蜜芽传媒

In 2021, Elon Musk started calling himself The Dogefather to signal his support for Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency based on a joke meme about a dog. That dog, Jill Lepore argues, is now wagging the tail of the world鈥檚 economy. In the 2024 US presidential election, nearly half of all corporate spending came from the cryptocurrency industry. When Trump won that election, leading figures in the cryptocurrency industry celebrated his creation of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, a task force led by Musk. DOGE鈥檚 mandate is to reduce government spending and to eliminate regulations - including regulations affecting cryptocurrency companies. Cryptocurrency is, essentially, money without government. A libertarian鈥檚 dream. In this episode, Lepore looks at Silicon Valley's cryptocurrency craze through the lens of some very old science fiction. She argues that, like everything else about Muskism that purports to be futuristic, the idea of reinventing money is a relic whose history serves as a warning.

Jill Lepore is the Kemper Professor of American History at Harvard University and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She鈥檚 also a staff writer at The New Yorker and an acclaimed author.

Series Producer: Viv Jones
Researchers: Simon Leek, Oliver Riskin-Kutz
Editors: Richard Vadon, Hugh Levinson
Sound design and mix: James Beard, Graham Puddifoot
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke
Original music by Corntuth
Production Coordinators: Jack Young, Maria Ogundele

CREDITS
VOA, NBC, Tucker Carlson Network