Hello and welcome to Overthink.

The podcast where two philosophy professors and longtime friends connect big ideas to everyday life.

I am David Peña Usman.

And I'm Ellie Anderson.

We are witnessing an unprecedented overtaking of democracy by oligarchs since Trump's re-election.

And in fact, Bernie Sanders is currently on a nationwide tour.

He's going around speaking to crowds on a campaign against oligarchy.

He calls it the stop oligarchy tour.

And this is coming on the heels of important remarks that former president Joe Biden made to the American people in his farewell address to the nation on January 15th.

He said this is a quote from that speech.

Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence

that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, and freedoms.

Now, that claim very quickly led to a surge

of searches for the word oligarchy on Google, suggesting that even though the vast majority

of Americans voted for an oligarch, the vast majority of Americans did not even know what an

oligarch, let alone what oligarchy means.

Speaking about things that have happened recently, but not like super recently, really in the past few years,

there were 150 billionaire families who spent almost $2 billion in support of presidential and congressional candidates in the 2024 election cycle.

So 150 billionaire families put almost $2 billion into the last election cycle.

And the ultra-richest segments of the U.S. control a greater portion of wealth than they did even

during the gilded age. The top five billionaires alone today own more

than a trillion dollars total in wealth. Yeah, and the numbers are just staggering, right? And not only

...