Today’s guest on the Consumerism Commentary is author Zac Bissonnette. Zac last appeared on the show four years ago, and he’s back today to talk about his new book, Good Advice from Bad People: Selected Wisdom from Murderers, Stock Swindlers, and Lance Armstrong. The study of hypocrisy seems to be infinite, but it is particularly evident in the self-help and motivational genres — and you don’t have to look far from personal finance advice to find some of the most egregious examples of experts and gurus living by rules different than those they preach. Zac’s book is a fascinating read about the lives of notorious people who, if judged by their words of advice alone, should be saints. You might be familiar with Bernie Madoff, but reading about the lives of motivational swindlers like Charles Givens, Barry Minkow, and Myron Scholes gave a different kind of context to the words they’ve written and the speeches they’ve performed. Can you separate the advice from the people who speak it? What makes someone worthy of offering advice? Zac and I discuss these things — and Tim Tebow. Continue reading this article to listen to or download the podcast. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. jQuery(document).ready(function($) { $('#wp_mep_2').mediaelementplayer({ m:1 ,features: ['playpause','current','progress','duration','volume','tracks','fullscreen'] ,audioWidth:400,audioHeight:30 }); }); Luke: Welcome to the Consumerism Commentary Podcast. I’m Luke Landes, and my guest is Zac Bissonnette, author of Good Advice From Bad People, a new book available in paperback and digital formats from Amazon.com and other retailers. Hi Zac, how are you? Zac: Great to be here. How are you? Luke: Great, and it’s great to have you back. I know you’ve been on the show before and it’s always good to talk. So in the new book, you take a look at financial gurus and executives who have perpetuated financial fraud, moralists who get caught with their pants down, politicians who spout advice about ethical behavior who wind up embroiled in scandal, athletes as role models for kids, who are cheating. Once someone gives advice, does that open that person up to more scruitny and judgment than your average individual who’s not a best-selling author? Zac: Well, it certainly should. I don’t know that it often does, which is sorted interested me, and made me want to write this book. One of the things that fascinated me the most was — and I didn’t really know this until I was actually going over edits on it — was how relatively few of these people really paid a particularly significant price for their incredible hypocrisy. William Bennett, who’s this right-wing moralist, who turned out to be a degernate gambler — he had his scandal, and it was in the newspaper for a few weeks, and now he’s back with his radio show and his best-selling books. They put themselves on a pedestal — giving great advice doesn’t make them any more likely to follow that advice, and in many cases it often doesn’t result in the kind of penalties you would think it would. Luke: Why aren’t they receiving these penalties that your average criminal might get? Zac: Part of the thing that really interests me on this topic of hypocritical icons is that it’s just way too easy to become an inspirational icon in America in the 21st century. There’s very little vetting of these people. All you have to do is have a certani kind of smarmy charisma and tell people things that will make them think highly of you, and sort of sound like good advice, and people start sending you money and buying your books. One of the criticisms I got a little bit, not a ton, is that a lotof these people are not really “bad people,” and I totally get that. That’s why we put Lance Armstrong in the subtitl