This is a headgum podcast. I don't know what to think I don't know what to say

and that's all right that's okay

I don't know anything.

Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me again.

I am so excited for this week's episode.

We have one of the most massive guests we have ever had on this show.

I am beside myself.

This week's topic, we are talking about one of the biggest changes in how America deals with business in decades.

We're talking about how we are finally fighting back against monopoly capitalism by pursuing antitrust

reform.

Now I talked about this in my video on monopolies from a few months ago, but just to catch

up on the history, during the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age, American life was

transformed for the worse.

Monopoly capitalists built up incredible and unprecedented power,

and this was rightly seen by most people

as an assault on American democracy and democratic ideals, because, you know, the billionaires were calling the shots instead of the voters.

So in response, our government pushed by average people like you and me built an enforcement regime that broke up those monopolies and prevented new ones from forming.

And this massive change helped create a golden era for American equality after World War II.

But then the capitalists fought back. They devised a legal and political

philosophy which infected American government from Reagan through Trump. This philosophy portrayed

Americans not as citizens, but as consumers, and it allowed

for a return to gilded era levels of corporate control, consolidation, and inequality.

...