Hey there, it's Shemita here. I am still out on parental leave, but wanted to bring you this episode from our archives. It's a fascinating look at the ever-growing ultra-wealthy class in America. I hope you enjoy it.

This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm Shemita Basu.

Today, why Americans love to hate the ultra-wealthy.

In the last weekend of June, billionaire Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, got married to his fiancé, Lauren Sanchez, in an elaborate days-long celebration in Venice, Italy.

Festivities included a pre-wedding foam party on their $500 million yacht, and a pajama-themed after-party where guests were serenaded by Usher.

The event was covered by news outlets across the world, tracking who was attending, what they were wearing, and the protests that came with it from people who were horrified by the

ostentatious display of wealth in the famously sinking city.

That wedding felt like the confluence of about 50 years of decisions around politics, around wages,

around wealth, around taxes, all of which brought it to the point of making that kind of

wedding possible.

That's Evan Osnos, a reporter for the New Yorker.

He wasn't a guest at the wedding, but he's been following Bezos and the movements of

the ultra wealthy for years.

His new book, The Haves and Have Yachts, is a collection of his reporting on America's

billionaires, from their excessive lifestyles to their disproportionate influence on politics. He says that when it

comes to wealth, we're at a moment unlike any other in history. 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?

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.

At the time we chatted, it was still winding its way through

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