In some ways, George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who turns 90 this week, is the sum of the worst horrors and greatest triumphs of the twentieth century. A survivor of World War II who narrowly escaped Nazi concentration camps, Soros would escape totalitarianism twice, making his way to London on the eve of the Soviet occupation of his hometown, Budapest, Hungary. Soros went on to become one of the financial titans of global capitalism, a ruthless hedge fund manager whose aggressive currency speculation infamously broke the Bank of England. As he amassed an immense fortune, Soros would spend $32B on his Open Society Foundation, an organization through which he seeks to nourish liberal democracy worldwide. It’s that very work in support of democracy which has led Soros to become the reviled target of both Western antidemocratic conservatism and Eastern antiliberalism. On this episode of Who Is?, Sean Morrow explores the story of one of the most loved--and loathed--people on the planet.

Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford and senior fellow at Stanford University, who has been writing about the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe for 40 years 

Hannes Grassegger, an investigative reporter based in Bern, Switzerland, who focuses on digital power and information warfare

Kati Marton, a Hungarian born writer, journalist, and activist. Marton is currently working on her tenth book, a biography of Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel 

Emily Tamkin, U.S. editor and Washington correspondent at The New Statesman, a political and cultural magazine based in the United Kingdom. Tamkin's new book, “The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society,” is available now


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