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Badly Behaving Billionaires · Luke's English Podcast

0:07
Speaker 1: Well, welcome everyone to another episode of Science of the
0:11
Speaker 1: Times podcast.
0:12
Speaker 2: How are you, Simon?
0:14
Speaker 3: I'm doing very well, thanks. A bit cold, but all good.
0:16
Speaker 3: How are you, Tim?
0:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I'm good.
0:19
Speaker 1: Relaxed after the Christmas break and sort of ready to
0:23
Speaker 1: throw myself into a not particularly onerous.
0:26
Speaker 2: Term, I hope.
0:28
Speaker 3: Excellent.
0:31
Speaker 1: You'd be at like a workshop all day, a bacteria workshop.
0:36
Speaker 1: Bringing everyone who works on bacteria or many people who
0:38
Speaker 1: work on bacteria in Oxford together.
0:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. And we've had a great guest speaker from
0:44
Speaker 3: Harvard who's been with us all day and staying over
0:47
Speaker 3: this evening. And yeah, it's been really good, actually. Lots
0:50
Speaker 3: of different aspects of bacteria being studied here.
0:53
Speaker 1: We should do some more episodes on bacteria, actually, because
0:58
Speaker 1: microbes are such fascinating, fascinating organisms.
1:02
Speaker 3: They really are. We're far removed from bacteria today, though, right,
1:06
Speaker 3: with our guest?
1:07
Speaker 4: We are.
1:07
Speaker 1: In fact, we're kind of moving a bit into the
1:09
Speaker 1: social science. I think we should ask our guest a
1:13
Speaker 1: little bit about that. He's called Pepper Culpepper. Fantastic name.
1:18
Speaker 1: And he has written a book with a guy called
1:23
Speaker 1: Taeko Lee. It's coming out quite soon. And it's called
1:27
Speaker 1: Billionaire Backlash. It's all about his analyses of corporate scandals
1:32
Speaker 1: and how they might help save democracy. So, I mean,
1:36
Speaker 1: you're a big fan of Elon Musk, aren't you, Salima?
1:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. He's one of my best mates.
1:44
Speaker 1: So, you know, in this book, he kind of does
1:46
Speaker 1: these analyses of a number of corporate scandals, and a
1:50
Speaker 1: lot of them are around companies that get really big,
1:54
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful, and then screw things up. And um uh
1:59
Speaker 1: you know by breaking rules by thinking they're above the
2:02
Speaker 1: law that sort of stuff and i think we'll have
2:06
Speaker 1: a fascinating conversation with him uh and we should ask
2:09
Speaker 1: him about how it goes about collecting the data and
2:11
Speaker 1: kind of analyzing these sorts of things but i think
2:14
Speaker 1: you know we'll we'll hear about about volkswagen probably the
2:18
Speaker 1: american uh meat market from the 1800s um you know,
2:24
Speaker 1: the East India Company, um, you know, Samsung, uh, all
2:29
Speaker 1: of those sorts of things. So it's a, it's a
2:31
Speaker 1: great book, a little bit different from usual, but, uh,
2:34
Speaker 1: I think our listeners will enjoy it.
2:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so too. Shall we, uh, shall we
2:39
Speaker 3: get him on?
2:39
Speaker 2: Let's do that.
2:41
Speaker 3: Well, Pepper, welcome to, uh, Science of the Times. Um, yeah.
2:45
Speaker 3: Would you like to introduce yourself for our listeners?
2:48
Speaker 4: Oh, thanks Simon. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. I'm, um,
2:51
Speaker 4: So I'm Pepper Culpepper.
2:53
Speaker 5: I'm a professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at
2:55
Speaker 5: Oxford and with my colleague, Tegu Lee, with whom I've
2:59
Speaker 5: been working on this project for many, many years, a
3:02
Speaker 5: decade or more. I've written a book called Billionaire Backlash,
3:07
Speaker 5: which Tim is kindly holding up, The Age of Corporate
3:09
Speaker 5: Scandal and How It Could Save Democracy. And it's basically
3:12
Speaker 5: an argument about, in a partisan polarized age, how corporate
3:18
Speaker 5: scandals against very big corporations seem to be one of
3:22
Speaker 5: the few things that speak across the divides and bring
3:25
Speaker 5: people together in favor of what we might call common
3:29
Speaker 5: sense regulation. There is a common sense regulation. And one
3:31
Speaker 5: of the things we can talk about is how we
3:33
Speaker 5: discover public opinion and what it actually is on that.
3:37
Speaker 1: So, I mean, as an example, everyone's kind of a
3:39
Speaker 1: bit angry with X at the moment for their AI
3:43
Speaker 1: thing GROK. Is that sort of a potentially a beginning
3:46
Speaker 1: of a corporate scandal?
3:48
Speaker 4: So it is. You've anticipated, Tim, some of the stuff
3:53
Speaker 4: we'll talk about.
3:54
Speaker 5: The thing about Grok is that its owner, Elon Musk,
3:57
Speaker 5: has injected himself very heavily into politics, not just in
4:00
Speaker 5: the United States, but especially in the United States. And
4:03
Speaker 5: so Elon Musk is not without partisanship in the sense
4:07
Speaker 5: that most people don't look at Elon Musk and say, wow,
4:11
Speaker 5: he's just a crazy billionaire, they say he's a billionaire
4:14
Speaker 5: who's associated himself very much with the political right. And
4:16
Speaker 5: so those on the political right are a little more
4:18
Speaker 5: sympathetic to X and Grok than people on the left.
4:22
Speaker 5: So even though you get large portions of the population,
4:27
Speaker 5: certainly in the United States, that are very worried about
4:29
Speaker 5: AI and what's going to happen with AI, and many
4:32
Speaker 5: people around the world are uncomfortable right at the moment
4:34
Speaker 5: that we're taping this with the abilities of Grok to
4:37
Speaker 5: undress underage people, You have people who will nevertheless, for
4:43
Speaker 5: political reasons, and I want to say a little more
4:46
Speaker 5: about those political reasons, who might be more supportive of
4:49
Speaker 5: Musk than if Musk didn't have political valence in the
4:52
Speaker 5: sense where we're an apolitical figure. And so we find
4:56
Speaker 5: that scandals that have political valence are a little bit
4:59
Speaker 5: harder to catch on, though I have to say that Grok, Musk,
5:03
Speaker 5: and X are doing their damnedest to kind of break
5:05
Speaker 5: through that wall.
5:07
Speaker 1: So I guess before we get into that, though, most
5:10
Speaker 1: of our guests are scientists. You're a social scientist. Obviously,
5:13
Speaker 1: social science is a type of science. But, you know,
5:16
Speaker 1: each scandal, and it kind of comes across in your book,
5:19
Speaker 1: each scandal is a little bit different.
5:21
Speaker 2: So how do you draw? Tell us about how you.
5:25
Speaker 1: Go about conducting the research and you sort of have
5:28
Speaker 1: historical narratives around many of the scandals in your book,
5:31
Speaker 1: how they unfolded and what have you.
5:34
Speaker 2: How do you go about.
5:38
Speaker 1: Sort of analysing each of those scandals and drawing together
5:42
Speaker 1: a coherent conclusion, as you've done, about how these things
5:46
Speaker 1: play out and how they can influence public views on
5:50
Speaker 1: large businesses, but also on how democracy should work and
5:54
Speaker 1: good government should function.
5:57
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, thank you for the open question.
5:59
Speaker 5: Many hard scientists have a view of social science that's
6:03
Speaker 5: somewhat more skeptical, that it goes all the way to,
6:05
Speaker 5: you know, it's throwing feces at the wall sort of things.
6:08
Speaker 2: That's why I asked it rather than Simon.
6:13
Speaker 4: But I think we can take it all the way
6:15
Speaker 4: to where we're all.
6:15
Speaker 5: Trying to do the same thing and that we're trying
6:18
Speaker 5: to uncover what is the truth. And we're trying to
6:22
Speaker 5: take hypotheses to data that can shed light on that.
6:25
Speaker 5: And so Our truth is a lot about public opinion
6:29
Speaker 5: and what the public thinks. And so we're very interested
6:32
Speaker 5: in trying to understand where people stand. So when we
6:36
Speaker 5: talk about public opinion, for example, there's a chapter about
6:39
Speaker 5: financial regulation. So we're measuring what opinions are about financial
6:44
Speaker 5: regulation in a way that is pretty systematic in terms
6:48
Speaker 5: of if you just ask individual questions of the sort
6:51
Speaker 5: that one asks in the kind of polls that you
6:53
Speaker 5: read in newspapers, they move around a lot. But we
6:56
Speaker 5: ask scales, and scales tend to hang together much more regularly,
6:59
Speaker 5: and we use a technique called factor analysis to draw
7:02
Speaker 5: out what, if you like, is the underlying latent variable,
7:05
Speaker 5: which may or may not be familiar to you all
7:06
Speaker 5: as a way to think about opinion. And so then
7:10
Speaker 5: we measure, with those measures of, say, financial regulation or
7:14
Speaker 5: technological regulation or positions on climate change, we then are
7:20
Speaker 5: able to look at what happens when in a survey
7:23
Speaker 5: context we randomize the assignment between, and here you're moving
7:26
Speaker 5: into an experimental context that will be very familiar to
7:29
Speaker 5: all of your scientific listeners, your exposure to either what
7:33
Speaker 5: we call the scandal treatment where they read about, say
7:36
Speaker 5: for example, Goldman Sachs and the way that Goldman Sachs
7:40
Speaker 5: behaved in the wake of the financial crisis and how
7:42
Speaker 5: it was covered in the U.S. Congress, or they'll read
7:45
Speaker 5: about Exxon and the Exxon News scandal and how Exxon was,
7:50
Speaker 5: you know, aware of, had very good models of climate
7:53
Speaker 5: change from the 1970s, but basically tried to systematically push
7:57
Speaker 5: the narrative that, in fact, science is very uncertain, so
8:00
Speaker 5: we shouldn't regulate in this area.
8:02
Speaker 4: So that's the scandal treatment, if you like.
8:04
Speaker 5: It mimics what a news article would be without any
8:07
Speaker 5: particular name of a publication so that people don't get
8:11
Speaker 5: distracted by that.
8:12
Speaker 4: And then they would get a control group.
8:16
Speaker 5: And the control group is very important for us because
8:19
Speaker 5: we're not interested in what the effects that business coverage,
8:22
Speaker 5: which bores some people in the first place, has on people.
8:25
Speaker 5: So we take a sort of neutral company, for example,
8:29
Speaker 5: Office Depot in the United States is our control group.
8:31
Speaker 5: And we write a very boring article about their business strategy.
8:35
Speaker 5: It's not boring to business analysts, but it's boring to
8:36
Speaker 5: most readers. And so it's designed to evoke images of business,
8:41
Speaker 5: but not any particular strong valence issues.
8:44
Speaker 4: And that's our control to which we compare scandal effects.
8:47
Speaker 1: Let's hope they don't have a big scandal about it.
8:50
Speaker 2: Sorry, Simon.
8:52
Speaker 4: You laugh. Sorry, just to say on that.
8:55
Speaker 5: We did a set of surveys in 2020 and then
8:57
Speaker 5: again in 2023, and one of our control companies in
9:02
Speaker 5: Germany did have a scandal in between, so we had
9:04
Speaker 5: to switch companies.
9:05
Speaker 3: Amazing. So, Pepper, when you.
9:11
Speaker 3: So you have the people that you get opinions from
9:14
Speaker 3: and you sort of... How... How far out of your
9:17
Speaker 3: way do you go to ensure an even demographic, if
9:21
Speaker 3: that makes sense?
9:23
Speaker 5: That's pretty fundamental to what we're doing. We employed YouGov,
9:29
Speaker 5: which is a pretty well-known survey firm and relatively reputable.
9:32
Speaker 4: I would say highly reputable, actually.
9:35
Speaker 5: We're trying to get a representative sample based on a
9:39
Speaker 5: number of demographic characteristics, like gender, like income, like education,
9:45
Speaker 5: like vote share, so that the group we have mimics
9:48
Speaker 5: the population in these countries. And then we have relatively
9:51
Speaker 5: large samples so that we're pretty sure that we're not
9:53
Speaker 5: far off of what the population actually thinks.
9:57
Speaker 2: And so these scandals, you know, I kind of think.
10:00
Speaker 1: what I was really interested in your book is, you know,
10:02
Speaker 1: that they're not a new phenomenon. So corporate scandals have
10:07
Speaker 1: been for big companies have been around for some time.
10:11
Speaker 1: You know, it's not just that I kind of always
10:16
Speaker 1: thought that, you know, things like Meta and things like Amazon,
10:21
Speaker 1: you know, in the internet age, they've just grown to
10:23
Speaker 1: be these massive companies. But there have been very large
10:26
Speaker 1: and very influential and very powerful companies in the past.
10:29
Speaker 1: And in fact, you start the book, actually, with one
10:34
Speaker 1: of the earlier examples of a corporate scandal is around
10:37
Speaker 1: meat processing in the US. I wonder if you'd like
10:43
Speaker 1: to say a little bit more about that.
10:45
Speaker 4: Thank you for the opening, Tim.
10:46
Speaker 5: So we're going to venture into history here, so I
10:48
Speaker 5: hope the scientific listeners won't feel uncomfortable. So in terms
10:53
Speaker 5: of positioning the book, we try to say many people
10:56
Speaker 5: think we're in an age that's very close to the
11:00
Speaker 5: 1930s where parties are radicalizing and democracy seems under threat.
11:03
Speaker 5: We agree that democracy is under threat, but we think
11:06
Speaker 5: the better analogy for where we stand is the 1900s,
11:08
Speaker 5: especially the 1900s in the United States where.
11:13
Speaker 4: In the United States as a result of the technological.
11:15
Speaker 5: Revolution, the industrial revolution, you'd had, which is, of course,
11:19
Speaker 5: just another version of what we're experiencing now with first
11:22
Speaker 5: the internet and now AI, you had these massive companies
11:26
Speaker 5: that grew up. They were phenomenally successful. They made lives
11:29
Speaker 5: a lot better. They made living standards a lot better.
11:32
Speaker 5: But they also began to exert huge control over politics.
11:35
Speaker 5: And there was, if you like, an ambient concern about
11:38
Speaker 5: these in the American public. And So scandals provide a
11:42
Speaker 5: way for that ambient concern to get released. They're the
11:47
Speaker 5: earthquake that's happening while there's sort of a plate tectonics
11:51
Speaker 5: going on underneath. And the plate tectonics are these very
11:53
Speaker 5: big companies are suddenly taking a role that they didn't
11:56
Speaker 5: have before. And people are being democratically disempowered and they
12:00
Speaker 5: don't like it. And political parties don't like it either.
12:03
Speaker 5: And so the scandal that Tim mentioned was the publication
12:07
Speaker 5: of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair in 1906.
12:10
Speaker 4: Which was, in fact, a novel.
12:12
Speaker 5: It was not about what actually happened, but he was
12:15
Speaker 5: an investigative reporter. And he went in and he sort
12:18
Speaker 5: of worked among the stockyards, which is, of course, the
12:22
Speaker 5: place where they slaughter animals. And he reported the state
12:26
Speaker 5: of the stockyards and the way that, you know, rats
12:30
Speaker 5: had been poisoned and then ground up into your sausage
12:33
Speaker 5: and how These big carcasses were dragged across the floor
12:37
Speaker 5: where the workers had spit their tubercular phlegm. And the
12:41
Speaker 5: book caught fire in the United States. You know, it
12:44
Speaker 5: was rejected by several publishers, but when it was published,
12:47
Speaker 5: it immediately sold out because it spoke to something that
12:49
Speaker 5: Americans were really worried about, which is that they were
12:51
Speaker 5: getting this crap beef and crap meat and that it
12:54
Speaker 5: wasn't safe for them. And so you immediately get the
12:56
Speaker 5: establishment of what becomes the Food and Drug Administration. And
13:01
Speaker 5: so that sort of beginning of the regulatory state in
13:04
Speaker 5: the United States, we think is very suggestive of the
13:07
Speaker 5: era we may be in now. But no scandals are
13:09
Speaker 5: not new, but they're especially important at a time when
13:12
Speaker 5: you get a society out of whack in terms of
13:14
Speaker 5: the role of big companies.
13:16
Speaker 1: Well, one thing that Upton Sinclair, was that his name?
13:21
Speaker 4: Yes.
13:22
Speaker 1: One of the things, he was left wing, you point
13:25
Speaker 1: out in the book, and he was a socialist. So
13:27
Speaker 1: he was kind of, he was hoping to sort of
13:29
Speaker 1: empower socialists, but But actually it led to this regulation
13:33
Speaker 1: that you talk about. And he had a great line
13:35
Speaker 1: about sort of trying to punch them in the chest,
13:37
Speaker 1: but missed and got them in the stomach.
13:39
Speaker 4: Yes, I aim for the heart and I hit them
13:41
Speaker 4: in the stomach is what he says.
13:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great line. It made me, I was amused. Simon.
13:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, so when, you know, when Tim suggested
13:52
Speaker 3: you as a guest in the book, I think what
13:54
Speaker 3: I found interesting was the, well, in the title was
13:58
Speaker 3: the focus on billionaires in particular. I wondered if you
14:03
Speaker 3: can tell us this sort of the companies and is
14:07
Speaker 3: that a big distinction from just rich people? Like does
14:13
Speaker 3: the billionaire distinction tell us something that, you know, sort
14:17
Speaker 3: of does it give us something that we don't get
14:20
Speaker 3: just from a rich elite, if that makes sense?
14:24
Speaker 5: So we've done a lot of work on attitudes towards
14:27
Speaker 5: actual billionaires. And we find that the billionaires... So we
14:33
Speaker 5: know in politics that stories about structural phenomena are a
14:38
Speaker 5: little more boring than stories that are told episodically. And
14:42
Speaker 5: episodically means in terms of an individual person. The billionaires
14:47
Speaker 5: are the episodic stories of our age, right? They explain
14:53
Speaker 5: or they represent these massive changes which have concentrated a
14:57
Speaker 5: lot of income and wealth in a very few hands.
14:59
Speaker 5: And so you have powerful companies, but already a powerful
15:03
Speaker 5: company is kind of, it's hard to understand, you know,
15:06
Speaker 5: exactly what's going on with meta. It's hard to understand
15:10
Speaker 5: what's going on with, you know, say a crypto company
15:12
Speaker 5: or FTX, but it's very easy to understand what's going
15:14
Speaker 5: on with Sam Bankman Freed or with Mark Zuckerberg, right?
15:17
Speaker 4: So that catches attention. People focus on that.
15:21
Speaker 5: And we find that there's, if you like, and I'll
15:24
Speaker 5: kind of veer into something that I hope we can
15:26
Speaker 5: talk more about, which is a difference between what we
15:30
Speaker 5: call a kind of good populism and bad populism. And
15:33
Speaker 5: this is implicit in the book because it's not just
15:36
Speaker 5: about corporate scandals. It's about corporate scandals have to, for
15:40
Speaker 5: them to have effect, there has to be sort of
15:41
Speaker 5: resentment out there. And we find a lot of resentment
15:44
Speaker 5: towards billionaires that's concentrating what we call a good populism.
15:48
Speaker 5: And it's not good because, for example, many listeners will
15:50
Speaker 5: be on the left and they will say, oh, well,
15:52
Speaker 5: it's good because it'll get these right-wingers out.
15:54
Speaker 4: It's not.
15:54
Speaker 5: It's about good populism is a sort of resentment of
15:58
Speaker 5: economic unfairness that's embodied in our current system, which is
16:01
Speaker 5: shared across the left and the right. And it goes
16:05
Speaker 5: alongside of what we call bad populism, which is concerned
16:08
Speaker 5: about political unfairness, which is represented by items on. You
16:12
Speaker 5: can't trust the mainstream media. It doesn't matter which parties
16:14
Speaker 5: get elected. There are just a few people who are
16:17
Speaker 5: in power. All of these things hang together very closely
16:20
Speaker 5: in public opinion. And those things, what we call that
16:23
Speaker 5: political unfairness dimension, also hangs very closely with anti-immigrant, anti-minority,
16:29
Speaker 5: and anti-Semitism views.
16:32
Speaker 4: So those things all hang together on one side.
16:34
Speaker 5: Good populism is actually associated with warmer feelings towards minorities
16:40
Speaker 5: and immigrants and very hostile feelings towards billionaires. So we
16:43
Speaker 5: actually find that there's a big trend out there, which
16:47
Speaker 5: is waiting to be captured by parties that want to
16:51
Speaker 5: try to seize it in terms of bringing in some
16:53
Speaker 5: sort of common sense regulation to these billionaires. It exists
16:56
Speaker 5: on the left, it's highly influential on the left, but
16:58
Speaker 5: it also exists on the right.
17:00
Speaker 1: So your last chapter actually is called Good Populism, if
17:03
Speaker 1: I remember rightly in the book.
17:04
Speaker 4: That's right.
17:06
Speaker 2: And so.
17:07
Speaker 1: But as you point out, and maybe I've kind of
17:10
Speaker 1: misunderstood this bit, but so some of our richest people
17:14
Speaker 1: on the planet at the moment, as you mentioned about
17:16
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, which we talked about earlier, is very right wing.
17:20
Speaker 1: He's come down on the right wing side. Those are
17:24
Speaker 1: probably his politics. I have no doubt about that. But
17:27
Speaker 1: does that, when you end up with a billionaire getting
17:31
Speaker 1: involved in politics on one side, does that sort of
17:34
Speaker 1: make the good populism hard because he's bringing people from
17:38
Speaker 1: the right to his side to become supportive of him?
17:40
Speaker 1: Because you haven't got that broad church across the political
17:44
Speaker 1: spectrum of people who are opposed to the billionaires or
17:48
Speaker 1: the unfurling scandals.
17:51
Speaker 4: Well, so Tim, people are complicated. They hold contradictory views.
17:56
Speaker 2: I don't? What are you talking about?
17:59
Speaker 5: So a way to think about this kind of thinking
18:03
Speaker 5: in politics is tribalism, right? People have a kind of
18:05
Speaker 5: tribal view that's associated with the right or the left,
18:09
Speaker 5: or in the United Kingdom for a long time, it
18:10
Speaker 5: was with Brexit or remain, and so leave or remain.
18:15
Speaker 5: And so these views, they are one strand that goes
18:20
Speaker 5: on alongside in the same person's mind often, a feeling
18:23
Speaker 5: that the billionaires are really out of control. So if
18:27
Speaker 5: you take, for example, Steve Bannon, who is a big
18:30
Speaker 5: thinker on the right in the United States, or you
18:32
Speaker 5: take JD Vance, the current vice president of the United States,
18:36
Speaker 5: These guys are very anti-big corporation, very anti-big tech in
18:40
Speaker 5: a lot of their discussions, even though JD Vance is
18:44
Speaker 5: basically bankrolled by Peter Thiel, who's a famous right-wing ideologue
18:48
Speaker 5: and billionaire. And so you get these things going together,
18:52
Speaker 5: and Bannon has been pushing to get the tech bros
18:54
Speaker 5: out of the administration because he realizes that a lot
18:56
Speaker 5: of the electoral force of what we call MAGA in
18:58
Speaker 5: the United States is, in fact, anti-big company and especially
19:03
Speaker 5: anti-big tech.
19:04
Speaker 4: And so.
19:05
Speaker 5: You know, the question is what comes out when you
19:07
Speaker 5: have these scandals and what are the moments that people
19:09
Speaker 5: seize on where you get these real focusing events where
19:12
Speaker 5: they stop looking at Musk as an actor associated with
19:16
Speaker 5: the Trump administration and start looking at Musk as someone
19:19
Speaker 5: who has unbelievable power over a lot of lives, including
19:23
Speaker 5: our informational sphere. And, you know, people come together and say,
19:26
Speaker 5: maybe there's something we need to do about this.
19:29
Speaker 2: So, sorry, Sam, I hear about.
19:31
Speaker 4: No, no, go ahead.
19:32
Speaker 3: Go ahead, Tim. So.
19:34
Speaker 1: I kind of then I kind of want to come
19:36
Speaker 1: a little bit round via a couple of examples to
19:39
Speaker 1: sort of how how these scandals can kind of help
19:42
Speaker 1: save democracy, because, you know, there's a lot of people.
19:45
Speaker 1: And I think you're right. A lot of our listeners
19:47
Speaker 1: are on the left. They're worried about the state of democracy.
19:50
Speaker 1: and what it looks like going forwards. But you have
19:53
Speaker 1: one or two examples. I'm thinking of the Samsung example
19:56
Speaker 1: in particular, where a corporate scandal actually led to, you know,
20:01
Speaker 1: the president of Korea stepping down or being forced out.
20:06
Speaker 1: And That's relatively unusual, though, is that you get to
20:10
Speaker 1: that point where you end up with a change of
20:12
Speaker 1: a powerful political figure who's managed to somehow get embroiled
20:16
Speaker 1: in a large corporate scandal.
20:20
Speaker 4: Yeah.
20:20
Speaker 5: And so the thing about the Samsung scandal, which maybe
20:24
Speaker 5: I'll give a little context for listeners. So it. The
20:28
Speaker 5: reason we talk about Korea, because, of course, South Korea
20:32
Speaker 5: back in 1960 was a backwater.
20:35
Speaker 4: It was one of the least developed countries in the world.
20:37
Speaker 4: It was very poor.
20:39
Speaker 5: And then it went through a crash course in industrialization,
20:42
Speaker 5: led by a bunch of big conglomerates called chaebol. And
20:47
Speaker 5: Samsung was the biggest among these or has become the
20:49
Speaker 5: biggest among these.
20:50
Speaker 4: And so these companies helped build.
20:52
Speaker 5: Modern Korea, and they were very closely associated with the
20:55
Speaker 5: autocratic leaders of Korea for a long time. And so
20:58
Speaker 5: they've been wrapped up with it, but there also is
21:00
Speaker 5: a lot of national pride about these companies. And so
21:03
Speaker 5: what happened with the fall of that administration that was
21:07
Speaker 5: tied up with these chaebol, these conglomerates, is that they
21:11
Speaker 5: were increasingly involved in corruption scandals. And so there was,
21:15
Speaker 5: if you like, a kind of simmering opinion in Korea
21:18
Speaker 5: about this kind of thing shouldn't be going on, but
21:22
Speaker 5: it seems like there's nothing we can do about it.
21:24
Speaker 5: And then there was a scandal where the president is
21:29
Speaker 5: shown to have an advisor, sort of a Rasputin figure,
21:33
Speaker 5: who has complete control over her, and part of the
21:36
Speaker 5: thing she's doing is getting a big donation from Samsung
21:40
Speaker 5: such that she can wield influence over the president. And
21:44
Speaker 5: that wraps the conglomerates right into a sort of bribery
21:47
Speaker 5: scandal around the president, and people march out on the
21:50
Speaker 5: street in what's called these candlelight protests, and eventually it
21:53
Speaker 5: topples the president, the president is impeached.
21:56
Speaker 4: And so.
21:57
Speaker 5: Korea is a very successful example of a society that
22:00
Speaker 5: kind of mobilizes around scandal issues and demands political change.
22:05
Speaker 5: But of course, there were lots of scandals that didn't
22:07
Speaker 5: take off. It just happened to be that it came
22:10
Speaker 5: at the right moment where there was this pressure that
22:13
Speaker 5: had built up.
22:14
Speaker 4: There was dissatisfaction.
22:15
Speaker 5: And then, of course, this very juicy scandal broke and
22:18
Speaker 5: it It involves the sort of puppy and a mistreatment
22:20
Speaker 5: of a puppy, if you'll remember from the book. So
22:22
Speaker 5: it has lots of colorful elements that catch people's eyes,
22:25
Speaker 5: but then it brought people out onto the street to
22:27
Speaker 5: protest in a big way. But as you say, that
22:29
Speaker 5: is rare. That is not what scandals often look like.
22:31
Speaker 5: What scandals often look like is people get really concerned
22:34
Speaker 5: about this, and activists come out, and they take advantage
22:38
Speaker 5: of that latent opinion, and they sort of try to
22:40
Speaker 5: push through change. So that's much more the modal case
22:44
Speaker 5: where you get reform, where some really crazy person says,
22:47
Speaker 5: you know, this is something I'm going to do something
22:49
Speaker 5: about and we need to change it. And so Max Schrimms,
22:52
Speaker 5: for example, the Austrian, Alistair McTaggart in California, these are
22:56
Speaker 5: much more your figures who make a regulatory change in
22:59
Speaker 5: the wake of a scandal.
23:02
Speaker 3: So, Pepper, are there, I mean, this could be a
23:06
Speaker 3: now thing or it could be a historical thing. Are
23:09
Speaker 3: there some institutions that are sort of, more susceptible to
23:15
Speaker 3: this kind of influence from the very rich or billionaires
23:20
Speaker 3: and others that are more resilient or is it an
23:23
Speaker 3: across the board kind of thing?
23:24
Speaker 5: So when you say institutions, are you talking about some
23:27
Speaker 5: countries have institutions that are better at resisting this sort
23:30
Speaker 5: of influence.
23:30
Speaker 4: Of the wealthy? So do you have something in mind,
23:35
Speaker 4: I wonder?
23:36
Speaker 3: I generally don't. As a sort of scientist, I'm thinking,
23:39
Speaker 3: do patterns emerge? Are there certain Are there some ways
23:43
Speaker 3: of setting up a country or, for example, some things
23:46
Speaker 3: that make it more resilient or make it more susceptible?
23:49
Speaker 1: Could you have had, okay, could the Samsung, let me
23:53
Speaker 1: put it another way, could something similar to Samsung have
23:55
Speaker 1: played out in China?
23:57
Speaker 5: Okay. So I think this is a really good question.
24:01
Speaker 5: And we start out the book with a story about
24:04
Speaker 5: the difference between two milk scandals, one in China. that
24:08
Speaker 5: actually wound up killing babies because what was happening in China,
24:12
Speaker 5: and so in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games,
24:16
Speaker 5: a bunch of stories were suppressed about babies getting ill
24:20
Speaker 5: from consuming this infant formula. And it turns out that
24:23
Speaker 5: a company was lacing this formula with a product called melamine,
24:27
Speaker 5: which is basically involved in the production of plastics. And
24:33
Speaker 5: what it does, it apparently increases protein content in the milk.
24:38
Speaker 5: And when you measure milk for protein content, you measure nitrogen.
24:43
Speaker 5: And so melamine brings a lot of nitrogen. And so
24:45
Speaker 5: they would use that as a cheap way to bump
24:46
Speaker 5: up the protein content of the milk. So it successfully
24:49
Speaker 5: passed muster. But also melamine is very bad for kidneys.
24:53
Speaker 5: And so some babies wound up dying and many wound
24:56
Speaker 5: up getting ill as a result of this sort of
24:57
Speaker 5: melamine scandal. The Chinese government suppressed it for a while
25:02
Speaker 5: and then allowed it to come out. And when it
25:04
Speaker 5: came out, they then had some scapegoats who they actually executed,
25:07
Speaker 5: you know, two people associated with the company. But they
25:10
Speaker 5: didn't allow any discredit to come to government. They didn't
25:13
Speaker 5: allow an attempt to mobilize around it, as often happens
25:18
Speaker 5: in democracies, where people are challenging the government, saying, you know,
25:22
Speaker 5: this is happening on your watch. It's a mistake of
25:24
Speaker 5: our regulatory system. And so now the Chinese, they are
25:26
Speaker 5: widely distrustful of their government. of their food production system
25:31
Speaker 5: because of the role of profit in sort of cutting
25:33
Speaker 5: corners and not just in milk. But so, so Lactalis,
25:37
Speaker 5: a French company, had a scandal that was in many
25:40
Speaker 5: ways less bad, but led to 35 parliamentary hearings, led
25:44
Speaker 5: to people being put on trial. And the French, they
25:47
Speaker 5: still trust their food. In fact, they'll tell you their
25:48
Speaker 5: food is a lot better than the food we have here.
25:51
Speaker 5: And certainly it's just as safe and certainly maybe safer
25:54
Speaker 5: than places where you don't have as much food regulation
25:57
Speaker 5: regularly being tested. And so that's kind of a democratic
25:59
Speaker 5: advantage for systems where you are a liberal democratic advantage.
26:04
Speaker 5: It's not just a democracy, but you've got to have
26:06
Speaker 5: an allowance for people to go out and protest and
26:09
Speaker 5: be pains to themselves so that change can actually happen.
26:13
Speaker 1: So can you give us an example then a little
26:16
Speaker 1: bit more about how the backlash against these corporate scandals
26:21
Speaker 1: and whether it's tied to individuals or the companies as
26:24
Speaker 1: you've been talking about, how it can actually help democracy?
26:28
Speaker 1: Is it just through putting better governance in place so
26:32
Speaker 1: that these large organisations, these large companies can't continue to
26:38
Speaker 1: behave outside of the law or.
26:44
Speaker 2: In a way that's damaging to individuals or groups of individuals?
26:50
Speaker 2: Or is there something more to.
26:51
Speaker 4: It than that?
26:54
Speaker 5: Okay, I was warned before coming on that academics sometimes
26:57
Speaker 5: have long answers. You'll interrupt me if I'm one of
27:02
Speaker 5: those just now. But it's a great question, and it
27:06
Speaker 5: goes to the core of what we talk about in
27:07
Speaker 5: our diagnosis.
27:08
Speaker 4: Essentially, democracy has several problems.
27:11
Speaker 5: When I say democracy, I mean democracy in many of
27:14
Speaker 5: the rich countries, not just in any one country, not
27:15
Speaker 5: just in the UK. In the UK, in the US,
27:17
Speaker 5: in France, in Germany, Australia, Switzerland, these are the countries
27:20
Speaker 5: where we've done surveys.
27:22
Speaker 4: Korea.
27:25
Speaker 5: What's happening is you have these companies getting very big
27:28
Speaker 5: and at the same time less and less ability.
27:31
Speaker 4: To control their influence in politics.
27:33
Speaker 5: And that's a widely sensed problem on both the left
27:35
Speaker 5: and the right. One area where they're particularly strong, and
27:39
Speaker 5: this is of course a product of the change of
27:42
Speaker 5: the internet age, is in.
27:44
Speaker 4: The informational sphere.
27:45
Speaker 5: So the informational sphere has got distorted such that it
27:49
Speaker 5: used to be that we were.
27:50
Speaker 4: All talking the same language.
27:51
Speaker 5: We all had a similar story that we were telling
27:54
Speaker 5: each other about what's going on. Now, Simon and I
27:56
Speaker 5: may have different political beliefs, but we were arguing about facts,
28:00
Speaker 5: about what, you know, do we want a government that
28:01
Speaker 5: will have higher taxes or lower taxes, more regulation or
28:04
Speaker 5: less regulation?
28:06
Speaker 4: And with the control that these big.
28:08
Speaker 5: Companies have over the informational sphere and with the way
28:10
Speaker 5: that people have disappeared down their little rabbit holes, we
28:13
Speaker 5: don't get as many of these common conversations. What corporate
28:16
Speaker 5: scandals do, we find, is they recreate these common conversations
28:20
Speaker 5: and they suggest a way that common conversations can be
28:23
Speaker 5: recreated and they result in the kind of common sense
28:27
Speaker 5: upwelling of people demanding accountability from their politicians. Because most people,
28:31
Speaker 5: most of the time, don't care about politics. They're thinking
28:33
Speaker 5: about other things. I'm a political scientist. I spend all
28:35
Speaker 5: my time thinking about politics. But that makes me exceedingly unusual,
28:38
Speaker 5: as my kids don't hesitate to tell me over the day.
28:42
Speaker 5: So it's about bringing people into politics and saying something
28:45
Speaker 5: has to happen, and then it's about activists responding to
28:48
Speaker 5: that demand.
28:48
Speaker 4: So that's why... the the claim about being.
28:51
Speaker 5: Good for democracy um is if you like two-pronged um
28:55
Speaker 5: in the one sense our diagnosis both about the role
28:57
Speaker 5: of companies and the role of the informational sphere is
28:59
Speaker 5: very much tied up to how we can correct this
29:02
Speaker 5: and make democracies work and then on the other hand
29:04
Speaker 5: as i was talking about in the answer earlier to
29:05
Speaker 5: sima a lot of the feelings about economic unfairness are
29:09
Speaker 5: actually associated there so they're associated with feelings that are
29:14
Speaker 5: um Good for solidarity. The only kind of solidarity that
29:17
Speaker 5: gets broken down when you play on what we call
29:19
Speaker 5: the sentiment of good populism is solidarity with billionaires.
29:22
Speaker 4: And we think that's not much of a loss.
29:25
Speaker 5: We think that when you play up differences with minorities,
29:28
Speaker 5: with religious groups, with immigrants in general, I say this
29:32
Speaker 5: as an immigrant in this country myself, that's much more
29:34
Speaker 5: corrosive of politics because, democratic politics is fundamentally about pluralism,
29:39
Speaker 5: we accept difference. And so if we identify out groups,
29:42
Speaker 5: not just as a couple of billionaires who have a
29:45
Speaker 5: lot of control over our lives, but as all of
29:47
Speaker 5: these groups that we blame for these problems, that's much
29:50
Speaker 5: more corrosive of democracy. And I think the last 10
29:53
Speaker 5: years in this country, we've very much seen that.
29:55
Speaker 4: And you see the arguments in the UK, are pretty.
29:57
Speaker 5: Much about an agenda set by reform and the radical right,
30:03
Speaker 5: that is, around immigration. And it's not around billionaires and control.
30:07
Speaker 5: And so last year, the Competition and Markets Authority stopped
30:11
Speaker 5: zero mergers in this country. Why? Because Rachel Reeves is saying,
30:15
Speaker 5: what we need to do is we need to get
30:16
Speaker 5: out of the way and let growth happen. Well, growth
30:18
Speaker 5: doesn't happen when you just let the biggest companies control everything.
30:20
Speaker 5: And so there's kind of an imbalance between the deference
30:24
Speaker 5: to what we call bad populism and the sort of
30:27
Speaker 5: appeal of what we think is a democracy that's supporting
30:29
Speaker 5: good populism.
30:31
Speaker 2: So what could we do?
30:32
Speaker 6: What could individuals do to sort of champion some of
30:40
Speaker 6: these corporate scandals or bring them to the fore?
30:44
Speaker 1: And I mean, can you, so I guess another question,
30:45
Speaker 1: can you spot, given all of your analysis, can you
30:48
Speaker 1: spot a scandal before it appears? And is other ways
30:53
Speaker 1: in which the media or people can use these scandals
30:57
Speaker 1: to effectively put pressure on governments in power to try
31:03
Speaker 1: and change their ways for the better?
31:06
Speaker 5: So I think that the role of the individual is
31:10
Speaker 5: hard because the role of the individual is to be ready.
31:13
Speaker 4: And I've given this.
31:14
Speaker 5: Talk for a political audience back in late November. And
31:19
Speaker 5: those were people who I thought were in a potential
31:22
Speaker 5: position of regulatory power. And their job, I said, is to,
31:25
Speaker 5: when the scandals come, seize on them because that's your moment.
31:28
Speaker 5: And if you don't seize on them, you know, the
31:30
Speaker 5: moments don't come every day. And so from the sort
31:34
Speaker 5: of position of the citizen who's not necessarily enforced in
31:39
Speaker 5: a position of power to be able to do that,
31:41
Speaker 5: it's much more about paying attention when scandals happen and,
31:44
Speaker 5: you know, using normal forms of accountability such that politicians
31:47
Speaker 5: perceive people are upset about this. But, so the question is,
31:51
Speaker 5: do we have scandals on the horizon?
31:53
Speaker 4: Of course we do.
31:54
Speaker 5: I mean, and I think the- So, you know, if
31:59
Speaker 5: I could call market bubbles, Tim, I would be, my
32:02
Speaker 5: background would be the Bahamas or something like that from
32:06
Speaker 5: my yacht. But it's pretty clear that we're in some
32:09
Speaker 5: sort of AI bubble. And even the people like Sam Altman,
32:13
Speaker 5: the head of OpenAI are saying that. And when the
32:17
Speaker 5: AI bubble crashes, um, I think that there's going to
32:21
Speaker 5: be a lot more attention to the very tight interlinking
32:24
Speaker 5: that all of the largest companies, uh, the Amazons, the Googles,
32:28
Speaker 5: the Microsofts have made with the new companies of, um,
32:32
Speaker 5: the AI sector and based on, um, wildly optimistic views
32:36
Speaker 5: about what the potential growth is going to be and
32:38
Speaker 5: the ability, um, to actually turn that growth into revenue
32:41
Speaker 5: for these companies, which they have not demonstrated at all. Um,
32:45
Speaker 5: And so that kind of close interlinking of companies, which
32:48
Speaker 5: is essentially monopoly behavior, is something that could come under
32:51
Speaker 5: a lot more scrutiny. More could be said also about
32:54
Speaker 5: the crypto sector, particularly in the United States, where I think,
32:57
Speaker 5: I mean, I think scandals are happening right in front
32:59
Speaker 5: of us. And because they're so political and tied up
33:01
Speaker 5: with the current administration in the United States, they don't
33:04
Speaker 5: yet get seized on because they're in the political sphere.
33:06
Speaker 5: But I think we've got a crypto crash coming. And
33:09
Speaker 5: that may highlight also some more general problems that it
33:13
Speaker 5: seems like a real problem of the sector as opposed
33:16
Speaker 5: to just a partisan left or right problem.
33:20
Speaker 3: Okay. So I've, you know, you sort of talked about
33:24
Speaker 3: this being quite a, you know, a long project. And
33:28
Speaker 3: I was wondering that as you were writing the book
33:32
Speaker 3: and all the research that came before that, did, did,
33:36
Speaker 3: were you surprised by anything or have your own, the
33:39
Speaker 3: way you think about democracy in the world itself, has
33:42
Speaker 3: anything changed?
33:44
Speaker 4: I think.
33:51
Speaker 5: Scientists do their work, and this includes social scientists, and
33:56
Speaker 5: their concerns change over time. It's not true to say
34:03
Speaker 5: that our concerns don't influence the science that we do.
34:08
Speaker 5: If you think about the structure of scientific revolutions, we
34:11
Speaker 5: know that we're kind of prisoners of a given set
34:15
Speaker 5: of assumptions. And sometimes things have to happen to break
34:17
Speaker 5: those assumptions. It's not just that we immediately find evidence
34:20
Speaker 5: and say, oh, we'll discount that. So I guess the,
34:27
Speaker 5: and indeed, Max Planck, I think, said that science proceeds
34:31
Speaker 5: one funeral at a time, right? Because we have to
34:33
Speaker 5: get new people in to think new things.
34:34
Speaker 4: And so I spent a.
34:35
Speaker 5: Lot of my early career looking at, why business always
34:39
Speaker 5: dominates in politics and the structural forces. But the thing
34:43
Speaker 5: that I discovered was it is in moments that are unusual,
34:48
Speaker 5: that are non-structural, that we get the really big changes.
34:52
Speaker 5: And so what I tried to do then was, working
34:55
Speaker 5: with Tegu, thinking about how it is that these moments happen,
35:00
Speaker 5: especially as we get what was first the financial crisis
35:04
Speaker 5: and then the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, because I
35:06
Speaker 5: was living in Italy, where we see people so visibly
35:10
Speaker 5: angry about the role of these big companies. And so
35:14
Speaker 5: I think that I became more concerned about the state
35:19
Speaker 5: of democracy vis-a-vis large companies was changing. The character of
35:23
Speaker 5: democratic capitalism was changing. It was changing because of radical
35:28
Speaker 5: improvements that had happened in companies and made them, you know,
35:32
Speaker 5: able to do amazing things. But that also had concentrated
35:34
Speaker 5: amazing power and sort of, was making people desert some
35:39
Speaker 5: of their democratic commitments. And I think this became more
35:43
Speaker 5: important to me as something that needs to be worked on.
35:45
Speaker 5: And therefore I started focusing my attention on how we
35:47
Speaker 5: get these moments.
35:49
Speaker 1: And then we're running out of time. So just probably
35:51
Speaker 1: one last question. You've written the book with, as you mentioned,
35:55
Speaker 1: your collaborator, Tiku Lee. Did you agree on everything?
35:59
Speaker 3: No. Mean question, Tim.
36:04
Speaker 4: So what a great question. So Taeku and I profoundly
36:10
Speaker 4: disagree about many things.
36:11
Speaker 5: And I think the thing that's most relevant probably for
36:14
Speaker 5: this podcast is we kind of disagree about how.
36:18
Speaker 4: To do social science, or at least we did when
36:20
Speaker 4: we started.
36:21
Speaker 5: Taeku is very much what we call a political behaviorist,
36:24
Speaker 5: where he looks at the individuals and individual opinion, and
36:27
Speaker 5: he's happy when he gets a new data set so
36:29
Speaker 5: he can figure out how voters changed in this particular
36:32
Speaker 5: election in response to these particular forces. Whereas I was
36:36
Speaker 5: concerned as what we call a political economist with the
36:39
Speaker 5: forces that lead to different outcomes and how interest groups win.
36:43
Speaker 5: And I thought elections were nothing but sideshows. I continue
36:46
Speaker 5: to think that largely. But, you know, I think both
36:49
Speaker 5: of us came together agreeing that the democratic public is important,
36:53
Speaker 5: but indifferent to a lot of things. And so the
36:55
Speaker 5: question became, when does it agree? But often he would
36:58
Speaker 5: say something in my office And I would look at
37:01
Speaker 5: him and have to translate his political behaviorist language into
37:05
Speaker 5: my political economist language. And that continues to happen. You know,
37:09
Speaker 5: we have weekly Zoom calls. And, you know, it's not
37:12
Speaker 5: unknown for us to use spicy language talking about behaviorists
37:16
Speaker 5: or political economists and each other's foolish assumptions. But we've
37:20
Speaker 5: each learned, I think, an enormous amount from doing that.
37:22
Speaker 5: And so I think we have not converged, but we've
37:26
Speaker 5: come a lot closer to each other. That's sort of
37:28
Speaker 5: the biggest area of disagreement that we have.
37:31
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's worked and I'd encourage our listeners
37:34
Speaker 1: to buy a copy and read the book. So billionaire backlash,
37:38
Speaker 1: the age of corporate scandals. It's hard to read back
37:42
Speaker 1: to front and how it can save democracy. And so
37:45
Speaker 1: by pepper, cold pepper and, and take who Lee and
37:49
Speaker 1: it's published by Bloomsbury Bloomsbury. And it's, and it's out now. So,
37:57
Speaker 1: and thank you very much for, joining us, Pepper.
38:00
Speaker 2: It's been fascinating to talk to you. I think we'd
38:02
Speaker 2: have to get more social scientists on, Simon. It turns
38:06
Speaker 2: out they do statistics and stuff.
38:11
Speaker 5: Well, these things move very slowly, changing hard scientists' minds.
38:15
Speaker 4: I hope we've had a little impact there. Thank you
38:18
Speaker 4: so much for having me on.
38:19
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
38:20
Speaker 3: Thanks, Pepper.
38:21
Speaker 2: Well, there you go. Some social science, Simon.
38:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that was really interesting. Social science, but
38:30
Speaker 3: The science was definitely there, right?
38:32
Speaker 2: No, I know.
38:33
Speaker 1: It's, you know, the way they go out and collect data,
38:36
Speaker 1: interview people doing various questionnaires, make sure it is as
38:40
Speaker 1: broad as possible in terms of the demographics and then
38:43
Speaker 1: analysing them using some pretty hardcore statistical approaches. So you'll
38:49
Speaker 1: probably have to stop being rude about social scientists from
38:51
Speaker 1: now on then.
38:53
Speaker 3: For our listeners, it's Tim that's rude about social science. No,
38:56
Speaker 3: I'm kidding. No, but also the controls. They clearly do
39:00
Speaker 3: sort of positive and negative controls, and it's, you know, yeah.
39:04
Speaker 3: I found it fascinating, and I have to admit, a
39:07
Speaker 3: little bit scary too.
39:09
Speaker 1: Well, I think what really, you know, you look at
39:13
Speaker 1: things like Meta, you look at things like Google, you
39:16
Speaker 1: look at companies like, you know, SpaceX and Tesla, these
39:21
Speaker 1: huge And I kind of always just thought, and they
39:26
Speaker 1: talk about this early on in the book, that you
39:27
Speaker 1: know this is a new phenomenon but no it's been
39:29
Speaker 1: there as you say the east india company is a
39:31
Speaker 1: really good example and and um and they you know
39:35
Speaker 1: many of them do eventually just seem to you know
39:39
Speaker 1: whether it's they get so big and there's just one
39:41
Speaker 1: or two dodgy employees or whatever or then you start
39:45
Speaker 1: to see some things go wrong so like the vw
39:47
Speaker 1: you know um volkswagen uh not being quite as environmentally
39:53
Speaker 1: friendly as they were supposed to be with their exhaust admissions.
39:55
Speaker 2: And, you know, VW is like, I.
39:57
Speaker 1: Always thought that, well, I suspect that was a German
39:59
Speaker 1: company he was talking about to be a, you know,
40:02
Speaker 1: to be an upstanding, trustworthy company.
40:05
Speaker 2: But, you know, even the Germans, they get embroiled in
40:09
Speaker 2: corporate scandals.
40:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, indeed. I imagine, you know, sort of dig into
40:14
Speaker 3: things and it'll be a global phenomenon. It'll be everywhere, right?
40:19
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah.
40:20
Speaker 3: I think I guess what we didn't touch on directly,
40:24
Speaker 3: which is kind of interesting also, is the role of
40:27
Speaker 3: the media.
40:29
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I think, yeah, you wonder how many
40:33
Speaker 1: scandals are out there that just don't.
40:35
Speaker 2: Get much traction.
40:37
Speaker 3: That's right.
40:38
Speaker 2: And, you know, some of the ones.
40:39
Speaker 1: That, you know, that he was talking about, the milk
40:43
Speaker 1: scandals in China and in France, for example, the meat scandals.
40:47
Speaker 1: that's kind of relating to human health. And to some extent,
40:50
Speaker 1: of course, things like meta are because all the, the
40:53
Speaker 1: mental health concerns around people spending a lot of time
40:57
Speaker 1: on social media and, you know, the, the, you know,
41:01
Speaker 1: fear of missing out and whatever FOMO. So I, you know, and, but, but,
41:06
Speaker 1: and also even the kind of admissions on Volkswagen, it
41:08
Speaker 1: was kind of bad for the environment. So, I mean,
41:11
Speaker 1: one of the things we didn't talk about is that
41:12
Speaker 1: are there, are the particular types of scandal or impacts
41:15
Speaker 1: that are more likely to catch media attention and then,
41:21
Speaker 1: you know, lead to more and more people becoming actually
41:23
Speaker 1: outraged about it.
41:25
Speaker 3: And perhaps different types of scandal in different parts of
41:28
Speaker 3: the world, depending on, you know, sort of economic status,
41:33
Speaker 3: the dominant religion, all sorts of things, I would imagine.
41:37
Speaker 2: You think if there was one in Oxford, it would
41:38
Speaker 2: be the Great Port scandal.
41:40
Speaker 1: Do you?
41:41
Speaker 3: Right, the Great... Court and cheese. I'd be at the
41:46
Speaker 3: heart of it.
41:49
Speaker 2: Anyway, no, it's fascinating.
41:50
Speaker 1: And I encourage readers to read the book and learn
41:53
Speaker 1: a lot more in A Billionaire Backlash by Pepper Coldpepper
41:57
Speaker 1: and Taekoo Lee.
41:59
Speaker 2: And we'll catch up again soon. sima i think um
42:05
Speaker 2: uh i think we've got a few exciting guests to
42:08
Speaker 2: come over the coming.
42:09
Speaker 3: Weeks yeah let's not give too much away right now
42:11
Speaker 3: and uh we'll let people know.
42:13
Speaker 2: Soon excellent okay well have a good rest of the
42:16
Speaker 3: Day you too tim yeah bye now