Money Talks: Boilerplate Land Mines
Slate Money
Slate Podcasts
4.1 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this Money Talks: UVA law professor Mitu Gulati joins Felix Salmon and Emily Peck to explain how an over-reliance on boilerplate language in contracts—that apparently never gets updated or even read—is leaving all of us vulnerable to legal traps.
Join Slate Plus to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the Slate Money show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/moneyplus to get access wherever you listen.
Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, and welcome to Money Talks, the very special part of Slate Money, where we talk to the most interesting people in the world about the most interesting subjects in the world. |
| 0:23.5 | I'm Felix Salmon of Bloomberg. |
| 0:26.2 | I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios. |
| 0:28.2 | Hello, hello. |
| 0:29.2 | And we are talking to one of the most interesting people in the world, |
| 0:33.2 | one and only, Mitu Gulati. |
| 0:35.1 | Me too, welcome. |
| 0:36.2 | Welcome back, I should say. |
| 0:37.9 | Thank you so much. |
| 0:39.0 | It's been almost four or five years since we last talked about Venezuela, I think. |
| 0:46.4 | Venezuelan debt and how to restructure it. |
| 0:49.2 | Who knows? |
| 0:49.8 | Oh, my God, those were the days. |
| 0:51.6 | Imagine a world where people talked about restructural. |
| 0:53.6 | Oh, never mind. But yeah, Me Too. First of all, introduce yourself who I am. |
| 0:58.4 | I am an obscure law professor at the University of Virginia, and I work on the topic of hazards in boilerplate contracts. I am completely obsessed with boilerplate contracts. |
| 1:15.0 | Okay, so I did mention at the top of this show that the whole point about money talks is that we |
| 1:20.7 | talk to the most interesting people in the world about the most interesting subjects in the world. |
| 1:25.6 | Emily, yes, sir. I have a question for you. Is legal boilerplate |
| 1:30.2 | one of the most interesting subjects in the world? Felix? Yes. I'm so happy you said that because |
| 1:37.8 | I think so too. I was looped in to an email between the two of you And without any context, it said something like, |
| 1:45.3 | I can't wait to talk about landmines when you come on. And I was like, what? Landmines? Are we |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

