The most difficult thing about parenthood is no matter how much you love them and how much you want to help them,

there is ultimately a limit on your control.

I'm Rie McRaece and welcome to This Is Uncomfortable, the weekly show for Marketplace about life and how money messes with it.

There's this moment I think a lot of people recognize, when

someone you love starts to see the world differently than you do. It feels deeper than a disagreement.

It's like their values start to feel foreign. They don't quite feel like the same person anymore.

Author Patrick Radin-Keefe spent the last few years getting to know a family in London

who lived through that shift with their teenage son.

As their son got older, his ideas about money and what it takes to succeed

started to pull him into a different world.

Patrick's new book is called London Falling, a mysterious death in a gilded city,

and a family search for truth.

It follows parents, Rochelle, and Matthew Brettler, as they watch their son, Zach, drift

toward an obsession with wealth, and later try to make sense of his untimely death.

I should say, it's a riveting book, but I don't want to spoil it for you all, so instead

of getting into the details of Zach Brettler's death, I'm going to focus on his life.

I invited Patrick on the show to talk about Zach's story and what it reveals about the pull of wealth and how much control we really have over the people we love.

Patrick Radin-Keefe. Welcome to the show.

Great to be with you.

So I really love this book. very intimate, also pretty unsettling.

It raises a lot of thorny questions around money and success that I'm excited to dig into.

But first, for those who haven't read the book, which, you know, just came out, so most people haven't.

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