Hey, pitchfork listeners, Goldie here. We've been doing this podcast for a long time now,

so we thought we'd take a little break this summer. But we don't want you to miss us too much,

so we thought we'd revisit some of the most essential episodes from early in our history

with a back-to-basic summer series. And assuming podcasts like this are still legal by the end of the summer,

we hope you enjoy this conversation with Matt Stoller about how monopolies feed plutocracy.

You have been at the forefront of identifying and pushing back on one of the most corrosive elements of the modern neoliberal economy, which is concentrated wealth and power, monopoly power in particular.

It's not just the big markets where you see this problem.

You also see it in pretty much every market.

So things like peanut butter or coffins or missiles and

munitions or voting machines everywhere in our society, you've seen this concentration

of power in our markets in the hands of the few. This is sort of the physical manifestation

of what you often talk about, which is the rise of plutocracy.

From the offices of civic ventures in downtown Seattle, this is pitchfork economics with Nick Hanauer.

Confessions of an American capitalist caught on tape.

I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.

I'm David Goldstein, senior fellow at Civic Ventures.

Today we get to talk to one of my favorite people, our old friend Matt Stoller. Matt, as you know, and I know you agree,

is just a really thoughtful, incisive thinker and writer. And he has this fantastic new book

out called Goliath, the 100-year War between Monopoly, power, and democracy. And he has been

hard at work for a bunch of years at the forefront of

this conversation about monopoly power. Monopoly power, market concentration, concentrated

wealth, concentrated power, and how it's damaging not just our economy, but it threatens our very democracy. That's right. And Matt is a

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