Your passport tells a story of where you’re from—and where you’re allowed to go. But what if you wanted to rewrite that story? Professor Kristin Surak joins us to discuss the world of golden passports, where millionaires and billionaires buy citizenship to countries they’re not from—and are often not living in—in order to navigate travel perks, business opportunities, and even scandals. If you thought all passports were created equal, you’re in for a trip.

Kristin Surak is Associate Professor of Political Sociology at the LSE and the author of The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires (Harvard University Press 2023). In addition to her academic work, she writes for popular outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Guardian, and comments regularly for the BBC, Bloomberg TV, and Sky TV News.

You can follow her on Twitter @KristinSurak and on TikTok @goldenpassports. To learn more about her work, check out her department page.

Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

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Our producer is Chris McClure. Our associate producer is Allison Weiss. Our engineer is Nathanael McClure. Production support from Julie Carrillo, Anne Currie, and Chad Hall.

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What Are Golden Passports? with Professor Kristin Surak