238. Brian Klass — Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How it Changes Us

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2021

⏱️ 101 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the result of poorly designed systems or are they simply bad people? What sort of people aspire to power anyway? Are there individuals among us who should never be given the title of president, or CEO, or PTA leader lest they build their own dictatorship?

Michael Shermer speaks with Brian Klaas, a renowned political scientist, Washington Post columnist and creator of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, about his long sought answers to the above questions.

In his new book Klaas draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world’s top leaders — from the noblest to the most crooked — including presidents and philanthropists as well as rebels, cultists, and dictators, to get to the root of power and corruption. Klaas dives into how facial appearance determines who we pick as leaders, why narcissists make more money, why some people don’t want power at all and others are drawn to it out of a psychopathic impulse, and why being the “beta” (second in command) may be the optimal place for health and well-being.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Sherman Shower Show.
0:25.0	Welcome to the Michael Sherman Show. I'm your host. Michael Shurmer. My guest today is Brian Class, his new book is corruptible. Who gets power and how it changes us? Brian grew up in Minnesota, earned his doctorate at Oxford and is now a professor
0:31.1	of global politics at University College London.
0:34.8	He is also a weekly columnist for the Washington Post, hosted the award-winning
0:38.9	Power Corrupts Podcast, and a frequent guest on national television.
0:44.0	Class has conducted field research across the globe,
0:47.0	interviewed despots, CEOs, torture victims, dissidents, cult leaders, criminals,
0:52.0	and everyday power abusers.
0:55.0	He also has advised major politicians and organizations,
0:59.0	including NATO, the European Union, and Amnesty International.
1:03.2	You can find him at Brian P Class K-A-S.com
1:08.6	and on Twitter at Brian Class K-A-A-A-S again.
1:14.0	Okay, fascinating conversation, very relevant for today's politics.
1:20.0	We talk about the question of does power corrupt or are corrupt people drawn to power.
1:27.8	This is actually a testable hypothesis and he does that quite well. We talk about some of his experiences of interviewing and
1:35.7	talking to dictators and despots and cult leaders and quite fascinating. What he's
1:41.0	searching for here is characteristics of these people and are they different from the rest of us if we think of
1:47.2	1 to 3 percent of the population as being psychopaths and some percentage of them
1:52.0	having the dark triad characteristics of
1:54.4	psychopathy Machiavellianism and narcissism. What about the rest of us?
1:59.3	The 97% of other people who are not psychopads or don't have the dark triad,
2:05.0	why do we fall for power?
	...

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