Cultured Media

The world food supply is an oligarchy. Only a few large corporations have control of the supply chain. Farmer suicides are up. Even our supermarkets are designed to cause us to buy highly processed foods. Raj Patel explores the global food system and what he contends are its inefficiencies in Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. Mr. Patel details how food is produced, marketed and sold and reports that currently more people are starving and more are overweight than at any other time in history. Raj Patel discusses his book with Evan Kleiman, host of the radio program “Good Food” that is heard on Southern California NPR affiliate KCRW. Raj Patel is a fellow at the Institute for Food & Development/Food First and has written for the Guardian and Los Angeles Times. He is currently a visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies.

Listen on After Words

A special program about the housing crisis. We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money. Ira Glass and his associates interview mortgage buyers and investors.

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