#102: Frauds And Visionaries – Bethany McLean

Bethany McLean is an investigative journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair.

Show notes

Selected links

• Follow Bethany: Website | Twitter
• The Smartest Guys in the Room, by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
• ‘Is Enron Overpriced?’, Bethany’s March 5, 2001, article for Fortune
• ‘What Caused Enron?: A Capsule Social and Economic History of the 1990’s’, article by John Coffee
• Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou
• The Seven Signs of Ethical Collapse, by Marriane Jennings
• Spy The Lie, by Philip Houston, Michael Floyd and Don Tennant
• Saudi America, by Bethany McLean
• The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis

Topics discussed

• How did Bethany become a journalist? 4:13
• How did Enron come to be Enron? 6:30
• How did Bethany see through Enron when most others were beguiled by it? 8:33
• What was the reaction to Bethany’s original article expressing skepticism about Enron? 11:35
• Why was Enron an example of ‘legal fraud’? 13:34
• How to spot the “dogs” dressed up as “ducks”. 16:20
• What were the ultimate causes of Enron’s collapse? 19:43
• How did so many smart people at Enron become so corrupted? 30:06
• Bethany’s book recommendations. 32:42
• The fine line between frauds and visionaries. 34:56
• Self-deception. 41:56
• If Elizabeth Holmes succeeded, would the end have justified her means? 45:23
• Elon Musk. 46:54
• The truth about fracking. 55:14
• How does Bethany stay organised as a journalist? 57:17
• How does Bethany put questions to her sources? 58:36
• Balancing accuracy with narrative flair. 59:35
• Which factors help Bethany decide which facts to include in a story and which to omit from it? 1:05:40
• How to construct an effective narrative. 1:11:46
• What business model could scale up investigative journalism? 1:17:54
• How does democracy survive the eroding of journalism’s traditional business model? 1:24:04