Going for Broke is a co-production of PRX’s To the Best of Our Knowledge at Wisconsin Public Radio and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. The three-part series hosted by broadcaster Ray Suarez centers on Americans who have lived on the edge. They share their sometimes startling economic experiences and also insight into our society as a whole. Each hour also includes some of our country’s top thinkers on income inequality, among them the legendary writer Barbara Ehrenreich, author of the classic "Nickel and Dimed," who passed away in September 2022.
In each episode we ask: what would result if we put more care into how we dealt with housing or mental health crises or our workplaces? Going for Broke explores these questions, moving from powerful personal accounts to visionary solutions.
Alissa Quart is the co-executive producer of “Going for Broke” and the author of five books of nonfiction including the forthcoming Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream (Ecco, 2023) and Squeezed (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2018). She is the Executive Director of the non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, created with her close collaborator the late Barbara Ehrenreich. She has written for many publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and TIME and has won an Emmy, an SPJ award, and received a Nieman fellowship, among other honors. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.
Shannon Henry Kleiber is senior producer and interviewer for To the Best of Our Knowledge, a national public radio show from Wisconsin Public Radio and PRX. She is the author of two non-fiction books and a former staff writer and columnist for The Washington Post. Kleiber co-executive produced the second season of “Going for Broke” and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Phillip Martin will be moderating the panel. He is a senior investigative reporter for The GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting.
Maia Szalavitz is the author, most recently, of Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction, which is the first history of the movement to focus drug policy on minimizing harms, not highs. She is also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and has written or co-written eight other books.
Alex Miller is a writer and one of EHRP’s Reporting Fellows. He has been featured in the anthologies “The Byline Bible” and “The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook.” His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, The Washington Post, and Wired. He is working on a mid-grade memoir about the struggles he faced while attending school for the first time at 11-years-old. He lives in New York with his cat, Claire.
*Masks and vaccination cards required upon entry*