For an event so utterly cataclysmic, the meltdown of 2008–9 is rarely remembered as the formative political and cultural moment it so clearly was, if indeed it is remembered at all. Bringing about millions of foreclosures and a trail of human misery in its wake, the crisis touched virtually anything and everything that came after it, but, alongside the “war on terror,” has fast been relegated to the back burner of the United States’ cultural memory.

The recently premiered podcast series Meltdown mounts a compelling case that the crisis and the institutional response to it from Democrats still haunt politics today and are in many ways the proverbial skeleton key to understanding the current moment. Jacobin’s Luke Savage sat down with investigative journalist David Sirota and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney to discuss their podcast, the meltdown of 2008–9, and the various ways history seems to be repeating itself amid the ongoing reconciliation fight.