Welcome back to the podcast, bribe, swindle, or steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge, and today we're talking about the corrupting influence of power.

We all have a sense that corruption is a tool, maybe a perquisite of the powerful.

But my guest today, Brian Klaus, is going to provide us with some interesting anecdotes

about power from his new book.

Brian is an associate professor in global politics at University College London and a columnist

for the Washington Post.

He's the author of several books, but today we're discussing corruptible, who gets power

and how it changes us. Brian,

thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me on the podcast. We've talked about a number of

books relating to corruption on the podcast previously, but this book definitely takes a different

approach. Can you help us understand why you wrote this book and what gap in the literature it

fails. I started my career studying dictators and despots and I went around the world and sat down

and interviewed some really awful people around the world, everywhere from Madagascar to Thailand

to Cote d'Ivoire, et cetera. And what struck me in these conversations is I

would be sitting next to somebody who had abused their power in a totally malicious way.

And I would be just unbelievably struck by a few things. One was how if somebody else had found

themselves in their position, they may have acted similarly. So sort of

the malleability of human behavior, that fascinated me. The other thing that fascinated me was how

likable some of these people were, how they were very charming, charismatic, and I think,

manipulative. And then the final thing that caused the book to be written was that when I would go

home and I would tell people about these encounters with, you know, what I label as some of the worst people on the planet. These are people who authorized torture or embezzled huge amounts of money from extremely poor people, et cetera. The response I would often get from friends and family members would say, oh, that sounds a lot like my old boss or like the guy who runs my homeowners association.

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