Mtoto wa nyoka ni nyoka – “The child of a snake is a snake” This Swahili proverb is quoted by one of the indelible subjects we meet in Siddharth Kara’s gut-punch of investigative journalism, Cobalt Red. The full-time guardian for her three grandchildren, at 69 Lubuya is the oldest person Kara interviewed on his many sojourns to the Democratic Republic…
Too Late to Revert Back to FM Radio?
“Everyone wants an answer: What’s the ethical alternative to Spotify?” posits journalist Liz Pelly in the concluding chapter of her bestseller, Mood Machine. This after 230+ pages of findings from investigating the music & podcast giant for half of its checkered 20-year history. She takes us back to its early days, debunking the claim that it was founded to save…
Ask Yourself a Question
Don’t you just love a bargain? Don’t you just love a bargain? Don’t you just love a bargain? Don’t you just love a bargain? Don’t you just love a bargain? Don’t you just love a bargain? Don’t you just love a bargain? Don’t you just love a bargain? Don’t you just love a bargain? Don’t you just love a bargain?…
With Friends Like These
The theory underlying the private equity industry is “firms and their executives have a greater incentive to improve a company’s performance than salaried managers at a public company do, because the firm has skin in the game.” So writes Megan Greenwell in Bad Company, her unsettling 2025 exposé. The question she raises is one of how much skin, really? On…
Neither Rain nor Snow nor Heat nor Gloom of Night
Steve Grant lost his job as a marketing consultant at the onset of Covid. He was 50 years old, had a wife, two teenaged daughters, cancer, and a glaring need for health benefits. The good, bad, and ugly of the year that followed is captured magnificently in his memoir Mailman, which is what out of pure desperation he became: a…