Oh hello! James McMahon here. It's been a time! I’m currently working on season 2 of Shame, a podcast about... shame, but I thought I’d share one episode of it early, mainly because the person I’m speaking to today - the journalist Christie Smythe - is writing a book, Smirk, about her relationship with the notorious ‘pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli.

You know Martin Shkreli. Hedge fund dude. Bit of a troll. Actually, and I say this as a Wu-Tang Clan fan, a lot of a troll. Massively hiked the prices of life saving pharmaceutical drugs. Went to prison for securities fraud, though he's in a half-way house now. You know who Christie is too. You read about her in the 2020 ELLE piece 'The Journalist and the Pharma Bro'. You read it (and in the unlikely event you didn’t, you should do that now). The internet went bonkers, and you probably had opinions about it and her and Martin. Donald Trump did. And Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders too. But Christie – who is a very good journalist and an excellent writer, it should be said – has often been shrouded by the hysteria that surrounds Martin. And so now you can get the truth about what happened when a woman fell for – and I quote the Elle article here – ‘one of the least liked men in the world’ by subscribing for missives from Christie’s book at smirk-book.com.

I hope you enjoy this conversation. Season 2 is coming.

Shame is a Spoook Media production. Spoook is also a record label, a promoter, a shop, a Substack - it's many things. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter. And please do Like, Review and Subscribe - it actually really helps people find our podcasts!

Watch the series trailer here: https://tinyurl.com/7r326hhc