It has been a wild week for Martin Shkreli, who became the poster boy for pharmaceutical greed earlier this year after his company acquired a potentially life-saving drug – and then raised the price on that drug five thousand percent. The chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals was arrested yesterday and arraigned on securities and wire fraud charges. He pleaded not guilty.
The charges are not linked to his pharmaceutical companies but to a hedge fund he managed years ago and an alleged Ponzi scheme there. An FBI official called his business practices “a securities fraud trifecta of lies, deceit and greed.”
News of Shkreli’s arrest was greeted with lots of cheers online. We look at that, and also how the new Star Wars movie is being discussed online, with Slate editor-in-chief Julia Turner.
Turner told Here & Now’s Eric Westervelt, “It’s so big that it has shut down all conversation so it feels like the entire Internet this morning is just kind of clenched in fear that the people who have seen it might ruin it for the people who haven’t.”
Guest
- Julia Turner, editor-in-chief of Slate. She tweets @juliaturner.
Host
- Eric Westervelt, correspondent for NPR and guest host for Here & Now. He tweets @Ericnpr.
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