Smart Girl Dumb Questions: Will the Market Crash in 2026? With Andrew Ross Sorkin

February 24, 2026·1 hr 23 min·6 clips

Andrew Ross Sorkin reveals why billionaires from J.P. Morgan to Elon Musk don't acknowledge their power and whether a 2026 market crash is coming.

The question is plain. Naima Raza sits down with Andrew Ross Sorkin to ask whether another crash can be spotted before it hits. Sorkin does not give the dramatic answer. He comes back to the awkward truth about market warnings: the Cassandras can be useful, but the clock is usually the problem. Charles Merrill is the cleanest example. He warned in 1928, then the market kept climbing hard after that warning, which makes any tidy "he was right" verdict harder to sell. That difference matters. A warning can be smart and still be almost impossible to trade on with confidence. Sorkin leans on history. Over the last hundred years, he says, investors were generally better off staying in the market than trying to jump out. That is not a shrug. It is the less satisfying answer: crashes make more sense in the rearview mirror than they do when people are still guessing. Raza keeps pushing. If leverage, financial innovation, democratization, and new instruments all reward markets for rising, then "markets usually go up" deserves pressure too. The interview stays measured, but the friction is real. Skepticism is necessary. Treating every warning like the edge of a cliff can get expensive. Money is the bigger subject around it. John Donvan sets up the conversation through cultural obsession, billionaire power, and what 2008 did not teach. The closing turn is more personal. Sorkin worries about writing another book, while Raza asks about archives, artificial intelligence, and what authorship could look like five years from now. It fits. Financial memory and technological change both look neater after the fact than they feel while they are happening.

As heard by us

A sharp markets conversation about crash warnings, billionaire power, and why prediction is easier to sell than to trust.

Naima Raza's conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin treats money anxiety less like a forecast problem than a cultural reflex. The episode moves through crash talk, billionaire power, the shadow of 2008, and the strange appeal of people who warn that the market is about to break.

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Why you'd press play

You get a calm, sharp look at whether another market crash is coming.

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