In a shocking move this week, Netflix declined to raise its bid against Paramount for control of Warner Bros. After months of corporate tug-of-war, Paramount and David Ellison have taken a giant step towards controlling Warner Bros’ linear television assets, including CNN, its streaming service HBO Max, and its film studio, which just had a blockbuster year. Without question, this deal will lead to mass layoffs, fewer shops to sell work to in Hollywood, and leverage massive debt against Paramount: so why is Paramount and Trump-World so desperate for it, and why did Netflix get cold feet? Today on the show, Matt and David dig into the deal, its questionable legality, and how antitrust objections may play out from both federal and state attorneys general. 

Besides data centers, climate change, and regulatory capture, there is yet another reason utility rates are far outpacing inflation: private equity! On this episode, we try to understand why investor-owned utilities, which provide electricity to the majority of Americans, continue to reap profits at the expense of their customers. These entities are supposed to be regulated by state governments, but why is enforcement often so toothless? And why does venture capital want to get involved in something as thin-margined as utilities?

To answer that, we are joined by Marissa Gillett, a former utility regulator and senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, along with James Baratta, a writing fellow at The American Prospect. Together, we try to untangle some of the regulatory spaghetti and dig into James’ recent reporting on the venture capital firm Blackstone’s bid to acquire a New Mexico utility, and the stock deal that could undo it if regulators are brave enough to follow the law.

The Epstein files lay bare the impunity the rich and powerful possess as a social class: The Epstein class. Today on the show, Matt and David dig into the Epstein files with one of the congressmen responsible for their release: Representative Ro Khanna. We discuss what the Epstein files tell us about the influence that wealth affords the people who run our economy and institutions: People like Bill Gates, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and countless less-famous people who structure the world we live in, but are seemingly accountable to no rules at all. They also discuss Khanna’s recent decision to name some of the men listed in the unredacted files, how it feels to work with victims seeking justice, and how the government can restore trust with Americans in a post-Epstein world. 

After the government announced new regulations for Medicare Advantage, the market-based alternative to traditional Medicare, the stocks of healthcare companies that participate in the program plummeted. But why is this popular program in the crosshairs? And are these new Trump Administration rules actually...good?

Today on the show, Olivia Kosloff, senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project and creator of the newsletter Acute Condition, joins Matt and David to discuss Medicare Advantage and how a program that was intended to be cheaper for the government than traditional Medicare has become far more expensive. In addition to problems that have plagued the program since its inception, AI is now being used as a new tool for insurers to extract money from the government. They also discuss how insurers are reacting to the new rules, the future of the program, and whether we need Medicare Advantage at all.

As The Department and Homeland Security and ICE see their budget balloon, anything unrelated to to immigration is getting short shrift. Today on the show, Matt and David talk to Richard Powers, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at The Justice Department, and the former Acting Assistant Attorney General at the Antitrust Division, to discuss the consequences of ignoring antitrust and white collar crime. They discuss the post-DOGE state of The Justice Department, the culture of prosecution (or lack thereof) that dominated the antitrust division through the Obama and first Trump era, and how to make budgeting antitrust a priority. 

We tend to think of the law as a public asset - centuries of statutes, common law, and legal precedents that shape how society governs itself. So why is the law itself so hard and so expensive to access? 

Matt and David talk with Mike Lissner of the Free Law Project about the quiet duopoly that controls legal information, how Westlaw and LexisNexis turned public court records into pricey commodities, and why even the federal government charges by the page to read your own laws. Along the way, they uncover a system that drives up legal costs, shuts regular people out of justice, creates real security risks, and stifles innovation and explore how a scrappy nonprofit might finally crack it open. 

This week Matt and David talk with pricing expert Lindsay Owens about Google's plan to turn its Gemini AI into your personal shopping assistant. It sounds convenient until you realize it's actually a massive surveillance pricing operation. Google just announced partnerships with Walmart, Visa, MasterCard, and others to use everything they know about you (emails, photos, calendar, searches) to help retailers personalize prices and steer you toward higher-priced products. Lindsay, who went viral calling this out on Twitter, explains how Google's own reply basically admitted they "restrain price", a pretty wild admission for a company facing antitrust lawsuits. It's a sobering conversation about how AI shopping could turbocharge price discrimination, why major retailers are handing over their pricing power to Google, and whether we can stop this before it's too late. 

In the twilight of the Biden Administration, FTC Chair Lina Khan filed a price-fixing case against Pepsi, using the powerful but little-enforced Robinson-Patman Act. A few months into Trump’s 2025 term, that lawsuit was dead and buried by the new regime, leaving only a bunch of redacted documents and a lot of questions for the public to pore over. 

Our guest today is Stacy Mitchell, the co-executive director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, who recently convinced a judge to release those files. Together, Matt and David break down how Pepsi and Walmart worked together to set “price gaps,” and how similar techniques are used throughout the economy, driving up prices for everyone, even as Walmart gets to take credit for having the lowest prices around.

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As a holiday treat, we bring you a new conversation with author and Organized Money alum Cory Doctorow about his new book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. Recorded earlier this year at a live book event, David asks Cory to expand on the thesis of the book: that digital platforms are now locked in a cycle of decay, seeing our technology become less intuitive, less useful, and less private. For Cory, this cycle is a choice, driven by government policy favoring lax antitrust enforcement, strong digital rights management, and wholesale regulatory capture. 

In this wide ranging conversation they discuss how market consolidation and DRM has shifted the balance of power away from workers, who are no longer able to defend themselves with the technology they are forced to use. They also get into the history of digital rights management, why Cory isn't on Audible, algorithmic pricing, and how coalition building and policy change might just be the way out of the enshitification cycle. 

Organized Money will be back in the new year. Thanks for listening! 

The Warner Bros. deal could decimate the film industry in California, and yet almost no state-level politicians have spoken out about it. Today on the show, Matt and David talk to a California gubernatorial candidate who has vocally opposed the deal: Tom Steyer. Tom is a former financier, 2020 presidential candidate, and billionaire, who happens to be the most vocally anti-monopoly candidate in the race. Tom's background in business and personal wealth makes him an unusual candidate, but it also gives him a sense of how money and competition work than most candidates with anti-monopoly policies. We talk with him about why he opposes the Warner Bros. deal, how to reign in utility boards, housing regulation, and what, exactly, "affordability" means. This is our last regular episode of Organized Money for 2025, but we'll have a special episode recorded live for you next week, and see you again in the new year.