4. The Lance Armstrong Defence
From fake essays to dodgy ratings to Silicon Valley fraud, Jamie Bartlett traces the moment cheating stopped feeling like cheating and became a way to get ahead.
In the early 2000s, a young man in New Jersey was writing thousands of fake university essays for paying students. Around the same time, financial analysts in New York were rating toxic debt as safe. And in Silicon Valley, a new business philosophy was taking hold: fake it till you make it.
Jamie Bartlett asks how so many people, in so many different worlds, arrived at the same conclusion at the same time. The answer, he thinks, has a name - The Lance Armstrong Defence. A quiet, creeping logic that says everyone else is doing it so why can't I?
Presenter: Jamie Bartlett
Series Producer: Tom Pooley
Sound Design: Rob Speight
Production Coordinator: Neena Abdullah
Original music: Coach Conrad
Editor: Craig Templeton Smith
A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4.
On radio
Broadcast
- Tomorrow09:30BBC Radio 4
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Everything Is Fake
Fake is the new real. Jamie Bartlett investigates.
