Greg Grandin, author of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, takes a fresh look at how American hubris and imperial ambitions led to the establishment of an outpost of the auto industry in the Brazilian rainforest. Ford, in many ways an embodiment of the contradictions of American capitalism (The Wall Street Journal once called him a "class trader") tried to institute what Grandin calls a Ponzi scheme of high ideals in the Amazonian jungle. What was he after and what does it tell us about US empire in the 21st century? Grandin also discusses the military coup in Honduras and Alvaro Uribe’s visit to Washington.

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