This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanthu.

When the New York Times showed that Donald Trump may have used a legal loophole to avoid

paying federal income taxes for years, many people expected the self-destribe billionaire

to be embarrassed.

Instead, in a debate with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump said,

he didn't pay any federal income tax. So, if he paid zero, that means zero. That makes me smart.

It got us thinking about a new book by Brooke Harrington, a sociologist at the Copenhagen

Business School in Denmark. She decided several years ago to explore the secret lives of

billionaires. She took an unusual path to enter this world. She herself trained to become

a wealth manager. In the course of this training, she gained unprecedented access to other

wealth managers who agreed to be interviewed for her research. She discovered that in order

to manage money for the super rich, these professionals also learn a lot about the private

lives of their clients. What they shared, Brooke says, shocked her.

The lives of the richest people in the world are so different from those of the rest of

us. It's almost literally unimaginable. National borders are nothing to them. They might

as well not exist. The laws are nothing to them. They might as well not exist.

Today on Hidden Brain, the sociology and psychology of some members of the billionaire class and

the professionals who enabled them.

Brooke Harrington, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Thank you for having me on the show.

For wealth managers to do their job, Brooke, I understand that they need to find out everything

about a client's life, not just a client's financial life, but everything about their

...