
World Eaters
How Venture Capital Is Cannibalizing the Economy
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Narrated by:
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Catherine Bracy
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By:
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Catherine Bracy
About this listen
A Next Big Idea Book Club March 2025 Must-Read
An urgent and illuminating perspective that offers a window into how the most pernicious aspects of the venture capital ethos is reaching all areas of our lives, into everything from healthcare to food to entertainment to the labor market and leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
The venture capital playbook is causing unique harms to society. And in World Eaters, Catherine Bracy offers a window into the pernicious aspects of VC and shows us how its bad practices are bleeding into all industries, undermining the labor and housing markets and posing unique dangers to the economy at large. VC’s creates a wide, powerful wake that impacts the average consumer just as much as it does investors and entrepreneurs.
In researching this book, Bracy has interviewed founders, fund managers, contract and temp workers in the gig economy, and Limited Partners across the landscape. She learned that the current VC model is not a good fit for the majority of start-ups, and yet, there are too few options for early stage funding outside of VC dollars. And while there are some alternative paths for sustainable, responsible growth, without the help of regulators, there is not much motivation to drive investors from the roulette table that is venture capital.
World Eaters is an eye-opening account of the ways that the values of contemporary venture capital hurt founders, consumers, and the market. Bracy’s clear-eyed debut is a must-listen for fans of Winners Take All, Super Pumped, and Brotopia, an appealing “insider / outsider” perspective on Silicon Valley, and those who are fascinated to look under the hood and learn why the modern economy is not working for most of us.
©2025 Catherine Bracy (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“One of the most important and insightful books about venture capital I have ever read. A clear-eyed and illuminating examination of VC’s peril and possibility. Bracy's call to action to reimagine what VC can be is one we should all heed.”—Ro Khanna, Member of Congress from Silicon Valley and author of Dignity in a Digital Age
"World Eaters is a compelling account of the grift that so much of Silicon Valley VC has become, and a vision of what a more equitable and equity-enabling VC industry might look like."—Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media
“Persuasively demonstrates how VC’s prevalence has created a startup monoculture."—Bloomberg Business Week
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Story
In What's Real About Race?, sociologist Rina Bliss illuminates the truth about one of the most misunderstood, controversial concepts in our society and reveals why we cannot confuse race with genetic difference. Blending energizing prose with the latest in genetics research, this paradigm-shifting tour unmasks what's truly real about race: namely, racism's impact on our bodies and lives.
By: Rina Bliss
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Delay Deny Defend
- Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It
- By: Jay M. Feinman
- Narrated by: Pat Grimes
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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The denial of valid insurance claims is not occasional or accidental or the fault of a few bad employees. It's the result of an increasing and systematic focus on maximizing profits by major companies such as Allstate and State Farm. Citing dozens of stories of victims who were unfairly denied payment, the book explains how people can be more careful when shopping for policies and what to do when pursuing a disputed claim. It also lays out a plan for the legal reforms needed to prevent future abuses.
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prolonged and dry
- By Robert Katuna on 05-20-25
By: Jay M. Feinman
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The Body Is a Doorway: A Memoir
- A Journey Beyond Healing, Hope, and the Human
- By: Sophie Strand
- Narrated by: Sophie Strand
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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At age sixteen Sophie Strand—bright, agile, fearless—is suddenly beset by unexplained, debilitating illness while on a family trip abroad. Her once vibrant life becomes a tangled miasma of medication, specialists, anaphylaxis, and seemingly never-ending attempts to explain what has gone so terribly wrong. And, for many years thereafter, Sophie's life becomes subsumed with ideas not of "health," but of explanation, and the narrative of how and why she became sick. But slowly, she comes to another, more fundamental understanding of what has happened to her body.
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The Book I Didn’t Know I Needed
- By John G. on 05-12-25
By: Sophie Strand
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Black Pill
- How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics
- By: Elle Reeve
- Narrated by: Elle Reeve
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Award-winning journalist and CNN correspondent Elle Reeve was not surprised by the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. With years of in-depth research and on-the-ground investigative reporting under her belt, Reeve was aware of the preoccupations of the online far right and their journey from the computer to QAnon, militias, and racist groups. At the same time, Reeve saw a parallel growth of counterforces, with citizen vigilantes using new tools and tactics to take down the far right.
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Great story — uneven performance
- By SSG on 08-19-24
By: Elle Reeve
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The Eurasian Century
- Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern Century
- By: Hal Brands
- Narrated by: Tim Fannon
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Hal Brands argues that a better understanding of Eurasia's strategic geography can illuminate the contours of rivalry and conflict in today's world. The Eurasian Century explains how revolutions in technology and warfare, and the rise of toxic ideologies of conquest, made Eurasia the center of twentieth-century geopolitics—with pressing implications for the struggles that will define the twenty-first.
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Worth the read.
- By Chip Eckert on 02-24-25
By: Hal Brands
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Let Only Red Flowers Bloom
- Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping's China
- By: Emily Feng
- Narrated by: Emily Feng
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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The rise of China and its great power competition with the U.S. will be one of the defining issues of our generation. But to understand modern China, one has to understand the people who live there–and the way the Chinese state is trying to control them along lines of identity and free expression. In vivid, cinematic detail, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom tells the stories of nearly two dozen people who are pushing back.
By: Emily Feng
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The Experimentation Machine
- Finding Product-Market Fit in the Age of AI
- By: Jeffrey Bussgang
- Narrated by: Jeffrey J. Bussgang
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Experimentation Machine, HBS professor, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist Jeffrey J. Bussgang reveals how AI is transforming the way startups find product-market fit and scale.
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Really a shortcut to becoming a 10X Founder supercharged by AI
- By Neil Bee on 03-28-25
By: Jeffrey Bussgang
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The Crazies
- The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector, and a War Out West
- By: Amy Gamerman
- Narrated by: Anna Sale
- Length: 17 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Most locals in Big Timber, Montana learn to live with the wind. Rick Jarrett sought his fortune in it. Like his pioneer ancestors who staked their claims in the Treasure State, he believed in his right to make a living off the land—and its newest precious resource, million-dollar wind. Trouble was, Jarrett’s neighbors were some of the wealthiest and most influential men in America, trophy ranchers who’d come West to enjoy magnificent mountain views, not stare at 500-foot wind turbines.
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A glimpse behind the curtain of wealth and outside interests in Montana
- By Karen D Nard on 04-21-25
By: Amy Gamerman
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How to Feed the World
- The History and Future of Food
- By: Vaclav Smil
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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We have never had to feed as many people as we do today. And yet, we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. As a result, in our economic, political, and everyday choices, we take for granted and fail to prioritize the thing that makes all our lives possible: food. In this ambitious, myth-busting book, Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today.
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lots of dense information, hard to absorb.
- By chris on 05-20-25
By: Vaclav Smil
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The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
- Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000
- By: Paul Kennedy
- Narrated by: Peter Coates
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Spanning five centuries of history, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers offers a sweeping exploration of how nations rise to dominance and fall into decline. Paul Kennedy masterfully examines the intricate interplay between economics and strategy, revealing how shifts in wealth and resources have shaped global power dynamics from 1500 to 2000. Filled with keen insights, this groundbreaking and important work provides a compelling lens through which to understand the forces that continue to shape our modern world.
By: Paul Kennedy
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House of Huawei
- The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company
- By: Eva Dou
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On the coast of southern China, an eccentric entrepreneur spent three decades steadily building an obscure telecom company into one of the world’s most powerful technological empires with hardly anyone noticing. This all changed in December 2018, when the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ female scion, sparked an international hostage standoff, poured fuel on the US-China trade war, and suddenly thrust the mysterious company into the global spotlight.
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Excellent work
- By Suzi on 05-26-25
By: Eva Dou
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Superagency
- What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future
- By: Reid Hoffman, Greg Beato
- Narrated by: Scott Wallace
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Superagency offers a roadmap for using AI inclusively and adaptively to improve our lives and create positive change. While acknowledging challenges like disinformation and potential job changes, the book focuses on AI’s immense potential to increase individual agency and create better outcomes for society as a whole. Imagine AI tutors personalizing education for each child, researchers rapidly discovering cures for diseases like Alzheimer's and cancer, and AI advisors empowering people to navigate complex systems and achieve their goals.
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Reid & Greg See a positive future for AI & Humans
- By T. Gallina on 04-10-25
By: Reid Hoffman, and others
Going down the VC rabbit hole
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