According to the latest industry statistics , the global influencer economy grew from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $21.1 billion in 2023 — and it's only expected to grow exponentially from here with advances in artificial intelligence. In 1988, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman investigated how mass media sways audiences to conform to social norms without coercion, or what they called “manufacturing consent.” In her new book, “The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media,” Dr. ...
Feb 01, 2024•44 min•Ep 95•Transcript available on Metacast It's been nearly 16 years since the federal government bailed out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion in response to the financial crisis that precipitated the Great Recession. The idea that the public must guarantee critical financial institutions that are “too big to fail” was controversial then, but does it still remain an issue? Stanford finance professor Anat Admati, whom the New York Times profiled in an article titled " When She Talks, Banks Shudder ," argues it’s become worse. Admati...
Jan 18, 2024•39 min•Ep 94•Transcript available on Metacast After two seasons and 163 episodes, Capitalisn’t hosted its first-ever live event late last year. As part of the University of Chicago Podcast Festival, co-host Luigi Zingales fielded questions from three UChicago undergraduate students — Surya Gowda, Mete Bakircioglu, and Giuseppe Di Cera —and an in-person audience in an “Ask Me Anything.” From the evolution of competition policy to the impact of greener energy sources on prices, from the challenges of regulating the shadow economy to Luigi's s...
Jan 04, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep 93•Transcript available on Metacast The firing, and subsequent rehiring, of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman raises fundamental questions about whose interests are relevant to the development of artificial intelligence and how these interests should be weighed if they hinder innovation. How should we govern innovation, or should we just not govern it at all? Did capitalism "win" in the OpenAI saga? Bethany and Luigi sit down with Luigi’s colleague Sendhil Mullainathan, a professor of Computation and Behavioral Science at Chicago Booth. Toget...
Dec 21, 2023•52 min•Ep 92•Transcript available on Metacast After discussing the trajectory of China's economy earlier this year, Luigi and Bethany turn their attention to the future of another global economic behemoth: India. Joining them is renowned Indian economist Raghuram Rajan, who has a brand-new book out this week, "Breaking the Mould: Reimagining India's Economic Future" (co-authored with Rohit Lamba). In "Breaking the Mould," Rajan and Lamba make the controversial and counterintuitive argument that India should follow an economic development pa...
Dec 08, 2023•48 min•Ep 91•Transcript available on Metacast After previously exploring the worlds of 'consultants for sale' and 'scientists for sale,' Luigi and Bethany turn their attention to another broken system of 'enablers' - the world of lawyers for sale. With award-winning investigative journalist David Enrich, they discuss David's latest book, "Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice." Enrich presents several case studies showing how 'Big Law' firms have used their wealth and influence to capture the j...
Nov 30, 2023•56 min•Ep 90•Transcript available on Metacast In his new book "Number Go Up, " Bloomberg News investigative reporter Zeke Faux takes readers on a wild ride through the world of cryptocurrency, from its origins in the dark corners of the internet, its meteoric rise to mainstream popularity, and finally its equally precipitous fall. A few days after the 'convicted' verdict in the trial of beleaguered crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), Faux joins Bethany and Luigi to make a case for why we should judge cryptocurrency by what it has d...
Nov 16, 2023•53 min•Ep 89•Transcript available on Metacast In his new book, Sohrab Ahmari argues that the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few corporations has created a new form of tyranny in America. "Coercion is far more widespread in supposedly noncoercive societies than we would like to think—provided we pay attention to private power and admit the possibility of private coercion," he writes. Ahmari, founder and editor of Compact magazine, joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss his book, "Tyranny Inc.: How Private Power Crushed America...
Nov 02, 2023•47 min•Ep 88•Transcript available on Metacast In her brand new book , "The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind," Bethany and her co-author Joe Nocera argue that the COVID-19 pandemic was not simply a natural disaster but also a man-made one. Based on rigorous research and compelling storytelling, Bethany, who is renowned for her incisive reporting, reveals uncomfortable truths that have emerged from the pandemic about capitalism, inequality, and corporate power. In this one-on-one convers...
Oct 19, 2023•42 min•Ep 87•Transcript available on Metacast How does science become public policy? It's not always as straightforward as it might seem. In his book "The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception," leading public health expert and former Clinton/Obama administration official David Michaels shows how corporate interests often "manufacture uncertainty" in order to protect their profits. Using wide-ranging case studies from Big Tobacco, Volkswagen, American football, and talcum-based baby powder, Michaels exposes the disinform...
Oct 05, 2023•54 min•Ep 86•Transcript available on Metacast In his new book, Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future , renowned political philosopher Patrick Deneen argues that the liberal ideology that has shaped capitalism for centuries has also failed to deliver on its promises of freedom, equality, and prosperity. Is he able to offer a compelling alternative that serves the interests of the common good over those of wealthy elites? Deneen, whose previous book " Why Liberalism Failed " was acclaimed by the likes of former U.S. President Obama, join...
Sep 21, 2023•58 min•Ep 85•Transcript available on Metacast As companies become increasingly big through mergers and acquisitions -- especially in technology, health care, and several other industries -- how should rules and regulations change with the times? Freshly minted and hot off the press: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently released an updated set of draft "Merger Guidelines," which could reshape the landscape of corporate mergers and acquisitions both in the U.S. and globally. Esteemed Stanford pr...
Sep 07, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep 84•Transcript available on Metacast Is there a fundamental tension between democratic freedom, economic growth, and social equality? Chilean economist and UCLA Professor Sebastian Edwards joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss his recent book, " The Chile Project: The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism ." The Chicago Boys were a group of free-market economists trained at the University of Chicago who shaped economic policy and reforms in Chile during General Augusto Pinochet's rule. In the book, Edwards (who a...
Aug 31, 2023•55 min•Ep 83•Transcript available on Metacast A wet hot antitrust summer is in the news, mainly because of the Biden administration appointees continuing to take an aggressive approach to enforcement. Why is this important, and how has antitrust thinking evolved over time? In this conversation, Bethany and Luigi draw from his long-standing research and from the Stigler Center's most recent antitrust conference exploring new paradigms of traditional economic ideas. Together, they trace the evolution of antitrust from its fraught foundations ...
Aug 17, 2023•46 min•Ep 82•Transcript available on Metacast Republican presidential candidates, such as Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, continue to keep ESG in the national conversation. Ramaswamy in particular called it "woke capitalism" in his book and on our podcast. As we take our summer break, we decided to re-release our conversation with Tariq Fancy, BlackRock’s former global chief investment officer for sustainable investing, whose criticism of ESG is based not on its goals, but rather on an insider's knowledge of how it actually works. We’re t...
Aug 10, 2023•52 min•Ep 81•Transcript available on Metacast In the last episode of our podcast, we had a mini version of a never-ending debate on this show: whether private equity is good or bad. Afterward we talked about doing a full episode debating the pros and cons of PE until we realized, we’d already done it. The debate features Jeff Hooke, author of the book "The Myth of Private Equity," and Chicago Booth Professor Steven Kaplan, once referred to by Fortune Magazine as "probably the foremost private equity scholar in the galaxy." We’re taking a sh...
Jul 27, 2023•1 hr•Ep 80•Transcript available on Metacast How can public policy improve upon and fix the mess of U.S. health care? In a new book, health economists Amy Finkelstein (MIT) and Liran Einav (Stanford) argue that's the wrong question. Instead, they suggest we ask: What is it that U.S. health policy should try to accomplish? Finkelstein, also a MacArthur Genius grantee, joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss health care as a social commitment and to make the case for free, automatic, and universal coverage for a basic set of medical services. She...
Jul 13, 2023•47 min•Ep 79•Transcript available on Metacast "Poverty will be abolished in America only when a mass movement demands it," writes Princeton sociologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond in his new book, "Poverty, by America." Building on his own lived experiences of growing up poor and continued contact with impoverished communities that "forces [him] to be intellectually honest," he claims that poverty persists in America not because we are incapable of preventing it but because society - and especially the wealthy - benefi...
Jun 29, 2023•55 min•Ep 78•Transcript available on Metacast Thank you to our listeners for the feedback and engagement on last week's episode with former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm. Sen. Gramm was also one of the co-sponsors of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999, which removed part of the Depression-era law separating investment banking from commercial banking, among others. Bethany and Luigi couldn't pass the opportunity to ask the senator about his views on a possible line from his legislation to the 2008 financial crisis and the recent SVB banking meltdo...
Jun 22, 2023•19 min•Ep 77•Transcript available on Metacast In his recent book " The Myth of American Inequality ," former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm (along with co-authors Robert Ekelund and John Early) challenges conventional wisdom on the state of income inequality in the United States. Gramm argues that the gap between the rich and the poor is not as wide as often claimed because it is measured incorrectly, thus biasing public policy debates. On this episode, he joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss the data and evidence behind his claims, as well as impli...
Jun 15, 2023•51 min•Ep 76•Transcript available on Metacast What if we harnessed the collective wisdom of the crowds and delegated democratic leadership to the masses? In her book " Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the 21st Century ", Yale political scientist Hélène Landemore proposes a radically new vision for "what genuine democratic representation means and how we could open up our narrow electoral institutions to ordinary citizens, including via [what she calls] open mini-publics." Drawing from ancient Athenian democracy of the past and t...
Jun 01, 2023•48 min•Ep 75•Transcript available on Metacast In his new book, " Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity ", renowned MIT Professor of Economics Daron Acemoglu (with co-author Simon Johnson) argues that the benefits from technological progress are shaped by the distribution of power in society. In this episode, Acemoglu joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss the key challenges of ensuring that this progress benefits everyone, not just the wealthy and powerful. They discuss the rules, norms, and expectations arou...
May 18, 2023•52 min•Ep 74•Transcript available on Metacast On this episode, our hosts Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales sit down with renowned MIT economist David Autor to discuss the impact of technology, labor markets, and immigration on wage inequality and the economy at large. Autor is best known for his work on the "China Shock," the impact of rising Chinese exports on manufacturing employment in the United States and Europe after China's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. His most recent work sheds light on which groups have seen t...
May 04, 2023•50 min•Ep 73•Transcript available on Metacast It is hard to think of an idea more central to capitalism than economics, particularly economic efficiency. Similarly, public policy is now — and has been for a while — conducted in the language of budgets, models, and cost-benefit analyses. But how accountable is this idea to the public? Elizabeth Popp Berman is a sociologist and historian of economic thought at the University of Michigan and the author of the new book " Thinking Like An Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Publi...
Apr 20, 2023•48 min•Ep 72•Transcript available on Metacast Several questions continue to swirl around the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and its larger implications. In this special episode, Chicago Booth’s Raghuram Rajan – former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and IMF Chief Economist – joins Bethany and Luigi to explore the risks in the financial system and possible solutions. Rajan discusses a paper he presented (with NYU Professor Viral Acharya) at the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole conference in 2022, arguing that the Fed’s liquidity provisi...
Apr 06, 2023•38 min•Ep 71•Transcript available on Metacast Read ProMarket's ongoing coverage of the Twitter Files, including the research summary of the Twitter Files prepared by Stigler Center Research Professional Utsav Gandhi in preparation for this episode Read the Stigler Center's 2019 Report on Digital Platforms , addressing many of the underlying issues discussed in this episode: trust and transparency in social media, business models of journalism, platform regulation when it comes to content moderation, and more....
Mar 30, 2023•41 min•Ep 70•Transcript available on Metacast We had initially prepared an entirely different episode for today, but last week's Silicon Valley Bank collapse, the largest in U.S. history since 2008, meant a quick change of plans. What happened? What is unique about this bank run, and what isn't? How much should regulators be blamed, and how much should bank management be? Do social media and today's frantic digital environment mean this is the end of banking as we know it? Luigi and Bethany talk to two experts with unique insights into the ...
Mar 16, 2023•54 min•Ep 69•Transcript available on Metacast Revisit: When the Profit Motive Kills , with Anand Giridharadas, on Capitalisn't Why the US Government Buys Overpriced Services From McKinsey , by Matt Stoller in ProMarket
Mar 02, 2023•50 min•Ep 68•Transcript available on Metacast Read the following articles in ProMarket : There Is a Direct Line from Milton Friedman to Donald Trump's Assault on Democracy , by Martin Wolf George Stigler and the Challenge of Democracy , by Anat Admati Corporations Are Not “We the People, ” by Geoffrey Stone eBook: Milton Friedman 50 Years Later, a Reevaluation Also, check out relevant past Capitalisn't episodes: Martin Wolf: Is Capitalism Killing Democracy ? Why Capitalism Needs Democracy The Breaking Point Of Democracy With Morton Schapiro...
Feb 23, 2023•12 min•Ep 67•Transcript available on Metacast Read the following articles in ProMarket : There Is a Direct Line from Milton Friedman to Donald Trump's Assault on Democracy , by Martin Wolf George Stigler and the Challenge of Democracy , by Anat Admati Corporations Are Not “We the People, ” by Geoffrey Stone eBook: Milton Friedman 50 Years Later, a Reevaluation Also, check out relevant past Capitalisn't episodes: Why Capitalism Needs Democracy The Breaking Point Of Democracy With Morton Schapiro and Gary Morson...
Feb 16, 2023•52 min•Ep 66•Transcript available on Metacast 
