Power, faith, money, and the record.
Gangster Capitalism follows the Liberty University story beyond headline scandal into testimony, records, politics, and money. Its reporting connects individual accounts of harm to a larger system of religious authority, family influence, real estate, and public power.
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Gangster Capitalism is an investigative series built around institutional power and the people caught inside it. Its Liberty University season centers on Jerry Falwell Jr. and the school his family helped define. The reporting does not stop at scandal. It asks what the scandal reveals. Episodes move carefully through testimony from former and current students, staff, faculty, administrators, and people close to the story. Some accounts are intimate and painful. Others are legal, financial, or political in nature. Together, they form a portrait of a university where religious authority, personal loyalty, campus discipline, and public influence appear deeply intertwined. The series uses a sober editorial voice. It lets witnesses describe what happened to them, then returns to the record: lawsuits, nonprofit rules, real estate documents, public statements, archival clips, and prior reporting. One episode follows allegations in Jane Does v. Liberty and the treatment of survivors. Another examines LGBTQ students navigating a hostile campus environment. Others look at Christian nationalism, convocation politics, business deals, property transfers, and the orbit of Donald Trump. The show is strongest when it turns a single incident into evidence of a wider pattern. It is not casual true crime. There is little banter and almost no ornament. The pacing is deliberate, with enough context to follow complicated timelines without softening the stakes. Gangster Capitalism is for listeners who want consequence, not spectacle. It treats faith, money, sex, politics, and institutional reputation as connected forces. The result is a grave, evidence-heavy account of how a powerful school could protect itself while leaving vulnerable people to carry the cost.
Made for: For listeners drawn to serious investigative journalism about institutions, religion, politics, and abuse of power. It will especially suit those who prefer testimony, documents, and careful chronology over conversational true-crime storytelling.
What sets it apart: The series pairs survivor and insider accounts with legal, financial, religious, and political context, making the Liberty story feel systemic rather than merely sensational. Its restraint gives the evidence more force.
The C13Originals Peabody nominated series is back for Season Three: Jerry Falwell Jr. and Liberty University. A sex scandal rocks one of the world’s largest Christian universities, and the man at the center of it. But that scandal is just the beginning. The award-winning Gangster Capitalism team spoke with more than 80 former and current Liberty students, faculty, staff, high-ranking administrators, and those with intimate knowledge of Falwell Jr. What emerges is the inside story of how the university, and the family who founded it, have been rocked by power, greed, hypocrisy, and of course money.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Gangster Capitalism connects personal testimony at Liberty University to the institutional, political, and financial power surrounding Jerry Falwell Jr.
Gangster Capitalism follows the power surrounding Jerry Falwell Jr. and Liberty University through a serialized true-crime investigation. Narrated reconstruction gives the season its spine, while testimony from students and employees shows how institutional decisions reached…
A Christian university's rulebook meets its financial paperwork, and you get every uncomfortable receipt.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sober look at how institutional authority can hide coercion behind faith and procedure.
Gangster Capitalism treats Liberty University as a place where faith, authority, and discipline overlap in uneasy ways. It follows Chelsea Andrews from a first-year conversion story into campus leadership, then shifts to Doe One and Keith Anderson, where religious authority and…
A measured account of how Christian nationalism, Liberty University, and January 6 converged.
The episode tracks January 6 through Liberty University and the broader Christian nationalist current around it, connecting the Capitol attack to institutions, symbols, and political language that were already in circulation.
A tight account of campus control, fear, and exclusion through one student's experience.
The episode tracks Jerry Falwell Jr. and Liberty University through Tessa Russell's account of arriving as a freshman, making friends, and learning that her relationship was treated as something to fix.
A record-driven account of access, property, and institutional self-dealing.
The episode begins with Jerry Falwell Jr.'s May 30, 2020 Instagram video from the Cocoa Beach Pier in Florida, then broadens into a record-based account of Liberty Broadcasting Network, Liberty University, and the people who appear to have moved within the same circle of…
A calm, document-led chapter that turns a lurid setup into a careful case built from testimony and consequence.
This episode follows Giancarlo Granda's account of a South Beach flirtation that grows into a story about Jerry Falwell Jr., Becky, and a private arrangement with public fallout.
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Liberty comes through testimony first.
Prayer opens the frame.
Tessa Russell comes to Liberty after a childhood that already made the outside world feel distant.
Jerry Falwell Jr.
Giancarlo Granda starts with South Beach.