The creator of NPR’s Planet Money podcast and award-winning New Yorker staff writer explains our current economy: laying out its internal logic and revealing the transformative hope it offers for millions of people to thrive as they never have before.

Adam Davidson is the cofounder of NPR’s Planet Money podcast and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he covers economics and business. Previously he was an economics writer for The New York Times Magazine. He has won many of journalism’s most prestigious awards, including a Peabody for his coverage of the financial crisis.

“I love Adam Davidson’s book. This is the golden moment for the marriage of passion and excellence, a time for optimism, not pessimism. The opportunity to create great businesses you love and which your customers come to love lies around every corner. The heart of every economy is small enterprise, not large. We have waited a long time for this book, and brother does it deliver. Bravo!” — Tom Peters, author of The Excellence Dividend

“Adam Davidson is one of America’s most accomplished business journalists — and this book reminds us why. With a reporter’s eye and a storyteller’s grace, he has traveled the country to find regular people who have cracked the code of the modern economy. Reading their stories will reveal the secrets of successful careers. It might even restore your faith in the American Dream.”— Daniel H. Pink, author of When and Drive

Contrary to what you may have heard, the middle class is not dying and robots are not stealing our jobs. In fact, writes Adam Davidson–one of our leading public voices on economic issues– the twenty-first-century economic paradigm offers new ways of making money, fresh paths toward professional fulfillment, and unprecedented opportunities for curious, ambitious individuals to combine the things they love with their careers. Drawing on the stories of average people doing exactly this–an accountant overturning his industry, a sweatshop owner’s daughter fighting for better working conditions, an Amish craftsman meeting the technological needs of Amish farmers–as well as the latest academic research, Davidson shows us how the twentieth-century economy of scale has given way in this century to an economy of passion. He makes clear, too, that though the adjustment has brought measures of dislocation, confusion, and even panic, these are most often the result of a lack of understanding. In The Passion Economy, he delineates the ground rules of the new economy, and armed with these, we begin to see how we can succeed in it according to its own terms–intimacy, insight, attention, automation, and, of course, passion. An indispensable road map and a refreshingly optimistic take on our economic future.

Academy Award winning writer/director/producer Adam McKay’s most recent feature was VICE, starring Christian Bale and Amy Adams, the film went on to receive many accolades including eight Academy Award nominations and six Golden Globe nominations among others, and a DGA nomination for McKay. The WGA honored McKay with the Paul Selvin Award in recognition of the script that best embodies the spirit of the constitutional and civil rights and liberties.

McKay serves as an executive producer on the critically-acclaimed HBO show Succession. In 2015, McKay and Charles Randolph adapted Michael Lewis’s book, The Big Short, which won Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards. Recent work includes his role as an executive producer on both Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut Booksmart (2019), Netflix’s hit show Dead to Me (2019), starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini, and writer director Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers (2019), starring Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu.

Upcoming TV projects include the HBO series based on Jeff Pearlman’s non-fiction book Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s for which McKay directed the pilot. He is also working on a limited series for HBO, based on Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown’s upcoming book about Jeffrey Epstein.

McKay made his name in the comedy world as a founding member of the Upright Citizens Brigade. In 1995, McKay and Will Ferrell happened to start on the same day at Saturday Night Live, where he became Head Writer. McKay and Ferrell’s time at SNL led to collaborations that established their unique absurdist style on the now classic Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) followed by the hit Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006). Other credits include Step Brothers (2008), The Other Guys (2010) and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013). He has also produced numerous others including hits Get Hard (2015) and Daddy’s Home (2015) and Daddy’s Home 2 (2017), and independent titles such as Welcome to Me (2015).

McKay feels passionately about the climate change emergency. He uses his voice to draw attention to the most urgent crisis mankind has ever known. In 2016, he joined the board of Represent.Us, the largest grassroots anti-corruption campaign in the US to pass laws that stop political bribery, end secret money and give voters a stronger voice.

Photo Credits:
Michael Lionstar for Adam Davidson
Miller Mobley © 2015 Paramount Pictures for Adam McKay