In this must-listen episode of the MeidasTouch Podcast, Ben and Brett Meiselas sit down with bestselling author and renowned journalist Anand Giridharadas for a powerful conversation about the dangers of oligarchy, the unchecked influence of billionaires, and the urgent fight for democracy. Anand has been at the forefront of exposing how wealth and power are manipulated to undermine the public good—insights that have profoundly influenced the work of the MeidasTouch Network. From the erosion of democratic norms to the manufactured narratives that prop up the ultra-wealthy, this discussion pulls no punches in dissecting the forces threatening the future of America. If you care about holding the powerful accountable, you don’t want to miss this conversation. Tune in now, and don’t forget to subscribe to MeidasPlus.com to be the first to hear more exclusive interviews like this. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Anand Giridharadas and what is his influence on Midas Touch?
Hey everybody, Brett from Midas Touch here. My brother Ben and I just had such an incredible conversation with Anand Giridharadas on the Midas Plus substack. Anand is a brilliant journalist and best-selling author, and he has been warning about the oligarchy and the threat of billionaires in the United States for years.
His work has actually informed a lot of what we do here at the Midas Touch Network. and I found his comments today to be incredibly illuminating. We've been hosting live conversations with incredible guests like this every Thursday on Midas Plus. That's the Midas Touch sub stack. So make sure you visit MidasPlus.com now and sign up so you could be the first to hear conversations like this.
Without further ado, enjoy the interview.
All right, welcome everybody to our weekly Midas Touch Network speaking series. I'm here with Anand Giridharadas. You all know him from the ink right here on Substack. And Anand, on your Substack today, I saw also... celebrating, what, two decades from when you first wrote at the New York Times. The article is still up right now.
And you wrote this piece today reflecting back on what it was like to start as a journalist and then what it's like now, kind of the mixed feelings that you have, but the importance of being an independent reporter and keeping your independence. And
You know, one of the things I've always respected about your work, in addition to the content that I agree with your thesis that you've been talking about, especially as it relates to the dangers of the oligarchy. But Anand, you've been calling this out now since the beginning of your career. This isn't you're jumping on the oligarchs are bad fad.
You've been, by the way, if people want to jump on that fad, jump on it because it's true. But you've been warning about it really since day one. All of your books have really been focused primarily on that topic and this class war that's being inflicted by these oligarchs, but also the way they were doing it, almost shapeshifting and pretending that they were doing it. And you said...
They're waiting for this mask off moment. Just you wait. They're hiding behind their philanthropy and winner takes all. You said they're hiding behind their philanthropy, but they'll have this mask off moment once they amass enough power and they're going to let you know who they are. And it was such a prescient book, you know, 2018 to where we are today.
So first off, I wanted to let everybody know. And I am someone who appreciates your work. I am a consumer of your sub stack. And you and I had been talking over the past six to nine months. So I'm glad we can collaborate and find some time to work together. Yes, I love it.
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Chapter 2: What insights does Anand Giridharadas provide on journalism and independence?
So if you end up with $300 billion in a supposed market economy, I'm oversimplifying a lot here, but I think this is important. If you end up with like $300 billion or even $10 billion, probably you didn't just show up in a competitive marketplace and have something really good that you were offering because that kind of doesn't explain why that wasn't cut into by competitors.
Probably you did some things to limit the entry of other competitors into that arena, to have monopolies on something, to monopolize, let's say, government contracts that fed you and not others. And if you look at all these guys and you actually break into what they have done,
they they're it's all based on stepping on other people right um and so what they are afraid of is the fact that they actually cannot sustain that level of wealth without affirmative action for billionaires right they need like that fortune is not based on their product being awesome It's not.
That fortune is based 90 plus percent of the time in some kind of predatory or aggressive behavior that they need not to be regulated, not to be investigated, not to be unionized against. So they are, in a way, very, very vulnerable and dependent because their entire structure depends on kind of special perks and special privileges. So in a way, they're not masters of the universe.
In a way, they are right to be afraid because what they're really afraid of is competing on an open market.
And that's why their priorities are often a form of socialism, but just for the billionaires where the billionaires get the benefits and have, you know, and then what that actually is called is not socialism for billionaires. It's actually called oligarchy. And then you start looking like what you have in Russia and in Soviet states of the past. And we used to look at that in a certain way.
And what your thesis there is, you know, also perfectly explains why they do the most illogical things vis-a-vis the market. We all know that tariffs would result in the outcomes we're seeing now. We all know that these threats against our allies would result in the markets tanking.
We all have seen in the history where, no, America wasn't economically most successful, as Donald Trump likes to believe, during the years of the Great Depression. We remember those years as the Great Depression for a reason. So if you're looking for some sort of pseudo-capitalist idea explanation of why they're supporting this. It's actually because these billionaires are not capitalists.
They are oligarchs, and they actually want to undermine the whole system. And if we, the people, suffer, that's not a bug. That's actually their design, as long as their proximity to power is preserved, which for them, they'll buy into all this bullshit about the tariffs here and this, and it's going to make us great and gold cards. They're like, and they can see the markets tanking.
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