Mary in America

Mary Childs
  • 5.0 (21)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Weekly

Mary in America is a weekly conversation about how the machine of society works. Journalist and author Mary Childs jumps into the minds of the greatest, most interesting people who are shaping the world we live in, to understand the structures we build, the stories we tell, the games we play, and the choices we make. Why is it like that? Who made it that way? Should we change it? Can we?

Episodes

  1. 2d ago

    "Class Apartheid" in America (and cigarettes)

    Xochitl Gonzalez is a bestselling novelist, but, to me, she’s an economist. Her books are about collisions between economic classes; she captures precarity and luxury, access and scrappiness, often with gentrification as the site of these collisions. She has this freakishly astute lens because, she says, she herself has “changed economic classes,” not once but three times — an experience she’s now writing about in a forthcoming memoir.  Further Reading: Last Night in Brooklyn Need Blind: A Memoir of Class in America “I Mean, Why Shouldn’t We All Smoke Cigarettes Again?”, New York Magazine What the Comfort Class Doesn’t Get, The Atlantic A Year of Confronting the Gentrification of Self, The Atlantic Subscribe to the show! YouTubeInstagramTikTokWebsite

    38 min

  2. May 29

    How to Price the Priceless

    Al Roth won a Nobel prize for his work helping create a market for matching kidney donors with people who needed kidneys. You know what would really help people who need kidneys though? If they could just buy them. But almost no country allows that, because it feels like it would create bad outcomes, and because it feels gross. Al loves thinking about these awkward intersections of money and morality. He calls these “repugnant markets.” And he has pretty thoroughly convinced me that it would be GOOD to let people pay for organs. Further Reading:  Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal about How Markets Work Subscribe to the show! YouTubeInstagramTikTokWebsite

    39 min

  3. May 27

    Introducing Mary in America

    Mary in America, a new show from journalist Mary Childs about why we are the way we are. Out now. Join us. Subscribe to the show!  YouTube Instagram TikTok Website

    1 min

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
21 Ratings

About

Mary in America is a weekly conversation about how the machine of society works. Journalist and author Mary Childs jumps into the minds of the greatest, most interesting people who are shaping the world we live in, to understand the structures we build, the stories we tell, the games we play, and the choices we make. Why is it like that? Who made it that way? Should we change it? Can we?

Information

  • Creator
    Mary Childs
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    3
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Mary in America
  • Show Website
    Mary in America

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