A Pitch of Philosophy

Recent News

• Brooke Harrington, author of Capital without Borders, discussed how the one percent hide their money on Australia Radio National’s LateNightLive.
• Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice Stucke, authors of Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy, spoke with the University of Chicago’s ProMarket blog about why the digital economy is less competitive than we think and how antitrust law could be used to protect consumers and encourage innovation in the digital marketplace.
• Slate debuted the first episode in the 5-part podcast series “Pop, Race, and the ‘60s,” hosted by Jack Hamilton, author of Just around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination. Meanwhile, Stereogum asked Hamilton whether rap, like rock ’n’ roll, will become a white-dominated genre.
• A PBS documentary based on Elizabeth Cobbs’s American Umpire debuts this week. View the trailer and check local listings for air dates and times.

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September 30: Deepwater Horizon’s Parable of Risk

The big-budget Hollywood take on the 2010 explosion of the offshore drilling rig known as Deepwater Horizon opens today. Directed by Peter Berg and featuring Mark Wahlberg, the film arrives as a star-driven disaster movie, suspensefully depicting events that included the deaths of eleven men, the destruction of a half-billion-dollar drilling platform, and the worst human-made ecological disaster in Gulf Coast history. As is frequently the case with big productions, where the film ended up isn’t where it was always headed, and initial director J. C. Chandor had a different vision for the story before being replaced over “creative differences” with the studio. Chandor’s plan w…