Going for Broke

Latest Episodes:

Introducing Other People’s Pockets: Ray Suarez on Aging and Work Apr 05, 2023

In this special episode, we’re sharing a conversation Ray had on the new podcast, Other People’s Pockets. On Other People’s Pockets, journalist Maya Lau asks people from all walks of life to get radically transparent about their personal finances in order to learn more about who we are and level the financial playing field along the way. Ray and Maya chat about how Ray found it difficult to find desirable jobs the older he gets … and he’s not afraid to admit he’s angry about it.
If you like what you hear, be sure to listen to Other People’s Pockets at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/opp?sid=broke.

Anne Strainchamps and Ray Suarez talk about reporting on poverty and why the care economy matters Nov 26, 2022

The hosts of "Going for Broke" discuss reporting on poverty and how to give economic insight a tone of empathy and a tangible sense of human connection.
More about the series at ttbook.org/goingforbroke.

Can Work Be Love? Nov 19, 2022

In this final part of our series, we’re talking about work — about the right to meaningful work, the search for jobs that pay enough to live, and what happens to people who look for work while also having a disability that’s invisible to most.

Original Air Date: November 19, 2022

Guests:
Andrea Dobynes Wagner — Angela Garbes — Rodrigo Toscano — Barbara Ehrenreich

Interviews In This Hour:
Do they need to know that I'm blind? — The work of care is vital. Why don't we pay like it is? — A sonnet for a lineworker — Barbara Ehrenreich on writing the American labor story

About Going For Broke: The Care Economy
How we live is indelibly intertwined with the care and empathy we give to each other. What if we put care into helping Americans find homes and build dwellings, into keeping their bodies and minds sound, and finding meaningful and well-paid work? In this three part series, "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project bring you real life stories about economic struggle in our time, as well as ideas for solutions.

Rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts.
Learn more about the series at ttbook.org/goingforbroke.
About the Economic Hardship Reporting Project
EHRP supports independent journalists so they can create gripping stories, often countering the typical narratives. They then inject this high-quality journalism into the mainstream media, mobilizing readers to change systems perpetuating economic hardship. Learn more about EHRP here.

About To The Best Of Our Knowledge
”To the Best of Our Knowledge” is a Peabody award-winning national public radio show that explores big ideas and beautiful questions. Deep interviews with philosophers, writers, artists, scientists, historians, and others help listeners find new sources of meaning, purpose, and wonder in daily life. Whether it’s about bees, poetry, skin, or psychedelics, every episode is an intimate, sound-rich journey into open-minded, open-hearted conversations. Warm and engaging, TTBOOK helps listeners feel less alone and more connected – to our common humanity and to the world we share. Learn more about the show here.

Making Up Our Minds Nov 12, 2022

Post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health challenges can push people into poverty. Meanwhile, the experience of financial desperation can also create even more trauma, even more suffering. How do you break the cycle? How do we truly care for people mentally and financially?

If you or someone you know are having mental health struggles, we wanted to make sure you are aware of some resources. The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24 hours a day by calling 9-8-8. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reminds us that one in five people in the US has a mental health concern every year. You can find support and education at their web site, nami.org.

Original Air Date: November 12, 2022

Guests:
Alex Miller — Katie Prout — Daniel Bergner — Maia Szalavitz

Interviews In This Hour:
Trauma and poverty: The perfect storm experienced by U.S. veterans — Learning to cope when mental health care feels out of reach — More than one way to treat a mind — How harm reduction disrupts painful cycles of addiction

Change of Address Nov 05, 2022

In the first of three episodes of "Going For Broke" all about the care economy, we're thinking about housing. Many of us would consider it a basic human right. But in America, it can be hard to come by.

Original Air Date: November 05, 2022

Guests:
Bobbi Dempsey — David Harvey — Annabelle Gurwitch — Justin Garrett Moore

Interviews In This Hour:
When the walk home from school keeps changing — Creating a compassionate geography — More supportive housing can start with sharing space. And upending assumptions. — The infrastructure of care
About Going For Broke: The Care Economy
How we live is indelibly intertwined with the care and empathy we give to each other. What if we put care into helping Americans find homes and build dwellings, into keeping their bodies and minds sound, and finding meaningful and well-paid work? In this three part series, "To The Best Of Our Knowledge" and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project bring you real life stories about economic struggle in our time, as well as ideas for solutions.

Coming November 5: Going For Broke on the Care Economy Oct 21, 2022

Going for Broke returns and this time, we're talking about the care economy.
This three-part series hosted by broadcaster Ray Suarez centers on Americans who have lived on the edge. They share their sometimes startling economic experiences and also insight into our society as a whole. Each hour also includes some of our country’s top thinkers on income inequality, among them the legendary writer Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the classic “Nickel and Dimed,” who passed away in September 2022.
In each episode we ask: what would result if we put more care into how we dealt with housing or mental health crises or our workplaces? Going for Broke explores these questions, moving from powerful personal accounts to visionary solutions.

Going for Broke season 2 is a co-production of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and PRX’s "To The Best of Our Knowledge" at Wisconsin Public Radio.
Learn more about this season at ttbook.org/goingforbroke

Jen Fitzgerald: A Poet Without a Home Nov 15, 2021

During the pandemic, Jen Fitzgerald, a poet and teacher, became a statistic, forced to find an apartment under duress as the city closed down around her. The situation the fifth-generation New Yorker and single mom found herself in has everything to do with what has happened to her city—and other hyper-prosperous American metropolises—during the last decade. They are now built to exclude the poor and even the unstable middle class, and certainly most of the poets.

In COVID lockdown, Fitzgerald was thrown back on her resources, which included poetry she wrote about her period of homelessness. Her greatest asset might have been her robust social network, which she reached for in her desperation. And it was through community that the light poured back into her life.

On this episode of Going for Broke With Ray Suarez, Jen tells her story, and shares her profound poetry that came out of the experience. We also hear from Matthew Murphy, executive director of the NYU Furman Center, a think tank devoted to trying to solve the housing crisis.

Want more from the Going for Broke team? Join us on Wednesday, November 17 at 8pm ET for a special event, featuring Ray Suarez and Ann Larson, hosted by Laura Flanders. RSVP today.

To be the first to hear all the episodes in this season, subscribe to Going for Broke with Ray Suarez on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes premiere each Monday.

Going for Broke With Ray Suarez is a podcast by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation. To learn more about the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, sign up for our newsletter. To support all of The Nation’s journalism, including our podcasts, subscribe today.

John Koopman: A Veteran of America Nov 08, 2021

John Koopman has been a Marine, a war correspondent in Iraq, and a manager at a strip club, among other things. His journey through precarity in the weird 21st century started in earnest after the bottom fell out of the newspaper business. That was when sacrifice or experience seemed to matter, and John found himself laid off and out of the middle class. It was a different war than the one he had experienced before: This time the battle was for consistent and meaningful employment, and its timeframe was indefinite.

On this episode of Going for Broke With Ray Suarez, John explains how he went from Baghdad’s Firdos Square to working at a strip club, and all that came next, including stints at a dive bar, driving for Uber, and more. You’ll hear how John came to rely on a vital safety net: the Veterans Health Administration. We’ll also hear from Aaron Jackson, a scholar studying the VA at the University of California–San Francisco, about how the agency could be a model for the health care system the rest of us need.

To be the first to hear all the episodes in this season, subscribe to Going for Broke With Ray Suarez on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes premiere each Monday.

Going for Broke With Ray Suarez is a podcast by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation. To learn more about the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, sign up for our newsletter. To support all of The Nation’s journalism, including our podcasts, subscribe today.

Lisa Ventura: The Daughter’s Burden Nov 01, 2021

Lisa Ventura is a housing case manager by day, but for years she's also been her family’s unofficial social worker by night. Lisa was just a kid when she learned to help her Spanish-speaking mother navigate the welfare system. It was a struggle, but she could handle it. But she wasn’t prepared for what it would feel like when her isolated father lost his job during the pandemic and needed her help filing for unemployment. Battling the bureaucracy during Covid on top of a troubled family history takes its toll.

What Lisa experienced first-hand is what experts call "administrative burden," the mountain of paperwork and forms we all have to fill out—but like many burdens, this one falls disproportionately on those already experiencing financial hardship. On this week's episode of the Going for Broke podcast, Ray Suarez also talks to Pamela Herd, professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, and coauthor of the book, Administrative Burden: Policy-Making by Other Means.

Ann Larson: The Cashier Philosopher Oct 25, 2021

“What would it look like for that man in the business suit who comes in in his SUV and loads up with groceries… what if he had to work in the grocery store?”

On this week’s episode of Going for Broke With Ray Suarez, Ann tells us how her co-workers at the grocery store where she works chase shoplifters and clean up bathrooms, while shoppers, afraid of contagion, treat her like she’s untouchable. Ann grew up working class and trained to be a college professor but then the academic jobs disappeared. In the meanwhile, she co-founded an organization called the Debt Collective that fights for student debt cancellation. By the time the pandemic rolled around, she found herself out of work—so she took this job at a local grocery store.

Listen to this week’s episode to learn what it’s been like working in a grocery store during a pandemic year, including the surreal interactions between customers, those experiencing homelessness, and those who work in her store. During her year at the till, Ann has seen the bright lines that stand between workers like her and the customers, particularly the most privileged ones. We’ll also hear from Ann about her ideas for changing the existing paradigm and shaking up the hierarchies that divide and alienate us.

Going for Broke With Ray Suarez is a podcast by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation. To learn more about the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, sign up for our newsletter. To support all of The Nation’s journalism, including our podcasts, subscribe today. New to podcasts? Learn how to subscribe here.

Ray Suarez: A Veteran Journalist Finds Himself the Center of the Story Oct 18, 2021

Ray Suarez never wanted to be the center of the story. He’s been a journalist of one kind of another all of his adult life, on radio, on television, in books and newspapers. He was the host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation, he was a senior correspondent for PBS NewsHour, and he had his own daily news show on Al Jazeera America. When that last network ceased operations in 2016, he figured it might take a while to find work, but he had a reputation and good connections that would eventually land him a new gig.

He was in for a rude awakening: As he discovered, if you lose one job late in your career, the next one will both take longer to find, and not last as long as the ones earlier in your working life. For Ray, the endless job search was just the beginning of his troubles. On this episode of Going for Broke, Ray explains how he found himself in the kind of tough situations that he had spent a career reporting on.

Lori Yearwood: Sleepless on the Streets Oct 18, 2021

Lori Yearwood had never thought much about sleep, until she found it almost impossible to catch a wink. After a series of tragedies in her life, including losing her home in a fire, Lori was suddenly catapulted into homelessness. The shelters Lori found herself in were a nightmare, and the streets were hardly better—for two years, Lori struggled to get through each day without ever getting a full night’s sleep. The trauma of homelessness was compounded by the trauma of involuntary sleeplessness.

On this first episode of Going for Broke with Ray Suarez, the new podcast from The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Nation, Lori talks about the soul-deadening effects of sleep deprivation, and the solutions she wants to see to make sure no one goes through the same experiences as her. That’s what Going for Broke is all about, hearing directly from the people who know about hardship the best: those who have lived through it. Each of the six episodes in this first season will give a platform to one person who has faced the prospect of losing their home, or their job, or their sense of meaning, and will offer lessons on how we make our society work for all of us.

Now that Lori is back on her feet, and finally able to get a good night’s sleep each night, she’s sharing the lessons she learned about homelessness through her reporting—she’s now the national reporter on the housing and crisis beat for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. In the second part of the episode, we’ll also hear from Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania, about how just providing adequate, humane shelter to people experiencing homelessness can be transformative.

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