Following Dirty Money Around the World

08/24/22 • 61 min

2 Listeners

We are in a golden age for organized crime and corruption, according to watchdog groups. Technological innovations like cryptocurrency have given criminals new tools for covering their tracks, and allowed them to spread out around the globe. Bad actors have spent decades building tangled webs of enablers and tactics, and they now have more resources and capital than ever to invest in new crime enterprises. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has reporters and editors on every continent who put their lives at risk to follow trails of laundered money and trace clues back to the guilty parties. Their reporting uncovers the ways corruption is chipping away at democracy, human rights, and quality of life for regular citizens. The co-founders of the OCCRP, Drew Sullivan and Paul Radu, along with Freezing Order author Bill Browder, joined NPR host and reporter Mary Louise Kelly on stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival, to explain their methods, share their read on the magnitude of the problem, and speculate about the future of organized, globalized crime.

aspenideas.org

aspenideas.org

Previous Episode

When it Comes to Education, Do Parents Know Best?

Parents have always cared about what their kids are learning in school, but education debates have become particularly explosive in the U.S. in the last couple of years. All over the country, parent groups have introduced bills that try to control and restrict what children learn – especially around issues of race, history, and LGBTQ identity. What’s behind the recent push for parental power over education? And is it pitting parents against teachers? Parents who are also educators, researchers and writers join moderator and New York Times podcast host Jane Coaston to try and untangle this flood of activism and assess its impact. You’ll hear from writer and editor at The Dispatch, David French, Wheaton College theology professor Esau McCaulley, and Stanford internet researcher Renée DiResta.

aspenideas.org

Next Episode

Time for a Friendship Reset?

For many people, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown became an unexpected opportunity to take stock of our relationships. Some friendships deepened and transformed, some slipped away, and many social circles shrank. Which isn’t always a bad thing. Our friendships have an enormous impact on our lives, but this type of relationship hardly gets any attention from social scientists and the media, and we have a lot of misconceptions about friendship. The writers and researchers in this panel from the 2022 Aspen Ideas Festival, psychologist Marisa G. Franco, writer Eric Barker, and author and speaker Jen Hatmaker, are all working to change that. In a lively conversation, they pick apart the inner workings of these unique kinds of bonds and share some tips on making and keeping better friends. Writer Jennifer Senior, author of the viral story in The Atlantic, “It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart,” moderates the discussion.

aspenideas.org