What happens when the world's biggest fast-food chain hands its menu prices to an algorithm? And who pays when Big Tech needs more power, more water, and more land to keep the AI arms race going? This week, Ryan and Shireen look at two sides of the same problem: powerful companies using AI to take more from ordinary people, and pushing the costs onto communities that never got a say.

They start with Clarkson's new lawsuit against McDonald's. The suit alleges that corporate required franchisees to follow an AI pricing tool built around customers' "willingness to pay," and that this cut out real competition among locations that are supposed to compete. Then they turn to the growing backlash against AI data centers: the noise, the vibrations, the strain on water and power, and the falling home values. They also look at why communities are so often the last to know.

In this episode:

• The McDonald's case. The lawsuit alleges that McDonald's pressured independent franchisees to follow algorithmic pricing as a condition of keeping their franchises, contributing to price increases well beyond inflation since 2019. The claims are brought under federal and state antitrust and consumer protection law.
• "Charity first"? Ryan and Shireen weigh McDonald's argument that the pricing tool helps some customers, and the privacy questions raised by tracking what people buy and where they buy it.
• The data center boom. They cover thousands of data centers already operating and more under construction or planned, the local fights over zoning and land use, and the lawsuits over xAI's Colossus facilities near Memphis.
• Who carries the cost. They ask why there's no requirement for tech companies to pay for costs associated with the infrastructure they demand, why the burden falls on some communities and not others, and why the backlash crosses party lines.
• The case for transparency. Communities should know the jobs, the risks, and the real trade-offs before a facility goes up, not after.
• Rose, Bud, Thorn. They talk about the Bryson Fire evacuation in Malibu and the fast response from firefighters, and Ryan shares a tribute to a childhood friend and a reminder to stay present with the people who matter.

Everybody wants clean air, clean water, and affordable utility bills, whatever their politics. When companies treat communities as an afterthought, those communities push back, and the reckoning is only getting started.

This podcast is not legal advice.

Follow Represent More on Substack: representmore.substack.com

Welcome to Represent More, with Ryan and Shireen Clarkson of Clarkson Law Firm.

This week, Ryan is back from speaking at NYU's global class actions conference, where a panel meant to cover data privacy quickly turned into a conversation about AI. Shireen opens the episode with a hard question: if we could delete AI and go back to a world without it, would we? The answer leads into a closer look at the White House's newly announced AI agreement. The leading frontier labs signed on to the four-point framework, and it was presented as "morally binding." It has no enforcement mechanism, no penalties, and no "or else." Ryan and Shireen go through it line by line and ask what real accountability for AI harms would require, including whether executives should face criminal liability when their products cause harm.

Then the conversation turns to food. California Governor Newsom recently signed a bill creating a state-certified "non-ultra-processed" seal for food products. Ryan and Shireen consider whether it will actually help consumers make healthier choices, or whether it could become another label that companies learn to game, one that leaves shoppers confused and makes deceptive marketing harder to challenge in court.

In this episode:

• Would you delete AI? Ryan and Shireen weigh AI's promised benefits against the harms we're already seeing, from intellectual atrophy to chatbots allegedly linked to teen suicides.
• Who's deciding our future? Ryan questions why a small group of tech leaders with narrow expertise should shape how society works.
• The "morally binding" pact. The hosts break down the agreement's four commitments: internal controls, internal oversight, independent external audits, and board oversight. They also look at what the agreement leaves out.
• Where's the "or else"? Why voluntary self-regulation fails without civil and criminal penalties.
• Politics and the AI economy. How stock market dependence on AI growth, along with tech money in politics, may be slowing meaningful regulation at both the state and federal level.
• California's non-ultra-processed food seal. What the new certification covers, what it may miss, and why it won't take effect until 2029.
• The trouble with "organic." Shireen explains how government-certified labels can create a misleading overall impression, and how federal preemption limits consumers' ability to challenge them.
• Roses. A proud parent moment at a school assembly offers some hope at the end of a heavy week.

Promises aren't protections. If the most powerful companies in the world can write their own rules and face no consequences for breaking them, then the rules don't exist. Real accountability means specific obligations, real enforcement, and lawmakers willing to act for the people they serve.

Follow Represent More on Substack: https://representmore.substack.com

Welcome to Represent More, hosted by Ryan Clarkson and Shireen Clarkson, founding partners of Clarkson, a national public interest law firm.

This week is all tech. Ryan and Shireen open with two case updates: the claims period for the $250 million Apple false advertising settlement opens Monday, September 21; and the newly filed consolidated complaint in the Meta AI glasses litigation (where Ryan was recently appointed co-lead counsel) expands the case to a third group of plaintiffs: bystanders who never bought or wore the glasses but allegedly ended up recorded anyway. From there, the conversation turns to a remarkable week in AI, as a researcher walks away from Anthropic to sound an alarm, the CEOs of the biggest labs concede he may be right, and a federal judge weighs in on whether the government can blacklist an AI company over its safety policies.

In this episode:

• The Apple claims window opens. Eligible devices include any iPhone 16, iPhone 15 Pro, or iPhone 15 Pro Max models purchased between June 10, 2024, to March 29, 2025. Ryan explains how the 90-day claims period works, what to expect from the notice email, where to find your serial number, why claims can reach up to $95, and when payments are likely to go out. File a claim starting September 21 at smartphoneaisettlement.com.
• The Meta AI glasses case expands. Roughly eight federal class actions have been consolidated into one amended complaint on behalf of 72 plaintiffs. Ryan walks through the three groups now represented (purchasers, users, and bystanders), the false advertising and invasion-of-privacy theories behind each, and why the firm alleges Meta is a participant in the violation rather than a mere manufacturer.
• The bystanders. Fifteen bystander plaintiffs, fourteen of them minors. Ryan and Shireen discuss what the complaint alleges about recordings of children, why consent as a legal term of art is at the heart of the case, and Shireen's view that this may be the most vulnerable class of all.
• Frogs in a boiling pot. How privacy erodes one convenience at a time, why people feel powerless to stop it, and what a healthy balance between innovation and privacy rights should look like.
• Anthropic's whistleblower. A pretraining researcher resigns, reportedly leaving millions in unvested equity behind, to warn that frontier labs are "gambling with all of our lives." CEO Dario Amodei's public response, the concurrence from OpenAI's Sam Altman and DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, and why the reaction mattered more than the resignation.
• Why self-regulation can't work. Ryan revisits the AI-and-nuclear parallel from his op-ed three years ago, breaks down the caveats in Amodei's auditor proposal, and lays out the first-mover and collective-action problem at the center of the AI arms race. Shireen adds the power-and-control incentive that profit alone doesn't explain.
• Anthropic v. the Pentagon. Shireen explains the First and Fifth Amendment ruling in the Northern District of California, and the two debate what Big Tech's support for Anthropic really signals.
• Rose, Bud, Thorn. Ryan's rose for the whistleblowers, Shireen's for a career that lets her do something about the problems most people can only worry about, and a cliffhanger on Ryan's "swing-for-the-fences" big idea.

Plus: the 2026 Malibu Chili Cook-Off results, a colleague's top-hat wedding, and a Netflix recommendation.

When safety collides with profits, profits win. The only fix for a collective-action problem is a collective one, and that has to come from the law.

Follow Represent More wherever you get your podcasts, and find us on Substack at representmore.substack.com.

Welcome to Represent More, brought to you by We Are Them Media.

Ryan and Shireen are back in the Malibu studio (with a very special behind-the-scenes guest) for a two-part episode on what happens when technology sells certainty it can't deliver.

First, Shireen walks through Clarkson's newly filed class action against Oura, the maker of the wildly popular smart ring. The lawsuit alleges Oura markets its sleep-stage tracking as "95% accurate," while independent, peer-reviewed research puts the figure closer to a coin flip. Ryan and Shireen dig into how the ring actually works, why the gap matters when people are making real health decisions based on a score, and what it means that Oura is now pushing its data into clinical care.

Then the hosts turn to the nearly $18 billion settlement between Meta and dozens of state attorneys general over alleged harms to kids and teens. Ryan lays out the terms — daily time limits, overnight blocks, the end of beauty filters for minors, mandatory removal of under-13 accounts — and then makes the case that it still falls short of what New Mexico won by going to trial. Shireen pushes back on delay and asks the question nobody seems to be answering: where does the money actually go?

In this episode:

• The Oura Ring lawsuit — what's alleged, the 53% vs. 79% vs. 95% accuracy gap, and why "estimate" and "measurement" aren't the same thing
• Orthosomnia, gamified sleep, and what happens when a score starts running your life
• HIPAA, consent, and the risks of wearable data flowing into the healthcare system
• The Meta social media harm settlement, term by term — and the roughly $6 billion that only gets paid if TikTok and YouTube follow suit
• New Mexico vs. everyone else — sextortion protections, prominent warnings, court reporting, and why one state got more
• Settle now or take Zuckerberg to the stand? Ryan and Shireen make their cases
• Where the billions go, and why there's no check coming for individual victims
• Rose, Bud, Thorn — advocating for yourself at the doctor, a shout-out to Malibu Urgent Care, and the Malibu Chili Cook-Off

When regulation doesn't come from Congress, it comes from courtrooms and state AGs — and the difference between a good outcome and a great one often comes down to who's willing to go to trial.

Follow Represent More wherever you get your podcasts, and read full transcripts and companion pieces at representmore.substack.com.

Welcome to Represent More, the podcast about power — who has it, who doesn't, and what happens when accountability disappears.

In this episode, Ryan and Shireen Clarkson sit down with Bahar Sodaify, Clarkson's first associate and first homegrown partner, who now leads the firm's food fraud practice. Bahar traces a direct line from her childhood in a Persian family in Beverly Hills — where her parents, who arrived from Iran in 1977, couldn't recognize the ingredients on American food labels and drove out of their way for organic produce — to the consumer class actions she prosecutes today. Along the way: a UCLA sociology experiment in standing perfectly still, a lawyers' choir at Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the moment a room full of 1L students realized what a class action actually is.

In this episode:

• Bahar's path from Beverly Hills High and Santa Monica College to UCLA and Southwestern Law, and why a B+ in chemistry pointed her toward the law
• How her parents' skepticism of processed food shaped the practice she runs now
• Why American supermarkets carry flavors that don't exist in nature — and what that has to do with regulatory capture at the FDA and FTC
• Why the same cereal is sold in Japan without the artificial colors and flavors it contains in the US — and why thousands of ingredients banned abroad are still legal here
• The CLRA, UCL, and FAL: how a California consumer protection case actually gets built, from notice letter to injunctive relief
• The $7.8 million Celsius "no preservatives" settlement and the slack fill cases that helped change how movie theater candy is packaged
• Why "a bunch of Davids and one Goliath" is the right way to think about the class action device
• Bahar's advice for law students, her tips for truly unplugging on vacation, and the Hard 8 (spoiler: the answer is always coffee)

It's a conversation about where the impulse to hold corporations to their labels comes from, and why individual harms that feel too small to fight become worth fighting when people come together.

Read more and subscribe at representmore.substack.com.

Welcome to Represent More, a production of We Are Them Media, hosted by Ryan Clarkson and Shireen Clarkson.

Two people look at the same product at the same time — and pay two different prices. That's surveillance pricing, and in this episode, Ryan and Shireen break down how companies quietly use your location, browsing habits, and purchase history to decide how much you should pay. They dig into Clarkson's new lawsuit against The Washington Post, filed on behalf of subscribers whose personal data was allegedly fed into a pricing algorithm without their knowledge — and what it will take to hold the line when the agencies meant to police these practices have been gutted.

In this episode:

• What surveillance pricing is — and how it differs from haggling, insurance, and dynamic pricing
• The case against The Washington Post: what's alleged, and the remedies at stake
• New York's Algorithmic Pricing Disclosure Act and the wave of legislation likely to follow
• Why "just opt out" isn't a real choice when a handful of tech giants run the game
• How Clarkson has evolved to meet harms where they now live — in the digital world
• Growing with purpose: practice areas, global expansion, and the firm's mid-year Clarkson 180
• Rose, Bud, Thorn: family across generations, the World Cup, and keeping politics out of sport

When companies extract your data to extract your money, the price you pay stops being fair — and the fix won't come on its own. It comes from disclosure laws, consumer cases, and people willing to demand that technology's conveniences never come at the cost of accountability.

Read more at https://representmore.substack.com

Welcome to Represent More, a production of We Are Them Media, hosted by Ryan and Shireen Clarkson.

This week, Ryan and Shireen welcome Tracey Cowan, who leads Clarkson's fertility negligence and sexual assault practices. From a childhood spent moving school districts with a superintendent dad who preached sticking up for the little guy, to the Tisch School of the Arts, to a research lab at NYU, to constitutional law and prisoners' rights work at Peiffer Wolf, Tracey's path to the courtroom was anything but a straight line — and every stop along the way shaped the fierce, client-first advocate she is today.

In this episode:

• Tracey's winding road from theater kid to trial lawyer — and why empathy is a litigator's secret weapon
• Inside the landmark Pacific Fertility Center trial and the first jury verdict to put a value on destroyed embryos
• The CooperSurgical cases: how a missing ingredient in embryo culture media devastated families across the country
• Rideshare accountability: the Uber and Lyft sexual assault litigation now underway in the Northern District of California
• Why civil justice matters when criminal courts can't deliver — and what "being heard" really means for survivors
• Plus: the Hard 8 — rapid-fire questions on everything from childhood heroes to cats vs. dogs

At its heart, this conversation is about what happens when the people we trust most — fertility clinics, rideshare platforms, the systems built to keep us safe — fail the people who depend on them. Tracey's clients can never be returned to where they were before. But accountability, acknowledgment, and a team that believes them can restore something just as vital: their voice.

For more, subscribe to our Substack at representmore.substack.com.

Welcome to Represent More, a production of We Are Them Media.

In this milestone tenth episode, hosts Ryan and Shireen Clarkson dive into a wide-ranging discussion spanning artificial intelligence, a major Supreme Court ruling, and the state of American democracy heading into the midterms.

• AI in higher education: Universities are pushing students to learn AI tools while simultaneously issuing false cheating accusations based on unreliable AI-detection software — Ryan breaks down the due process protections students are entitled to, and why outdated school policies are fueling the confusion
• AI's broken promises: Three years after Ryan's original op-ed on AI risk, he and Shireen take stock of what's actually materialized — misinformation, job displacement, and "AI washing" by corporations — while struggling to name a single tangible societal benefit
• Monsanto v. Durnell: The Supreme Court's 7-2 ruling that federal law preempts state failure-to-warn claims against Bayer over Roundup's cancer risks, and what it means for the thousands of pending lawsuits nationwide
• A bright spot in election law: A 5-4 ruling that crossed ideological lines to push back against further erosion of voting rights, plus a look at the gerrymandering battles unfolding state by state ahead of November
• Rose, Bud, Thorn: Ryan reflects on the country's 250th anniversary and the resilience of democracy; Shireen shares a personal win on staying physically active

At its core, Represent More is about power — who holds it, who doesn't, and what happens when the systems meant to provide accountability fall short. Whether it's corporations reaching for AI as cover, or courts closing the door on injured consumers, Ryan and Shireen keep coming back to the same throughline: when legislatures and regulators fail to act, the courts remain the last resort — and that only works if people keep demanding it.

Subscribe to Represent More wherever you get your podcasts, and find us on Substack at https://representmore.substack.com