How the Tech Billionaires Bought Radical Journalists
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talk to Eoin Higgins about how rich tech weirdos co-opted huge chunks of the media.
The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
The Time of Monsters podcast features Nation national-affairs correspondent Jeet Heer’s signature blend of political culture and cultural politics. Each week, he’ll host in-depth conversations with urgent voices on the most pressing issues of our time.
How the Tech Billionaires Bought Radical Journalists w/ Eoin Higgins
Tech lords such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are among the richest humans who have ever
lived and have an enormous sway over the American political system but even that isn’t enough
for them. They also want a compliant media, one that echoes their ideas, doesn’t investigate
their business practices, and goes after their enemy. This is the subject of a new book by Eoin
Higgins: Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. I
talked to Eoin about two of the major figures in this story, Peter Thiel, a plutocrat who is eager
to abandon the human species and Matt Taibbi, a onetime anti-establishment voice who now
has become a standard reactionary.
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Peter Thiel
(Nordin Catic / Getty Images for The Cambridge Union)Tech lords such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are among the richest humans who have ever lived and have an enormous sway over the American political system, but even that isn’t enough for them. They also want a compliant media, one that echoes their ideas, doesn’t investigate their business practices, and goes after their enemy.
This is the subject of a new book by Eoin Higgins: Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. I talked to Eoin about two of the major figures in this story: Peter Thiel, a plutocrat who is eager to abandon the human species, and Matt Taibbi, a onetime anti-establishment voice who has now become a standard reactionary.
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The Story of Justice Democrats w/ Usamah Andrabi / Fighting Fascism
We are officially almost at the end of the 2026 election. To reflect back on the crazy twists and turns and the major progressive successes of this cycle, we spoke with Usamah Andrabi, the communications director for Justice Democrats. Justice Democrats is best known as the org that recruited AOC in 2018, but they’re a lot more than that, and their story is, in a lot of ways, the story of the left’s resurgence over the last few years.
(Note: We recorded this episode a few weeks ago. At first we were concerned about whether a conversation focused largely on how progressives have used primaries to make the Democratic Party better was appropriate for the day before the general election. But then corporate Dem Haley Stevens endorsed MAGA freak Mike Rogers in an attempt to ratfuck Democrats’ U.S. senate nominee in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. And we remembered that yes, beating the far right absolutely requires us to defeat the corporate Dems who are far more interested in protecting their billionaire donors than defeating fascism. Let’s beat these MAGA freaks on Tuesday and then let’s clear out the rot in our party starting Wednesday.)
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