Battle For IIT's - http://www.battleforiits.com Power of future Machines - http://www.poweroffuturemachines.com 10 heads of Ravana - http://www.tenheadsofravana.com To support Infinity Foundation's projects including the continuation of such episodes and the research we do: इनफिनिटी फ़ौंडेशन की परियोजनाओं को अनुदान देने के लिए व इस प्रकार के एपिसोड और हमारे द्वारा किये जाने वाले शोध को जारी रखने के लिए: http://infinityfoundation.com/donate-2/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rajivmalhotrapodcast/support

Aaron Mate returns with Max Blumenthal to cover Elon Musk's pending lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League, and the organization's history of collaboration with federal law enforcement and Silicon Valley to censor and smear opponents of Israel's apartheid regime. They will also cover Blinken's disturbing trip to Ukraine and the latest Omidyar-sponsored censorship ploy. Watch on ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ Our new uncensored fundraiser. Find more reporting at The Grayzone.

If you've listened to the podcast at all over the past few years, you'll know that the search for routes to total systemic change has always been the driver of what we're doing and why we're doing it. Even so, it's not often I talk to someone who is singlemindedly exploring the routes to that systemic change and who has the tools to help everyone explore the potential for what might come next. And so this week, I am immensely happy to have had the chance to talk to Cat Tully, a remarkable woman who spends her life helping people to bridge the space between where we are and where we need to get to, in ways that drag as little of the past with us as possible, while opening the widest gates we can to the systems, structures and practices that stand the best chance of a generative future. Cat leads the School of International Futures (SOIF), a not-for-profit international collective of practitioners based in the UK that use futures thinking to inspire change at the local, national and global levels. SOIF has worked with organisations like the UN, Omidyar, NATO, the Royal Society and national governments across the planet - all with the explicit intention of making the world fairer for current and future generations.  SOIF also supports a growing network of Next Generation Foresight Practitioners - young people under the age of 35, who can advocate for and engage with change in their communities and the wider world. There is so much that the SOIF is doing - so many people it's bringing together - we could have spent our time together talking about specific instances, and Cat does use specific examples of projects she's involved in to highlight specific areas, but in general, we wanted to explore the ideas, the systems, the ways we might think differently so that you can pick them up and run with them. Because one thing is becoming increasingly clear as our future unfolds - which is that none of us knows what it is, and it's going to take all of us, using the best tools we have, to make it clear. Cat is bringing us those tools, honed and ready for use. SOIF Projects: If you are interested in learning strategic foresight to shape the future of your community or your organisation, SOIF offers an annual in-person Summer Retreat in Strategic Foresight, happening from 24 to 28 July 2023 in the UK and virtual courses throughout the year. The next virtual courses in 2023 are starting in May and September. Futures toolkit for leaders: SOIF and California 100 published "Beyond Strategic Planning: Foresight Toolkit for Decision Makers"—a primer for leaders looking for straightforward, pragmatic ways to apply foresight to their work. The National Strategy for the Next Generation programme engaged 16-30-year-olds, Next Generation Champions, to imagine futures of the UK's international development role in 2045. SOIF developed the Framework for Assessing Intergenerational Fairness with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The tool has been used by All Parliamentary Party Groups for Future Generations (APPG) in their initiative Futures Check, and we have developed a policy brief on Building a Coalition for Intergenerational Fairness in the European Green Deal. Next Generation Foresight Practitioners, an initiative by SOIF, is the largest global network of next-generation future-alert changemakers democratising the futures and foresight field. With 100 fellows and 500 members of a global network, the initiative supports young change agents that use foresight to shape better futures for their community and the world, e.g. NGFP members in Africa imagining Digital Futures of the continent, seeding collaboration with an Impact fund and creating opportunities for members to be visible,  BBC Futures article, Youth Climate and Energy Futures Lab at COP26 and contributing to United Nations General Assembly on the SDG Moment Closing Panel. Other links3 Horizons model https://www.boardofinnovation.com/blog/what-is-the-3-horizons-model-how-can-you-use-it/Beth Barany https://bethbarany.com/

On this episode Pat sits down with Arjuna Costa, Managing Partner at leading fintech fund Flourish, which is part of the Omidyar network, we dive into the challenges of achieving true financial inclusion and access to capital for everyone, how the next waves of fintech products will evolve and making the most out of embedded financeOn this episode you will learn about:  Arjuna's journey into VC The evolution of financial inclusion in emerging markets and beyondHow embedded finance solutions will change the way we consume, interact and finance products in the economy Is informality a hurdle to achieve financial inclusion in emerging markets? Flourish's initiatives around digitising corner-stores and their early stage programme for the African ecosystem, MadicaYou can find Arjuna on LinkedIn here, check out their recent report on the Digitisation of cornershops here and the techcrcunch article on Madica here

In this episode of Looking Outside we learn how to weave together the voices of the future, the agents with vision, to create Coalitions of Change, with Cat Tully, Founder and Director of the School of International Futures.With a broad, and ‘mongrel' background, Cat shares how her mixed experiences from across multiple sectors, government to private, have helped her to fine tune learned behavior in looking broadly at the influences of change and facing into their often uncomfortable realities.Having created the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Network, Cat speaks to why it's critical we use the voice of young people as evidence towards future planning, by allowing those who will live in the future to speak for it.Jo and Cat discuss the important but challenging role of the Horizon 2 operator, the middleman between horizon 1's business realities, and Horizon 3's future necessities, as being a critical bridge between the past and future. Cat also highlights the need for leaders to recognize a bias towards what's comfortable, the quick dismissal of what's seemingly ridiculous, and a rejection of possible futures driven by sadness for loss of the present. And therefore the importance of providing cover for people in organizations to explore and provoke about the future with sympathy, vulnerability and compassion.--To look outside, Cat turns to the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Network, a 600+ strong network of young change agents across 90 countries, who are using futures to challenge the status quo in a brave way, raising the alarm on issues they care about. Cat proactively reaches out to listen.--Catarina Zuzarte Tully leads the School of International Futures (SOIF), a not-for-profit international collective of practitioners based in the UK. SOIF uses future thinking to inspire change at the local, national and global levels. Since its inception in 2012, Catarina has worked with the UN, Omidyar, NATO, the Royal Society, and national governments to make the world fairer for current and future generations. She has also led a team to create a framework for intergenerational fairness assessment and is working on anticipatory governance ecosystems. Cat also mentors a growing network of Next Generation Foresight Practitioners, an initiative by SOIF. Previously, Cat served as Strategy Project Director at the UK FCO and Policy Advisor in the PM's Strategy Unit.--Curious for more?Follow Cat on Twitter @cattullyfoh Follow SOIF on Twitter @nxtgenforesight and @SOIFuturesLearn more about the Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Network: NGFPRead about the Intergenerational Fairness Observatory assessment: IGFSee more a bout the School of International Futures: soif.org.uk Follow SOIF on LinkedIn and Instagram--Looking Outside is a podcast dedicated to exploring fresh perspectives of familiar business topics. The show is hosted by its creator, Joanna Lepore, consumer goods innovator and futurist at...

In this discussion, Dr.SHIVA Ayyadurai, MIT PhD, The Inventor of Email, exposes the whole story of how he discovered the Partner Support Portal between the US Government and supposedly “private” social media companies back in March of 2020 through his US Senate Campaign, and how the intelligence agencies have used their players in the media to conceal, delay, steal, and hijack the story.

Originally recorded during the 9/18/22 Episode of How Did We Miss That?, found here: Rokfin: https://www.rokfin.com/stream/22881/Climate-Polluters-MUST-PAY--Independent-Unions--Twitter-Whistleblower--How-Did-We-Miss-That-51 Odysee: https://odysee.com/how-did-we-miss-that-ep-51-09182022:23bf6e16216a1b139ca14b89727a3f0b0a6577a1 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tgnv4TWOhk Facebook: https://facebook.com/279284498838444/posts/5145609168872595 Twitch: https://twitch.tv/indleftnews Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1OyKAVwwZqwGb Story 1- The Biggest Climate Polluters Must Pay Up! Pakistan's Devastation Is Just a Preview of the Future—and the Biggest Climate Polluters Must Pay Up: Jeffrey Sachs, CommonDreams https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/09/16/pakistans-devastation-just-preview-future-and-biggest-climate-polluters-must-pay Story 2- A Path Forward for Independent Unions? Now More Than Ever, the Working Class Needs Independent, Democratic Unions - James Dennis Hoff & Luigi Morris, Left Voice https://www.leftvoice.org/what-does-a-democratic-and-combative-union-look-like/ Story 3- Twitter Whistleblower Linked to Pierre Omidyar Twitter 'whistleblower' handlers played key role in facilitating sham Trump impeachment: Jordan Schachtel, The Dossier https://dossier.substack.com/p/twitter-whistleblower-handlers-played Story 4- Public Campaign Financing in Portland, Maine? Maine's Biggest City Will Vote on Public Campaign Financing Measure: David Moore, Sludge via Truthout https://truthout.org/articles/maines-biggest-city-will-vote-on-public-campaign-financing-measure/ All links found at our Substack: https://independentleftnews.substack.com/p/how-did-we-miss-that-ep-51 How Did We Miss That? Streams LIVE Sunday nights at 10pm ET / 7pm PT on YouTube, ROKFIN, Rumble, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, Odysee & Telegram, reviewing a few BIG stories we haven't seen covered much in leftist independent media.

You know Soros and Steyer, Buffett and Bloomberg, but you may not be familiar with one of the most important left-of-center billionaires of all: Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. Through vehicles such as the Democracy Fund and its affiliated “social welfare” Democracy Fund Voice, Omidyar supports left-of-center and anti-populist causes to the tune of millions of dollars per year that are increasingly in alignment with the Democratic Party. Joining me to discuss Omidyar and his advocacy philanthropy is my Capital Research Center colleague Hayden Ludwig, who has written a five-part series for CapitalResearch.org on Omidyar's Political Machine. Links: https://capitalresearch.org/article/omidyars-political-machine-part-1/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/omidyar-nexus/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/democracy-fund/ https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/democracy-fund-voice/ Follow our socials: • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/capitalresearchcenter • YouTube: https://bit.ly/CRCYouTube • Rumble: https://rumble.com/capitalresearch • Gettr: https://gettr.com/user/capitalresearch

36 people and entities, including some in the government, have been booked by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) under FCRA violations that Omidyar Networks committed. Watch this video to find out which media organizations are funded by Omidyar Networks. #OmidyarNetworks #Scroll #NewsLaundry #PierreOmidyar #FCRAViolation #ForeignFunding

To kick off Season 3, we are excited to welcome Anab Jain - designer, futurist and filmmaker. As co-founder of Superflux, Anab leads a seminal design practice that is responsive to the challenges and opportunities of this era. Anab and her team imagine and build future worlds for the present moment. They confront issues such as climate change and inequality, the emergence of artificial intelligence, and the future of work. And they collaborate in surprising ways, they're currently working on new narratives in Artificial Intelligence with organisations like Deepmind and Omidyar. Anab is a dreamer, storyteller, and mythmaker, and her childhood in India has brought her on a remarkable journey. We hope you enjoy this conversation.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://thecitylife.org/2021/10/29/a-new-donation-of-2-3-million-for-the-elahe-omidyar-mir-djalali-fund-in-the-louvre-endowment-fund/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/citylifeorg/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/citylifeorg/support

"The war for our minds (con'd)." The colonization of independent media.    Patrick Lawrence THE SCRUM  Oct 21       21 OCTOBER—Watch and listen, O you with open eyes and ears. The national security state's long, very long campaign to control our press and broadcasters has taken a new turn of late. If independent media are what keep alive hope for a vigorous, authentic Fourth Estate, as argued severally in this space, independent media are now subject to an insidious, profoundly anti-democratic effort to undermine them. The Independent Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Frances Haugen, Maria Ressa: Let us consider this institution and these people. They are all frauds, if by fraudulent we mean they are not what and who they tell us they are and their claim to independence from power is bogus. The Deep State—and at this point it is mere pretense to object to this term—long ago made it a priority to turn the mainstream press and broadcasters to its purposes—to make a free press unfree. This has gone on since the earliest Cold War decades and is well and responsibly documented. (Alas, if more Americans read the many excellent books and exposés on this topic, assertions such as the one just made would not arrive as in the slightest outré.)    But several new realities are now very evident. Chief among them, the Deep State's colonization of corporate media is now more or less complete. CNN, filling its airtime with spooks, generals, and a variety of official and formerly official liars, can be counted a total takeover. The New York Times is prima facie government-supervised, as it confesses in its pages from time to time. The Washington Post, owned by a man with multimillion-dollar CIA contracts, has turned itself into a comic book. For reasons I will never entirely fathom, corporate media have not merely surrendered their legitimacy, such as it may have been: They have actively, enthusiastically abandoned what frayed claim they may have had to credibility. The national-security state incorporates mainstream media into its apparatus, and then people stop believing mainstream media: The thrill is gone, let's say.  In consequence of these two factors, independent media have begun to rise as … independent media. They accumulate audiences. A little at a time, they acquire the very habits of professionalism the mainstream press and broadcasters have let decay. Gradually, they assume the credibility the mainstream has lost. The media ecosystem—horrible phrase but there it is—begins to take on a new shape.  Certain phenomena engendered by independent media prove popular. There are whistleblowers. People inside Deep State institutions start to leak, and they turn to independent media, most famously WikiLeaks, to get information out. While the Deep State's clerks in mainstream media keep their heads down and their mouths shut as they cash their checks, independent media take principled stands in favor of free expression, and people admire these stands. They are, after all admirable. Those populating the national-security state's sprawling apparatus are not stupid. They can figure out the logical response to these developments as well as anyone else. The new imperative is now before us: It is to colonize independent media just as they had the mainstream in previous decades. There are some hopelessly clumsy cases. I urge all colleagues to stop bothering with The Young Turks in any capacity. Those running it, creatures of those who generously fund it, are simply infra-dig. As Matt Taibbi pointed out over the weekend in a piece wonderfully headed, “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Deep State,” they've now got some clod named Ben Carollo proclaiming the CIA as an accountable force for good, savior of democracy—this in a video appearing under the rubric “Rebel HQ.” As an East European émigré friend used to say, “Gimme break.” Democracy Now! is a subtler instance of colonization. The once-admirable Amy Goodman drank the Russiagate Kool-Aid, which I counted the first indication of covert intervention of one or another kind. Then she caved to the orthodoxy on the chemical-weapons scam during the Syrian crisis, and lately—you have to watch to believe—Goodman has begun broadcasting CNN “investigative” reports with unalloyed approval. The debate in this household is whether Ms. Goodman had a long lunch in Langley or her donors started threatening to delay their checks. I have no evidence of either but tend to the latter explanation. The three recent phenomena suggested at the top of this piece are indications of the Deep State's latest tactics in its assault on independent media and the culture that arises among them. It behooves us to understand this.  Two weeks ago, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published “The Pandora Papers,” a “leak” of 12 million electronic documents revealing the tax-fiddling, money-hiding doings of 300–odd political figures around the world. “The Pandora Papers” followed publication of “The Panama Papers” in 2016 and “The Paradise Papers” a year later. There are many useful revelations in these various releases, but we ought not be fooled as to the nature of the project. Where did the ICIJ get the documents in “The Pandora Papers,” and how?  Are they complete? Were names redacted out? They have been verified? Explaining provenance, authenticity, and so forth is essential to any investigative undertaking, but ICIJ has nothing to say on this point. Why, of all the people “The Pandora Papers” exposes, is there not one American on its list? As Moon of Alabama notes in an analysis of this release, it amounts to a list of “people the U.S. doesn't like.” The ICIJ vigorously insists on its independence. But on close inspection this turns out not to be so by any serious understanding of the term. Among its donors are the Ford Foundation, whose longtime ties to the CIA are well-documented, and the Open Societies Foundation, the (in)famous George Soros operation dedicated to cultivating coups in nations that fall outside the fence posts of neoliberalism.  The group was founded in 1997 as a project of the Center for Public Integrity, another institution dedicated to “inspiring change using investigative reporting,” as the center describes itself. Among its sponsors are Ford, once again, and the Democracy Fund, which was founded by Pierre Omidyar, bankroller of The Intercept (another compromised “independent” medium). Omidyar is, like Soros, a sponsor of subversion ops in other countries masquerading as “civil society” projects. ICIJ's other sponsors (and for that matter the Democracy Fund's) are comprised of the sorts of foundations that support NPR, PBS, and other such media. Let us be crystal clear on this point. Anyone who assumes media institutions taking money from such sponsors are authentically independent does not understand philanthropy as a well-established, highly effective conduit through which orthodoxies are enforced and public discourse circumscribed.  What are we looking at here? Not what we are supposed to think we are looking at, certainly. I will return to this question. There is the case of Maria Ressa, which I considered briefly in a previous commentary. Ressa is the supposedly courageous, speak-truth-to-power co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize this year, a Filipina journalist who co-founded The Rappler, a web publication in Manila. The Nobel committee cited Ressa for her “fight for freedom of expression.” Who is Maria Ressa, then, and what is The Rappler? I grow weary of writing this sentence: She and her publication are not what we are supposed to think they are. Ressa and The Rappler, each insisting on independence just as the ICIJ does, are straight-out lying on this point. The Rappler recently received a grant of $180,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA front—this according to an NED financial report issued earlier this year. None other than Pierre Omidyar and a group called North Base Media own nonvoting shares in the publication. Among North Base's partners is the Media Development Investment Fund, which was founded by George Soros to do what George Soros likes to do in other countries. Does a picture begin to emerge? Read the names together and one will. You have to figure they all party together. Nobel in hand, Maria Ressa has already declared that Julian Assange is not a journalist and that independent media need new regulations, as in censorship. Henry Kissinger got a Nobel as a peacemaker: Ressa gets one as a defender of free expression. It's a fit. This brings us to the case of Frances Haugen, the former Facebook exec who recently appeared before Congress waving lots of documents she seems to have secreted (supposedly) out of Facebook's offices to argue for—what else at this point?—increased government regulation of social media, as in censorship. Frances Haugen, you see, is a courageous, speak-truth-to-power whistleblower. Never mind that her appearance on Capitol Hill was carefully choreographed by Democratic Party operatives whose party simply cannot wait to censor our First Amendment rights out of existence.  It is hard to say who is more courageous, I find—the ICIJ, Maria Ressa, or Frances Haugen. Where would we be without them? The culture of independent media as it has germinated and developed over the past decade or so gave us WikiLeaks, and its effectiveness cannot be overstated. It gave us all manner of gutsy journalists standing for the principles of a genuinely free press, and people listened. It gave us whistleblowers who are admired even as the Deep State condemns them.     And now the national-security state gives us none other than a secret-disclosing crew of mainstream hacks, a faux-independent journalist elevated to the highest honors, and a whistleblower who was handed her whistle and taught how to toot it—three crowd-pleasers, three simulacra. These are three frauds. They are to independent journalism what McDonald's is to food.  There is only one defense against this assault on truth and integrity, but it is a very good one. It is awareness. CNN, Democracy Now!, the ICIJ, Maria Ressa, Frances Haugen—none of these and many other media and people are properly labeled. But the labels can be written with modest efforts. Awareness and scrutiny, watching and listening, will prove enough.

We talk about a lot of immigrants in this podcast. There's the Hungarian mathemeticians and scientists that helped usher in the nuclear age and were pivotal in the early days of computing. There are the Germans who found a safe haven in the US following World War II. There are a number of Jewish immigrants who fled persecution, like Jack Tramiel - a Holocaust survivor who founded Commodore and later took the helm at Atari. An Wang immigrated from China to attend Harvard and stayed. And the list goes on and on. Georges Doriot, the father of venture capital came to the US from France in 1899, also to go to Harvard. We could even go back further and look at great thinkers like Nikolai Tesla who emigrated from the former Austrian empire. And then there's the fact that many Americans, and most of the greats in computer science, are immigrants if we go a generation or four back. Pierre Omidyar's parents were Iranian. They moved to Paris so his mom could get a doctorate in linguistics at the famous Sorbonne. While in Paris, his dad became a surgeon, and they had a son. They didn't move to the US to flee oppression but found opportunity in the new land, with his dad becoming a urologist at Johns Hopkins. He learned to program in high school and got paid to do it at a whopping 6 bucks an hour. Omidyar would go on to Tufts, where he wrote shareware to manage memory on a Mac. And then the University of California, Berkeley before going to work on the MacDraw team at Apple. He started a pen-computing company, then a little e-commerce company called eShop, which Microsoft bought. And then he ended up at General Magic in 1994. We did a dedicated episode on them - but supporting developers at a day job let him have a little side hustle building these newish web page things. In 1995, his girlfriend, who would become his wife, wanted to auction off (and buy) Pez dispensers online. So Omidyar, who'd been experimenting with e-commerce since eShop, built a little auction site. He called it auction web. But that was a little boring. They lived in the Bay Area around San Francisco and so he changed it to electronic Bay, or eBay for short. The first sale was a broken laser printer he had laying around that he originally posted for a dollar and after a week, went for $14.83. The site was hosted out of his house and when people started using the site, he needed to upgrade the plan. It was gonna' cost 8 times the original $30. So he started to charge a nominal fee to those running auctions. More people continued to sell things and he had to hire his first employee, Chris Agarpao. Within just a year they were doing millions of dollars of business. And this is when they hired Jeffrey Skoll to be the president of the company. By the end of 1997 they'd already done 2 million auctions and took $6.7 million in venture capital from Benchmark Capital. More people, more weird stuff. But no guns, drugs, booze, Nazi paraphernalia, or legal documents. And nothing that was against the law. They were growing fast and by 1998 brought in veteran executive Meg Whitman to be the CEO. She had been a VP of strategy at Disney, then the CEO of FTD, then a GM for Playskool before that. By then, eBay was making $4.7 million a year with 30 employees. Then came Beanie Babies. And excellent management. They perfected the online auction model, with new vendors coming into their space all the time, but never managing to unseat the giant. Over the years they made onboarding fast and secure. It took minutes to be able to sell and the sellers are the ones where the money is made with a transaction fee being charged per sale, in addition to a nominal percentage of the transaction. Executives flowed in from Disney, Pepsi, GM, and anywhere they were looking to expand. Under Whitman's tenure they weathered the storm of the dot com bubble bursting, grew from 30 to 15,000 employees, took the company to an IPO, bought PayPal, bought StubHub, and scaled the company up to handle over $8 billion in revenue. The IPO made Omidyar a billionaire. John Donahoe replaced Whitman in 2008 when she decided to make a run at politics, working on Romney and then McCain's campaigns. She then ran for the governor of California and lost. She came back to the corporate world taking on the CEO position at Hewlett-Packard. Under Donahoe they bought Skype, then sold it off. They bought part of Craigslist, then tried to develop a competing product. And finally sold off PayPal, which is now a public entity of its own right. Over the years since, revenues have gone up and down. Sometimes due to selling off companies like they did with PayPal and later with StubHub in 2019. They now sit at nearly $11 billion in revenues, over 13,000 employees, and are a mature business. There are still over 300,000 listings for Beanie Babies. And to the original inspiration over 50,000 listings for the word Pez. Omidyar has done well, growing his fortune to what Forbes estimated to be just over $13 billion dollars. Much of which he's pledged to give away during his lifetime, having joined the Bill Gates and Warren Buffet giving pledge. So far, he's given away well over a billion with a focus in education, governance, and citizen engagement. Oh and this will come as no surprise, helping fund consumer and mobile access to the Internet. Much of this giving is funneled through the Omidyar Network. The US just evacuated over 65,000 Afghans following the collapse of that government. Many an oppressive government runs off the educated, those who are sometimes capable of the most impactful dissent. Some of the best and most highly skilled of an entire society leaves a vacuum in regions that further causes a collapse. And yet finding a home in societies known for inclusion and opportunity, and being surrounded by inspiring stories of other immigrants who made a home and took advantage of opportunity. Or whose children could. Those melting pots in the history of science are when diversity of human and discipline combine to make society for everyone better. Even in the places they left behind. Anyone who's been to Hungary or Poland or Germany - places where people once fled - can see it in the street every time people touch a mobile device and are allowed to be whomever they want to be. Thank you to the immigrants, past and future, for joining us to create a better world. I look forward to welcoming the next wave with open arms.

With Omidyar Network, ImpactAlpha is exploring emergent ideas, rules and power relationships of a resilient 21st-century economy. Visit the Capitalism Reimagined landing page for podcast summaries, as well as original coverage, impact voices, features and Agents of Impact. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/impact-alpha/message

  If you ever wondered how a Silicon Valley mindset rooted in social entrepreneurship can improve global education, then this episode is for you.  A fascinating look at an organisation that is quite different from traditional philanthropy. Imaginable Futures is a philanthropic investment firm that combines impact investing and foundation grant-making in order to unleash human potential through learning. Imaginable Futures spun out of the Omidyar Network a little over a year ago, where they were previously the Education initiative of Omidyar.  They were founded and are funded by Pam and Pierre Omidyar — who is also the Founder of eBay. Amy worked for eBay, where she served as VP of product strategy and operations, and was previously one of PayPal’s earliest employees in the late 1990s. Today, she leads Imaginable Futures.  She provides great insight and projects very positive energy.  Visit The Do One Better! Podcast website at Lidji.org for a full transcript of this episode. Please click the subscribe button on your favourite podcast app and share widely with others. Thank you!  

Sponsored in association with Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali, Founder and Chair, Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute. With Professor Anoush Ehteshami (Professor of International Relations in the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University) The event is chaired by Dr Stephanie Cronin (St Antony's College, Oxford), Q and A moderated by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College, Oxford). Part of the MEC Friday Seminar series The Arab uprisings of a decade ago threatened to redraw the political map of the Middle East and North Africa region, and set in motion forces that as first sight appeared to be out of the control of ruling regimes, dominant regional powers, and external interested parties. Within the region, the one country whose policies and behaviour was profoundly influenced by the early-2010s uprisings was the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran’s mood music swung between a celebration of the Arab ‘Islamic awakening’ and euphoria about Iran’s new geopolitical opportunities, to the need and duty to mobilise in defence of the Assad presidency in Syria and the protection of the ‘resistance front’. What determined Iran’s policies in the uprisings and how the uprisings shaped Iran’s regional role and political posture will form the body of this lecture.

Sarah Drinkwater is the Director of Responsible Technology at Omidyar Network and has supported an amazing variety of great projects in this space. We chat about movement-building and language in the responsible tech space. https://twitter.com/sarahdrinkwater/ https://omidyar.com/ https://twitter.com/RhysLindmark https://patreon.com/rhyslindmark

Alexandre (Alex) Lazarow has spent his career working at the intersection of investing, innovation, and economic development in the private, public, and social sectors. He is the author of Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs - from Delhi to Detroit - Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley (HBR Press). Alex is a venture capitalist with Cathay Innovation, a global firm that invests across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Previously, Alex worked with Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm that has invested over a billion dollars in hundreds of startups around the world. He has served as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company, a financial regulator with the Bank of Canada, and an M&A investment banker with the Royal Bank of Canada. Alex is an adjunct professor specializing in impact investment and entrepreneurship at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He is a Kauffman Fellow, CFA Charterholder, and a Stephen M. Kellen Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations. He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.Comm from the University of Manitoba. Alex is a regular columnist with Forbes, and his writing has been featured in the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, Entrepreneur Magazine, TechCrunch, Fast Company, VentureBeat, Business Insider, and Quartz , among others. He speaks regularly on global innovation trends and has presented at Collision, Endeavor, InsureTech Connect, the Social Innovation Summit, SOCAP, and the Corporate Venture Capital Summit. He is most proud of having once been called a ‘sad, low budget Ryan Reynolds' on Twitter. “ I believe that some of these businesses in this impact world are building not just fabulous business models, but something that has impact aligned with it. And as they scale they will scale to their impact as well.” - Alex LazarowAlex joins me today to discuss his background in impact investing with the Omidyar group. We discuss financial ecosystems around the world and how they differ from the changing ecosystem in Silicon Valley. Alex shares some advice for people seeking investment and with those who want to become an investor. Alex shares his secret to getting fifteen minutes with a venture capitalist.Today on Startups for Good we cover:Frontier EcosystemsGlobal Financial Inclusion InvestingA camel as an example rather than a unicornBlitz Scaling How to develop a team in a frontier marketMulti Mission AthletesConnect with Alex on his website or on LinkedIn or TwitterYou can purchase Alex's book Out Innovate on Amazon or like Alex suggested your local bookstore. The authors that Alex suggested: Brad Feld and Bill Draper Startup GameSubscribe, Rate & Share Your Favorite Episodes!Thanks for tuning into today's episode of...

Georgia made history this week: The state elected a Black Senator on Tuesday for the first time ever. Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Morehouse graduate who serves as senior pastor of the storied Ebenezer Baptist Church once pastored by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., will be representing Georgia in the Senate as soon as the results are certified. Along with the win of his fellow Georgian, Jon Ossoff, the Senate will effectively be in Democratic hands, as will the House and the Presidency. Sadly, a different kind of history was also made this week, when an angry, violent, mob of mostly white Trump supporters broke into the Capitol on Wednesday, smashing windows, destroying private offices and violating public spaces. With encouragement from the man occupying the highest office in the land, the mob forced our elected representatives to flee the House and Senate floors as they were undertaking the constitutionally mandated certification of the 2020 presidential election. The people who perpetrated this attack against our democracy were fueled by misinformation, much of it coming from the President himself: That dead people had voted, that voting machines had somehow switched votes, that the election was rigged and widespread fraud had handed Biden the presidency. But they were also acting on another kind of misinformation, another kind of lie—a lie that erases the genius and the contributions of Black people, a lie that ignores the fact that it was Black hands that made America what it is, that unpaid Black labor built the very buildings that serve as the seat of our democracy (https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/slave-labor-commemorative-marker) . They were fueled by the lie that is white supremacy. If we are to move beyond the gridlock that has been our political fate for years, we need to face up to this lie embedded deep within our entire public life. On this week’s show, your hosts Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren undertake a system check of the very foundation of our politics. Our guest and guide this week is Hasan Kwame Jeffries, associate professor of history at The Ohio State University where he teaches courses on the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. He reminds us that the violence we saw at the Capitol this week is not an anomaly—in fact, political violence is what birthed this nation. The American Revolution, the Civil War, the brutal suppression of Reconstruction and the stiff resistance to the Civil Rights Movement, political violence has long been used to perpetuate white supremacy in this country. And too often, Black agency and emancipation has been bartered away to avoid further political violence. But Prof. Jeffries points us toward a way to hold people—whether they’re the people who stormed the Capitol or the politicians who egged them on—accountable for their political violence, and a way to recognizing and honoring the full contributions that Black Americans have made to our republic. Our final word this week goes to Professor Blair Kelley, Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University. System Check listeners will remember Prof. Kelley from episode 2, in which she gave us a deeply personal perspective on voter suppression (https://www.thenation.com/podcast/politics/voting-election-electoral-college/) —this week, she reminds us of all the working class Black folks who have asserted their right to participate in a political system that more often than not thwarted and devalued their input. It is our task to honor their legacy. System Checklist Transforming analysis into action, the System Check Team gives listeners three action items this week: Take Action: The politicians who aided and abetted this week’s assault on democracy must be held accountable. Prof. Hasan Kwame Jeffries’s brother, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (https://twitter.com/RepJeffries/status/1347245549188239360?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet) , is one of a chorus of politicians who came out today demanding President Trump’s removal from office. Add your name as a co-signer of Rep. Cori Bush’s bill to investigate and expel members of congress who fomented the storming of the Capitol (https://gopcoup.com/) , and help shift the balance of power in the Senate, that most unequal of institutions, by telling your representatives to make Washington, DC the 51st state (https://statehood.dc.gov/page/contact-congress#/3/) . Get Informed: How do we fight misinformation? By educating ourselves. This week’s political violence didn’t come out of nowhere (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/proud-boys-capitol/) , it’s a clear response to the progressive political gains made this year, facilitated by the work of Black women from Stacey Abrams all the way back to Fannie Lour Hamer (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/black-women-voting-rights/) . Check out Prof. Jeffries’s moving TedTalk (https://www.ted.com/talks/hasan_kwame_jeffries_why_we_must_confront_the_painful_parts_of_us_history/transcript?language=en#t-95967) , mentioned in today’s show. Listen to Rev. Raphael Warnock’s speech (https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/elections/raphael-warnock-georgia-senate-runoff-statement/507-43edf954-2b32-4730-a035-fde09b50f2b5) after his defeat of Sen. Kelly Loeffler to learn how the son of a woman who picked someone else’s cotton could become a US Senator. Watch: And while you’re at it, treat yourself to Elizabeth Alexander’s full reading of “Praise Song for the Day” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vLBnFk-OFc) at the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. As always, we welcome your additions to our Checklist! Use our Twitter (https://twitter.com/SystemCheckPod) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SystemCheckPod/) pages to add your comments, suggested actions, and organizations to support. And if you like the show, subscribe on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/system-check/id1536830138) , Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/0vI1wNUVfYbZXMIM6nciaX?si=VoRgIzndRVG4Xw_rQNGKmQ) , or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes every Friday. System Check is a project of The Nation magazine, hosted by Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren and produced by Sophia Steinert-Evoy. Support for System Check comes from Omidyar Network, a social change venture that is reimagining how capitalism should work. Learn more about their efforts to recenter our economy around individuals, community, and societal well-being at Omidyar.com (http://omidyar.com/) . Our executive producer is Frank Reynolds. Our theme music is by Brooklyn-based artist and producer Jachary (https://jachary.bandcamp.com/) . Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: http://thenation.com/systemchecksubs.

This week on System Check we are saying farewell to 2020 and hello to 2021 with our first System Check Book Club. Your hosts Melissa and Dorian first aired this Book Club as a Live Event (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/system-check-live-video/) on YouTube and Facebook just in time for holiday reading. While the original show was over two hours long (https://www.facebook.com/7629206115/videos/199505105156343) , for our podcast this week we decided to share with you some of the highlights from the live event. First up is Maria Hinojosa (https://www.futuromediagroup.org/maria-hinojosa/) , journalist , storyteller and founder of Futuro Media Group. She is the host and executive producer of the brilliant and informative weekly NPR show Latino USA, and anchor of the Emmy Award-winning talk show Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One. Her latest book, Once I Was You: a Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America (https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Once-I-Was-You/Maria-Hinojosa/9781982128654) was published by Atria Books and received well-earned, rave reviews this fall. We talk with her about the system of immigration, particularly the cruel and harmful practices of family separation of young immigrant children from their parents, the role of state agents who insist they are simply “doing their job” as well as those brave enough to resist, and the personal origins of her book title. Next we speak with Rumaan Alam (https://rumaanalam.com/) , author of the gripping, searing and suspenseful novel Leave The World Behind (https://www.harpercollins.com/products/leave-the-world-behind-rumaan-alam?variant=32123411365922&utm_source=aps&utm_medium=athrweb&utm_campaign=aps) . With bylines in many places including The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/authors/rumaan-alam/) , Alam’s fictional characters in his third novel feel as though they are grappling with the dystopia of their new domestic lives, revealing deep-seated racism, and coping with the death-dealing consequences of environmental and political disaster. Sound familiar? Leave the World Behind was a finalist for this year’s National Book Award and has already been optioned by Netflix. Although written in 2018 and 2019, it seems like the year 2020 released the lived experience version of this novel. Up next is a powerful, brutal, and insightful new book by New York Times best-selling author Scott Farris (https://www.c-span.org/person/?scottfarris02) . Freedom on Trial: The First Post Civil-War Battle Over Civil Rights and Voter Suppression (http://www.thelyonspress.com/book/9781493046355) tells the story of the federal government prosecution of the South Carolina Ku Klux Klan in the early 1870s. Farris talks with us about the system of citizenship—and the contested meanings of the 14th and 15th Amendments during the Reconstruction period, the role of radical Republicans in the fight for racial justice, and the specific role of Farris’s own great grandfather in this overlooked historical saga of the KKK. Our colleague John Nichols, (https://www.thenation.com/authors/john-nichols/) National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation, joins us next to discuss his latest book, The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party: The Enduring Legacy of Henry Wallace’s Anti-Fascist, Anti-Racist Politics (https://www.versobooks.com/books/3082-the-fight-for-the-soul-of-the-democratic-party) . In the book, John reveals the legacy of former Vice President Henry Wallace, who warned of the persisting “Danger of American Fascism” and urged the Democratic Party to reject imperialism in favor of a genuinely progressive future. It is a message, Nichols says, the Democratic party needs to heed now. Nichols brings the often forgotten visionary, politician, activist and philanthropist Wallace to the fore of mid-century American politics, charting the untraveled paths he envisioned for the Democratic Party, including a post-war peace that was rooted in human dignity and justice abroad and domestically. And John answers the question: does the Democratic Party today have a soul to fight for? Our final selection for this week’s episode offers a very different way of thinking about systems. Although this book is about one man—athlete, artist, philosopher, and activist, Paul Robeson—it isn’t so much a biography as an exploration of Robeson as a system, a technology, an element and vibration. Intrigued? Tune in to hear Shana Redmond (https://drshanaredmond.com/) , Professor of Musicology and African American Studies at UCLA, and author of Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (https://www.dukeupress.edu/everything-man) , as she talks with our hosts about this extraordinary book, including how Robeson was to Henry Wallace in 1948 as Killa Mike was to Bernie Sanders in 2020. A very special thanks to all of our authors that joined us for first System Check Book Club (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/system-check-live-video/) , as well as all of our partners for the live event including: The Anna Julia Cooper Center (https://ajccenter.com/) , Community Change Action (https://communitychangeaction.org/) , The New York Public Library (https://www.nypl.org/) , Tattered Cover Bookstore (https://www.tatteredcover.com/) , and of course the home of System Check The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/) . Like System Check? Follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/SystemCheckPod) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SystemCheckPod/) , and subscribe on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/system-check/id1536830138) , Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/0vI1wNUVfYbZXMIM6nciaX?si=VoRgIzndRVG4Xw_rQNGKmQ) , or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes every Friday. System Check is a project of The Nation magazine, hosted by Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren and produced by Sophia Steinert-Evoy. Support for System Check comes from Omidyar Network, a social change venture that is reimagining how capitalism should work. Learn more about their efforts to recenter our economy around individuals, community, and societal well-being at Omidyar.com (http://omidyar.com/) . Our executive producer is Frank Reynolds. Our theme music is by Brooklyn-based artist and producer Jachary (https://jachary.bandcamp.com/) . Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: http://thenation.com/systemchecksubs.

President-elect Joe Biden has made history: This week, he announced that Rep. Deb Haaland would be his pick for head of the Interior Department, the first Native American person ever to a Cabinet-level position, making Biden’s Cabinet the most diverse in history. This kind of representation is important, but it’s not enough, because far from Washington, Native Americans are dying at disproportionate rates from the Coronavirus pandemic. In October, the death rate from Covid-19 on the Navajo Nation was higher than in any state. In South Dakota, the Cheyenne River Lakota reservation is fighting to keep roadblocks up to prevent the spread of the virus (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/lakota-tribal-sovereignty-covid/) , despite the order from the state’s governor to take them down. And Neshoba County, Mississippi, home of the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw, had the highest rate of death per capita in the entire of Mississippi due to coronavirus, devastating the tribe (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/us/choctaw-indians-coronavirus.html) . Neshoba (https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/fifty-years-after-freedom-summer-voting-rights-act-needed-more-ever/) : If that rings a bell, it’s probably because it was at the Neshoba County Fair in 1980 that then-candidate Ronald Reagan launched his campaign for the Presidency on the platform of “state’s rights,” ushering in four decades of neoliberal (https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/biden-inequality-coronavirus/) policies that have devalued and gutted many of the core functions of government (https://www.thenation.com/podcast/society/coronavirus-public-health/) meant to protect us from...deadly epidemics. On this week’s System Check, Melissa and Dorian follow up on last week’s episode (https://www.thenation.com/podcast/society/coronavirus-public-health/) to explore the system of finding a cure for the coronavirus epidemic that has killed more than 300,000 Americans so far. Finding a vaccine, for sure a scientific feat of epic proportions, is hopeful news. And while necessary, it is not sufficient to understand and transform the systems that have resulted in mind-numbing mass death. We have to push ourselves to also ask the questions: what are the systems that created and sustained the crisis? And how can we bring about a dramatic change not just of the system of science or the system of public health, but rather of the whole ecosystem that made this pandemic possible? We offer a few plausible answers found at the intersection of science, social science and activism. For insight into these intersecting systems, Melissa and Dorian talk to Gregg Gonsalves (https://www.thenation.com/authors/gregg-gonsalves/) , Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Associate Professor of Law at Yale University, to help us think about the Covid-19 pandemic beyond a clinical perspective. And he offers ideas about how to build our social immunity to defeat the virus, and the vast inequalities that make it deadlier for far too many. We then check-in with Alondra Nelson (https://www.ssrc.org/staff/nelson-alondra/) , president of the Social Science Research Council and the Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. She tells us about the creation of the Coronavirus Syllabus (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dTkJmhWQ8NcxhmjeLp6ybT1_YOPhFLx9hZ43j1S7DjE/edit) , and the necessary efforts to mobilize science and social science for the public good. And she reminds us that the solutions to this pandemic are not only biological and clinical (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/black-maternal-reproductive-health/) , but also require communities of social and human sciences working collaboratively to tackle exclusion, exploitation, and inequality. The missing piece, and one too often left out of public health conversations, is grassroots organizing. That’s why our final word this week comes from Lenice Emmanuel (http://www.alisj.org/letter-from-executive-director/) , Executive Director of the Alabama Institute for Social Justice. She reminds us that activism is what system change looks like on the ground, and that what Black people in the South and everyone vulnerable and marginalized across our country need are systems that allow them to thrive. And yes, childcare and coinage. System Checklist Transforming analysis into action, the System Check Team gives listeners three action items this week: Mask Up (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/covid-vaccine-mask-relief/) : We said it last week and we’ll say it again: With vaccines rolling out, there is light at the end of this tunnel. But we’re far from the end of the pandemic, and your actions now could save the lives of people in your community, maybe even people in your own home. Educate yourself: The Coronavirus Syllabus (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dTkJmhWQ8NcxhmjeLp6ybT1_YOPhFLx9hZ43j1S7DjE/edit#heading=h.kgodab1cx8ey) that Alondra Nelson highlights in this week’s episode is a cross-disciplinary treasure trove of research about the virus, a humane list of music and literature about past pandemics, and helpful syllabi and teaching resources for educating young people about this difficult time in our history. Dig in! RSVP: Lastly, you’re invited to the first ever System Check Book Club. This Saturday, December 19, at 5pm Eastern, join Melissa and Dorian for a live video event—they’ll be talking the authors of some of their favorite books from this year, and looking ahead to titles to watch out for in 2021. Register here for this free event (https://www.facebook.com/110234874208797/posts/140167737882177/?fbclid=IwAR1nkpjSsv1YOR6nYO0j4BC6aQu_CupmJ0iIeq_9UmF3GXBtsa7sbSHtJ48) . As always, we welcome your additions to our Checklist! Use our Twitter (https://twitter.com/SystemCheckPod) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SystemCheckPod/) pages to add your comments, suggested actions, and organizations to support. And if you like the show, subscribe on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/system-check/id1536830138) , Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/0vI1wNUVfYbZXMIM6nciaX?si=VoRgIzndRVG4Xw_rQNGKmQ) , or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes every Friday. System Check is a project of The Nation magazine, hosted by Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren and produced by Sophia Steinert-Evoy. Support for System Check comes from Omidyar Network, a social change venture that is reimagining how capitalism should work. Learn more about their efforts to recenter our economy around individuals, community, and societal well-being at Omidyar.com (http://omidyar.com/) . Our executive producer is Frank Reynolds. Our theme music is by Brooklyn-based artist and producer Jachary (https://jachary.bandcamp.com/) . Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: http://thenation.com/systemchecksubs.

On this episode Patrick sits down with Jenny Johnston, Associate at Flourish, Omidyar Network's fintech fund, to discuss the latest developments in the fintech space in Latam. Based out of the firms HQ in the Bay Area, Jenny leads the organisation's work for Latin America with investments ranging from Neobanks Albo and Neon to Brazilian's Guiabolso. Jenny makes a compelling case for the opportunities of Fintech in emerging markets and the strong potential Latam especially has on financial innovation with a young and tech savvy population. On this episode you will learn about: Omidyar's leading rol as a new typo of organisation combining the powers of philanthropy, a strong mission and for-profit business models The state of Fintech in Latam, how the sectors has evolved since its inception and where it might be heading The incredible resilience of gig workers as digital hustlers providing for their families even at times of extreme hardship during the pandemic To have a deeper look into Flourish's work, check out their website and download their comprehensive study "The Digital Hustle" on the state of the gig economy in emerging markets here.Jenny Johnston is active on Twitter under the handle @Jenny_Colgate as well as on LinkedIn. If you enjoy the show, it would be fantastic if you could give us a rating on Apple Podcasts. 

Defund. That one word has motivated thousands across the country to take to the streets this year to end police violence against Black Americans, and it has also become the punching bag for some Democratic politicians to explain their electoral misfortunes this cycle. But that word, defund, also explains why the United States surpassed 3,000 deaths from Covid-19 in a single day for the first time this week. That staggering number—just one day’s toll from Covid-19—surpasses the number of Americans who died on 9/11. The federal government’s response to those attacks in 2001 was to spend $6 trillion dollars (https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/pentagon-military-madness/) to address a so-called “national security emergency.” But when it comes to the national public health emergency brought on by Covid-19 that is the equivalent of 9/11 daily? We’ve seen nothing near the same urgency or funding from the highest levels of the federal government. Instead, the decades-long defunding and disinvestment from our public health system that has allowed the pandemic to become an uncontrolled disaster continues. On this week’s System Check, your hosts Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren explore the Covid-19 pandemic in the first of a two-part series that looks under the hood of our public health system. More than 286,000 people have died from Covid-19, but this week President-elect Biden announced his top-level health care team and an FDA panel voted to approve the emergency use of new vaccines. What the new administration will inherit—and need to reconstruct—is a hollowed-out federal government and public health infrastructure, the result not only of decisions and incompetence of the current lame-duck Administration, but of decades of disinvestment. To understand how our system of public health is vital to the entire body politic, Melissa and Dorian check-in with Dr. Monica McLemore, Associate Professor of Family Health Care Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco (https://profiles.ucsf.edu/monica.mclemore) where she is an affiliated scientist with Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, and a member of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health. Reframing the conversation of health away from a private, individualistic clinical model and toward a comprehensive, collective public health model, Professor Mclemore explains, has meaningful consequences for resource allocation and, of course, for lives lost or lives saved. When the public health system is working well, its work tends to be invisible, but as Professor Mclemore explains, we all might be living with Covid-19 for a long time, even with the promise of vaccines. Your hosts then check in with—and get a final word from—Dr. Chris Pernell, a Board-certified preventive medicine and public health physician based in Newark, New Jersey (https://twitter.com/drchrismd?lang=en) . Dr. Pernell reminds us of the necessity of well-functioning public health systems in creating healthy individuals, families, and communities. Sharing a truly personal story of how the deadly coronavirus went beyond her practice to affect her loved ones at home, she reminds us of the power of storytelling to create a more just, equitable, and accountable system of public health. System Checklist Transforming analysis into action, the System Check Team gives listeners three action items this week: Mask Up (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/covid-vaccine-mask-relief/) . Protect yourself, your loved ones, and your community by wearing a mask, and continuing to follow trusted guidelines around social distancing and other preventative steps to stop the spread of Covid-19. Stay informed with the latest updates from The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/keyword/coronavirus/) , on everything from whether and how you’ll be able to get vaccinated (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/covid-vaccine-mask-relief/) , to how messaging alone is not enough (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/public-health-messaging-covid/) to fix our public health crisis, to analysis on the Biden Administration’s appointments (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/biden-cabinet-appointments-progressives/) and personnel, to ideas around creating a Coronavirus Commission (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/congress-covid-commission-biden/) modeled after the 9/11 Commission. Get active and stay engaged! Continue to keep your eyes on Georgia (https://www.thenation.com/podcast/politics/georgia-biden-stacey-abrams/) and support efforts on the ground to expand democracy and sustain voter mobilization in the run-off election for the state’s two Senate seats on January 5, 2021 which will determine control of the Senate. The outcome of this race will determine just how bold and progressive the federal government’s response will be to the crisis in our public health system. It will also determine the national response to the other intertwined crises--especially of the system of poverty (https://www.thenation.com/podcast/society/poverty-inequality-basic-income/) and other systems of injustice (https://www.thenation.com/podcast/politics/voting-election-electoral-college/) that continue to marginalize far too many. As always, we welcome your additions to our Checklist! Use our Twitter (https://twitter.com/SystemCheckPod) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SystemCheckPod/) pages to add your comments, suggested actions, and organizations to support. And if you like the show, Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/system-check/id1536830138) , Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/0vI1wNUVfYbZXMIM6nciaX?si=VoRgIzndRVG4Xw_rQNGKmQ) , or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes every Friday. System Check is a project of The Nation magazine, hosted by Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren and produced by Sophia Steinert-Evoy. Support for System Check comes from Omidyar Network, a social change venture that is reimagining how capitalism should work. Learn more about their efforts to recenter our economy around individuals, community, and societal well-being at Omidyar.com (http://omidyar.com/) . Our executive producer is Frank Reynolds. Our theme music is by Brooklyn-based artist and producer Jachary (https://jachary.bandcamp.com/) . Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: http://thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

There are a lot of jobs we as a country don’t value. Think farm work, child care, service jobs—these low-wage, often racialized and gendered jobs form the backbone of our economy, but if you’ve worked in any of these fields, you know how hard it can be to make ends meet on these jobs. Three of Dorian Warren’s grandparents were janitors, another job that doesn’t get its due. But they were also proud members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and through their work and their union they learned a vital lesson. If we want to improve working conditions for these undervalued jobs, you can either upgrade the workers, or you can upgrade the jobs—or you can do both. Upgrading and transforming jobs, especially dangerous and poverty-level jobs in growing sectors like care work (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/coronavirus-child-care-nurses-essential/) , is a critically important strategy precisely because of the historically devalued nature of this labor. But it takes power—the collective power of workers joining together with communities—to redesign the system of bad, poverty-level jobs into good jobs. On this week’s show, Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren follow up on last week’s episode (https://www.thenation.com/podcast/society/poverty-inequality-basic-income/) to answer the question: How can we eradicate poverty in America? It's not just about jobs, and the answers are common sense, but radical: To end poverty, we need to meet people’s real needs, like food, or diapers, or childcare, but we also need to disrupt and reform the systems that keep people in poverty, and we need to give people the power to smash through the structures holding them back. For insight on how to get to a poverty-free America, Melissa and Dorian turn to experts leading campaigns and organizations fighting against the system of poverty. Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/we-still-live-in-two-americas-not-one/) , co-director of the Kairos Center and national co-director of the Poor People’s Campaign, joins to discuss how abolishing poverty is a moral imperative—and it makes good policy sense as well, leading to stronger organizing possibilities for all working Americans. Next up, Mary Kay Henry (https://www.seiu.org/mary-kay-henry) , President of SEIU, joins to talk about the role of multi-racial worker power in disrupting the system of poverty. Henry talks to Melissa and Dorian in-depth about the innovative “Fight for $15 and a Union” campaign SEIU helped launched in 2012, and the transformative power of workers setting the terms of their own fights. We then check-in with—and give the final word to—two guests on the ground in North Carolina doing the work to fulfill the immediate needs of those living in poverty and struggling to make ends meet. We talk to Eric Aft, CEO of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina (https://www.secondharvestnwnc.org/about-us) , who talks to us about “feeding the line and shortening the line” for the over 200,000 individuals his organization and its partners serve yearly. And Melissa and Dorian talk with Michelle Old, Executive Director of the North Carolina Diaper Bank, (https://ncdiaperbank.org/about-us) about how having access to diapers and what she calls “dignity items” is a vital necessity for babies, children and families to thrive. System Checklist  During the Covid-19 pandemic millions of Americans have fallen more deeply into poverty. Alleviating poverty in America requires political will, investment, and a strategy to win. During the past two weeks our System Check guests have identified two key issues that keep people poor: lack of cash and lack of power. This week’s System Checklist highlights a political agenda that addresses both. Raise the minimum wage. The last time Congress raised the federal minimum wage was 2007! We know that this meager $7.25 / hour minimum hasn't kept pace with cost of living. (https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/01/21/if-worker-pay-had-kept-pace-productivity-gains-1968-todays-minimum-wage-would-be-24) Right now there is nowhere in the country where a full time, minimum wage worker can afford rent on a two bedroom apartment. We must raise the minimum wage. Join the Fight for 15. (https://fightfor15.org) Universal Health Care. Unexpected medical bills cause 40% of individual bankruptcies. (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/this-is-the-real-reason-most-americans-file-for-bankruptcy.html) Universal health care acknowledges that healthcare is a basic, human right and unlinks health and wealth. With access to affordable, available health care, families can spend their income on housing, food, and other necessities, while avoiding the medical bill caused spiral into poverty. Join the majority of Americans (https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-opinion-on-single-payer-national-health-plans-and-expanding-access-to-medicare-coverage/) --support universal health care. Universal Childcare. One year of child care costs more than one year of tuition at most states’ four-year public colleges. (https://www.epi.org/child-care-costs-in-the-united-states/) Families need safe, accessible, affordable child care. We can alleviate poverty and change the trajectory of life for millions of American children with a substantial investment in childcare and early childhood education. Read this report from The Economic Policy Institute calling for “An Ambitious National Investment in America’s Children” (https://www.epi.org/publication/its-time-for-an-ambitious-national-investment-in-americas-children/) and sign up to join Childcare Changemakers (https://www.childcarechangemakers.org/) to enlist in the campaign for universal and equitable childcare for all families. Guaranteed Basic Income. Last week we heard from Aisha Nyandoro as she described the ways guaranteed basic income from The Magnolia’s Mother’s Trust (http://springboardto.org/index.php/blog/story/introducing-the-magnolia-mothers-trust) has affected the lives of Black mothers living in poverty in Mississippi. A Stockton, California, guaranteed income program (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-02/stockton-extends-its-universal-basic-income-pilot) has also ignited the interest around the country. If lack of cash is the core feature of poverty, then let’s get cash to the people. Learn about and support the work of the Economic Security Project.  (https://www.economicsecurityproject.org) Ensure Workers’ Right to Organize. Workers must have the right to organize in order to have a seat at the table of power. The power to negotiate wages and conditions of work is tied directly to the ability to organize and unionize. It’s time to update our outdated labor laws to adapt to our 21st century economy. Check out the campaigns of Jobs with Justice (https://www.jwj.org/) and Sign the Pledge (https://actionnetwork.org/forms/sign-the-jobs-with-justice-pledge?&source=NAT_W_homepage) to advance workers’ rights to organize. As always, we welcome your additions to our Checklist! Use our Twitter and Facebook pages to add your comments, suggested actions, and organizations to support. System Check is a project of The Nation magazine, hosted by Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren and produced by Sophia Steinert-Evoy. Support for System Check comes from Omidyar Network, a social change venture that is reimagining how capitalism should work. Learn more about their efforts to recenter our economy around individuals, community, and societal well-being at Omidyar.com (http://omidyar.com/) . Our executive producer is Frank Reynolds. Our theme music is by Brooklyn-based artist and producer Jachary (https://jachary.bandcamp.com/) . Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: http://thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

This week, your co-hosts Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren get personal. Melissa’s Grandma Rosa lived and worked in poverty in the Jim Crow south. She was a seamstress who suffered from arthritis, and she made tremendous personal sacrifices to ensure her twin sons, William and Wesley, could go to college (https://books.google.com/books?id=BPpYDAS_oUUC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=genius+twins+richmond+ebony+1960&source=bl&ots=8Jq0FvY6_4&sig=SHqA3DZb2_YeamIE5vr8PudHjxs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6wKafuunYAhVJymMKHWZ6Ce4Q6AEIKzAB%23v=onepage&q=genius%2520twins%2520richmond%2520ebony%25201960&f=false#v=onepage&q=genius%2520twins%2520richmond%2520ebony%25201960&f=false) and create a legacy of achievement and activism. (https://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/fifty-years-later-my-father-and-uncle-msna154681) Her story is inspiring, but why did she have to make the choice between personal comfort and her children’s future? Dorian’s grandmother also grew up poor on the south side of Chicago. Born in the midst of the 1919 Race Riot (https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/tom-dispatch-1919-taught-us-womens-voting-rights-immigration-racism/) and growing up during the Great Depression, she taught him to “earn a nickel, save 2 cents,” proving that while she certainly needed more money, she did not need the kind of “financial literacy” programs that many think tanks and philanthropies put forward as a solution to poverty. These were resilient, forward-thinking women—but they still struggled with poverty. That leads Melissa and Dorian to ask the guiding question for this episode: “Why are people poor?” Why does the richest country in the world still tolerate millions of our neighbors living in poverty? And why is it so rare to hear—in the media, in the boardrooms of philanthropies, in the halls of power in Washington, D.C.—from the people who are experiencing poverty? To answer all these questions and more, we turn to our experts. Aisha Nyandoro, Chief Executive Officer of Springboard To Opportunities (http://springboardto.org) talked with System Check about the Magnolia Mother’s Trust (http://springboardto.org/index.php/blog/story/introducing-the-magnolia-mothers-trust) . The Trust is the first guaranteed income project in the country to focus explicitly on racial and gender justice. Magnolia Mother's Trust gives $1,000 a month, with no strings attached, to extremely low income black women living in federally subsidized affordable housing. Nyandoro began the program in 2018 as a small pilot with just 20 women in Jackson, Mississippi. Today there are 110 women receiving $1,000 a month for a full year, and the results are pretty amazing. This week’s Final Word is offered by Tiana Gaines-Turner. Despite working as the Housing Stabilization Specialist at Eddie’s House (https://eddieshouse.org) in Philadelphia, this wife and mom still struggles with poverty, housing instability and food insecurity. In her final word this week, Gaines-Turner explains why she and others in her community should be at the policy-making table (https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/week-poverty-expert-testimony-tianna-gaines-turner/) . “Nothing about us, without us” is her lesson for System Check. We hope that after listening to our guests this week, you feel inspired to transform analysis into action. Here is this week’s System Checklist. Fight for 15: Set a monthly reminder on your calendar—let’s say the 15th of every month, or any day that works for you. Each month, on that date, call or email your senators (https://www.senate.gov/senators/How_to_correspond_senators.htm) and your representative in Congress (https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative) . Urge them to increase the federal minimum wage to $15/ hour. Get your family, friends, and social media contacts involved. Let them know, “Every month, on the 15th, we are going to demand 15!” Make sure you follow and support the Fight for 15 (https://fightfor15.org) . Give Locally: Take a small step to make an immediate impact in your local community. If you have the financial resources, set up a recurring monthly contribution to your community foodbank. (https://www.feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank) As little as $10 a month can make a big difference. While you are at it, find out if your employer will match your contribution. (https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=1799) Many companies will double, or even triple, charitable contributions made by their employees. Act Locally: If you are ready, consider taking an even bigger step in your local community. Find ways to get involved with families who are experiencing poverty, hunger or homelessness. Contact your local department of social services, your United Way, (https://www.unitedway.org) the homeless liaison at your local school, or your religious organization to find out where the need is in your community to identify how your time and talents can contribute to a more fair and just system. Water the Grassroots: If you’re really ready to commit to this work, join a local grassroots community organization fighting to upend the system of poverty on which our country, and especially the 1%, depend. Join or support efforts to unionize. Support collective efforts in your workplace, support friends and family who are organizing, and vote for candidates and policies that give workers more voice and power. Make a personal pledge to “show up” in solidarity for someone else’s fight at least 5 times in 2021--whether a town hall, a digital rally, or contacting your local elected officials, especially for folks who are struggling to make ends meet in the midst of a disastrous health and economic crisis. As always, we welcome your additions to our Checklist! Use our Twitter (https://twitter.com/SystemCheckPod) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/SystemCheckPod/) pages to add your comments, suggested actions, and organizations to support. System Check is a project of The Nation magazine, hosted by Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren and produced by Sophia Steinert-Evoy. Support for System Check comes from Omidyar Network, a social change venture that is reimagining how capitalism should work. Learn more about their efforts to recenter our economy around individuals, community, and societal well-being at Omidyar.com (http://omidyar.com/) . Our executive producer is Frank Reynolds. DD Guttenplan is Editor of The Nation, Erin O’Mara is President of The Nation. Our theme music is by Brooklyn-based artist and producer Jachary (https://jachary.bandcamp.com/) .  Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: http://thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

How did we get here? How did we get to the end of a week in which Americans cast 160 million votes, the highest number ever in a general election and the highest voter turnout among eligible citizens in over a hundred years (https://www.newsweek.com/election-2020-voter-turnout-67-percent-highest-120-years-1544552) , a week in which one candidate received almost 4 million votes more than the other one (https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2020-11-05/bidens-popular-vote-lead-over-trump-eclipses-clintons-in-2016) , and we still don’t know who our next president is? Last week on System Check, your hosts Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren dug into all the different ways this country makes it hard for people to cast their ballot. But it’s one thing to vote—on this week’s show, they explain why it’s a whole other thing to get that vote to matter. It’s time for a system check on how your vote gets counted. Any conversation about representation in our democracy has to start at the foundationally unequal institution of the electoral college. Rashad Robinson (https://twitter.com/rashadrobinson) , President of Color of Change and Spokesperson for Color of Change PAC, joins us to discuss how barriers to casting and counting the votes of Black Americans have been “baked in” to our political system. Next up, Kristen Clarke (https://lawyerscommittee.org/staff/kristen-clarke/) , President and Executive Director of the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, weighs in on the Republican strategy to nominate and confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Is it a coincidence that Barrett has just been confirmed to the court—one leg of the conservative movement’s “three-legged stool” of countermajoritarian rule (https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/10/21/the-gonzo-constitutionalism-of-the-american-right/) —just in time to strike down the will of the majority of voters? Our history is important, and can the dark periods in our past can help guide us through our struggles today. Professor Blair Kelley (https://www.profblmkelley.com/) of North Carolina State University offers both a deeply historical and personal perspective on voter suppression, grounded in her family’s own experiences during slavery, reconstruction, and in the Jim Crow South. Just as racism helps explain the particular ways in which our institutions were formed, it also provides a cudgel for those in power, and those who feel threatened by equality, today. The Nation’s own Sports Editor, Dave Zirin (https://www.thenation.com/authors/dave-zirin/) , joined us on our Election Night live coverage and reminds us of a single key insight to help make sense of the election results. And Cristina Beltran (https://www.thetroublewithunity.com/the-trouble-with-unity/) of NYU, author of Cruelty as Citizenship: How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy (https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/cruelty-as-citizenship) , joined us to help us think about how “white domination” is in fact, a civic experience for non-white voters hoping to cast a vote and have it count. But it wouldn’t be a System Check if we didn’t talk about the ways we can get out of our current mess. The Nation’s Strikes Correspondent, Jane McAlevey (https://www.thenation.com/authors/jane-mcalevey/) , talked to us about the intersection of a movement moment with a presidential election, and the necessity of non-violent, direct action. And two Members of Congress join us to talk about what is to be done once the votes are counted: Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (https://www.thenation.com/authors/pramila-jayapal/) instructs us on a path forward that centers intersectionality, and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Rep. Karen Bass (https://bass.house.gov/about/biography) reminds us of the necessity of outside pressure on all elected officials (Bass, like so many progressive champions (https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a34572845/election-2020-the-squad-reelected/) , won her reelection bid this week (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-california-house-district-37.html) ). Finally, Dreamer Astrid Silva (https://twitter.com/Astrid_NV?s=20) of Dream Big Nevada has the last word this week as she talks to us about what this election means for millions like her who are unable to vote, whose fates hinge on the final vote count, but who remain hopeful, no matter the outcome. Looking to turn all this analysis into action? We give listeners three action items this week: Demand Twitter and Facebook suspend Trump’s accounts for spreading lies and misinformation about the election (https://act.colorofchange.org/sign/facebooktwitter_suspendtrump/?t=3&ak_proof=1&akid=47766.3618562.D_ggQO) . Support the runoffs and help us do the work to ensure every vote is counted. (https://www.mobilize.us/colorofchangepac/event/362488/?utm_source=volcall1104) Listen to our 5-hour Election Night Livestream (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R94wvTRZze4) for cogent, real-time analysis with an array of insightful voices, from scholars to grassroots organizers on the ground. System Check is a project of The Nation magazine, hosted by Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren and produced by Sophia Steinert-Evoy. Support for System Check comes from Omidyar Network, a social change venture that is reimagining how capitalism should work. Learn more about their efforts to recenter our economy around individuals, community, and societal well-being at Omidyar.com (https://omidyar.com/) . Our executive producer is Frank Reynolds. DD Guttenplan is Editor of The Nation, Erin O’Mara is President of The Nation. Our theme music is by Brooklyn-based artist and producer Jachary (https://jachary.bandcamp.com/) . 

Welcome to System Check. On this podcast, we’re going to break down the big, unwieldy, seemingly immovable systems that structure our politics and our lives. In the ten episodes in this season, we will delve into the history of these systems, and along with our guests, we will seek ways to move beyond or redesign these systems. In our first episode, your hosts Dorian Warren and Melissa Harris-Perry are focusing on the system at the top of everyone’s minds: Voting. More than 75 million Americans have already cast a ballot, (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/us/elections/75-million-americans-have-already-voted.html) but election watchers are warning that long lines, false information, and purposeful barriers may deter many Americans from exercising their right to vote. America’s convoluted voting system is deeply and purposely unfair to many Americans, especially African Americans, Spanish-speakers, caregivers, and those with the least education and the fewest financial resources. It’s time for a system check. Sherrilyn Ifill, (https://www.naacpldf.org/about-us/staff/sherrilyn-ifill/) President and Director Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (https://www.naacpldf.org/) joins us to consider the long history of voter suppression in the United States and to outline how state laws, federal court decisions, and digital misinformation continue to depress voter turnout. After listening to this interview, we know you will want to learn more. Check out Sherrilyn Ifill, Civil Rights Superhero (https://www.glamour.com/story/sherrilyn-ifill-women-of-the-year-2020) by Melissa Harris-Perry (Glamour, October 13, 2020); Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t know his civil rights history (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/17/mark-zuckerberg-doesnt-know-his-civil-rights-history/) by Sherrilyn Ifill (Washington Post, October 17, 2019) and the testimony of Sherrilyn Ifill, before the United States House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Hearing on H.R. 1, the “For the People Act of 2019 (https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20190129/108824/HHRG-116-JU00-Wstate-IfillS-20190129.pdf) (January 29, 2019). Also in this episode, co-host Melissa Harris-Perry delivers the weekly “System Analysis” with a surprising take on the rationality of voting. She concludes by drawing on the wisdom of Professor Lani Guinier. (https://www.fairvote.org/lani_guinier_champion_of_democracy) legal scholar and a champion of voting rights and racial justice. Twenty years ago, as the 2000 election between Vice President Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush descended into a chad-hanging fiasco, Lani Guinier wrote Making Every Vote Count (https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/making-every-vote-count/) for The Nation. Her analysis remains relevant today. In the second half of the episode, we talk to Alicia Garza (https://aliciagarza.com/) , co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter (https://blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/) , founder of the Black Futures Lab (https://blackfutureslab.org/) , co-founder of Super Majority (https://supermajority.com/) , host of her own podcast, Lady Don’t Take No (https://lady-dont-take-no.simplecast.com/) , and author of the new book, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565184/the-purpose-of-power-by-alicia-garza/) . Alicia Garza is insightful, impactful, and vulnerable in this interview you will not want to miss! Transforming analysis into action, we give listeners three action items this week: Read Alicia Garza’s The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/565184/the-purpose-of-power-by-alicia-garza/) . If you haven’t already voted—VOTE! Not sure if you’re registered? You can check here (https://www.vote.org/) .  If you or anyone you know encounters difficulties while trying to vote, call Election Protection: 1-866-OUR VOTE (https://866ourvote.org/) Be sure to keep listening until the end of the episode, because organizer Linda Sutton of Democracy North Carolina (https://democracync.org/) has an inspiring final word this week. System Check is a project of The Nation (https://www.thenation.com/) , hosted by Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren and produced by Sophia Steinert-Evoy. Our executive producer is Frank Reynolds. DD Guttenplan is Editor of The Nation, Erin O’Mara is President of The Nation. Our theme music is by Brooklyn-based artist and producer Jachary (https://jachary.bandcamp.com/) . Special thanks this week to our guests Sherrilyn Ifill and Alicia Garza. Support for System Check comes from Omidyar Network, a social change venture that is reimagining how capitalism should work. Learn more about their efforts to recenter our economy around individuals, community, and societal well-being at Omidyar.com (https://omidyar.com/) .

In our latest podcast, Peter Jankovsky (WG'20) is joined by Emmalyn Shaw, Managing Partner at Flourish, a $500 M global venture fund whose investments leverage technology to advance financial health and economic resilience. Emmalyn co-manages the fund and leads its US investment efforts. She has 20 years of technology investing experience, working closely with entrepreneurs to build large-scale businesses. In this extensive interview, Emmalyn shares: • Flourish's goal of advancing financial health and how it grew out of Omidyar Network's impact mission • How Flourish identifies investment themes as well as specific companies to invest in • Portfolio companies that Emmalyn is especially excited about, and how they are helping consumers during COVID-19 • FinTech’s role in helping consumers overcome the financial challenges they are facing • Advice that Emmalyn has for those building careers as venture capitalists and/or entrepreneurs Prior to Flourish, Emmalyn was a Managing Partner at Omidyar Network where she co-managed the financial inclusion team. She joined Omidyar from Oak Investment Partners, where she was a venture partner. Prior to that, Emmalyn held roles at VantagePoint Partners and Barksdale Group. She began her career at Morgan Stanley and MSCI Barra. Emmalyn holds an MBA from Wharton and a BA from University of California at Berkeley, where she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. When not with entrepreneurs, Emmalyn enjoys time with her husband and six kids.

Alex Lazarow is the Investment Director at Cathay Innovation. Prior to joining Cathay Innovation, Alex was a Principal at Omidyar Network, a global philanthropic investment firm. While at Omidyar, he focused on investments in the global FinTech and financial inclusion space across the U.S., Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.He is also an adjunct professor specializing in impact investment and entrepreneurship at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He is a Kauffman Fellow, CFA Charterholder, and a Stephen M. Kellen Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations. He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.Comm from the University of Manitoba.Follow Alex (@Alex_Lazarow) and host, Akash Bhat (@bhatvakash) on Twitter.. . .Glossary of terms:1. Network Effects: Network Effects is a phenomenon whereby increased numbers of people or participants improve the value of a good or service.2. Impacting Investing: Impact investing refers to investments made into companies, organizations and funds with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return3. Blitzscaling: It's the science and art of rapidly building out a company to serve a large and usually global market, with the goal of becoming the first mover at scale; an accelerated path to the stage in a startup's life-cycle where the most value is created. . . .In this episode we will learn:1. Alex Lazarow's background (3:20)2. Why did Alex decide to write ‘Out-Innovate'? (7:00)3. What are ‘Frontier Ecosystems'? (9:34) 4. Similarities between emerging markets around the world and emerging markets within the US such as mid-West (11:53)5. Learnings from speaking to Indian entrepreneurs about ‘sustainable' growth (14:38)6. Misconceptions about Blitzscaling (18:22)7. Challenges in building global companies (22:04)8. How should entrepreneurs think about the global opportunity and get it right? (25:15)9. Bottlenecks in building sustainable businesses (28:10)10. Is real innovation taking place outside the Silicon Valley? (31:16) 11. Misconceptions Alex had about emerging markets before writing his book (33:40)12. How has Alex changed through his experience of writing the book? (35:15) 13. Rapid fire (38:10)

La storia di eBay il sito di vendita e aste online più famoso al mondo.

原创：酷玩实验室 主播：杨程昊（添加威信zhubochenghao备注“进群”了解更多热点）电影《西虹市首富》里，有一个经典情节：王多鱼要在一个月内，花光10个亿。本来他以为这是一件再简单不过的事情，但后来他发现，当财富积累到一定程度时，想倾家荡产都难。但是，也有倒霉蛋能花完。这个人就是李斌。从各个角度来看，李斌都应该是一个土豪，已经躺着赚钱的那种。他是中国第一批互联网人。1996年，他在北京成立了南极科技，在美国租服务器，在国内帮人注册域名，一个月收入几十万。那年，李斌22岁，赚到人生第一桶金。那年，25岁的马化腾还是一个软件工程师；那年，27岁的雷军刚当上北京金山软件公司总经理；那年，和李斌同岁的刘强东还在快递公司当物流主管。而他一手创办的易车网，是中国第一家在海外上市的汽车互联网公司，股价最高时一度接近100美元。李斌不但是一个土豪，他还是个低调的人。当那篇《摩拜创始人胡玮炜套现15亿:你的同龄人，正在抛弃你》的文章在朋友圈疯狂转发时，鲜有人知道，摩拜背后的男人，是他——无论是“共享单车”的创意，还是摩拜的每一笔融资，都和李斌有关。李斌还是个极具商业头脑的人。除了摩拜，他的投资领域遍布整个出行行业的上中下游，有人甚至称他为“出行教父”。但就是这么一个人，土豪、低调、有商业头脑，他却偏偏开始了第四次创业。在这次创业中，他的人设完全颠覆了——为了它，李斌突然变得异常高调，一改深沉隐忍的个人风格，多次“大放厥词”；为了它，李斌被人骂“贾跃亭第二”“骗子”，昔日那个高瞻远瞩的“出行教父”已经无人再提；而今天，为了它，李斌要倾家荡产了。是的，李斌这一次所做的这个行业，不可谓不凶险：纵使富可敌国，也能把钱造光。这就是蔚来，一个新能源汽车品牌。今天，蔚来的CFO谢东萤宣布离职，外界猜测或与融资停滞、资金链出现问题有关。这就是蔚来，一个即将凉凉的，新能源汽车品牌。1从种种过往来看，李斌应该很聪明才对。他几乎没有做过错的决定。1991年，17岁的李斌做了人生中第一个重大决定——他要考北大。这是一个很扯的想法，要知道高中三年，他去的最多的地方不是教室，而是游戏厅。这种人要是能上北大，那北大就不是北大了。不过李斌倒是没有在意旁人的目光，在高中的最后一段时光，他浪子回头，临阵磨枪，用功程度绝对赶超“头悬梁，锥刺股”了。几个月后，他以太湖县文科状元的身份考入北大。进了北大的李斌，再也没有浪费自己一秒时间。他一周参加17门考试，大学4年，拿了三个学位。1996年，他成立了南极科技。1997年，他参与创办科文书业信息技术公司，也就是当当网的前身。第二年年底，李斌离开了当当，因为他想做一件大事——成立一个像eBay一样的公司。eBay创始人Omidyar的女朋友喜欢一种糖果盒，但却找不到共同爱好的人。于是Omidyar为她成立这个网站，希望帮她找到更多志趣相投的伙伴。没想到eBay很快被同好者挤爆，渐渐地，发展成了一个购物网站。利用爱好吸引强相关用户，是eBay带给李斌的启发。而李斌选择的方向，是他自己的爱好——汽车。因为尽管当时的汽车还没有走入中国的家庭，但李斌觉得它会成为未来生活不可或缺的工具。李斌的性子向来是说干就干。2000年，他拿出自己的积蓄，和一个师兄一起成立了一个汽车网站，叫做易车。凭借着出色的口才，李斌拿到了950万美元的投资。真的被李斌算对了。2001年，国家首次鼓励轿车进入居民家庭，倡导发展经济型轿车。就在那一年，上海通用推出10万元的赛欧，10万元家用轿车市场迅速膨胀。就在那一年，中国加入WTO，汽车关税下降，合资汽车企业纷纷成立，进口车数量同比增长93%。越来越多的汽车产品让中国人挑花了眼。按照常理来说，李斌的易车网迎来了最好的时代。但事实上，易车网快要倒闭了。因为也是在那一年，互联网泡沫破裂了。纳斯达克指数狂跌78%，只有不到一半的网络公司活到了2004年。7500亿美元的资产和60万个工作岗位瞬间蒸发。赴美上市不到一年的新浪、网易、搜狐，股价都跌到了一美元。所有的互联网公司都赔了，当然也包括易车，它赔了400多万。这也许是李斌第一次感到什么叫做“生不逢时”。投资人还没来得及骂“李斌傻X”的时候，李斌就干了件更“傻X”的事情——他让投资人撤资，并将亏损的400万背在自己身上，变成了个人负债。当有记者问李斌为什么这么做的时候，他说：“困难是短暂的，挺过就好了，我有信心。”李斌有信心，可公司里的人没有。短短几天，公司里的人走的走，散的散。到最后，就剩下7个人。那几年李斌每天早上8点出门，下午6点回家，家里人都以为他还在上班，但实际上，他给人写代码，帮人弄网站，什么能挣到钱，他就干什么。最穷的时候，兜里就10块钱。2003年，门户网站开始起死回生。为了避免和门户网站竞争，李斌甚至都不敢把易车做成资讯类的网站。门户网站不愿意服务汽车经销商，李斌就收集这些经销商的资料，整理成信息数据库，倒贴钱给门户网站使用。那时，几大门户网站关于汽车市场的信息和数据分析，都是由易车提供的。随着易车的资源越来越多，不少企业和网站来找易车谈合作，经销商开始给易车交会员费，易车又开始有了现金流。到了2004年，易车的利润达到数百万。易车，竟然真的“活过来了”。李斌又一次算对了。2010年，易车在成立10年后正式在美国纽交所挂牌上市，同时，它也是中国第一家在海外上市的汽车互联网公司。媒体谈起易车的9年前，谈起他欠的那400万。本以为李斌会说出什么豪言壮语，但他只是淡淡的来了句，“三年前我们定下目标上市，今年不过是履行个承诺”。赴美上市，看起来是李斌创业成功的顶点。但36岁的李斌不知道，他和中国汽车的故事，才刚刚开始。2014年，李斌看着北京城灰蒙蒙的天空。一直在做“教人们买车”的李斌，决定自己造车。这就是蔚来。蔚来，Blue Sky Coming，蔚蓝的天空来了。汽车突破对空间的限制，意味着自由和美好，但是拥堵、环境污染等问题，是不是离这个目标有点远了？40岁的李斌给自己写了封信，就拿出了自己的全部身家——1.5亿美元，全部投进了蔚来。他甚至都没拿一丁点创始人股份，自己手里的股份，全部都是拿钱买的。这是一件值得用生命去做的事，李斌是这么和别人说的。李斌的决心，也打动了圈内的一众好友。雷军表示，“当你扣动扳机时，直接找我就行”。刘强东更是直接，听李斌讲了15分钟，只思考了10秒，就说了“Yes”。就连易车的主要竞争对手汽车之家创始人，李想，都入股了蔚来。新东方的俞敏洪也投了钱，并开玩笑地说，“我投了这个钱，你要让我赚钱的啊，要是赚不到，我就把你弄死”。蔚来一定会赚钱的，这是2014年，蔚来所有投资人的想法。事实上，蔚来拥有做电动汽车的“天时、地利以及人和”。含着“金汤匙”出生的蔚来，“人和”以及“地利”自然不必多说。更重要的是，它等到了中国新能源汽车最好的时代。2000年，时任奥迪公司生产部技术经理的万钢，向国务院上书，提出了开发洁净能源汽车的建议。在这份文件中，他分析了中外在内燃机上的技术差距，短时间内赶超国外厂商，基本上不现实，中国汽车业想要崛起，必须进行“弯道超车”。超车的手段，就是新能源汽车。新能源汽车的电机、电控和电池，与油车完全不一样，这也就意味着，在新能源这一行业，我们和国外是站在同一个起跑线上。万钢的建议，引起了国家的重视。2001年4月，“十五”正式设立了“863计划”，其中就有电动汽车重大专项。同年，科技部发布新能源汽车的战略规划。种种迹象表明，属于电动车的时代，要来临了。2013年9月，财政部与科技部联合发布了新能源汽车推广方案。随后，各地方政府也都出台了补贴政策。也就是说，买一辆新能源汽车，可以享受至少双份补贴。这一政策，在全世界根本找不到第二家。中国新能源汽车的春天，已然来临。2但在轰轰烈烈的补贴政策下，中国电动车行业交出的作品，却是这个画风——这辆车，叫做知豆。2015年它刚刚成立，就一举成为当年电动车的销冠，估值高达10亿。作为一辆车，它的最大特点，可能是“不要脸”。在它的车型介绍里，屡屡出现“银黑相间的配色掩盖了用料廉价的不足”“知豆竟然还配备了多功能导航以及冷暖空调系统”等字眼。而这辆最高时速可达80km/h（实际上根本到不了），以装了空调为傲的“新能源汽车”，官方指导售价是10.88万。号称知豆电动车主要竞争对手的众泰芝麻E30，在自己的介绍中堂而皇之写着，这是众泰旗下的一款商务车。恩，一款连安全气囊都没有的商务车。这款在车型尺寸和续航里程和知豆高度相似的“商务车”，官方的指导售价是17.98万。诸如此类的产品，成了中国电动车行业的“中流砥柱”。它们存在的意义，就是骗补。每卖出一辆车，知豆可以拿到的国家补贴，平均为6万元。截止2017年底，知豆共卖出10万辆车，也就是说，光补贴，它就可以拿到60亿。这些车，都卖给了谁呢？2015年，一家品牌为“小灵狗”的公司，购买了知豆1128辆车，这笔订单总计8341万元，政府会在交易后的下一年度，补贴4124万元。但当时“小灵狗”没钱，借了8500万，借款方，居然是知豆。卖家借钱给买家？仔细一查，原来知豆和“小灵狗”的股东重叠，互为关联方。无数企业在左手倒右手的操作中，骗取着新能源汽车的专项补贴。而这，只是中国新能源汽车行业的“常规操作”。早在2013年底政策颁布，互联网企业，早就看到了这里边的红利。一夜之间，300多个互联网造车团队成立。因为没有生产线，他们要比的不是产品，而是PPT。这其中，有一个人永远都跳不过去，他就是贾跃亭。2014年6月，马斯克开放了特斯拉专利。得知消息的贾跃亭，第一时间就发布了超级造车“SEE计划”。PPT上的slogan很醒目，“颠覆，由你开始”。可大众没想到的是，颠覆的，不止是乐视的超级汽车，而是整个乐视。接下来的故事，想必大家都很熟悉。套用现在很流行的一个句式，国家用13年时间，万亿资金投入，才打开新能源汽车的大门，贾跃亭用一页PPT，就把它关上了。2017年7月5日，贾跃亭去美国开FF的例会，自此，“下周回国”，成了一个传说。仅仅不到三年，互联网造车就一地鸡毛。正当李斌说服了投资人，组建了自己的团队，准备大干一场时，一转头——蔚来的“天时、地利以及人和”，已经所剩无几。这是李斌人生的第二次“生不逢时”。蔚来的路，该怎么走？显然，李斌已经做出了选择。一夜之间，原本低调，从不接受媒体采访的他，突然从幕后走向台前，亲自下场给蔚来做宣传。迎接他的，除了镁光灯，还有无尽的骂声。从那一天起，李斌和蔚来，被无数人在放大镜下注视着。他说的每一句话，都被媒体过分解读。他走的每一步路，原本就颤颤巍巍，旁边还围满了叉腰等着看笑话的吃瓜群众。最令人“津津乐道“的，是蔚来那一场堪比演唱会的新车发布会。这似乎也成了李斌是“骗子”的最好佐证——一场发布会，请来了5000名蔚来车主，包下8架飞机，60节高铁车厢，19家五星级酒店，160辆大巴。李斌还包下了整个五棵松体育馆，花1000万请来了梦龙乐队。总共花了8000万。但其实，这是蔚来第一次正式的亮相；开隆重的发布会，也是由苹果开始，互联网时代企业一贯的做法；而无论是哪个品牌，每场新车发布会的花费，都在数千万。但这些都被选择性地忘记了。人们只记得一句话——总之，李斌，傻逼。当蔚来EP9电动超跑在伦敦首发时，很多人说它只是一辆中看不中用的“玩具车“。当蔚来EP9在最魔鬼的纽北赛道，以6:45.900的成绩刷新了最快量产车圈速纪录时，很多人说它在作秀。当蔚来ES8发布的时候，很多人觉得它太贵。当价格更亲民的ES6发布时，他们又说它动力不够。抓住蔚来猛黑，已经成为了一种“政治正确”。不但没有公关风险，还能十万加。甚至还有人以蔚来续航不行，过于费电，给有关部门写文，建议取消蔚来的新能源补贴，并且向其征收消费税、置购税和车船税。不在汽车圈的人，可能很难想象，蔚来被喷到什么地步。就在几天前，苏州S228高架上，一蔚来车主因躲避大石头发生碰撞。大石头直接怼到了蔚来的底盘，现场事故照片非常骇人。但结果，车主并无大碍。整辆车车身完好，内部完好。整起事故，没有起火，电池和绝缘一切正常。据分析，这与蔚来电动车的设计有关。蔚来为了实现“换电池代替充电”，在电池包的碰撞安全方面，增加了更多的设计。这大大增加了车的安全性，但影响了续航。这也是蔚来的一大黑点。但这次事故，用当事车主自己的话说，如果换成是别的车，命就没了。这本是对“蔚来黑”最好的打脸方式。没想到，当有人尝试联系蔚来的高层采访时，对方却拒绝了。蔚来的人是这么说的：字字句句，如履薄冰。对自己不利的，不敢宣传，也就罢了。对自己有利的，也不敢宣传。因为，蔚来做什么，都是错的。3这种情绪，在蔚来2019年第二季度财报公布后，达到了顶峰。9月24日，蔚来发布2019年第二季度财报，数据显示，蔚来第二季度净亏损32.85亿元，财报公布后，蔚来股价暴跌28%。相较于IPO时的6.26美元，蔚来的股价已经下跌76%。不仅如此，华尔街的分析师们似乎并不准备放过蔚来。9月30日，投行桑福德-伯恩斯坦公司分析师将蔚来的目标股价从1.70美元直接下调至0.9美元。 美股规定，如果一家上市公司的平均股价连续30个交易日不足1美元，就会被发退市警告；如果在90天内这一情况没有改善，那就会被摘牌退市。10月15号，蔚来似乎转了运。有媒体报道称，“蔚来汽车正在与浙江湖州市吴兴区洽谈一笔50亿元的融资”。但仅仅一天后，吴兴区政府相关工作人员就出来表态，“洽谈过，但鉴于评估风险过大，已停止进一步洽谈。”谈过，但没谈成。它只是，短暂地爱了我一下。今天，蔚来的CFO，也宣布离职了。亏损、裁员、融不到资，蔚来，似乎已经没有了未来。蔚来不行，大概已经是全世界的共识。只有真的买了蔚来汽车的人，不这么看。做蔚来车主，真是不容易。花了40多万，还要与全世界为敌。我误入了一个蔚来的车主群，本以为最近大家应该很慌，但没想到，大家都在互相打气。有车主在晒，蔚来跑7777公里，只要300多的电费。有人在等待，“蔚来”这个孩子的成长。有人认为，蔚来会有一个“微信式”的逆袭。他们甚至认为，买蔚来给他们增添的不是面子，而是民族自豪感。说实话，听起来有点中二。这让我想起，我第一次对蔚来有深刻印象，也是因为一个蔚来车主朋友的“安利”。那次我坐上了这个朋友的车，他很骄傲地跟我说，这是蔚来ES8！我以为他在炫富，很敷衍地“噢~”了一声。直到我们开上路，在某一个路口，对面也开过来了一辆蔚来ES8。在短暂的会车时刻，两个蔚来车主，摇下车窗，互相挥手致意。那一刻我觉得，这个车，不简单。在那之后，我开始频繁地听到大家讨论蔚来。有两种人喜欢讨论蔚来：第一种，蔚来的车主，喜欢夸它；第二种，其他人，喜欢黑它。坦率地说，我至今买不起蔚来。但是这也形成了我一直对它有好感的理由：因为汽车，是中国传统弱势行业。而中高端汽车——中国没有这个行业。这是因为，造车，是一个庞大的、技术整合型的超级工程。时至今日，我国汽车制造关键设备的进口率，仍在60%以上。就是说，我们仍没有掌握核心技术。而高端汽车市场，还不只是制造业的问题，它背后还有品牌积累和营销能力的竞争。比起制造来说，这才是中国汽车更缺的地方。保时捷一个皮套，能卖2万；劳斯莱斯一把伞，能卖10万。图：劳斯莱斯售价10万的雨伞，你猜它的功能和普通雨伞有什么区别？答案是：没有。对高端汽车市场来说，比技术更值钱的，是品牌。而这样的品牌，中国没有。很多人说，中国很多人喜欢买进口的东西，是崇洋媚外。但是在汽车行业里，让人最气的是，要想买好车，只能买进口的。因为，我们，没有。图：劳斯莱斯如果你对汽车稍有了解就会知道，2018年我国GDP为900309亿，汽车制造业营业收入83372亿元 ，大约占 9.26%；在广告营销投放中，汽车是占比最高的，以微信平台为例，汽车广告投放占比大约30%。汽车是最重要的、关乎国计民生的大宗消费品，没有之一。而就是在这样重大的行业里，中国唯一定价在40万以上、还有成交的，只有两辆车：一是红旗H7，二是蔚来ES8。说句实话，也不怪中国车企不行，怪只怪我们起步实在是太晚。做油车，我们和外国的差距，我不想多说了；我们不能一边叫着“中国要自信”，一边却拿不出像样的车企。这就是前面万钢所说的：电动车，是我们弯道超车的机会。然而，哪怕是做电动车，也不容易。美国电动车巨头特斯拉，拥有无可媲美的功率200千瓦以上的高性能电机；作为世界第一，它还拥有“三电+三智”：三智是智能网关、智能座舱和自动辅助驾驶系统。三电则是电池、电驱和电控技术。光是“三电”，就占到了纯电动汽车成本的一半。这些，都是电动车的命脉。翻遍全世界，只有一家公司，也同样拥有以上这些东西。这家公司，叫做蔚来。尾声在我写这篇文章的时候，看到车友群里大家在传一张图片，说苏州那名被撞的蔚来车主，已经打算再买一辆蔚来。很多常看我文章的同学知道，马斯克是我的男神。很多人经常拿蔚来和特斯拉比，以证明蔚来不行。可马斯克创立特斯拉，跌跌撞撞，到今日，已经16年。而李斌创立蔚来，满打满算，到今日，不过4年。这些，媒体却很少报道。人们只看到贾跃亭拿着PPT全国演讲，接受鲜花和赞美，却没看到蔚来在全世界各地测试性能；人们只看到“知豆车”们在花样百出地骗补，却没看到蔚来一年申请4000多项专利。如今，国家对电动车的补贴退潮，很多薅羊毛或者割韭菜的企业，都准备退场了。蔚来，也来到了死亡边缘。李斌，怎么办？让我非常意外的是，李斌决定，all in。9月13日，易车网发布公告，已经在和腾讯商讨私有化交易。而李斌，大概能从这笔交易中套现1.24亿美元。不出意外，他会在第一时间把这笔钱投进蔚来。就像他18年前扛起易车的400万亏损一样。图：蔚来的全铝车身，也让它的扭转刚度足以媲美一些顶级超跑。作为一家造车新势力，蔚来要为新经济的泡沫背黑锅；作为一家汽车制造商，它要为中国造车行业的落后挡枪子。很多蔚来员工说，“斌哥在以肉眼可见的速度衰老”。说实话，写这篇文章时我就知道，可能会被很多人骂、被取关。如今这个世道，没有一个人敢说蔚来半句好话，也没有一个人敢给李斌伸出半根稻草。但是，我希望中国的汽车行业能好。我愿意说一句：斌哥，加油。

*** 1) O ministro da Economia, Paulo Guedes, enviou ao Congresso uma proposta de emenda à Constituição (PEC) que acaba, em alguns casos, com a obrigatoriedade de inscrição dos trabalhadores nos conselhos profissionais de classe. A PEC também transforma a natureza jurídica dessas entidades, que deixam de ser públicas e passam a ser privadas. A PEC 108/2019 começou a tramitar na terça-feira (9). Existem 29 conselhos de classe hoje no país, sendo os principais a Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil (OAB), o Conselho Federal de Medicina (CFM) e o Conselho Federal de Engenharia e Agronomia (Confea). O jornalista Guido Orgis comenta a ideia liberal para o exercício das atividades.*** 2) Ao longo dos últimos 11 anos, ministros do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) têm entendido que a nomeação de parentes para cargos de natureza política não se enquadra como nepotismo. A questão voltou para o centro do debate em Brasília, após o presidente Jair Bolsonaro anunciar que pretende indicar o deputado federal Eduardo Bolsonaro (PSL-SP), seu filho, para o cargo de embaixador do Brasil nos Estados Unidos. A possibilidade de um posto de embaixador ser enquadrado como cargo político é uma questão controversa, que ainda está em aberto. O repórter Renan Barbosa, de Brasília, explica o imbróglio jurídico.*** 3) Quando Glenn Greenwald saiu do jornal britânico The Guardian, após ganhar notoriedade expondo documentos secretos da National Security Agency (NSA), seu novo empreendimento, o The Intercept, foi rapidamente financiado. Por trás do aporte está Pierre Omidyar, bilionário francês de origem iraniana, fundador do site de leilões eBay e financiador de projetos e instituições progressistas. Paulo Polzonoff Jr, da editoria Ideias, fala sobre o perfil do mecenas do site que atormenta o ministro Sergio Moro.***Ficha técnica>>> O ’15 minutos’, podcast de notícias, é gravado no estúdio da Gazeta do Povo, em Curitiba # Apresentação e roteiro: Márcio Miranda; direção de conteúdo: Rodrigo Fernandes; equipe de produção: Fernando Rudnick, Vivaldo de Sousa Neto e Jenifer Ribeiro; montagem: Leonardo Bechtloff; identidade visual: Gabriela Salazar; estratégia de distribuição: Gladson Angeli.

In a new series of podcasts produced in collaboration with Omidyar Network, ImpactAlpha asked a range of investors, from fully “market-rate,” to unapologetically concessionary, what lies… Beyond Tradeoffs. What we heard is that investors of all types are finding strategies to avoid specific and systemic risks, to be aligned with long-term trends, to generate tangible and measureable social and environmental benefits and to otherwise meet their objectives – all along the continuum of risks and returns. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/impact-alpha/message

ಎಂ.ಪಿ. ಮತ್ತು ಎಂ.ಎಲ್.ಎ.ಗಳು ಶಾಸಕಾಂಗದಲ್ಲಿ ದಕ್ಷವಾಗಿ ಕಾರ್ಯನಿರ್ವಹಿಸಲು ಏನು ಮಾಡಬೇಕು? ದೇಣಿಗೆ ನೀಡುವ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಗಳು ಮತ್ತು ಸಾಮಾಜಿಕ ಪರಿಣಾಮಗಳನ್ನು ತರಲು ಹೊರಟಿರುವ ಹೂಡಿಕೆ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಗಳು ಹೇಗೆ ಬದಲಾವಣೆಯನ್ನು ತರಬಹುದು? ಬನ್ನಿ ಕೇಳಿ! ಸಿ. ವಿ. ಮಧುಕರ್ ರವರು ಒಮಿಡ್ಯಾರ್ ನೆಟ್ವರ್ಕ್ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಕಾರ್ಯ ನಿರ್ವಹಿಸುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಅವರು ಪಿ.ಆರ್.ಎಸ್. ಲೆಜಿಸ್ಲೇಟಿವ್ ರೀಸರ್ಚ್ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಯ ಸಂಸ್ಥಾಪಕ-ನಿರ್ದೇಶಕರಾಗಿದ್ದರು. ಅದಕ್ಕೂ ಮುಂಚೆ ಅವರು ವಿಶ್ವ ಬ್ಯಾಂಕ್ ನ ವಾಷಿಂಗ್ಟನ್ ಕಚೇರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಕೆಲಸಮಾಡುತ್ತಿದ್ದರು. ಅವರ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮತ್ತಷ್ಟು ವಿವರಗಳಿಗೆ ಇಲ್ಲಿ ನೋಡಿ. ಅವರು ತಲೆ ಹರಟೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಪಾಡ್ಕ್ಯಾಸ್ಟ್ಇನ ಈ ಕಂತಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಪವನ್ ಶ್ರೀನಾಥ್ ಮತ್ತು ಸೂರ್ಯ ಪ್ರಕಾಶ ಜೊತೆ ಮಾತನಾಡುತ್ತಾರೆ. ಮಧುಕರ್ ರವರು ಪಿ.ಆರ್.ಎಸ್. ಲೆಜಿಸ್ಲೇಟಿವ್ ರೀಸರ್ಚ್ ಸ್ಥಾಪಿಸಿದ ಆರಂಭದ ದಿನಗಳ ಅನುಭವಗಳನ್ನು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತ ಎಂ.ಪಿ. / ಎಂ.ಎಲ್.ಎ.ಗಳ ಜೊತೆ ನಾಗರೀಕ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಗಳು ಏಕೆ ಹೆಚ್ಚು ತೊಡಗಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳಬೇಕು ಎಂದು ವಿವರಿಸುತ್ತಾರೆ. ನಮ್ಮ ದೇಶದಲ್ಲಿನ ದೇಣಿಗೆ ಸಂಸ್ಥೆಗಳ ಬೆಳವಣಿಗೆ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮಾತನಾಡುತ್ತ ದೊಡ್ಡ ಉದ್ಯಮಿಗಳು ಸರ್ಕಾರದ ನೀತಿಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ ಪ್ರಭಾವ ಬೀರುವ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮತ್ತು ವಿದೇಶಿ ದೇಣಿಗೆ ಬಗೆಗಿನ ಅವರ ಅಭಿಪ್ರಾಯವನ್ನು ತಿಳಿಸುತ್ತಾರೆ. ಹಾಗೆಯೇ ಡಿಜಿಟಲ್ ಐಡೆಂಟಿಟಿಯ ಅಗತ್ಯ ಮತ್ತು ಡಿಜಿಟಲ್ ನಾಗರಿಕರಾಗಿ ನಾವು ಯಾವ ಮುನ್ನೆಚ್ಚರಗಳನ್ನು ಕೈಗೊಳ್ಳಬಹುದು ಎಂಬುದರ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ತಿಳಿಸಿಕೊಡುತ್ತಾರೆ. How do we get our MPs and MLA's to participate effectively on the floor of the Parliament or Assembly? How can philanthropy and impact investing make a difference in society? CV Madhukar of Omidyar Network joins Pavan Srinath and Surya Prakash BS for a wide ranging discussion in Episode 17 of Thale-Harate Kannada Podcast. Madhukar was Founder Director of PRS Legislative Research. Prior to that he was with the World Bank in Washington DC. You can read his full profile here. Madhukar talks about the early days of the formation of PRS Legislative Research and why civil society organisations need to engage more closely with MPs and MLAs. He shares his thoughts on the evolution of philanthropy in India, on big businesses impacting policy, and foreign donors. He explains how impact investing can make a difference to the society. Madhukar talks about the need for Digital Identity and how we as digital citizens need to be on our guard. ಫಾಲೋ ಮಾಡಿ. Follow the Thalé-Haraté Kannada Podcast @haratepod. Facebook: https://facebook.com/HaratePod/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/HaratePod/ Instagram: https://instagram.com/haratepod/ ಈಮೇಲ್ ಕಳಿಸಿ, send us an email at haratepod@gmail.com. Subscribe & listen to the podcast on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Castbox, AudioBoom, YouTube, Souncloud, Spotify, Saavn or any other podcast app. We are there everywhere. ಬನ್ನಿ ಕೇಳಿ! 

Never miss another interview! Join Devin here: http://bit.ly/joindevin. Isabelle Hau, a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley (where I originally met her more than a decade ago), now serves as the investment partner for US Education at Omidyar Network. She joined me to discuss a recent report showing the importance of educational intervention at a remarkably early age. Beginning at 18 months, researchers can identify vocabulary differences in children raised by parents with a college education compared with those who are not. By age five, when children start kindergarten, the difference can be almost too great to overcome. Children who are not reading and speaking on grade level by the third grade are shown to face greater challenges throughout their lives. Hau sees an opportunity to invest in children before they start school to level the playing field and give every child an equal opportunity at success in life. Click the following link to learn my insider secrets to media publicity for social impact: http://bit.ly/75offmedia.

Both US President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, have arrived in Vietnam today for their second summit to discuss denuclearization. Trump and Kim will officially meet Wednesday and Thursday in Hanoi, Vietnam. Our Brian Becker is in Hanoi and filed this report with Loud & Clear's Walter Smolarek.The US House of Representatives will vote Tuesday on a bill to block President Trump's national emergency declaration regarding the border. While many Republicans are expected to vote against the resolution, the Democratic-controlled House is expected to easily pass the measure, which would block the president from accessing some funds to construct a wall on the southern border. Trump has promised to veto it should it reach him, which would be his first presidential veto since assuming the office.The resolution, offered by Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas, would then be taken up by the Senate in the next couple of weeks, while multiple lawsuits contest Trump's authority in court to build barriers for an emergency that plaintiffs argue doesn't exist. It is not yet clear how many Republicans would vote for the resolution in the Senate, but it is very possible that it could pass the upper chamber, where Republicans hold a majority. That would amount to a major rebuke of the president, even if he vetoes it. What does this mean in terms of real politics and symbolically as well? Have any of you have asked yourselves: who is billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and what's his broad sweep of influence over global media and surveillance enterprises? Max Blumenthal and Alex Rubinstein have done a three-part piece in MintPress News that explores this issue. Part 1 examines Omidyar's use of investment to build a vast and tangled web of influence in NGOs and media outlets around the world; part 2 illuminates his involvement with regime-change networks and the surveillance state; and part 3 looks at how Omidyar has placed himself in the rare position of being able to support both the national security state and at least part of its self-proclaimed opposition. How did Omidyar build this web of influence, and why should people care? President Donald Trump's former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen is slated to discuss publicly for the first time Trump's alleged role in some of the crimes Cohen pleaded guilty to last year. Cohen is scheduled to appear before three congressional committees in three consecutive days, starting today, with one public and two private sessions. What are we to expect form this testimony? GUESTS: Brian Becker, John Kiriakou — Hosts of Loud & Clear on Sputnik News with producer Walter Smolarek.Shermichael Singleton — Writer and political analyst. Alex Rubinstein — MintPress News analyst and journalist. Garland Nixon — Co-Host of Fault Lines on Sputnik News.

On this episode of Fault Lines, hosts Garland Nixon and Lee Stranahan discuss the upcoming summit in Vietnam between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. What are the expectations for this meeting, and how might policy between the two countries be altered depending on the nature of Trump and Kim's conversations?Guests:Brian Becker - Host of Loud And Clear on Radio Sputnik | LIVE from Vietnam: Previewing the Trump-Kim SummitElbert Guillory - Former State Senator from Louisiana | Why Jussie Smollett, Why?!?Ian Shilling - Geopolitical Analyst, Researcher & Blogger | The Latest on Brexit & Political Tension Inside the UKAlex Rubenstein - Reporter for Mint Press News | Billionaire Pierre Omidyar and the Global Information WarLater this week, President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet in Vietnam for their second major summit together on the world stage. Sputnik radio host Brian Becker is currently in Vietnam to cover the summit, and he will talk about what he observed upon arriving in the country and the goals for each side heading into this high stakes meeting.While what comes next legally for Jussie Smollett remains unclear, what is clear is that the Chicago Police Department has already spent an immense amount of resources on the Smollett case. Former Louisiana State Senator Elbert Guillory joins Garland and Lee on today's show to discuss the Smollett saga and to give his take on what should happen to the disgraced actor if he is found guilty in court.Much of the public in the UK is frustrated with the status of the Brexit process and with the ruling elites in their country. Geopolitical analyst & blogger Ian Shilling returns to the show to talk about the current situation facing the people in the UK and why social media censorship continues to increase for those commenting on political issues and current events.For the final segment, Mint Press News reporter Alex Rubenstein joins the show to discuss his three-part investigative report on billionaire Pierre Omidyar and his role in the current media landscape. What are the major organizations currently being funded by Omidyar, and what are his main interests in furthering his growing media empire?

FreshEBT makes foodstamps do furtherFreshEBT is an app which helps one million of the 44 million Americans who receive foodstamps to put more food on the table via special offers from retailers, budgeting features and recipes. 85% of FreshEBT’s users are young mothers. We talked to founder Jimmy Chen about using technology to fight poverty.“I grew up in a loving and supportive household that also several years had trouble putting food on the table and I think that's not so different than how most families go through financial fluctuations over the course of their lifespans,” says Chen. He left his job as a product manager at Facebook to become a Blue Ridge Labs @ Robin Hood fellow where he started his company Propel. The Robin Hood Foundation is New York’s largest poverty fighting foundation and Blue Ridge Labs was a new incubator making tech for low-income Americans.Now Propel is blazing a trail for anti-poverty tech companies. It hasn’t been an easy ride. Since founding the company in 2014 Chen lost both of his co-founders, struggled to find a business model in line with his social mission and failed to raise funding. “Especially in the early days of fundraising, where I walk into a room and I'm pitching that we're building a food stamps software company, the conversation's over before it even starts,” he says.But in 2017 Propel landed an investment of $4 million from top Silicon Valley investment firm Andreeson Horowitz and impact investment fund the Omidyar network. Chen now wants to extend Propel’s work beyond the foodstamp program and even influence public policy.“We see our ambition as much broader than just one program. It's really about helping families in the United States to get back on their feet,” he says.Guest: Jimmy Chen, founder of Propel which makes FreshEBT.Host: Ciara Byrne, technology journalist and former Blue Ridge Labs @ Robin Hood fellow.Tags: Low income Americans, Civic tech, Tech for social good, Food stamps, EBT, Blue Ridge Labs @Robin HoodPropelFreshEBT

Every week the show host John Siracusa talks with amazing fintech leaders and entrepreneurs, through conversation uncovers the amazing stories behind them, their creations and the most important topics in fintech. You can subscribe to this podcast and stay up to date on all the stories here on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and iHeartRadio In this episode the host John Siracusa chats with Chris Britt Co-Founder and CEO of Chime.  Chime is a  U.S. challenger bank and technology company. Chime has received well over $100,000,000 funding to date from investors such as Omidyar, Forerunner Ventures, Cathay Innovation and Menlo Ventures.     Tune in and Listen.   Subscribe now to hear next Thursday's interview with Luvleen Sidhu from BankMobile.   About the host:   John is the host of the 2x weekly "Bank On It” podcast recorded onsite at the Carpenter Group offices, which is a strategic branding and positioning firm in the financial services industry. He's a highly sought after fintech, VC and financial services industry enthusiast and connector. He's in the center of the fintech ecosystem keeping current with the ever - innovating industry.   Follow John on LinkedIn, Twitter or Medium

My guest today is the World Bank’s Harish Natarajan, a leader of one of the most visionary and ambitious efforts underway in the financial world -- to achieve complete financial inclusion. Throughout history, the idea of reaching full inclusion -- enabling everyone to access the mainstream financial system -- seemed like fantasy. Financial services have always been expensive to produce and deliver, making it unprofitable to serve everyone. In addition, they often involve the need to evaluate and risk-rate customers, and to verify their identity information, all of which has always been costly and complex. Mainstream services were for people who had some means and had traditional identity documents. Other people had to rely on high-cost alternatives, or had no access at all. And then, we got cell phones. Suddenly, here was a new delivery system that could reach nearly everyone, through a channel that was already there, already built, and that could, furthermore, serve them inexpensively. No more need to build and staff high-cost branches. Everyone, today, can have a bank branch in their hand. Recognizing this new opportunity, the World Bank set a transformational goal -- that every adult on earth should have financial access by 2020. They defined inclusion as having a transaction account, since for most people, that’s the easiest and most-needed starting point. Once that exists, other services can be added on top of it, from lending to savings to insurance. As the consumer’s financial information becomes increasingly digitized and consolidated in the phone, it becomes possible for financial providers to evaluate that digital profile to extend more products. It also becomes possible to authenticate identity -- which is critical because the anti-money laundering Know-Your-Customer regulations currently block millions of people from the system because they lack traditional ID documents. Technology is making this shift possible, but of course, it isn’t easy, nor is it a panacea. Some people still don’t have mobile phones -- although that problem is rapidly evaporating -- the UN says more people have had access to mobile phones than to plumbing since 2013. Of those who do, many don’t adopt electronic financial accounts, and many who do so become vulnerable to scams and predatory products, especially since hundreds of millions of these consumers are being exposed to financial services for the first time. Those challenges, in turn, create an urgent need for regulatory modernization. Finance is being digitized, and regulation will have to be digitized too in order for government to protect consumers and assure financial stability. So the World Bank’s work includes a focus on modernizing the regulatory infrastructure itself, building up capacity to understand new technologies and address risk. In this episode, Harish describes this whole transformative landscape. He talks about the Financial Inclusion Global Initiative, or FIGI, a three-year program with three partners, and three global themes -- cybersecurity, e-payments acceptance, and digital ID. He explains why people don’t have access to accounts, how digital ID can satisfy documentation requirements, and the varied regulatory models evolving in different counties. He talks the World Bank’s research on blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) as critical components of a better system. The United States has been a relatively slow adopter of mobile phones, partly because most Americans traditionally had landlines. That means cell phone adoption is much more advanced outside the United States, which in turn means that the US can learn many lessons from countries that are leapfrogging over us in digital transformation of finance and financial regulation. Much of this modernization is being driven by NGOs like the Omidyar Network, where I’m a Senior Advisor, and the Gates Foundation. For example, Omidyar and Gates have financed a Regtech for Regulators Accelerator, or R2A, which is bringing technology solutions to regulatory challenges in multiple countries. More on Harish Harish is Lead Financial Sector Specialist in the World Bank’s Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice, heading a global team working on payments and market infrastructures. He is a core member of the cross-sectoral teams addressing Universal Financial Access 2020, ID for Development, government payments, Digital Economy and FinTech. Harish represents the World Bank in the working groups of the Committee on Payment Market Infrastructures (CPMI) at the Bank for International Settlements and FinTech-related working groups at the Financial Stability Board (FSB). Previously, Harish worked with VISA Inc. in the South Asia region in various senior roles in business development, operations and risk management. Prior to VISA, he served in positions at Citigroup, Infosys and other technology companies in the areas of payment systems and retail banking. Harish holds an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from IIT-Madras and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management, from IIM-Calcutta, specializing in IT systems and finance. More links Link to Full Transcription World Bank Financial Inclusion World Bank DLT Report Universal Financial Access by 2020 Financial Inclusion Global Initiative (FIGI) Payment Aspects of Financial Inclusion (PAFI) Findex G20 Digital Principles for Financial Inclusion Access For All: CIIE’s Sanjay Jain and The India Stack How to Change the World: The Gates Foundation’s Michael Wiegand Transforming Identity: GlobaliD CEO Greg Kidd More for our listeners We have great podcasts in the queue. From London, we’ll have a talk with P.J. Di Giammarino of JWG and the Regtech Council. We’ll also have a far-ranging conversation with Peter Renton, who leads Lend Academy and the LendIt conference series. As part of our series focused on global developments in fintech and regtech, we’ll talk to Anju Patwardhan of CreditEase and Stanford University, who describes fintech developments in China. And we’ll have a show with the co-founders of EarnUp, and one with Walter Cruttenden, Co-Founder of Acorns and Co-founder and CEO of Blast. A few places I’ll be speaking this fall include: Singapore Fintech Festival, November 12-16, Singapore LendIt Europe, November 19-20, London Consumer Federation of America Financial Services Conference, November 29-30, Washington, DC ABA Financial Crimes Conference, December 2-4, Washington, DC RegTech Rising, December 3-5, London Fintech Connect, December 5-6, London Boston Regtech Meetup, December 10, Boston, MA I also have a number of events coming up where I’ll be speaking directly to groups of regulators. Watch for upcoming information on my collaboration with Brett King on his new book, Bank 4.0, which you can now buy on Amazon. I co-wrote the regulatory chapter with Brett, and we’ll have a show and events on that as well. Last year, my autumn conference circuit became a  “world tour” designed to speak in seven countries in seven weeks. I chronicled it with mini-videos about what I was learning, and since a lot of people told me they enjoyed joining in those adventures, I’m doing it again this year. My fall travels will be fewer countries but more events, in America, Europe and Asia. Please follow along with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook and come to jsbarefoot.com for more information on it all and to subscribe to my newsletters and get the latest podcasts as soon as they come out. Also, here’s my fall newsletter, titled Whirlwind. Innovation everywhere! support our podcast Subscribe Sign up with your email address to receive news and updates. Email Address Sign Up We respect your privacy. Thank you!

David Madden has spent his life working in tech and startups, but when he follows his wife to Myanmar in 2012 he can barely load Gmail. When the country suddenly gets connected, David has a chance to put his skills to use. After organizing Myanmar’s first-ever hackathons, he dreams of creating a tech hub to grow the local startup ecosystem. But can he find a space, raise the money, build the team and create the programs that the community needs?

When they see a need in the world, they take action. Lindsay Beck survived cancer and founded a non-profit to help others with similar needs. Catarina Schwab has thrived through six careers (so far) from investment banking to a retail startup. The two have combined forces to form NPX Advisors, a for-profit organization tackling major inefficiencies in the ways money is raised by non-profits. Their work has already captured the attention of Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group; Pierre M. Omidyar, the founder of eBay; and Duncan Niederauer, the former chief executive of The New York Stock Exchange.

Today, we're joined by two excellent guests to discuss recent developments and new opportunities in emerging markets fintech.   Ameya Upadhyay is a Principal at Omidyar, an impact fund that has deployed over $1.3bn over the past 10 years. Asad Naqvi is Managing Director of Apis, a growth stage private equity fund focused on Emerging Markets. We originally connected with Ameya in Episode 39 in May 2017. If you like today's episode, check that one out too at www.bankingthefuture.com. In this conversation, we discuss the importance of cash and human touch points as a part of the innovation equation in Emerging Markets, why fintechs are overvalued, how raising a series C round is similar to turning 40, where the most recognized players in cross-border payments fintech have fallen short and much more. As always, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or on our website at bankingthefuture.com.   If you like today's show, please subscribe on iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice, and leave us a review. Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Ameya Upadhyay and Asad Naqvi.

Welcome back after a week off last week - our first in a year. Wow. Hope everyone's having some fun this summer.   We've got some amazing guests lined up over the next few months, so stay tuned for that. We're increasingly active in our newsletter lately - if you'd like to be a part of that, you can subscribe on our website at www.bankingthefuture.com.   Today, we've got one for the entrepreneurs. We've had some great episodes with venture capitalists and founders going through the most interesting opportunities their seeing, ideas about areas of fintech ripe for further innovation, startup advice and more.   We're pulling all of that together in one place in a nod to our founder and aspiring founder listeners, of which there are many. A lot of the questions that come up most often in our community are around turning concepts into action. One of our core tenants at Rebank is that its delivery that matters. The discussion and analysis of high level ideas and trends are part of the work that takes place around and in support of execution, but with no action, the reflection is only so relevant.   Today, we hear from a number of past guests, including Michael Kent of Azimo, Steve Lemon of CurrencyCloud, Nigel Verdon of Railsbank, Alex Macpherson of Octopus Ventures, Carolina Brochado of Atomico, Michael Treskow of Eight Roads, Ameya Upadhyay of Omidyar, Charlie Delingpole of ComplyAdvantage and Aman Ghei of Orange Growth Capital.   As always, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or on our website at bankingthefuture.com.   If you like today's show, please subscribe on iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice, and leave us a review.   Please enjoy today's special episode on starting a fintech.

Mindsets. An entrepreneur’s mindset – essentially a set of working assumptions about your intelligence, talent or abilities is critically important to understand when it comes to decision making in business. You could call it decision making theory – or the reasoning behind doing something in your business or not. Often there is far more success to be found when you do decide to do something as opposed to deciding not to do something. So, let me give you some context. In this episode, I chat Anish Shivasani the founder and CEO of Giraffe about their journey disrupting the recruitment industry. Now many of you will know that they won the global Seedstars program – not just south Africa which eventually lead them to finding investment with the US based investment fund Omidyar – which was formed by the entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar, who founded the eBay auction site which is today worth an estimated US$9 billion. But here’s the funny thing. They almost didn’t enter the Seedstars completion at all – but their mindset of believing that they could win it made all the difference. In this episode, we also cover the mindset of international vc’s vs south African vc’s, when to quit or persevere as an entrepreneur and much more.

The Omidyar Network is a high-impact, social investment fund set up by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Today, we're joined by Ameya Upadhyay, a Principal at Omidyar.   Ameya focuses on the firm’s Fintech and Financial Inclusion efforts, investing in organizations that have the potential to create economic opportunity for individuals in Africa, Europe, Myanmar and India. His portfolio includes first movers in India across micro-enterprise lending, digital retail lending, merchant cash advance, and online brokerage. He has been active in Myanmar for the last two years and is closely following the emerging mobile money ecosystem, in addition to making grants to non-profit organizations which are creating sector-wide public goods.   As always, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or on our website at bankingthefuture.com.   If you like today's show, please subscribe on iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice, and leave us a review.   Thank you very much for joining us today. Please welcome, Ameya Upadhyay.

Providing Access to Credit in Underserved Markets at LendIt USA 2016

Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1ZcOFKv. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Omidyar Network, an impact investing pioneer, recently published a new report entitled “Frontier Capital” on impact investing. Given the attention that has been paid to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which parallels the structure of the Omidyar Network in some respects–critically allowing for both impact investing and traditional philanthropy–I’ve taken time with Paula Goldman, a report author and Senior Director, Global Lead for Impact Investing at Omidyar Network to get her take on the report. Goldman makes three key observations about impact investing for 2016: 1. We’re at a tipping point for impact investing 2. The next generation is more socially minded and will push for change 3. Capital and technology will drive innovation in emerging markets Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1ZcOFKv. Please consider whether a friend or colleague might benefit from this piece and, if so, share it.

January 23, 2015 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/1JdMnmz. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Omidyar Network, founded by Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, and his wife Pam, is a driving force in the movement toward impact investing, using investments to drive social impact. Amy Klement, a partner at Omidyar Network or ON, explains the way she thinks about driving change, “Many ultra-high net worth individuals want to use the wealth they’ve acquired to make a social impact. Yet when creating a legacy, the power of markets often gets left out of their philanthropy.” She continues, “Our perspective at Omidyar Network is that wealth holders can and should bring their full range of experience and assets to address problems too big to be solved by grants alone. We are ultimately focused on the betterment of humankind. That’s why we focus on impact investing and grants.” Explaining the way in which ON brings either grants or investments or a combination, Klement says, “A hybrid entity like ours provides the flexibility to do whatever fits the bill. We call it the ‘problem first, tool second’ approach. This approach allows for the market-based solutions that are needed to address long intractable challenges at scale.” “We support social entrepreneurs and their innovative ideas through impact investing and grants,” she concludes. Please consider whether a friend or colleague might benefit from this piece and, if so, share it.

August 19, 2014 - Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://onforb.es/XvVaOm. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwitunes or on Stitcher by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ymotwstitcher. Several weeks ago, the U.S. National Advisory Board to the Social Impact Investment Task Force met at the White House to discuss its newly issued report, “Private Capital, Public Good: How Smart Federal Policy Can Galvanize Impact Investing–and Why It’s Urgent.” Jean Case, cofounder of the Case Foundation, has stepped forward as a mouthpiece for the rapidly growing impact investment market with pieces in the Huffington Post and Forbes. (Separately, I covered Prudential’s $1 billion impact investment commitment here.) Omidyar Network is among the growing list of institutions that are actively investing for impact and was among the early entrants into the burgeoning space for investments that seek positive social impact and financial returns. The White House roundtable on impact investing has catalyzed commitments of more than $1.5 billion in new investments, which in turn is creating a buzz among social entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on these investment flows to launch, grow and scale their social enterprises. On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 at 5:00 PM Eastern, Case and Omidyar Network’s Paula Goldman, Senior Director, Knowledge and Advocacy, will join me here for a live discussion about the new energy driving impact investing and the opportunities for regulation to foster it. Tune in right here to watch the interview live.

  why isn't everything easy  I mean why The next episoide will be out dec 24 , or maybe 25th, fuck australia  that should  FUCK         ello  the reason why I have not released  a new episode is that my computer is badly infected and could not do so.  I had a wake up call and decided to quite shity job and go travelling,  head towards  my brother in Australia,   I have recorded three I think quite good episodes but can not download.  I will try to find a computer on my travels and release them then, if I can not in a months time will arrive in oz and will release all three then    1995     List of Pixar films       Rank Title (click to view) Studio Gross / Theaters Opening / Theaters Date 1 Toy Story 3 BV $415,004,880 4,028 $110,307,189 4,028 6/18/10 2 Finding Nemo BV $339,714,978 3,425 $70,251,710 3,374 5/30/03 3 Up BV $293,004,164 3,886 $68,108,790 3,766 5/29/09 4 Monsters University BV $267,788,620 4,004 $82,429,469 4,004 6/21/13 5 The Incredibles BV $261,441,092 3,933 $70,467,623 3,933 11/5/04 6 Monsters, Inc. BV $255,873,250 3,649 $62,577,067 3,237 11/2/01 7 Toy Story 2 BV $245,852,179 3,257 $300,163 1 11/19/99 8 Cars BV $244,082,982 3,988 $60,119,509 3,985 6/9/06 9 Brave BV $237,283,207 4,164 $66,323,594 4,164 6/22/12 10 WALL-E BV $223,808,164 3,992 $63,087,526 3,992 6/27/08 11 Ratatouille BV $206,445,654 3,940 $47,027,395 3,940 6/29/07 12 Toy Story BV $191,796,233 2,574 $29,140,617 2,457 11/22/95 13 Cars 2 BV $191,452,396 4,115 $66,135,507 4,115 6/24/11 14 A Bug's Life BV $162,798,565 2,773 $291,121 1 11/20/98   EBAY AuctionWeb was founded in San Jose, California, on September 3, 1995, by French-born Iranian-American computer programmer Pierre Omidyar (born on June 21, 1967) as part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar's own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.[7] One of the first items sold on AuctionWeb was a broken laser pointerfor $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to ask if he understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers."[8] The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar's fiancée trade Pez candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media, which were not interested in the company's previous explanation about wanting to create a "perfect market".[9] This was revealed in Adam Cohen's 2002 book, The Perfect Store,[7] and confirmed by eBay.[9]   Reportedly, eBay was simply a side hobby for Omidyar until his internet service provider informed him he would need to upgrade to a business account due to the high volume of traffic to his website. The resulting price increase (from $30/month to $250) forced him to start charging those who used eBay, and was not met with any animosity. In fact it resulted in the hiring of Chris Agarpao as eBay's first employee to handle the number of cheques coming in for fees.   FLASH   The Shockwave player was originally developed for the Netscape browser by Macromedia Director team members Harry Chesley, John Newlin,Sarah Allen, and Ken Day, influenced by a previous plug-in that Macromedia had created for Microsoft's Blackbird. Version 1.0 of Shockwave was released independent of Director 4 and its development schedule has since coincided with the release of Director since version 5[citation needed]. Its versioning also has since been tied to Director's and thus there were no Shockwave 2-4 releases. Shockwave 1The Shockwave plug-in for Netscape Navigator 2.0 was released in 1995, along with the standalone Afterburner utility to compress Director files for Shockwave playback. The first large-scale multimedia site to use Shockwave was Intel's 25th Anniversary of the Microprocessor.   ERIC   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFsW6vvBwHk   BALLONS   On February 21, 1995, Fossett landed in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada, after taking off from South Korea, becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.     Fastest speed achieved in a hot air balloon: 200 miles per hour (320 km/h), breaking his own previous record of 166 miles per hour (270 km/h) Fastest Around the World in a hot air balloon (13.5 days) Longest Distance Flown Solo in a Hot Air Balloon (20,482.26 miles (32,963.00 km) 24-Hour Balloon Distance: 3,186.80 miles (5,128.66 km) on July 1   Of the two brothers, it was Joseph who first contemplated building machines as early as 1777 when he observed laundry drying over a fire incidentally form pockets that billowed upwards.[3] Joseph made his first definitive experiments in November 1782 while living in the city of Avignon.  Joseph, the 12th child, possessed a typical inventor's temperament—a maverick and dreamer, and impractical in terms of business and personal affairs. Étienne had a much more even and businesslike temperament. As the 15th child, and particularly troublesome to his elder siblings, he was sent to Paris to train as an architect. H   14 minute video about ballons http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2jPDAU4l-o     Tullamore air    On 10 May 1785, the town was seriously damaged when the crash of a hot air balloon resulted in a fire that burned down as many as 130 homes, giving the town the distinction of being the location of the world's first known aviation disaster.[10] To this day, the town shield depicts a phoenix rising from the ashes. The event is yearly commemorated by the Phoenix festival which celebrates Tullamore's resurrection from the ashes following the accident.