Tech Giants Are Nothing But Middlemen, with Tim Wu
Factually! with Adam Conover
Headgum
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2026
⏱️ 97 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The tech industry no longer serves human needs. According to legal scholar and writer Tim Wu, the tech industry has shifted away from providing services and now only exist to extract our money, data, and time. This week, Adam sits with Tim to talk about his new book, Age of Extraction. Together, they chart exactly how we came to find ourselves in this mess and what it might take for us to dig our way out of it. Find Tim's book at factuallypod.com/books
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a headgum podcast. |
| 0:05.0 | I don't know the truth. |
| 0:08.3 | I don't know the way. |
| 0:10.9 | I don't know what to think. |
| 0:13.6 | I don't know what to say. |
| 0:16.6 | Yeah, but that's all right. |
| 0:19.4 | That's okay. |
| 0:21.6 | I don't know anything. |
| 0:27.0 | Hey there, welcome to Factually. |
| 0:28.6 | I'm Adam Conover. |
| 0:29.4 | Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. |
| 0:31.9 | It's a very special episode of Factually because today we have a guest on the show |
| 0:36.8 | who I've been trying to get on the podcast |
| 0:38.5 | for many years. His name is Tim Wu. He's a legal scholar and writer. And he's probably done more |
| 0:44.5 | than anyone for me to explain how technology, economics, and power interplay to shape the world |
| 0:52.3 | that we live in. And I'm being completely serious about that. |
| 0:55.5 | Tim has an uncanny ability to describe the way that concentrated corporate power distorts |
| 1:01.6 | not just our economy, but also our individual lives and our experience of the world |
| 1:06.5 | around us. |
| 1:07.6 | And he writes about these topics with such vivid piercing clarity that he has |
| 1:13.5 | literally transformed policy debates about these subjects nationwide. In his book, The Master |
| 1:19.3 | Switched him told the history of how communications networks, whether radio or TV or the |
... |
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