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Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

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 capitalisntpod@gmail.com

Cover photo attributions: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/research/stigler/about/capitalisnt.

Capitalisn't

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 on time, are paid for by people who don't, and they warn that the resulting resentment is fueling political discontent.

But there is a tension at the heart of their argument. They don't want the government running finance or setting prices, yet they call for far more muscular rules. So what exactly are they proposing, and why do they insist it would expand your choices rather than limit them?

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✉️ Email your questions and comments to capitalisntpod@gmail.com

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our Personal Finance Mistakes Are The Industry's Profits - ft. John Campbell & Tarun Ramadorai

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 system actually relies on ignored externalities, allowing multinational corporations to reap the benefits of zero regulation while workers and the environment absorb the costs.

Zingales goes further, arguing the whole system isn't free trade at all, but something he calls “captured trade”. So who exactly is that trade free for and what exactly is it free from? Tai walks through the hidden machinery most people never see, and what she calls a plan for a worker-centered trade policy.

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📱 Follow Capitalisn’t on Instagram & TikTok

✉️ Email your questions and comments to capitalisntpod@gmail.com

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Was Free Trade Ever Really Free? - ft. Fmr. Biden Trade Rep. Katherine Tai

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 Luigi Zingales press him on what Zingales calls an incredible trick. Corporations insist they're separate from their owners when that shields owners from blame, then argue they're like people when they want to spend on elections or dodge a rule. 

Winkler traces how the Fourteenth Amendment, written after the Civil War to protect the newly freed, became a tool for railroads and banks instead. He even describes a lawyer who, by his account, lied to the Supreme Court, producing a journal he claimed proved the amendment was meant for corporations. 

Zingales pushes on what comes next: could AI itself qualify for legal personhood, and would that shield big tech from blame? When we ask Winkler for a shred of hope that the long arc doesn't simply keep favoring business, the answer is far shorter and blunter than expected. 

Connect with us:

📺 Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

📱 Follow Capitalisn’t on Instagram & TikTok

✉️ Email your questions and comments to capitalisntpod@gmail.com

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why Corporations Always Win At The Supreme Court - ft. Adam Winkler

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 Wikipedia governs itself without a central authority, why consensus beats voting, and what the deliberate vagueness of its rules actually protects against.

But is artificial intelligence a looming threat to this system? Wales questions whether these new technologies can actually verify truth without the human feedback loops that correct traditional platforms. 

Can the community-driven approach of Wikipedia teach the broader business world how to survive an era of deep digital skepticism? Tune in to discover if spontaneous human order is truly the ultimate defense against an automated future.

Connect with us:

📺 Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

📱 Follow Capitalisn’t on Instagram & TikTok

✉️ Email your questions and comments to capitalisntpod@gmail.com

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast player! Make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You Can't Buy Trust - ft. Wikipedia Co-Founder Jimmy Wales

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 costs from consumers. He argues this opaque system has quietly become one of the leading drivers of income inequality in America.

Cooper explains why standard economic principles break down in healthcare: in one of his studies, the average Manhattan patient drives past six cheaper MRI options to reach the one their doctor recommends. He also shows that when premiums rise equally across a workforce, companies are financially incentivized to lay off lower-wage workers to absorb the cost. And when hospitals acquire physician practices, doctor behavior shifts to maximize hospital revenue, significantly increasing rates of expensive, potentially unnecessary procedures like cesarean sections.

Looking ahead, Cooper argues the U.S. will soon face a stark choice to control costs. The system must either roll back employer-sponsored insurance to push more people into the individual market, or expand Medicare to bring more of the public under regulated pricing. If you've ever stared at a medical bill and wondered how those numbers got there, this episode is worth a listen.

Connect with us:

📺 Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

📱 Follow Capitalisn’t on Instagram & TikTok

✉️ Email your questions and comments to capitalisntpod@gmail.com

Enjoying the show? Please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast player! Make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is Healthcare Making Capitalism Sick? - ft. Zack Cooper

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 wisdom suggests that Silicon Valley billionaires are libertarians desperate to escape government oversight, historian Quinn Slobodian argues they actually want to achieve state symbiosis by turning the government into a dependent client. This vassalization of the state means private actors absorb critical public functions without any democratic constraints. 

Discussing insights from his and co-author Ben Tarnoff's new book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, Slobodian unpacks how Elon Musk’s worldview is reshaping the global political economy. This episode also dives into the parallels between American tech supremacy and the Chinese economic model. Slobodian posits that the real vulnerability in the United States is not the excess of regulation that the Abundance agenda focuses on, but rather a failure to discipline capital.

Connect with us:

📺 Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

📱 Follow Capitalisn’t on Instagram & TikTok

✉️ Email your questions and comments to capitalisntpod@gmail.com

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How “Muskism” Is Changing American Capitalism - ft. Quinn Slobodian

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 staunch defender of the free market, Kaplan argues that despite our collective pessimism, American capitalism is actually delivering unprecedented prosperity.

Are we just looking at the data wrong, or is the market failing us? From the staggering costs of the US healthcare system to the lasting scars of the China labor shock, we debate the deepest fractures in our modern economic framework.

Recorded alongside the Stigler Center's economic conference "Can Capitalism Be Popular?" the conversation covers how to actually measure an economic system, the U.S. vs. Europe debate, the opioid crisis, health care lock-in, teachers' unions, UBI, and the core tension of the whole show: if capitalism is working, why doesn't it feel that way?

Connect with us:

📺 Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

📱 Follow Capitalisn’t on Instagram & TikTok

✉️ Email your questions and comments to capitalisntpod@gmail.com

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is Capitalism Delivering For The Majority? - ft. Steve Kaplan

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 financial realities fundamentally reshaping the modern American workforce?

New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber joins the podcast to unpack the core arguments of his new book “Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class” about this labor shift. He argues that the psychological injury of these broken promises is sparking a unique wave of workplace activism. 

The systemic failure of the college wage premium poses urgent questions for the future of American capitalism. If millions of highly educated citizens feel cheated by the system, the resulting political and economic destabilization could be severe. 

Connect with us:

📺 Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

📱 Follow Capitalisn’t on Instagram & TikTok

✉️ Email your questions and comments to capitalisntpod@gmail.com

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Is The College Promise Broken? - ft. Noam Scheiber

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 labor markets are riddled with invisible frictions that give employers outsized power over your paycheck. 

These uneven power dynamics help explain why salaries at the bottom of the distribution have historically stagnated while the broader economy grew. Dube unpacks decades of data to show what actually happens when minimum wages rise, pushing back against the classic warning that wage floors automatically destroy jobs. Instead, he presents evidence suggesting that higher pay can actually reduce turnover and push workers toward more productive companies. 

Hosts Luigi Zingales and Bethany McLean press Dube on the missing pieces of his labor puzzle. Zingales questions whether Dube is ignoring the massive impact of immigration on the supply and demand for low-wage labor. Meanwhile, McLean digs into the elusive concept of fairness, asking whether outsourced corporate janitors should compare their pay to Wall Street bankers or just to other janitors. 

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel

Follow Capitalisn’t on Instagram & TikTok

Send us your questions or comments by emailing capitalisntpod@gmail.com

You can find Arin Dube's book "The Wage Standard" here

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Real Cause Of Wage Stagnation - ft. Arin Dube

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. In her book, “Adam Smith’s America”, Liu reintroduces the famous philosopher as a theorist of power who worried deeply about organized wealth distorting society. She notes that Smith watched early merchants use their disproportionate resources to capture political influence and actively suppress workers. 

 Hosts Luigi and Bethany debate whether early merchant wealth accumulation truly mirrors the massive capital concentration seen in today's corporate landscape. They also explore the argument that reintroducing moral foundations to economic theory might provide a better foundation for capitalism itself.

Subscribe to our Youtube Channel

Follow Capitalisn’t on Instagram & TikTok

Send us your questions or comments by emailing capitalisntpod@gmail.com 

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why Corporations Always Win At The Supreme Court - ft. Adam Winkler

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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