“We don’t know what the flowering will be after we break up Amazon, but I promise you it’s coming.”

Zephyr Teachout made that prediction in an interview released Monday, two days before Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos appeared before the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust alongside fellow masters of the universe Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple, and Sundar Pichai of Google.

The hearing devolved into Republican representatives complaining about the companies’ perceived bias against conservatives, but Democrats invited the CEOs—who spoke from their homes—to address rising concerns about their companies’ alleged monopolistic powers and anti-competitive influence on markets and politics.

The antitrust debate around Big Tech gained prominence after Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal and again during this year’s Democratic presidential primary, after Sen. Elizabeth Warren announced breaking up the companies as part of her platform. But Warren isn’t alone.

Teachout—a law professor and author who has run (unsuccessful) campaigns for New York governor, state attorney general, and the House of Representatives—has made a career of tackling government corruption, open communication, and corporate manipulation. And antitrust reforms are the subject of her new book, Break ’Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom From Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money.

She joined host Mike Pesca on The Gist to discuss the book and many of the issues that led to Wednesday’s hearing. A portion of the interview is transcribed below; it has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Mike Pesca: You’ve taken a populist turn, and I can sense that because the em in your book’s title is not in T-H-E-M. It’s apostrophe-em. You’re a woman of the people.

Zephyr Teachout: Well, one of the horrible things that has happened with antitrust and anti-monopoly is that a bunch of economists, academics, well-funded Robert Bork–style thinkers really basically started to tell the American people that they had no business talking about antitrust or anti-monopoly. That this is a technical issue for highly trained economists; you’ve got to get your nose out of here. And one of the things that I care the most about is letting people know that they have complete authority to demand a new antitrust era, to demand things being broken up. They don’t have to know all the details of particular economic models in order to say, “Hey, Amazon and Monsanto have way too much power, and it’s a problem.”