Welcome to a very special Monday edition of On the Tape podcast on President's Day, a very special guest with us, Beth Thinney McLean, contributing editor of Vanity Fair, contributor now a business insider, former Goldman Sachs Investment Banking analyst, host of podcast Capital Isn't, which you can find in your favorite podcast store, bestselling author.

We're going to get into your most recent book, The Big Fail, which looks at the pandemic.

I got to know you before I ever met you on the smartest guys in the room at Enron, and we can talk

about all the books. But great to have you here, Bethany, a lot to talk about. You were here with us

exactly a year ago, and a lot was about to happen. A lot had already happened. Let's talk about the big fail in the book and how that's going and what's the feedback on it. Marvelous. So the book came out in the fall. I think that the world is not ready to look back on the pandemic yet. I would argue that it's important. But I think timing-wise, it was awkward. And the book came out right as more important

events were superseding it in the Middle East. So it's been a little quieter than I think Joe

and I would have liked. I co-authored it with Joe No Sarah, with whom I also wrote,

All the Devils Are Here, about the Financial Crisis. Somebody who read it said, you're just going to

make enemies everywhere you go because it's not

easily right wing or left wing. And a couple people who have read it have said to me, I can't tell

what your politics are, which I think is a compliment. But in something that has such an ideological

divide as the pandemic, that's not necessarily a good thing. People want to read what they already

think. So the outcome, having looked, I've not read the full book, I'll be honest with you, but I've obviously read, I promise you, I will read it. I could lie and say,

I read the book. I think it's okay. But let me say, but, but the takeaway is that, you know,

the rich, we're in a great spot during the pandemic and the not rich kind of forced to deal with more of the issues that, you know, the rich got to kind of go away. And so there are socioeconomic consequences that have now occurred as a result.

I think in the time people, maybe the U.S. government did what they thought was best, you know,

because there was no precedent for this really to do.

So talk about, I guess, that aspect because we're still living that today in terms of

with the impact of that.

And how have things changed permanently,

you think, in society as a result? The book looks at the lockdown strategy and basically

traces the fact that there, despite the fact that we all talked about following the science,

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