Capitalisn't

50 episodes listed below

Listen to the show on

Capitalism, tested against power.

The gist

Capitalisn't treats capitalism as a system built by people, rules, incentives, and institutions. Recent episodes test familiar market stories against college debt, wage stagnation, Adam Smith, antitrust, courts, private law, and betting apps.

PRESS PLAY

Find your next episode

All episodes

About Capitalisn't

Capitalisn't is an economics show with a political spine and a legal memory. It treats capitalism as something built, maintained, distorted, and occasionally repaired by institutions. The central question is rarely whether markets are good or bad. The more interesting question is who shapes the market, who benefits from the rules, and who gets told that the rules are natural. Recent episodes have examined whether the college promise still holds once debt and generational decline in returns are included. They have looked at wage stagnation through monopsony power, worker mobility, slack labor markets, and the survival of firms that depend on low pay. Adam Smith appears not as a cardboard symbol of the invisible hand, but as a thinker concerned with morality, power, institutions, and the human relationships inside economic life. Technology is treated with the same suspicion of inevitability. Progress can stall, and antitrust, diffusion, state capacity, and corporate power all matter to whether innovation benefits the public. The show also spends serious time on law. Supreme Court independence, judicial overreach, private law, constitutional constraints, corporate liability, and the legal coding of inequality are framed as economic questions, not side issues. Its episode on betting apps fits the same pattern: data, incentives, addiction risk, and profit concentration are analyzed as market design choices. The conversation can be wonky. It can also be blunt. Capitalisn't is strongest when it connects technical mechanisms to moral stakes without pretending the fixes are easy. It suits listeners who want economics that names power, checks assumptions, and keeps asking whether capitalism is serving the society around it.

Made for: For listeners who like economics, law, policy, and institutional history argued with rigor. It especially suits people skeptical of simple market stories and simple anti-market stories alike.

What sets it apart: Capitalisn't connects economic theory to the legal and political machinery that makes markets possible. Its edge is the habit of asking who wrote the rules before debating whether the market worked.

In their own words

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.

As heard by us

Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026

Capitalisn't makes the rules behind markets legible, connecting economic outcomes to corporate incentives, legal structures and political power.

Capitalisn't treats markets as designed systems, tracing how law, corporate incentives and political power determine who captures the gains and absorbs the losses.

Read our full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Capitalisn't makes you wonder who profits when a betting app can spot trouble in your deposits.

Press play if you want

to hear Bethany McLean and Luigi Zingales question what betting companies do with the warning signs they can see
to have your tidy tax fairness argument complicated by wealth that never shows up as income

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

capitalism and institutional powerwage stagnation and labor marketscollege debt and economic mobilityAdam Smith and moral economicsantitrust and technological progressSupreme Court legitimacyprivate law and inequalitysports betting and addiction risk

Talks about

Business & Finance Economics

Podcasts like Capitalisn't

The Economics of Everyday Things
Familiar things, itemized.
RW acontece – últimas notíciasRW Cast
Brazilian news with practical public stakes.
Inside Wirtschaft - Der Podcast mit Manuel Koch | Börse und Wirtschaft im BlickManuel Koch
Markets, money, and Germany in motion.
Mesele EkonomiMesele Ekonomi
Turkish macro under political pressure.
The NegotiationWPIC Marketing + Technologies
China business, from headlines to execution.
USSC LiveThe United States Studies Centre
Policy rooms, recorded in full.

Find your next episode

About Capitalisn't

In their own words

As heard by us

Why you'd press play

Talks about

Podcasts like Capitalisn't

Episodes

Is The College Promise Broken? - ft. Noam Scheiber

The Real Cause Of Wage Stagnation - ft. Arin Dube

Is Everyone Getting Adam Smith Wrong? - ft. Glory Liu

Why Human Progress Is Not Inevitable - ft. Carl Frey

The Hidden Economic Dangers Of Supreme Court Overreach - ft. Steve Vladeck

Adam Smith In The Age of The “Epstein Class” - ft. MP Jesse Norman

How Inequality Distorts the Law - ft. Katharina Pistor

Are Betting Apps Engineered for Addiction? - ft. Jonathan Cohen

Can We Build a Middle Class Without Factories? - ft. Dani Rodrik

Who Should The Fed Answer To? - ft. Sir Paul Tucker

How To Fix The American Tax System - ft. Ray Madoff

How Capitalism Became Global ft. Sven Beckert

How to Stop “Ensh*ttification” Before It Kills the Internet - ft. Cory Doctorow

Why Matthew Yglesias Is Skeptical Of Anti-Monopoly Policies

Are Big Tech’s Regulators “Cowards”? ft. Tim Wu

Why Economists Should Care About Inequality, with Branko Milanovic

Nobel Economist Reveals Why Economic Models Keep Failing Us, ft. Richard Thaler

What Everyone’s Getting Wrong About AI, with Arvind Narayanan

Why Capitalism Stopped Working In Japan, with Takeo Hoshi

How Profit and Politics Hijacked Scientific Inquiry, with John Ioannidis

Will Privatizing The Mortgage Giants Solve The Housing Crisis?

Trump's Great Private Equity Bailout, with Dan Rasmussen

Should Chatbots Teach Our Children? With Khan Academy CEO Sal Khan

Can The Dollar Be Dethroned?, with Ken Rogoff

Revealing the Secret Architects of Capitalism, with Chris Hughes

How The Democrats Lost Labor And Found Capital, with David Sirota

Why Cliff Asness Believes Markets Are Getting Dumber

How Democrats Forgot To Be Normal, with Joan Williams

Lina Khan's Vision of Capitalism

The Economics of Law Firms’ Resistance to Trump, with John Morley

Profit or Purpose? OpenAI's $300 Billion Question, with Rose Chan Loui

Is Silicon Valley Turning Fascist?

Why Trump Is Deregulating In The Wrong Way, with Sam Peltzman

Trump’s War on Universities, with Nicholas Dirks

Did NIMBYs Kill the American Dream?, with Yoni Appelbaum

Can AI Even Be Regulated?, with Sendhil Mullainathan

Why This Nobel Economist Thinks Bitcoin Is Going to Zero, with Eugene Fama

Should Companies Have A Social Responsibility To Be “Great Businesses”?, with John Kay

How Big Money Changed The Democratic Game, with Daniel Ziblatt

America’s Addiction to Easy Money, with Ruchir Sharma

The Argentinian DOGE

The Fertility Crisis: Capitalism's Next Challenge, with Sir Niall Ferguson

Visa's Hidden Tax on Americans

How Lobbying Led to Crony Capitalism, with Brody Mullins

Mailbag: UBI, AI, and Does Luigi Believe in "Free Time"?

Harris vs. Trump: Economics Beyond The "Vibes"

Can Democracy Coexist With Big Tech? with Marietje Schaake

Universities and Politics: Should They Mix? with Hanna Gray

Raj Chetty's Surprising New Insights On How Children Succeed

The End of Google As We Know It?