Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs

Magazine. I am joined today by Michael Mechanic. He is senior editor at Mother Jones Magazine and the author of

the book Jackpot, How the Super Rich really live and how their wealth harms us all. Michael Mechanic,

thank you for joining us today on Carit Affairs. Thanks for having me. You make it sound so

dramatic. Well, this is what I try to do. I try to build everything up. We get a bit of drama

in it, get a bit of excitement. I mean, it is dramatic, right?

It is dramatic.

It is dramatic.

You're writing about the most important issues in the world.

You're writing about the class struggle, Michael.

So your book takes us inside a world that many of us, most of us, will never get to see the inside of. That is to say, the world of

the super or Uber wealthy. So tell us first, how did you pry open the door? What did you do to

try and get an inside look at the world that is often discussed but rarely seen in this world of the super wealthy.

I pride into it painstakingly.

Yeah.

Not being from that world, one cannot just cold call billionaires and say, hey, talk to me about your money.

I mean, nobody likes to talk about their personal finances.

It's sort of taboo in our society. So it requires a lot of legwork and a lot of sort of working

from the outside, talking to people, you know, who are in the circles of very wealthy people.

And in fact, you know, there's a lot of stuff you just have to glean from those interactions because there are some people, of course, who won't,

but you get anywhere near. And I, you know, I write about, in the book about sort of the

frequency of rejection. You kind of have to go into it knowing you got a list of targets,

...