A few weeks back, we put on an episode about the lives of the very rich.

Evan Osnows and I talked about his book, The Haves and the Have Yachts.

And you all ate it up.

It's our most popular episode of the year so far.

I think it's scratched an important itch.

You all have questions. Who are these very, very rich

people among us? What do they care about? And what do they fear? Because these very, very rich

people, it's their choices that are affecting so many of our lives, like which technologies are going to underpin our economy,

whether they'll create or keep jobs in our industry or community,

and also how much these very, very rich people pay in taxes to pitch in for the government we all need.

Our episode this week is also about people making lots of money in the private equity industry

and what it's like to work for companies that have been bought by private equity.

Don't worry, one of the things we'll get into is what private equity actually means.

Basically, it's like house flipping for business.

The investors buy up companies, but they don't use their own money to do it. And then they get

paid management fees and other payments. So actually making the flipped businesses profitable

so employees can keep their jobs, that's not necessarily the point.

Our guide is Megan Greenwell, a journalist. She wrote a book called Bad Company, Private Equity

and the Death of the American Dream. And in it, she details how confusing it was for her when a private equity company took over the media company Deadspin, where she was editor-in-chief.

It did not go well.

But her writing here doesn't just have the dishy feel of making sense of a bad work experience.

It's also about how she and other people she reports on in the book,

...