London Falling: Patrick Radden Keefe on How Money, Power and Corruption Shape Our City, with Emily Maitlis (Part Two)

Summary

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Intelligence Squared: London Falling: Patrick Radden Keefe on How Money, Power and Corruption Shape Our City, with Emily Maitlis (Part Two)

Date: May 12, 2026
Host: Emily Maitlis
Guest: Patrick Radden Keefe
Location: Live at the Royal Geographical Society

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Episode Overview

Theme:
In this riveting continuation, investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe unpacks the tragic, mysterious death of Zach Brettler and explores how the search for truth by Zach’s family reveals deeper currents of money, corruption, and power in modern London. In conversation with Emily Maitlis, Keefe examines the Brettler family’s investigation, the failings of the Metropolitan Police, and wider issues of social status, identity, and the allure of reinvention in the city. The discussion connects intimate family tragedy with systemic dysfunction, offering a searing critique of institutions and raising urgent questions about who London is really for.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sleuthing by the Brettlers and Journalistic Access

• Brettlers as Real-Life Detectives: Matthew and Richelle Brettler’s intensely personal investigation, forced by police incompetence, becomes the backbone for Keefe’s reporting.
  • Keefe notes: “They had been forced...to become detectives themselves and figure out what had happened to Zach as best they could...They were sort of retracing Zach's steps. But then I came in and I was kind of retracing their steps...” (04:35)
• Unprecedented Access: The Brettlers kept recordings, police files, and contemporaneous notes—gold for Keefe seeking veracity and narrative detail.
  • “If there are journalists in the room, there's nothing you would prefer to have than real time audio recordings of conversations that you're trying to reconstruct.” (04:52)

2. Reporting Challenges and Reluctance to Speak

• Both the family and others in Zach’s circle were initially reluctant and wary of opening up. Keefe emphasizes the delicate balance between journalistic drive and trauma sensitivity.
  • “They had to kind of decide in a thoughtful way, that this was something they were ready to do. And we talked through all the implications.” (02:50)

3. Key Characters: Akbar Shamji and Virendra Sharma

• Akbar Shamji: Described as a “character for the ages” (06:52), Shamji minimizes his role and attempts to dissuade Keefe from pursuing the story, ironically framing it as a cruelty to the Brettlers.
  • "He kind of very breezily told me that he'd put all this behind him...suggested that it would be very cruel of me to subject the Brettlers to this heartless exercise..." (06:54)
• Verendra (Indian Dave) Sharma: Seen as potentially more deeply involved, though deceased by the time of investigation.
• Chilling Details: Maitlis and Keefe discuss the transcript of a call with the Brettlers, where Shamji pretended to help while allegedly knowing Zach was already dead.
  • Keefe: “It's pretty galling to listen to the conversation now.” (08:01)

4. Police Failings and Systemic Questions

• Initial Inaction & Timidity: The Brettler parents’ politeness, deferral, and fear of alienating police contrasts sharply with their more effective investigative efforts.
  • Keefe: “Rochelle, the mother...sent these kind of very polite texts...apologetically suggesting the police do the most elementary work.” (09:23)
  • “Matthew was always saying, ‘Of course, you are the experts, and I defer to you...but did you think about doing the most elementary police work?’ And it's a maddening dynamic...” (09:53)
• Privilege & Institutional Inequality: Despite their resources, the Brettlers saw the same indifference that likely affects less privileged families more.
  • “They're quite privileged people...And I think if you back up...these are the kinds of people...who would normally have a passive expectation that they are going to get the benefits of whatever the system is affording. And then you see what happened with Zach...” (10:24)
• Bigger Conspiracy or Everyday Negligence?
  • Maitlis suggests perhaps police were distracted by a larger criminal enterprise. Keefe refutes: “I kind of don't believe in a grand conspiracy here. I think...these are cops on the job with varying degrees of competence and perhaps under resourced... In the kind of churn of casework, [they] operate on a sort of pattern recognition basis...” (14:01)

5. Notable Details and Police Oversights

• Police ignored clear evidence—untested blood, ignored text messages, and failure to interview witnesses and track phone records.
  • Keefe: “On the night that Zach dies…Akbar is texting…'Shit is going really bad here.' And he says, 'I'm heating up knives and cleaning up blood.' …the police never bothered to … find [the recipient of those texts].” (18:57)

6. On Accountability and the Limits of Journalism

• Keefe's Perspective: Journalism’s role is to illuminate truths, but not always deliver concrete justice.

  • “I want you to trust me with this story. But don't do it out of some expectation that… I will give you the accountability that the police failed to do, because I can't promise that… The most important thing was just that there is this artifact, and it is a book, and it is true, and it is fact checked, and it is out there...” (21:15)

• Press, Police, and Public Response:

  • The Met's only public statement: “We did everything we possibly could. No stone was left unturned.” (22:45)
  • Keefe's reaction: “...to me that’s...such a self-disqualifying thing to say.” (23:33)

7. Identity, Reinvention, and Social Commentary

• Intergenerational Lying & Self-Fashioning: The story becomes about the gap between truth and image, and the idea that deception has historical as well as modern roots.

  • Maitlis: “We sort of look back to our grandparents...who fudged their dates of birth...and we asked that question about when did...the idea of truth...Has it changed from that generation to Zach's generation?” (24:15)

• Keefe describes Zach as both an “irrepressible, ambitious...compulsive liar” and an emblem of modern London—the ultimate city of hustle, reinvention, and “three bullshit artists selling air.” (25:55)

• London as a Playground for Wealth: Cites Boris Johnson:

  • “London is to the billionaire as the jungles of Sumatra are to the orangutan. We are their natural habitat, and we're very proud of that.” (27:34)

• Wider Societal Implications:

  • The blurring lines between authenticity and fabrication; social media-age skepticism versus pre-digital faith in narratives.
  • “If I were 16 in 2016, I think I would look around and I would say, or you push all your chips in and you fake it till you make it…if you do it well enough, eventually you can reach the highest levels.” (29:45)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On reporting and material:

  • Keefe: “As a reporter, there's nothing you would prefer to have than real time audio recordings of conversations that you're trying to reconstruct.” (04:51)

• On privilege and disappointment in institutions:

  • Keefe: “If you back up...these are the kinds of people...who would normally have a passive expectation that...they are going to get the benefits of whatever the system is affording. And then you see what happened with Zach...” (10:24)

• On police indifference and institutional response:

  • Keefe (on the Met): “Their only statement...was, ‘We’re terribly sorry for the loss...We did everything we possibly could. No stone was left unturned.’ ...They went further, actually, and they said, ‘We think that there’s nothing at all about this death that’s suspicious.’ To me that’s...such a self-disqualifying thing...” (22:45, 23:33, 22:52)

• On the cultural moment:

  • Keefe: “Zach is 2016...he’s not just a digital native, he’s a social media native...the grownups were more our generation...the kids...had grown up...implicitly distrustful of the masks...they knew...there’s a filter on it, that somebody’s tweaking things...” (27:40 - 28:22)

• On London's transformation:

  • Keefe: “There’s a great quote from Boris Johnson when he was mayor...‘London is to the billionaire as the jungles of Sumatra are to the orangutan. We are their natural habitat, and we're very proud of that.’” (27:34)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:34 — Discussion of how Keefe gained access to the Brettler family and their investigation
• 06:45 — Introduction of key figures Akbar Shamji and Virendra Sharma
• 09:23 — Analysis of Brettler parents’ interactions with the police and issues of privilege
• 13:09 — Debate over police competence, public perceptions, and possible conspiracy
• 17:45 — Discussing possible grounds for arrest and overlooked evidence
• 23:43 — Exploration of identity, fantasy, and generational truth-telling
• 27:34 — London as a playground for the global rich
• 29:45 — Keefe on the social media era and ambition
• 30:33 — Closing thanks and acknowledgements

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Tone and Atmosphere

The conversation mixes intellectual rigor, moral urgency, and moments of dry humor—especially when discussing the surreal ineptitude of institutions or the self-aggrandizement of London’s elite. Both Keefe and Maitlis balance empathy for the family with sharp critique of the systems they confronted.

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The episode offers a deeply engaging blend of mystery, family fortitude, systemic critique, and sharp cultural observation—providing not just a tale of personal tragedy, but a microcosm of London’s ongoing battles with money, status, and truth.

Transcript

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[Mia Sorrenti]

welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. In this episode we return for part two of our recent live event with investigative journalist and author Patrick Radden Keefe. Keefe joined us at the Royal Geographical Society to discuss his new book London Falling and how the unexplained death of one boy and his family's search for answers revealed how money, crime and power shaped modern London. He was in conversation with award winning journalist and presenter of the Newsagent's podcast, Emily Maitlis. If you haven't heard part one, we recommend jumping back in episode to catch up, but now let's return to the conversation live at the Royal Geographical Society.

[Emily Maitlis]

We'll come back to the narrative, but I just want to talk a little bit about how you wrote this because the sleuthing of Matthew in particular, but of both parents seems to be fundamental to allowing you to have such incredible access to what was actually going on. And they were doing, it seems contemporaneously after Zach disappeared. How did you work with them and how did you work with the people who didn't want to talk to you?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Well, I mean, to just back up, I was living in London the summer of 2023 when I heard this story from a friend of the Brettlers

[Emily Maitlis]

and

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

I was here for the summer. I was producing the TV drama say Nothing based on my book and when I heard the story I was immediately intrigued and I went back to the apartment where I was staying with my family that summer and googled Zach Brettler deaf tems and couldn't find anything because the family had kept it very private and there was no record on the Internet, even actually that Zach was dead at all. And we arranged to meet. I think that Richelle and Matthew were very uncertain about whether it made sense to talk to a journalist and go public at all. And so our initial conversations were entirely off the record. And it was. I was trying to sort of be as transparent as possible. It's a tricky place to be as a journalist, because on the one hand I was very. I sensed that this was a great story and I wanted to do it, but on the other hand, I didn't want to twist their arms. They had to kind of decide in a thoughtful way, that this was something they were ready to do. And we talked through all the implications of that. But fortuitously enough, part of this story is about the spectacular failings of the Metropolitan Police in investigating Zach's death. And so during that period of time when Zach's death was still kind of quite a private thing, the police were busy really bungling the investigation in ways that we're not going to be able to do justice to. You sort of have to read the book to grasp the full colossal extent to which they botched the job. There was then an inquest, and the inquest ended up with an open verdict saying, could have been suicide, could have been something more nefarious, we don't know who's to say. And it was at around that time, at the point where the kind of official process had run its course, that I met the Brettlers. And so there was this sort of interesting sense in which they had been forced by the failure of the authorities here in London to become detectives themselves and figure out what had happened to Zach as best they could, who he'd been hanging around with, trying to kind of better understand who he was than they'd really been able to grasp when he was alive. So they were sort of retracing Zach's steps. But then I came in and I was kind of retracing their steps because they had been doing all this investigating and they had access to a huge number of police files, which the police had shared with them without putting any stipulations on what they could do with them, and they shared those files with me. They had taken the unusual step before they even knew that Zach was dead, when they were just still searching for him when he was missing, of recording the conversations that they were having with people when they were trying to find him. If there are journalists in the room, you will appreciate that as a reporter, there's nothing you would prefer to have than real time audio recordings. Of conversations that you're trying to reconstruct. And so all of that came to me, and I was then in some ways, able to kind of advance the ball a bit further down the field, but always following the lead that they had established totally on their own before I came into the picture.

[Emily Maitlis]

But when you recount, for example, Zach's clothes, classmates talking about New Balance, I mean, where do those stories come from? Did you find.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

I tracked them down.

[Emily Maitlis]

The actual. The kids themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there are two characters that are central to this story, unfortunately. Akbar Shanji, who Zach meets, who is the very suave businessman who seems like he could be the gateway to Zach's fortune and clearly thinks that Zach is the gateway to his fortune. And this guy, Verendra Sharma. Virendra Sharma is dead himself by the time you get to the story. What did you get from Akbar Shamji? Because he's around. He's walking free, and he's around.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

He is indeed. Probably not here tonight, but possibly.

[Emily Maitlis]

Let's find out in the questions.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

But possibly not far from here. Akbar is really just kind of a character for the ages. I wrote to him initially on email, and he kind of very breezily told me that he'd put all this behind him. And interestingly, he suggested that it would be very cruel of me to subject the Brettlers to this heartless exercise and bring them more pain.

[Emily Maitlis]

And because just to recount this, you describe a meeting that he had with Zach's parents, where he talks to them as if he's helping them to find Zach. And you believe he already knew he was dead at that point?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily Maitlis]

I mean, that. Yeah.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

It really is astonishing. And the thing is, I have the audio recording of that conversation in a way that when I talk to. To Matthew and Rochelle about their memories of it. Memory is a weird thing. And so when I first talked to them about their memory of that conversation, they both felt that there was something suspicious about Akbar. But I think that that was actually informed somewhat by what they learned subsequently, because when you listen to the initial recording, in fact, they were expressing their gratitude to him. They were desperate to find Zach. They didn't know he was dead, and Akbar was saying he was going to help, even though I think Akbar did know he was dead. And, I mean, it's pretty galling to listen to the conversation. Now,

[Emily Maitlis]

just on that point, the police investigation seems to start. Well, there's a moment where the two detectives spot the phone on the balcony. They piece together things quite quickly, and then it quickly becomes apparent that There is incompetence, carelessness, an overwhelming lack of curiosity. And one thing that I really related to is how polite Rochelle and Matthew feel they have to be, that they can't criticize the authorities, they can't criticize the police in case it pushes them further away. And. And they probably are doing much better detective work than anyone that they're talking to.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

I can't even express to you. I was texting the other day with Rochelle about just this, and she was sort of ruefully saying, we were so polite, we were so timid. And she sent me these screenshots of these kind of heartbreaking texts that she sent after these long periods of silence from the Metropolitan Police, these kind of very polite texts that Rochelle, the mother of this dead boy, sent to one of the contacts at the Metropolitan Police and said, would it be all right? Have you considered perhaps interviewing this person, this really critical person, who anybody should interview in an investigation like this? But I just wanted to just possibly raise again the idea that maybe it would make sense for you to do this. And always with a kind of. Often with these apologies. Matthew was always saying, well, I. Of course, you are the experts, and I defer to you, and I would never want to tell you how to do your job, but did you think about doing the most elementary police work? And it's a maddening dynamic, and I think, particularly to look at in retrospect. But to me, this was part of what was interesting about this story, is that I think that, You know, the brothers are quite privileged people. You know, they live a very financially comfortable life. They live in a nice flat in Maida Vale. They have a second apartment in New York. They are connected. They have a lot of friends, probably many of them in this room right now. And I think if you back up, you know, they're white, right? Like, if you back up and you look at their lives in the scheme of this huge city with millions and millions of people, I think most of us would say, okay, well, the authorities, the system, it may not protect everybody equally, but actually, these are the kinds of people in a very unequal society who would normally kind of have a passive expectation that they are going to get the benefits of whatever the system is affording. And then you see what happened with Zach and how they were treated. And of course, it begs the question, you know, what if this was. What if this was a homeless family? What if this was an immigrant family? What if this was a family that didn't have the wherewithal or the resources to actually go and kind of do their own investigation. I think it begs really serious questions about how fit to purpose the authorities in question are.

[Emily Maitlis]

I mean, we were discussing this a little earlier. It may be more surprising to you as an outsider than to many people in the room, to be frank, but we're always looking for explanations. And one is certainly a massive underfunding of the police. But another one which sort of fits your underworld direction is this idea maybe that we have to tell ourselves a story that the police were actually concentrating. They had their eyes on a much bigger prize that there was some kind of criminal enterprise that they were trying to get on top of. There was some kind of investigation that they were reaching towards, and that this was taking them in a different direction or in the wrong direction. Was anything in the discovery around Zach's death leading you to think that he had stumbled into something bigger that they were trying to solve?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Well, I mean, a couple of things. So the first thing is on the idea that maybe I'm just surprised because I'm an American. It is funny, having been talking with people in the US about the book, because I think Scotland Yard still has quite good branding, you know, and for Americans, I think they spend. We have this thing called Britbox, which is like how you watch all the BBC like police procedurals.

[Emily Maitlis]

Downton Abbey.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Yeah, all of that.

[Emily Maitlis]

You think we're Downton Abbey.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

But it is this kind of funny thing where you could sort of. With definitely some of the audience, some of the older audience members, I could sort of see the looks of consternation on their faces when I suggested that. Yeah. That Scotland Yard may not be the world's most peerlessly capable police constabulary. But, yeah, I don't. It's complicated because there is a kind of whiff of intrigue around this whole story. And there are some suggestions that I explore in the book. I don't think I come down in a definitive way, but there are some indications that Indian Dave Verinder Sharma may have been a police informant. There are some facts that by themselves seem to indicate a kind of level of nefariousness and intrigue. So to give you one example, Zach had spoken with a friend days before he died about the idea that he might go into witness protection. We know that he did a Google search about going into witness protection. Having said all that, I kind of don't believe in a grand conspiracy here. I think it would be comforting in a way to think that there was some kind of high level corruption or that there was some larger police objective. I think that probably what happened is a bit more prosaic in that I think that these are cops on the job with varying degrees of competence and perhaps under resourced. And I think that they have a tendency to, in the kind of churn of casework, operate on a sort of pattern recognition basis where they look at something and they say, okay, is this a murder? Do we have somebody pushing Zach off the balcony? No, he was alone on the balcony. So that means he jumped off the balcony and that means it must be a suicide because that's the only explanation here. And if you say, well, couldn't something more nefarious have been going on? He was literally in the apartment with a guy, a murderous criminal who had just discovered, I should add, that Zach wasn't a Russian oligarch with hundreds of millions of pounds. Doesn't that seem worth digging into? But I think there was a kind of, well, how are we going to charge that? Like how do we bring that case to a point where they, you know, there were police photos taken showing blood splatter on the wall in the apartment and they never tested the blood. Just kind of carelessness.

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[Emily Maitlis]

So knowing what you know now, do you think there are grounds for arrest? Do you think there are people who should still be arrested today if the metwers doing their job.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Well, I mean, the one thing I can tell you for certain is that. Well, a couple of things. One is that there's a period of time when Varinder Sharma was alive and being investigated. There was a year during which I think that the cops probably could have been a little bit more aggressive in trying to figure out how to charge the case. There's a sort of funny thing that happens where Indian Dave, if you read the book, he's got a long criminal history. He's a very hardened gangster. And as any hardened gangster would, when he gets hauled into the police station, he just says, no comment, no comment, no comment, no comment, no comment. Doesn't give them anything. Akbar Shamji, by contrast, is brought in and just talks and talks and talks and talks and talks, talks their ear off and just lies and lies and lies. And in fact, the cops know that Akbar is lying. And I have always been startled that they didn't use as leverage the fact that they knew that he was lying

[Emily Maitlis]

because they have evidence. They have phone messages, they have texts, they have cars.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Deeply suspicious stuff. I mean, I could give you any number of examples. But just to cherry pick one. On the night that Zach dies, he is in the apartment with Akbar in Verinder. This is in this apartment in Riverwalk, this building right next to Vauxhall Bridge. And Akbar is texting with a friend who's not in the flat with them. He's supposed to meet up with a friend. And the plans change. And Akbar basically says, I'm not going to be able to get together. And then he says, you know, shit is going really bad here. And he says, I'm heating up knives and cleaning up blood. So first of all, imagine being the Brettlers and getting those text messages and knowing that that was what was being discussed by these guys hours before Zach died. And then imagine the fact that the police never bothered to try and track down the guy who received those text messages. Never had a conversation with him, never asked him. What did you think those text messages meant? I don't know that they actually ever figured out what his last name was. I figured out what his last name was, but it never comes up in any of their discussions of this. And their view was, oh, it was just talk. This was just guys talking. Could have been about anything.

[Emily Maitlis]

And now, Patrick, I mean, now they are exposed. They're exposed in a. In a number one bestseller, right? I mean, what happens now?

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Well, I don't know. I mean, it's Interesting. The. You know, this is the thing I think about. You must have thought about this, too, in terms of the role of journalism. So I'm always quite careful not to want to place too many expectations on the work that I do. On the one hand, I think journalism is very important to hold power to account. I think that's a function of. A kind of essential function of journalism. On the other hand, when I say hold power to account, I don't mean that it necessarily translates into any specific form of accountability. I think our job is to kind of put the truth out there, and then, you know, and then other people will sort of take it and see what they can do. So when I first met with the Brettlers, I said to them, and this came up because I had written this book, say Nothing. And say Nothing is about a murder in 1972. And at the end of that book, I point my finger. I identified the person who was the murderer. And I basically said, I really want to tell this story. I want you to trust me with this story. But don't do it out of some expectation that if you open up this private tragedy in your lives to me, I will give you the accountability that the police failed to do, because I can't promise that. And so I've always had the view this was true with my Sackler book. None of the Sacklers are in prison right now. They have agreed to pay billions of dollars, which is helpful. And they've all had to move to Florida. Punishment enough, the last refuge of scoundrels. So there's a form of punishment there, and their names have come off the buildings and so forth. But to me, the most important thing was just that there is this artifact, and it is a book, and it is true, and it is fact checked, and it is out there in the world. And any of you can read it now, and their kids and grandkids can read it, and their friends can read it, and it will be on the shelf in the library when we're all dead, if there are still libraries when we're all dead. And I think there's a function in that. And so for me, with the Met, should they reopen the investigation? I think so. Should some other body come in and check their work? I think so. Do they owe that much to the Brettlers? I think so. Should they, at a minimum, short of all of that, make some kind of an apology or in a statement saying, maybe we didn't handle this as well as we could have? Yes. What do we get instead? They hadn't really offered much of a statement at all. Like their only statement they gave me when I was working on the article and then the book was, we're terribly sorry for the loss of the Brettler family. We feel great compassion for them. We did everything we possibly could. No stone was left unturned. And then I think it was the Guardian had a piece about the book and they went to the Met for comment. This is like two weeks ago. And they went further, actually, and they said, we think that there's nothing at all about this death that's suspicious. So you tell me, I mean, to me that's kind of such a. It's like such a self disqualifying thing to say that. I don't know.

[Emily Maitlis]

I said at the very beginning that one of the themes, and maybe with the last time we've got before questions we should just explore this a bit, is the idea of identity and fantasy. Because there is so much here that resonates with a much wider question, I think, about how we forge our own identities, whether it's as a teenager or an adolescent trying to change his name, trying to change his accent, trying to change his class. Rachelle and Matthew seem so happy with who they are, their class, their background, their values. And through your storytelling, we also learn more about Rachelle's father, very well known Rabbi Hugo Grin, who was an Auschwitz survivor who had to learn how to lie to save his own life, but then created a Cambridge education, which is sort of a shock to her growing up. And you make the point, this is not about genetics, it's not about saying something sort of travels through families. But this has become a talking point, actually, amongst many of our friends. We sort of look back to our grandparents, some of whom were born in terribly complicated situations, who crossed continents, who fudged their dates of birth, who tried to escape conscription, whatever it was. And we asked that question about when did was this idea of truth sort of. Has it changed from that generation to Zach's generation? Are we the kind of ploddy ones stuck in the middle? You know, the sort of filing cabinet age that adhere to it when nobody on either side seemed to think it was as important? Or is that too trite? Because you've got three characters at the end. I think Rochelle's words, three characters who were all dissembling to each other. Right.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

Yeah. In the very. The wonderfully memorable turn of phrase Rochelle used was she said it was three bullshit artists selling air. Yeah. I mean, I think there was a sense in which part of what was Interesting to me in writing this book is that on the one hand, Zach is this kind of sui generis character. You know, he's this irrepressible, ambitious, dynamic, fabulous, compulsive liar. And on the other hand, he feels to me like such a creature of the 21st century and of 21st century

[Emily Maitlis]

London or of any big city.

[Patrick Radden Keefe]

I think any big city. I mean, I think there are aspects of this story that do feel very specific to London to me. And there's a whole history that we haven't talked about about London's reinvention, really, during the 1980s and 90s as a money town and a place that was no longer an industrial city that manufactured things. It was no longer a port city and had to find a new role. And it was really in the Thatcher years that there was a quite conscious decision to kind of revive London as a destination for rich people and their money. And there's a great quote from Boris Johnson when he was mayor in the book where he says, london is to the billionaire as the jungles of Sumatra are to the orangutan. We are their natural habitat, and we're very proud of that. I mean, you tell me how it's working out, but. So there are specific aspects of this that are about London, but I also just think that there's. The thing I keep coming back to is, you know, Zach is 2016, when Donald Trump was elected, and he's not just a digital native, he's a social media native. And when I mentioned that thing about the woman in Nashville earlier, I was thinking, why is it that the kids would have seen through Zach's lies and the grownups wouldn't? And I think it's because the grownups were more our generation, and the kids were of a different generation. They had grown up, I think, implicitly distrustful of the masks that any of us wear, because they knew that when you see the photo, there's a filter on it, that somebody's tweaking things, that we're all kind of presenting ourselves in different ways. There's a sort of a slippage between who we really are and who we pretend to be. So when Hugo Grin dies and all of his obituaries say that after the war, he arrived in London as a teenager and that he ended up at Cambridge University, where he got a scholarship to study mathematics. And his family learns only after his death that, in fact, he had never been at Cambridge. He had been at a technical college in East London. That feels like it kind of hits you with the force of revelation. Whereas I think for kids in Zach's generation, it's much more familiar, the idea that everybody's kind of faking it till you make it. And the thing I come back to is just that I'm thinking of, I'm 16 in 2016, wondering who I'm going to be, wondering about the value of truth, wondering about the value of living the kind of lives that Rochelle and Matthew have led, which are sort of more modest. You get a job, you work hard, you. You save, you try and live with some integrity and some decency, and you live a decent life and kind of get yourself some security in that way. If I were 16 in 2016, I think I would look around and I would say, or you push all your chips in and you fake it till you make it. And if you're a failure, you pretend to be a success. And if people don't believe you, you keep pretending and you say it louder and you say it longer. And if you do it well enough, eventually you can reach the highest levels. And I do think that there was something in the air. I guess what I'm saying is I don't know that. You know, I look at some of the people who have succeeded, who continue to succeed today, and they're pretty much operating on that philosophy. And so I've always thought that if Zach could have survived that night, and I say this actually without judgment, I don't mean to implicitly analogize him to Donald Trump. I'm more saying that Trump is out there as an archetype, right? As that person who's kind of gone straight to the moon. I could see a world in which he was a really successful real estate developer. Now, that kind of hustle, that kind of mojo, in a town like this, I think you could go far.

[Emily Maitlis]

Yeah. Thank you all so much for coming tonight, for being so engaged. I just want to say thank you to the Brettlers as well, for their searing honesty. And. It is searing honesty and generosity in sharing Zach's life with all of us. And thank you to Patrick for pulling it all together into this extraordinary book. Thank you. Thanks very much.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Ginny Hooker and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a [e-mail] membership and if you'd like to join us at future events, you can find our full program and buy tickets [e-mail] forward slash, attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.

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