Carly Busta: So, McKinsey was contracted by Purdue in the 2000s to grow their Oxy business. They then recommended saying like you know, when prescribed properly, it's really fine; it's a really great resource for pain management. And then they were retained by Purdue after the lawsuits started coming in and McKenzie said, well, you want to make sure that the pharmacies don't feel like it's a risk. So here's what you do: you set up a plan that says if your customer, if they buy from you and they die of an overdose, or they overdose period...

LIL INTERNET: ...overdose or develop an addiction

CB: Just say that you will reimburse them for ...

LI: $14,810 per event

CB: … and this was in 2017.

LI: I mean think about it, if you got a heroin addiction you can easily spend $14,810

CB: How much do you spend in like a week if you're like full throttle…

LI: $700 is where you like kind of max out. $100 a day I would say. And CVS could easily be losing $14,800 with the revenue if somebody gets addicted...

Daniel Keller: I mean they're not getting that revenue though, right?

LI: You know, a local CVS, maybe they bought everything from there... the lifetime value of that customer that CVS lost to addiction.

CB: Well if you’re going to CVS to pick up your Oxy, you might as well also get your toothpaste there, right like so that's a full customer. So McKinsey and Purdue, it’s important to say, that when Purdue started ramping up Oxy sales, they retained McKinsey after the lawsuit started coming in. And their plan was just “oh, reduce the risk of the pharmacies by making sure that if they lose these customers to od-ing that like they'll be okay.

DK: McKinsey's just cartoonishly villainous. I mean, they're really like the other scandal with them fixing bread prices. I don't know the details of it. I just remember that one meme where there's the guy was his name like Binyamin Appelbaum, the New York Times guy in there when they were doing the interviews of all the Democratic candidates. He was interviewing Pete Buttigieg, and he says, “You worked for a company that was fixing bread prices!” I don't know. I remember that. I think it was something about I think it was cartoonish.

CB: That is cartoonish. Like the bread riot.

DK: Like, really. Yeah. And also, notably, they're involved with “Build Back Better” branding, too. I saw some McKinsey reports where they're talking about it. So

CB: What do you think? Because McKinsey is usually staffed by Ivy Leaguers, well-connected, and who presumably have like leftist values going into this?

DK: Leftist? No. Liberal, yes.

LI: But also, I'm sure they heavily recruit from like the frat house sector, right, which is just like fraternity culture is like sociopath training. Like, that's the whole point of it. That's the point of hazing. That's the point of the like predatory sexual culture. That's a point of the like, insane drinking culture. It's just learned sociopathy.

CB: How did the team at McKinsey who was advising Purdue, how did they go home at night and not feel like that was just so evil?

LI: Because they’re Masters of the Universe? They fuck.

CB: Do you really think that's true? Usually, when you see McKinsey representatives who show up in the newspaper, they seem like the kind that you would imagine at a wedding in Connecticut, and they would be like, nice, and they would talk to you about like global warming or something because they knew that you were like a leftist.

DK: They love their job. They love doing their job.

LI: One of the things that McKenzie was trying to help Perdue to do was to find a way to counter the emotional messages from mothers with teenagers that overdosed. That's like one thing that McKinsey was trying to figure out how to do so. But what I can imagine, I picture it this way, you're at McKinsey; maybe you're young and still a bit idealistic, and you're there, but you're getting paid a shit ton of money, you're smart, you're a big shot, and you get assigned to this job...I am sure that they sort of have an HR sort of situation or something where you can say, I'm actually not comfortable doing this job and they're like: “That's totally okay. We'll put you on something else” and like they like let you like

CB: ...water in Somalia, right?

DK: … [which is actually just] fixing water prices...

LI: You probably won’t move up in the ranks, right? Maybe. But I'm sure they have this kind of thing where they show and

CB: Or you will, and they’ll be like “this person found their path.”

LI: Yeah, I mean, this is my own speculation but from having friends I grew up with, went to high school with, having some experience of like what frat culture was all about and really like Darwinian like win win win, take it, get money, like drink away the fucking regret and just like... fuck, be a beast, fucking beast mode! For real! It sounds funny. It's like a culturally normalized thing, but there’s something really dark behind all of it. Behind that whole culture. Yeah. And then of course, you know, it’s “I take care of my family, I would do anything for my family. For my family, for my boys. I would do anything. I would take a fucking bullet for my family. So it's like, it comes down to the family they protect, that’s who they care about. And everyone else, it’s just like…”fuck em.”