The Book Club: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracies

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4.3 • 826 Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2026

⏱️ 58 minutes

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Summary

My guest on this week’s Book Club podcast is Jeffrey Winters, whose new book The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracies makes the case that democracy as it functions now isn’t, as many of us imagine, the only thing keeping the robber barons in check – it is, in fact, the very system that has enabled them to thrive. He tells me how the wealth gap in the US is now many multiples of that in ancient Rome, how extreme wealth translates into political power, and how reforming campaign finance laws is only a tiny part of the solution we need.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What happens when journalists, politicians and storytellers come together to make sense of the world right now?
0:07.5	Find out at Fleet Street Quarter's Festival of Words this May.
0:11.1	Sponsored by Lansack and NYU, the Vibrant Programme celebrates London's historic news district
0:16.5	and explores this year's theme, The Age of Wisdom and Foolishness,
0:20.2	inspired by the opening lines of a tale of two cities.
0:23.1	Hear from voices including Anthony Scaramucci,
0:25.8	Baroness Hale of Richmond, Hanif Karachi and Sir Ben Okre
0:28.8	as they unpack the ideas shaping our time.
0:32.3	Join us for the Fleet Street Quarter's Festival of Words
0:35.0	running 7th, 16th of May.
0:37.0	Visit fleetstreetreetcorder.co.combe, to book.
0:43.3	Hello and welcome to the Spectators Book Club podcast.
0:50.7	My guest this week is Geoffrey Winters.
0:53.0	He's a Professor of political science at Northwestern University
0:55.8	and the director of the Equality Development and Globalisation Studies Program at Northwestern's
1:00.5	Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. And Jeffrey's new book is The Blind Spot, How Oligarchs
1:06.6	Dominate Our Democracies. Jeffrey, welcome. The blind spot you describe, and I hope I'm framing
1:13.9	this right, is that most of us think that democracy is one of the few things that keeps a reign
1:20.1	on oligarchy, or keeps oligarchs and the power of the extremely wealthy in check. Your argument
1:26.9	is that exactly the opposite applies.
1:28.5	Is that right?
1:29.6	Yes, that's right.
	...

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