8 Oct 2026 · 48 min
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.
Podcast · News
Capitalisn't
by University of Chicago Podcast Network · English · News
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 capitalisntpod@g
- New episodes
- Every two weeks
- Typical length
- 51 min
- Latest
- 8 Oct 2026
- Language
- English
Latest episode
Earlier episodes 29 most recent
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S2 · E174 · 24 Sep 2026 · 48 min
The Workplace Is a Dictatorship? - ft. Elizabeth Anderson
At the center of our market economy sits an institution that runs more like a dictatorship.
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S2 · E173 · 17 Sep 2026 · 52 min
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.
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S2 · E172 · 10 Sep 2026 · 57 min
Can Capitalism Serve the Common Good? - ft. Mariana Mazzucato
The public often helps fund breakthroughs, while private companies claim all the profits. Economist Mariana Mazzucato thinks it’s time to renegotiate.
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S2 · E171 · 27 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
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.
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S2 · E170 · 13 Aug 2026 · 54 min
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.
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S2 · E169 · 6 Aug 2026 · 49 min
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?
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S2 · E168 · 30 Jul 2026 · 46 min
A Conservative's Attack On Neoliberalism - Ft. Chris Griswold
The GOP is often associated with free-market fundamentalism, deregulation, and tax cuts. But a new faction on the right is challenging that consensus.
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S2 · E167 · 16 Jul 2026 · 51 min
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.
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S2 · E166 · 2 Jul 2026 · 50 min
Our Personal Finance Mistakes Are The Industry's Profits - ft. John Campbell & Tarun Ramadorai
Is personal finance rigged against ordinary people? Economists argue the system rewards the wealthy and financially savvy at the expense of everyone else.
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S2 · E165 · 18 Jun 2026 · 51 min
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.
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S2 · E164 · 4 Jun 2026 · 46 min
Why Corporations Always Win At The Supreme Court - ft. Adam Winkler
Many people think corporate personhood is the problem behind many issues in law and politics. This guest argues it might actually be the answer.
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S2 · E163 · 28 May 2026 · 43 min
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?
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S2 · E162 · 21 May 2026 · 1 hr
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 argues that the U.S. healthcare market is failing because of structural flaws like employer-sponsored insurance, which hides true costs from consumers.
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S2 · E161 · 7 May 2026 · 56 min
How “Muskism” Is Changing American Capitalism - ft. Quinn Slobodian
Conventional wisdom suggests that Silicon Valley billionaires are libertarians trying to escape government oversight, but Quinn Slobodian argues they actually want to achieve state symbiosis by turning the government into a dependent client.
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S2 · E160 · 23 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 5 min
Is Capitalism Delivering For The Majority? - ft. Steve Kaplan
High GDP, low unemployment, and booming markets...so why does it feel like the system is broken for so many people?
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S2 · E159 · 16 Apr 2026 · 41 min
Is The College Promise Broken? - ft. Noam Scheiber
Instead of corporate management, many college grads are finding themselves in low-paying service roles. Is this widening gap between expectations and realities reshaping the modern American workforce?
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S2 · E158 · 2 Apr 2026 · 48 min
The Real Cause Of Wage Stagnation - ft. Arin Dube
Economist Arin Dube argues that modern labor markets are riddled with invisible frictions that give employers outsized power over your paycheck.
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S2 · E157 · 26 Mar 2026 · 31 min
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 reconstruction.
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S2 · E156 · 12 Mar 2026 · 42 min
Why Human Progress Is Not Inevitable - ft. Carl Frey
In this episode, Oxford Professor Carl Frey joins the podcast to share the unsettling message of his new book, “How Progress Ends”. He argues that technological progress is far from inevitable and can easily reverse when entrenched institutions block new ideas from transforming society.
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S2 · E155 · 5 Mar 2026 · 50 min
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 appointed each justice. If the referee is suddenly wearing a team jersey, the fundamental systems of democracy and capitalism begin to break down.
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S2 · E154 · 26 Feb 2026 · 56 min
Adam Smith In The Age of The “Epstein Class” - ft. MP Jesse Norman
What would the "father of economics" think about today's crony capitalism, and what would he make of the so-called "Epstein class"?
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S2 · E153 · 19 Feb 2026 · 49 min
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?
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S2 · E152 · 5 Feb 2026 · 57 min
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?
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S2 · E151 · 22 Jan 2026 · 42 min
Can We Build a Middle Class Without Factories? - ft. Dani Rodrik
Is the era of manufacturing-led growth officially over? In this episode, Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales sit down with Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard and author of Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World. Rodrik argues that we have "no other choice" but to look toward the service sector to anchor our future economy.
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S2 · E150 · 15 Jan 2026 · 53 min
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.
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S2 · E149 · 6 Jan 2026 · 55 min
How To Fix The American Tax System - ft. Ray Madoff
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 a deliberate "bait-and-switch" designed to confuse the public.
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S2 · E148 · 18 Dec 2025 · 53 min
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 difficult to answer: what exactly is capitalism? Beckert argues that capitalism is not defined simply by the existence of markets—which are found in all human societies—but rather by a specific economic logic of privately owned capital productively invested to produce more capital. He challenges the…
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S2 · E147 · 11 Dec 2025 · 56 min
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 shareholders. We invited the coiner of this term, science fiction author and activist Cory Doctorow, on the podcast to discuss whether he thinks this decline is an inevitable feature of digital markets or a consequence of specific policy failures. And, most importantly, how he thinks it could be reversed. For…
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S2 · E146 · 4 Dec 2025 · 58 min
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 modern antitrust movement has become "slipshod" and is ignoring basic economic trade-offs in favor of political wins. In this episode, Yglesias joins Luigi and Bethany to discuss his views on the theoretical and practical limitations of the "Neo-Brandeisian" approach to antitrust. He contends that…
About Capitalisn't
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 capitalisntpod@g
Capitalisn't is a English news podcast from University of Chicago Podcast Network. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Podcast Network
- Language
- English
- Category
- News
- New episodes
- Every two weeks
- Typical length
- 51 min
- Latest episode
- 8 Oct 2026
- Feed
- RSS — paste into any podcast app
- Apple Podcasts
- podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1326698855
- Rights
- 087667
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