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For more than 25 years, host Marcia Franklin has recorded "Conversations That Matter" with some of the world's most noted writers and thinkers — from historians to humorists, from politicians to pundits, from jurists to journalists — for her series "Dialogue" on Idaho Public Television.

Oct 18, 2020

Host Marcia Franklin talks with investigative journalist Jane Mayer, the author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

Mayer, a staff writer for The New Yorker, worked for more than three years on the book, an expansion of an article she wrote on Charles and David Koch for The New Yorker in 2010. The two brothers, the scions of Koch Industries, have spent decades funding conservative candidates and causes. In her book, Mayer traces the history of the family and its political strategies, and examines the rise of untraceable "dark" money in the political system.

"They've built up something that hasn't really existed before in the country's politics, which is a huge, multi-state, private political machine," says Mayer about the Kochs.

"They operate in 35 states. They have a bigger budget and payroll than the Republican National Committee, yet they're private citizens."

Mayer is the author or co-author of four books, including Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas and The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. Both were finalists for the National Book Award.

Mayer, who started her career writing for newspapers in Vermont, was a reporter for the Washington Star and then for the Wall Street Journal for 12 years, where she was that paper's first female White House correspondent. She joined The New Yorker in 1995.

She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the John Chancellor Award, the J. Anthony Lukas Prize, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Toner Prize for Political Reporting, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence.

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Originally Aired: 09/15/2017

The interview is part of Dialogue’s series, "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference," and was taped at the 2017 conference. Since 1995, the conference has been bringing together some of the world’s most well-known and illuminating authors to discuss literature and life.