Embarrassingly low production value, but not an altogether uninformative series.
I guess it's good enough to continue, and not bad enough to stop—so let's proceed to Episode 2 and see what we see!
If nothing else, the series introduces Canadian psychologist Robert D. Hare's infamous Psychopathy Checklist ("PCL-R"), sometimes used by law enforcement to identify the presence of psychopathy in individuals. (FWIW, and unrelatedly, Ira Glass and This American Life's staff took the survey; episode here).
Hare authored Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us in which he wrote, "Like all predators, psychopaths need hunting grounds, so wherever there is power, control, and money, you'll find them."
This naturally led to his second book, Snakes in Suits, Understanding and Surviving the Psychopaths in Your Office. I kid you not. Be afraid. Be very afraid!
Whereas psychopaths comprise approximately 1% of the general population and 25% of the U.S. prison population, Hare estimates 4% of CEOs exhibit degrees of psychopathic behavior (e.g., Sunbeam's Al Dunlap), and perhaps an even larger percentage do among politicians (think dictators or the puffy orange truth-denier who writes love letters to one, mocks the handicapped, dismisses science at the expense of 800,000 human lives, throws family members under the bus, disregards the Constitution, incites a coup at one's own Capitol, threatens polling officials, perpetuates endless falsehoods about election fraud, denies a war hero because said hero was captured, lusts after his own offspring, harasses/threatens/bullies women, belittles the weak, blasphemes the Bible, considers hate-mongering white supremacists "good people," adulters regularly, lies habitually and without need or provocation, stands idly by as 'friends' [fall guys] are sent to prison, believes the end justifies the means, and generally napalms everything he touches without one scintilla of regret or remorse or compunction that a course correction of any kind is ever warranted: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's, like, incredible.").
