58 Minutes Worth Listening To

When I watch a movie, read a book, or hear a news story that piques my curiosity I will spend hours digging for more information about it. I'll wikipedia actors names for the picture's chronological order in their career or satisfy my curiosity by reading the back stories of parafial characters to that meant nothing to the plot. Last fall I was driving home from work half listening to NPR when I caught the tail end of a story that deserved some research. It took quite a few months and some forced down time from being sick, but today as I was surfing the movie channels I remembered that summer afternoon.

The movie was The Informant staring Matt Damon. It was an okay flick that served its purpose of mildly distracting me from the misery of a late winter cold for a few hours, but was not noteworthy beyond that. I was more curious about the NPR story of the real story behind Matt Damon's character Mark Whitacre. Truth always fascinates me more than fiction which is an ironic reason to research a story based on lying and it's accidental exposure of truth. Anyway it's worth taking a listen to if you have nothing better to do with 58 minutes of your time.

In This American Life, episode 168 The Fix Is In, Ira Glass tells the story of Mark Whitacre (a pathological lier) who was pivotal in the FBI's case against Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) in the mid '90's for price fixing. It was the biggest price fixing case in history at the time and set a precedent for the way the FBI prosecuted white collar crime from then on.

Here it is. You can stream for free by clicking the stream episode icon to the right of Mark Whitacre's picture.

The Fix Is In

Enjoy...