The Russian Banker, Part 2: The Whistleblower

What is money? And what can a small island in Micronesia teach us about how it works? On Yap, a remote island in the western Pacific, giant calcite “Rai” stones once functioned as currency, where ownership and collective trust — rather than physical possession — defined wealth an ...  Show more

In 19th-century America almost anyone could print their own money – and many did. One of the most notable figures to take this up was a man named James Brown, a charismatic conman who built a fortune producing fake banknotes. In this episode of The Story of Money, Stephen Mihm, a ...  Show more

Who is Sergei Leontiev? To the US asylum system, he’s an exiled Russian banker who was persecuted by the state and forced to flee. To Russia, he’s said to be responsible for massive fraud.  On The Russian Banker, a new series from the Financial Times, reporters Cou ...  Show more

Alexei Navalny was sent to one to die and American journalist Evan Gershkovich is being held in another. Our correspondent reports on the notorious brutality of <a href="https://www.economist.com/1843/2024/02/22/life-and-death-in-putins-gulag?utm_campaign=a.io&utm_medium=audio ...

When Alexei Navalny flew back to Russia in 2021 he never made it through passport control. In an excerpt from Next Year in Moscow, The Economist’s series on Russian opposition to the war, today’s episode chronicles this period of his life. It’s an account of what turned out to be ...  Show more

When Alexei Navalny flew back to Russia in 2021 he never made it through passport control. In an excerpt from Next Year in Moscow, The Economist’s series on Russian opposition to the war, today’s episode chronicles this period of his life. It’s an account of what turned out to be ...  Show more