“We are living in a new Gilded Age”: how the billionaire class came to power
Apple News In Conversation
Apple News
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Americans have a long history of obsession with the ultrarich, from Carnegie and Rockefeller to Bezos and Musk. And today, the gap between the rich and the poor is bigger than ever as the billionaire class has ascended to new heights. In his new book, The Haves and Have-Yachts, New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos explores the extravagant lifestyles of the wealthy and their outsize influence on politics. He sat down with Apple News In Conversation host Shumita Basu to talk about this unique moment — when billionaires are both resented and envied by the public — and what it means for the rest of us.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is in conversation from Apple News. |
| 0:06.5 | I'm Shemita Basu. |
| 0:08.0 | Today, why Americans love to hate the ultra-wealthy. |
| 0:16.0 | In the last weekend of June, billionaire Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, |
| 0:26.1 | got married to his fiancé, Lauren Sanchez, in an elaborate days-long celebration in Venice, Italy. |
| 0:32.7 | Festivities included a pre-wedding foam party on their $500 million yacht and a pajama-themed after |
| 0:39.6 | party where guests were serenaded by Usher. The event was covered by news outlets across the |
| 0:45.5 | world tracking who was attending, what they were wearing, and the protests that came with it from |
| 0:51.2 | people who were horrified by the ostentatious display of wealth in the |
| 0:55.6 | famously sinking city. That wedding felt like the confluence of about 50 years of decisions around |
| 1:03.0 | politics, around wages, around wealth, around taxes, all of which brought it to the point of |
| 1:10.2 | making that kind of wedding possible. |
| 1:12.6 | That's Evan Osnos, a reporter for the New Yorker. |
| 1:15.5 | He wasn't a guest at the wedding, but he's been following Bezos and the movements of the |
| 1:19.6 | ultra-wealthy for years. |
| 1:21.5 | His new book, The Haves and Have Yachts, is a collection of his reporting on America's |
| 1:26.3 | billionaires, from their excessive |
| 1:28.0 | lifestyles to their disproportionate influence on politics. |
| 1:32.5 | He says that when it comes to wealth, we're at a moment unlike any other in history. |
| 1:37.6 | We are living in a new gilded age in the sense that almost never before in 250 years of American history have we had a group of people with as much money concentrated in such a small group of hands. |
| 1:54.1 | Evan and I talked about what this obsession with wealth means for our culture and our politics and the big budget bill that's now been signed into law. |
| 2:03.0 | At the time we chatted, it was still winding its way through Congress. I started by asking Evan |
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