Books mentioned on Confronting a Global Politician on America's Corruption | Ep. 650

“The beginning of the book describes a Madagascar election, and it really reads like a screenplay where a good hometown kid becomes a horrible corrupt dictator who can't keep his hands off power and money that isn't his.”

“There was one time, which I don't write about in the book, where he wanted advice from me.”

“He had like 10 plates of food, and I’m like, 'Oh my god, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.'/But he also had, I write about this in the book too, this shrine to Bethlehem that I can only describe as a model train Bethlehem.”

“Meanwhile, people don't have healthcare in other parts of Madagascar, but he's got this $58,000 or more scale model of Bethlehem in the living room to show to random dudes who don’t care; I’m just here to write a book.”

“I assume he didn’t know the book was called 'Corruptible' and was about this.”

“I sent copies of the book to the people who come out a bit better, and Mark Ravalo Manana did not receive a copy, so I don’t think he knows he’s in the book because his chief of staff, a super nice guy, just messaged me, saying, 'Happy New Year.'”

“Or if you've got a bad system, let’s just talk about India and Denmark because this is the classic example from the book.”

“It’s an elegant simplicity that I cite in the book; these researchers took economics.”

“Maybe that's your next book; you can just reuse a bunch of stuff from this book because I will tell you the more that I see people, in let's say, a media industry, you see these people who start off wanting to talk about their ideals and things like that.”

“This was one of the few things I really lamented while writing the book, as I was busy with the pandemic.”

“One major argument I present in the book is that self-selection is central to the power dynamic.”

“One of the best studies I came across looks at presidents versus runner-ups in elections over 17 countries for 200 years.”

“One of the problems I talk about in the last third of the book is how to get people who abuse power to accept significantly more scrutiny.”