Capitalisn't
by University of Chicago Podcast Network
We investigate how capitalism is—or more often isn’t—working in our world today.Hosted by economist Luigi Zingales and business journalist Bethany McLean, our podcast explains why capitalism can go wrong and what we can do to fix it.Send us your questions or comments by emailing [email protected] photo attributions: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/research/stigler/about/capitalisnt.
Episodes
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2026 Midterms: Promises vs. Economics
Everyone covers the 2026 midterms like a sports match, so we pulled the candidates' actual economic platforms and stress-tested the math. Instead of asking who is up by two points in Michigan, Texas, or South Carolina, this special 2026 Midterms Edition examines what the candidates are actually...
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The Case That Could End Super PACs - ft. Larry Lessig
Everyone blames Citizens United for super PACs. Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig says they're blaming the wrong case, and he is actually taking his argument to court. The ruling that actually created super PACs, he argues, is SpeechNow.org v. FEC, a D.C. Circuit decision issued two months...
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The Workplace Is a Dictatorship? - ft. Elizabeth Anderson
At the center of our market economy sits an institution that runs more like a dictatorship. The firm you work for writes the rules and enforces them. There is no vote, no appeal, and no constitution. The only real remedy is to leave. University of Michigan philosopher Elizabeth Anderson, author…
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Why Congress Protects Car Dealers More Than Elon Musk - ft. Eric Zwick
For every member of the Forbes 400, there are more than 4,000 private business owners worth at least $10 million. You probably have never heard of any of them. They own the beer distributorship in your town, the dental group with four offices, the HVAC trucks that passed your house this morning.…
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Can Capitalism Serve the Common Good? - ft. Mariana Mazzucato
The drugs in your medicine cabinet were probably discovered on your dime, in a university lab, with NIH money. You don't hold the patent. You don't set the price. Same story with the touchscreen, the GPS and the voice assistant in your pocket. The public often helps fund breakthroughs, while...
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The One Thing That Could Decide If AI Takes Your Job - Ft. Luis Garicano
AI is coming for your job; AI isn't coming for your job. Economist Luis Garicano thinks both camps are asking the wrong question. In Messy Jobs: The Work That AI Cannot Reach, Garicano and co-authors Jin Li and Yanhui Wu argue that all knowledge work varies along a dimension of “messiness”, and...
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Can Liberalism Survive This Kind of Capitalism? - ft. Daron Acemoglu
For most of the last century liberal democracies offered a simple deal: the economy grows and, if you work hard, you get a fair shot at the rewards. According to 2024 Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu, that deal is broken. Acemoglu joins Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales to discuss his...
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How Washington Privatized The Capital Market - ft. Renée Jones
Amazon went public three years after it was founded. SpaceX stayed private for 24 years. What changed and why does it matter? The standard story is that companies avoid an IPO because public markets carry too many government rules and too many lawyers looking to sue. Renee Jones, law professor,...
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A Conservative's Attack On Neoliberalism - Ft. Chris Griswold
The Republican Party is often associated with free-market fundamentalism, deregulation, and tax cuts. But a new faction on the right is challenging that consensus. In this episode, Bethany and Luigi sit down with Chris Griswold, the Policy Director at American Compass. Drawing on Catholic social...
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Was The Constitution An Anti-Democratic Coup? - ft. Michael Klarman
Were the foundations of American governance engineered to protect the wealthy? Harvard Law professor Michael Klarman argues that the US Constitution was actually a counter-revolutionary coup to constrain democracy rather than protect it. This episode explores how debt, taxes, and money influenced...
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Our Personal Finance Mistakes Are The Industry's Profits - ft. John Campbell & Tarun Ramadorai
Is personal finance rigged against ordinary people? Economists John Campbell and Tarun Ramadorai argue the system rewards the wealthy and financially savvy at the expense of everyone else. Their book Fixed points to a troubling pattern: the fees you avoid by never overdrafting, or by refinancing…
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Was Free Trade Ever Really Free? - ft. Fmr. Biden Trade Rep. Katherine Tai
Free trade was never actually free? That's the case Katherine Tai, Joe Biden's former U.S. Trade Representative, brings Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales this week. For decades, the economic consensus treated free trade as an engine for cheaper goods and faster growth. But, Tai argues, this…
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Why Corporations Always Win At The Supreme Court - ft. Adam Winkler
Corporations are people in the eyes of the law. But how did that happen, and why does it hand them rights you don't have? UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, author of "We the Corporations", traces a 200-year campaign by business to win the constitutional rights of human beings. Bethany McLean and...
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You Can't Buy Trust - ft. Wikipedia Co-Founder Jimmy Wales
How does a free, decentralized, volunteer-run encyclopedia produce something more trusted than nearly any for-profit institution? Luigi Zingales and Bethany McLean sit down with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales to explore how the platform organizes global knowledge. The conversation unpacks how...
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Is Healthcare Making Capitalism Sick? - ft. Zack Cooper
Are stagnant wages the hidden price tag of a broken healthcare system? On this week's Capitalisn't, Yale health economist Zack Cooper tells Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales that the U.S. healthcare market is failing because of structural flaws like employer-sponsored insurance, which hides true...
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How “Muskism” Is Changing American Capitalism - ft. Quinn Slobodian
For the better part of the 20th century, the American economy relied on the steady social peace of "Fordism"—an era of mass production and consumption that helped reconcile capitalism with democracy. Today, a radical new paradigm threatens to upend that equilibrium: "Muskism". While conventional...
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Is Capitalism Delivering For The Majority? - ft. Steve Kaplan
The US economy looks great on paper: high GDP, low unemployment, and booming markets. So why does it feel like the system is broken for so many people? To unpack the disconnect between macroeconomic data and everyday financial anxiety, we’re joined by Chicago Booth professor Steve Kaplan. A…
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Is The College Promise Broken? - ft. Noam Scheiber
For decades, Americans were promised that a college degree guaranteed a secure spot in the middle class. But instead of entering corporate management, many graduates are finding themselves trapped in low-paying service roles with crippling debt. Is this widening gap between expectations and...
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The Real Cause Of Wage Stagnation - ft. Arin Dube
Economic models have treated the labor market like a perfectly competitive system where wages naturally align with worker value. Arin Dube, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of “The Wage Standard”, challenges this long-held assumption. He argues that modern...
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Is Everyone Getting Adam Smith Wrong? - ft. Glory Liu
Most people associate Adam Smith with free markets and “the invisible hand”. But does this conventional narrative purposefully ignore Smith’s deep suspicions about monopolies and power? Georgetown assistant professor Glory Liu argues this narrow interpretation is actually a deliberate historical...
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Why Human Progress Is Not Inevitable - ft. Carl Frey
We tend to view technological advancement as an unstoppable force that naturally improves our living standards over time. From the printing press to the internet, modern society assumes that groundbreaking ideas will always find their way into the marketplace. However, beneath the surface of our...
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The Hidden Economic Dangers Of Supreme Court Overreach - ft. Steve Vladeck
For decades, Americans viewed the Supreme Court as an impartial referee standing above the political fray. However, public trust in this vital institution has recently plummeted to historic lows. Many observers blame a surge in ideological rulings that align with the party of the President who...
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Adam Smith In The Age of The “Epstein Class” - ft. MP Jesse Norman
As we approach the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith's “Wealth of Nations" this March, his theories on competition and the invisible hand remain part of the bedrock of modern economics. But, have we undermined those theories in our economy today? Widespread public anger suggests there is a growing...
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How Inequality Distorts the Law - ft. Katharina Pistor
If we want to understand why capitalism feels broken, do we need to stop looking at the economy and start looking at the legal code that underpins it? In our system, capital is often described as money, machinery, or raw materials. But Columbia Law School professor Katharina Pistor argues that...
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Are Betting Apps Engineered for Addiction? - ft. Jonathan Cohen
If a sports betting app has the data to know exactly when a user is struggling financially, should it have a legal duty to cut that person off? On this episode of Capitalisn't, we dive into the murky waters of the American sports betting explosion. We are often told that legalization simply moves...
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Can We Build a Middle Class Without Factories? - ft. Dani Rodrik
Is the era of manufacturing-led growth officially over? For decades, the path to a stable middle class was paved through industrialization, but today, even manufacturing giants like China are losing millions of factory jobs to automation. In this episode, Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales sit…
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Who Should The Fed Answer To? - ft. Sir Paul Tucker
Is the Federal Reserve’s independence a pillar of democracy or a convenient shield that allows elected officials to duck their responsibilities? This week on Capitalisn’t, we confront a shift in Washington after the Justice Department served subpoenas on the Fed. Joining the conversation is…
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How To Fix The American Tax System - ft. Ray Madoff
Is the American tax code a fair engine for growth, or a "second estate" where the rich choose whether or not to pay? We are often told that the top 1% of earners already pay 40% of all taxes, while nearly half of Americans pay nothing at all. Legal scholar Ray Madoff argues that this statistic is…
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How Capitalism Became Global ft. Sven Beckert
Is capitalism a force of nature, or a human-made order that we have the power to shape? In this episode, Luigi and Bethany sit down with Sven Beckert, a Harvard historian and author of the new book A Global History of Capitalism, to tackle a question that seems basic but remains surprisingly...
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How to Stop “Ensh*ttification” Before It Kills the Internet - ft. Cory Doctorow
There’s a word that’s gained a lot of popularity in the last year: “ensh*ttification”. It refers to a trajectory many see with digital platforms: they initially offer immense value to users, only to systematically degrade that quality over time in order to extract maximum surplus for…
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Why Matthew Yglesias Is Skeptical Of Anti-Monopoly Policies
A recent proposal by Lina Khan, co-chair of Zohran Mamdani's mayoral transition team, to cap the price of beer at stadiums in New York City sparked a debate on X last month. At the center of that debate was Matthew Yglesias, editor and author of the Slow Boring newsletter, who argued that the...
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Are Big Tech’s Regulators “Cowards”? ft. Tim Wu
Did you know Amazon makes $37 billion a year—more than double the revenue of all the newspapers in the world combined—from its sponsored results alone? Yes, the same, spammy, sponsored results at the top of a search that bilk shoppers with fake or low-quality items and can starve legitimate...
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Why Economists Should Care About Inequality, with Branko Milanovic
Recently, Bethany and Luigi joined economist and wealth inequality expert Branko Milanovic in front of a live audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival to explore how capitalism, democracy, and income inequality interact. Together, the three discussed the pervasiveness of income inequality around the...
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Nobel Economist Reveals Why Economic Models Keep Failing Us, ft. Richard Thaler
Standard economic theory informs how we think about business strategy and the economy and presumes that people are selfish, have well-defined preferences, and consistently make welfare-maximizing choices. In other words, we are rational. But what if that is not the case? Nobel Prize-winning...
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What Everyone’s Getting Wrong About AI, with Arvind Narayanan
Every major technological revolution has come with a bubble: railroads, electricity, dot-com. Is it AI’s turn? With investments skyrocketing and market valuations reaching the trillions, the stakes are enormous. But are we witnessing a genuine revolution—or the early stages of a spectacular…
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Why Capitalism Stopped Working In Japan, with Takeo Hoshi
The Japanese economy was once the envy of the world. By the 1980s, it looked set to surpass the United States in size. Real estate prices were high, the stock market was booming—the entire world was asking if Japan had found a superior model of economic growth and recovery after World War II, one...
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How Profit and Politics Hijacked Scientific Inquiry, with John Ioannidis
Why does a podcast about capitalism want to talk about science? Modern capitalism and science have evolved together since the Enlightenment. Advances in ship building and navigation enabled the Age of Discovery, which opened up new trade routes and markets to European merchants. The invention of...
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Will Privatizing The Mortgage Giants Solve The Housing Crisis?
This week, the Trump administration announced it would sell around 5% of mortgage giants and government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The sale would begin to reintroduce the two firms to private markets after 17 years of government conservatorship. The decision to...
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Trump's Great Private Equity Bailout, with Dan Rasmussen
For decades, private equity has been the darling of pension funds, university endowments, and sovereign wealth funds, promising high returns and low volatility. Now, President Donald Trump has made it possible for everyday investors to get in on the magic with his executive order, "Democratizing...
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Should Chatbots Teach Our Children? With Khan Academy CEO Sal Khan
What is the right way, if there is one at all, to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) technology into our education system? For Sal Khan, CEO of one of the world’s largest nonprofit education technology platforms, the answer is to take a step back and ask: Where can AI best complement current...
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Can The Dollar Be Dethroned?, with Ken Rogoff
Americans are often told that they benefit from the privilege of the dollar serving as the world's currency. A strong dollar makes imports cheaper, facilitates demand for American companies, and is tied to cheap government borrowing. But what happens when this powerful privilege weakens? What…
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Revealing the Secret Architects of Capitalism, with Chris Hughes
After the 2008 financial crisis, and especially after the COVID pandemic of 2020, an increasing number of Americans are questioning the wisdom of unregulated markets and envisioning a more active role for the state. Scholars have coined a panoply of neologisms to capture this view of the…
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How The Democrats Lost Labor And Found Capital, with David Sirota
The Democratic Party has become too focused on appeasing its billionaire donors and has failed to communicate its commitment to the working class, argues long-time political journalist David Sirota. The question moving forward, he says, is if the party can ever refocus its brand orthodoxy from...
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Why Cliff Asness Believes Markets Are Getting Dumber
Are financial markets becoming less efficient? Famous investor Cliff Asness certainly thinks so. In his paper published last year, “The Less-Efficient Market Hypothesis,” Asness argues that social media and low interest rates, among other factors, have distorted market information so that stocks...
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How Democrats Forgot To Be Normal, with Joan Williams
Back in 2016, Joan Williams, distinguished professor of law (emerita) at UC Law San Francisco, wrote an essay for the Harvard Business Review on why President Donald Trump attracted so many non-college voters. It went viral with almost four million views, becoming the most-read article in the...
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Lina Khan's Vision of Capitalism
Lina Khan recently concluded her term as one of the Biden administration’s most controversial leaders. Her tenure as chair of the Federal Trade Commission raised the profile of the relatively obscure antitrust agency charged with protecting competition. Her anti-monopoly outlook and more…
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The Economics of Law Firms’ Resistance to Trump, with John Morley
The rule of law is essential to the flourishing of liberal democracy and capitalism. Yet, it is now under pressure in the United States, and corporate law firms are in the eye of the storm. Over the last few weeks, President Donald Trump has issued executive orders against several prominent law...
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Profit or Purpose? OpenAI's $300 Billion Question, with Rose Chan Loui
All too often, capitalism is identified with the for-profit sector. However, one organizational form whose importance is often overlooked is nonprofits. Roughly 4% of the American economy, including most universities and hospital systems, are nonprofit. One prominent nonprofit currently at the...
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Is Silicon Valley Turning Fascist?
Silicon Valley’s traditionally Democratic tech leaders are turning toward President Donald Trump, but are the reasons as straightforward as lower taxes and favorable regulations? Perhaps not, if we consider the influence of a convoluted political philosophy called the “Dark Enlightenment.”...
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Why Trump Is Deregulating In The Wrong Way, with Sam Peltzman
In President Donald Trump's recent joint address to Congress, he said, "To unshackle our economy, I have directed that for every one new regulation, ten old regulations must be eliminated." Elon Musk, whom Trump has assigned to execute this vision, has argued that it is time to get rid of all...
About this show
We investigate how capitalism is—or more often isn’t—working in our world today.Hosted by economist Luigi Zingales and business journalist Bethany McLean, our podcast explains why capitalism can go wrong and what we can do to fix it.Send us your questions or comments by emailing [email protected] photo attributions: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/research/stigler/about/capitalisnt.
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University of Chicago Podcast Network
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