WHY ARE BILLIONAIRES?!?: You’re Not Gonna Believe This B.S. with Amanda & Anand Giridharadas

We Can Do Hard Things

Treat Media and Glennon Doyle

Relationships, Education, Self-improvement, Society & Culture

4.8 • 42.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2026

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Amanda’s first You’re Not Gonna Believe This B.S. show is here: The myths and truth of BILLIONAIRES! We pull back the curtain on how billionaires were made, how much they have, how they skate on public benefits while hoarding the fruits of our labor, how they pretend to fight to keep us distracted fighting with each other (while we barely get by on their scraps), what we learned from them in the Epstein files—and how we get our cookies back. Joined by author and political analyst Anand Giridharadas, we break down: - What the Epstein emails reveal about the unwritten rules billionaires play by;- What Anand learned about billionaires from the Mandani campaign; and - Why this moment offers hope for building a more just world where we get to have nice things. About Anand: Anand Giridharadas is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Persuaders, the international bestseller Winners Take All, The True American, and India Calling. A former foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for more than a decade, he has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time. He is an on-air political analyst for MSNBC. He is the publisher of the newsletter The Ink. Follow We Can Do Hard Things on: Instagram — ⁠https://www.instagram.com/wecandohardthings⁠ TikTok — ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@wecandohardthingsshow⁠

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. This is Amanda, and you're not going to believe this bullshit.
0:06.3	I'm feeling very excited and nervous and energized and vulnerable, hoping that you love this new
0:11.8	little series I'm hosting, that I am loosely calling, you're not going to believe this bullshit.
0:17.8	It's going to be a set of shows throughout the year that are sort of real housewives,
0:21.7	meets History Channel, meets TED Talk, meets your favorite etymology book. My goal is to bring you
0:26.7	one thing that seems maybe obscure or isolated or niche like cat ladies, pre-celibacy, the carbon
0:33.7	footprint, birth control, the bar exam, the CIA, something which sort of take as given.
0:38.9	And we're going to bust it open. We're going to dig back into the history of that thing, how it was
0:42.8	invented, because of course everything is invented for someone else's profit and at someone else's
0:47.4	expense. And we're going to peel back what that seemingly inevitable, idiosyncratic one thing
0:52.9	reveals about everything, about power and culture
0:56.2	and our daily lives. And it will be about our actual lives because nothing is more political
1:01.6	than our daily lives. I have a hunch that most structural power is built of tiny jenga pieces
1:07.7	that seem insignificant, isolated, and obscure, that those who are on top of the
1:14.5	structural power system need us to believe and see as natural and inevitable. And that the more we
1:22.2	take them out, turn one and another over in our hands and really examine it the closer we are to toppling the
1:30.8	whole damn thing and being able to build back a sturdier structure that we can all live and
1:35.7	breathe and thrive inside of. That's my dream. And if we fall short of that dream, we'll at least
1:41.1	have some really interesting context to reframe the way we interpret what we see
1:44.9	in the news and experience in our lives and at the very very least we'll have some sexy new facts
1:50.5	to share at the dinner table or bus stop or grocery line. I'm anxious because I hope you will love
1:56.2	this series and I'm trying to be brave because I think it's going to be fun and important.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Treat Media and Glennon Doyle, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Treat Media and Glennon Doyle and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.