Thank you for your interest and for tuning in to the Playing Books podcast. Welcome to a practical, relatable episode of the podcast. We discuss rent in this Playing Book podcast. You pay it. You dread it. You argue about it. Let's go beyond the surface of this complex subject. Rent is one of those words so woven into daily life that we've stopped questioning what it really means, whom it serves, whom it punishes, and why entire economies have been quietly reorganized around it. In this episode of the Playing Books podcast, we explore Joe Collins' sharp, eye-opening book, Rent (What is Political Economy?), and what we found inside will make you look at your monthly payment very differently. Here's a number to think about: 1 in 3 people across the 38 OECD nations rent their homes. In Switzerland, one of the wealthiest countries on earth, that figure climbs to 55%. In Germany, 45%. So before anyone tells you renting is a sign of financial failure, Collins dismantles that myth completely. Renting isn't a marker of poverty. It is, at its core, a question of power, who holds it, who extracts it, and who never quite escapes it. And the power dynamics Collins exposes are, at times, deeply disturbing. Did you know that thousands of women face sexual harassment directly tied to their housing situation, trading safety and dignity just to keep a roof over their heads? Did you know that revenge evictions, landlords pushing out tenants who dare to complain or organize, are a quiet epidemic reshaping entire neighborhoods? These aren't edge cases. These are features of a system, not bugs. Collins takes us on a global tour of what rent actually does to the world. We travel with him from São Paulo to Dublin, watching gentrification hollow out communities in real time. We move through Taipei and San Francisco, where Big Tech's stranglehold on housing has turned entire cities into playgrounds for the wealthy. We stop in Sekondi and Karratha, where extractivism, the industrial-scale stripping of land and resources, reveals rent's rawest, most exploitative face. But this episode goes even deeper than housing. Learn how rent traps many people, especially economically. Learn the three kinds of rent and other valuable lessons. Collins convincingly argues that rent is at the root of some of the most urgent crises of our time: the climate emergency, spiraling economic inequality, and the slow-motion fallout from global financial crises. Rentier capitalism, the system where wealth is generated not by making things but by owning things, is quietly running the show, and most of us are funding it one monthly payment at a time. We also nerd out (in the best way) on something you might not expect: the origin of the word "rent" itself, and what its linguistic history reveals about how deeply extraction has always been baked into economic life. Rent decides so much; we encourage you to listen, comment, share your experience with renting, and do you prefer renting to owning? Consider buying Joe Collins’ Rent (What is Political Economy?) on Amazon, at your local bookstore, or on your ereader like Kindle. Connect with other art and literature advocates on our social media: playingbooks.org YouTube Instagram Twitter TikTok Thank you for tuning in, for your time, and for listening.
