NPR is doing its annual survey to better understand how listeners spend time with podcasts.

It's short, it's anonymous, so please fill it out, especially if you're a new listener.

You can find it at npr.org slash podcast survey.

That's all one word, so npr.org slash podcast survey.

Thanks very much.

NPR.

Penguin Random House and Simon and Shuster, these are two of the world's largest publishers.

They're basically the Godzilla and King Kong of publishing.

Only now, Godzilla is trying to eat Kong.

That's right.

Penguin Random House wants to buy Simon and Shuster for more than $2 billion.

But not if the Department of Justice has anything to do with it.

In November, the DOJ filed a lawsuit to block the merger.

And not for the reasons you might think.

For decades, antitrust regulators, whose job it is to promote competition in the economy,

these people have been laser focused on the consumer.

As long as consumers aren't hurt, just let businesses do their thing.

What's so interesting about this case is that it's not about the consumers, you know,

the readers and how much we pay for books.

Instead, the DOJ is worried that if these two major publishers merge, it will cause harm

to workers to the authors.

And this focus on harm to workers relates to a concept known as monopsony.

...