Welcome back to the podcast, Brib, Swindle, or Steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge and on today's podcast you can listen in on my discussion with Rupert Younger,

director at the Oxford University Center for Corporate Reputation.

Rupert and I spoke at the excellent UC Berkeley conference

Fraud in the Bull Market, informally called The Fraudfest. Here's Rupert. So my name is Rupert Younger.

I'm from the University of Oxford in England where I study the subject of reputation. I'm the

author of a book called The Reputation Game and the co-author

with Frank Partnoy of a mad manifesto reimagining what Marx and Engels would write today

if they were having a conversation. So I thought what we might do is just pick up on, I think,

the excellent prompt and challenge that Bethany mentioned in the last session, which is the

question of why, this fundamental question of motivation. I am interested from my perspective in some of

the evidence that suggests that it's beyond financial. It seems to me that a lot of the why is

answered by social capital, not by financial gain.

People are doing things because they are of their desire to be liked.

Their need to fit in or their pressure to succeed.

If we think about Bernie Madoff, who I interviewed for my book,

this was a story really at its heart for me about him not wanting to admit

failure to a very, very important group of close contacts who were also investors for him.

And Elizabeth Holmes, who will hear more about later, I spent two hours with her, and that was a

deep desire to be seen to be successful. So I think

this question of social capital, in addition to financial capital, is a very important idea.

And what we're going to do, and by the way, this is supported by a number of really interesting

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