Lina Khan Returns (feat. Zohran Mamdani)

EPISODE 280: Billionaires and developers, developers, developers, developers.

One of the strange delights of PTFO is that we’ve somehow convinced former FTC chair Lina Khan — a.k.a The Most Hated Person in Silicon Valley — to keep returning to our program.

The impetus, this time, was the reporting we’ve been doing into anticompetitive business practices in the NBA.

And the fact that the protagonist of that story, Steve Ballmer, just happened to play a starring role in United States v. Microsoft — arguably the most prominent study of monopolistic behavior in modern American history.

My basic thesis on all of this: holding billionaires to account, at a time when so much of our government willfully grants them permission to rig the economy in their favor, transcends political party. (Just ask Steve Bannon!)

I dare say that this strain of genuine populism also explains why New York City’s Democratic nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is polling so well right now.

And why he agreed to join the show, too.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Sincerely,

Pablo