A shuttered Toys R Us in Orlando, Florida, on June 21, 2019. | Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images It shapes every big company in America, even those it never directly touches. On the latest episode of The Weeds podcast, I sat down with Emily Stewart, a business and politics reporter, to talk about the private equity industry — one of the most powerful and least understood influences on the contemporary American economy. Emily has written at length about private equity’s role in recent bankruptcies of major retailers and about Elizabeth Warren’s plan to reform and re-regulate the industry.