Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on today's show is Corbin Barthold.

Corbin is the Internet Policy Council and Director of Appellate Litigation for Tech Freedom.

He's written for City Journal, both long articles for forthcoming issues and some shorter

reactions to the web, the most recent of which is on Elon Musk's Twitter takeover, which

everybody's talking about.

And that's going to be the subject of today's episode.

So Corbyn, thanks very much for coming on. It's great to be here.

So let's indeed start with the news that's sent a shudder through not only the tech world,

but also the political and media spheres. Last night, or I should say Monday night,

the Twitter approved Elon Musk's bid for control of Twitter,

which he will purchase at $54.20 a share.

So that's considerably above its current market price.

And it's true that Twitter's business model has struggled for years to match, you know,

what is an extraordinarily large cultural footprint, I think we'd have to say. So this combined

with Musk's not so subtle declarations of his intent to bring free speech back to Twitter

has led many to suggest that he has motives beyond simply making

money. So let's talk this through. How did the deal come together over the last week? And did

Twitter's shareholders and board work to stop the takeover? That's certainly what it looked like.

Or was the whole poison pill idea that they set forth just kind of standard

corporate maneuvering? And, you know, what's your take on Elon Musk's intentions here?

Sure, sure. Well, starting with how things look with the deal now that the dust has settled a bit,

...