Chapter 1: Who is Ben McKenzie and what are his new projects?
Welcome to It's Open with Alana Glazer. My guest today was just such a wonderful conversationalist and surprised me. It's Ben McKenzie, the actor you know from The O.C. and Gotham. But did you also know he's an author of the book Easy Money and a writer director of his new film called Everyone is Lying to You for Money?
He's exposing in his book and in this new documentary, he's exposing the complete scam that is cryptocurrency. But what I found also interesting is that he... There's an exploration of masculinity here, and it's not just crypto, but it's crypto as a container for some community or cult-like figure that men today seem to need. He's 47, I learned.
A millennial dad who wants to see the world change. better than it is today. And he really comes off as a wife guy, loves his wife. Very sweet. I had a great time talking to him and I think, I think you will enjoy listening. So come on in. It's open. So Ben McKenzie, thanks for joining me. Um, I, you know, the, the way that we got connected was I was interested in your documentary.
Everyone is lying to you for money.
Yes.
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Chapter 2: What critical issues does Ben McKenzie raise about cryptocurrency?
It's so good. Thanks. It's so good. Before I watched it, and I actually asked you to be on the show before I watched it, and I was like, this is so interesting that you, who I know as an actor, are doing investigative journalism about crypto. But then I have to say, so I thought it was like really serious. But then when I watched it, it was like much lighter. Yeah.
And there's much more of a sense of humor in it than I was expecting. Yeah.
Oh, good. Good. That was intentional. I was trying to kind of make it fun.
Chapter 3: How does masculinity intersect with the crypto culture?
It was really self-deprecating in such a funny and surprising way.
A lot of OC jokes.
But also like examining yourself as an actor who's been in the game for so long. It was really, that was really interesting, that aspect of it. Let's first start with the crypto of it all. You hate it.
I kept coming back to this concept in the film about crypto is sold as a story of technology, but it's not. It's actually a story of human behavior and the crypto market really just exists as a projection of the hopes and dreams of all of these investors that think they're going to make a ton of money on this.
And then it's wrapped in this political ideology for a lot of them, this sort of libertarian type thing. It's very male. We should definitely talk about that. Holy shit. And so I think it becomes about belief systems and stories that we're telling ourselves and each other. And Trump, this notorious con man,
like his one neat trick is that he never apologizes and he always pushes through with bluster and he ends up conning his own people, right? Like he cons his own people over and over and over again and they just keep coming back for more. And in the movie I tried to sort of like
talk about a similar thing by showing, uh, I interviewed victims of this fraud called Celsius and I bonded with them earlier in the movie. And then at the end I come back and I ask them, do you still believe in crypto? And some of these people have lost their life savings. They all said yes. Every single one.
Oh my God.
So we're really talking about beliefs rather than like technology or financial markets or anything like that.
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Chapter 4: What is the narrative behind the rise of cryptocurrency?
But sometimes it's just, you know, it's just straight up scams and frauds. And again, like the president of the United States is a convicted fraudster, is found guilty by a jury of his peers. You know, like, what do we expect? Of course. And then what does it say about us?
Yeah.
that a plurality of us voted for him. You know, I think it should at a minimum be a moment for the Democratic Party to look in the mirror and say, you lost to this guy twice?
Right.
that's a like that is first of all pathetic it's just absolutely pathetic and it should cause you to think about why and if they can't tell the parties apart and you know how bad he is right then you're doing something wrong yeah um so trying to like talk to people about that um
This moment of how and why we're in this moment, and also to the point of crypto is a very male-led and male-followed movement. Men are looking for shortcuts to some ideal.
Yeah.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely. Spending a couple of years looking at this, because it's been four years now, so many of the people that I talk to are men. It's almost exclusively men. There are some women, but it's really, really... Which is fascinating, because... Yes, the traditional financial markets are often male-dominated as well. But this is to an even further extent and degree.
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Chapter 5: Why do people still believe in crypto despite its risks?
That's the trick is crypto fixes this. It's worse. But the story is so powerful because the first part is true. And so all of the things that crypto is doing is just showing us how we have to change the system. We have to change our system. That's why I talk about very seriously, like get rid of the banks.
Wait a second. Sorry.
Our actual system, our actual financial system.
Crypto proves to us that we have to improve our actual real system. Yeah.
If it serves any purpose, it's to highlight the myriad failures of the system.
I love, I love like health and improvement. So that's like helpful to know, like we can actually get a lesson from this. Helps my heart.
Yeah. I mean, I try to look at it that way because it's just way too grim. And I do think there's a real opportunity here. I mean, if Trump has done anything, he's definitely like shifted the what is it, the Overton window of like what's possible.
What is that? I don't know.
It's like what's possible. Like people like people just sort of presume that certain things aren't possible politically because based on what's happened before.
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Chapter 6: What are the flaws in the current financial system according to the guest?
But like, I don't know, what are we going to do?
I mean, all of the problems in our economic system, to me, stem from problems in our democratic system. Like if the people were actually in control, the majority of the population was in control of the policies that the politicians actually enacted. then there would be much higher taxes on billionaires. Then there would be... I'm not saying the majority of the population is perfect.
We've seen deficiencies in that before, but right now we're just not really living in a functional democracy, right? The Senate is not really a representative body because each state has two senators. And so to fix these things... it's going to require significant change.
I think it's going to require term limits on the Supreme Court and or new justices so that, because right now the highest court in the land is just fundamentally anti-democratic.
It's insane.
And anti-human, really.
That's right.
I mean, it's like, you know what I mean, the abortion decision and the decisions actually just up and down. I mean, they're now sort of often doing whatever Trump wants them to do. Our Constitution is such a bizarre document in many ways, right? Because there is no other position that I'm aware of in the federal government that's for life other than the Supreme Court.
Totally.
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