What you should read and listen to during your holiday

Whether your holiday season involves flight delays, a long car ride, or a rare day with room on your calendar, chances are you’ll soon have some free time.

If you want to use it to get a little smarter about deals and the economy — and maybe even entertain yourself in the process — you’re in luck: Here are our favorite books and podcasts from this year (plus one game) that will help you do just that. doing.

An investigative journalist unpacks the crypto industry

“Number Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Dizzying Fall” by Zeke Faux

Cryptocurrency has its detractors, including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who told a Congressional hearing this month that the government should ban digital assets. Few crypto critics have been as dedicated to trying to understand the technology and thoroughly exploring the industry — which at times has seemed to make money out of thin air — as Bloomberg investigative journalist Zeke Faux. In his book ‘Number Go Up’, he travels the world for two years to meet the people who are fueling the enthusiasm for digital tokens – and exposing corruption, greed and exploitation along the way.

The book was published about a month before the criminal trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the crypto exchange FTX, who was convicted last month of seven charges of fraud and conspiracy. Faux begins by admitting that he didn’t see through Bankman-Fried’s child prodigy facade when they met. But Faux did have his suspicions about the crypto industry, promising digital asset enthusiasts that blockchain would democratize finance, and he met many of the people pushing these ideas. “From the beginning, I thought crypto was pretty stupid. And it turned out to be even stupider than I thought,” he writes.

Global trade, the online game

Trade

Time for the quiz: Which country’s outbound trade was approximately $597 billion in 2021? A tip: the main export categories were cars, refined petroleum, wine and valves.

A. Japan

B. Argentina

C. United States

D. Italy

The answer is D, Italy.

That is according to Tradethe Wordle-like game about global trade that has become a daily habit for economics buffs, global policy geeks, and at least one DealBook editor.

Developed by the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a specialist in trade data visualization, Tradle takes gamers around the world every day. The hints could lead to a developing island economy whose main exports are recreational boats (e.g. the Cayman Islands) or to a group of seven giant ships. like Canada (Spoiler: the main exports are crude oil, sawn timber and fertilizers).

Gilberto García-Vazquez, an economist whose company is behind the game, said marketplace this summer, Tradle’s worldwide popularity was a big surprise. The site attracted “almost a million visits a month,” he said, another sign that everyone likes good games — even ones about global trade.

If Hollywood had a sports podcast

“The city”

Who is at the top of the media world and who is below it? Tinseltown’s main industry has an image based on art and glamour, but Matt Belloni’s podcast about its inner workings treats it like sports, with an AM talk radio vibe (no surprise, given its roots in podcast network The Ringer) and an informed, informal approach to the subject. Belloni has developed in Hollywood and is the author of Puck’s flagship newsletter, What I’m Hearing, but on the podcast he takes an approach that welcomes more casual followers of media news. However, observant industry watchers will still appreciate interviews with newsmakers like Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos and Endeavor President Mark Shapiro on hot topics like the streaming wars, actor and writer strikes, and why superhero movies are disappointing.

A glimpse into a climate apocalypse

“Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World” by John Vaillant

In 2023, forest fires were in the news. Burning Canadian forests engulfed New York in smoke, there were deadly fires in Maui and extreme heat caused the worst fires ever in Greece. In ‘Fire weather’ the reporter John Vaillant writes about an earlier forest fire that gave a hint of what was to come.

In 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta went up in flames, forcing 90,000 people to evacuate. The city is the center of Canada’s oil sands industry, meaning the city is dependent on the production of fossil fuels that contribute to global warming. Vaillant calls it a “split reality,” where executives recognize the threat of carbon dioxide emissions but still make money from the industry despite the damage it apparently causes.

The contradictions will not end soon. Some of the world’s largest energy companies have signaled this year that they will double down on fossil fuels through a series of deals in the shale oil sector. July was the warmest month ever recorded. And the United Nations Climate Conference in the United Arab Emirates – a petrostate – was the first to publicly declare that the world must move away from fossil fuels.

We are not done producing and using fossil fuels, and our world is warming. These two trends will inevitably collide again, and Vaillant’s book is a useful look at how that might unfold.

A warning about the geopolitical challenges that threaten market democracy

“The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism” by Martin Wolf

Martin Wolf, chief economist commentator at the Financial Times, believes in the marriage between liberal democracy and market economics. The combination, he argues, has created the most successful societies in history, producing prosperity and freedom.

In ‘The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism’ he argues that this is changing as the system fails to deliver economic and political results, leading to the rise of populists and self-destructive political movements. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump as president and the rise of rentier capitalism are all bad for democratic societies and the institutions they rely on, he writes. And that has worrying consequences for free societies and the companies that operate within them.

The case is personal for Wolf. He is an economist and his parents were refugees from the Nazis, who came to power partly due to the Great Depression. History, he says, is a warning that political mistakes can be enormously destructive when combined with economic disaster.

A podcast that profiles the drama of big deals

“The Closer”

Deal reporting is often all about the numbers. That approach can miss the drama behind it and the impact afterwards. ‘The Closer’, a podcast hosted by journalist Aimee Keane, unfolds rich stories behind the headlines, often revealing unexpected consequences.

The first episode examined the 2013 merger of American Airlines and US Airways, which created the world’s largest airline, and the role unions played in the deal. Since then, the podcast has explained how a Justice Department move led to Modelo becoming the best beer in the US; why a failed 2018 deal led to WeWork’s bankruptcy this year; and How Private Equity Investors and Walmart Killed Toys “R” Us (an episode with DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch, who broke the story about the company considering bankruptcy.)

The trick of the show is to demonstrate the continued relevance of old deals, and how the cascading events they unleash can reshape industries.

A podcast for real deal nerds

“Purchased”

Technology investors Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal take listeners behind the scenes of some of the world’s most famous companies: Costco, LVMH, Porsche. Their extensively researched episodes last several hours (one on Nike lasted about four hours) and explain the strategies and strange twists that allowed the founders of these companies to build lasting businesses. Gilbert and Rosenthal devote several episodes to guests, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Charles Munger, who were interviewed about a month before his death at the end of November.