I've finally gotten the opportunity to finish the episode and listen to the interview and I was surprised to hear Brian say some things about all this that I don't recall ever hearing before, even from him in his first written explanation after his legal gag orders were lifted. Some of the points sound reasonable on their own, presuming they are accurate, and this is honestly the first time I'm hearing him phrase his side of things in a way that I find actually compelling. I'm going to try and dig back into this and look at the actual evidence available to me again and also do a tad more research on all the involved topics to get a better handle on things. That said, I also find some of of the points he made a tad contradictory because he seemed to be both selling us on the idea that he had no reason to believe that anything he was doing was wrong or unethical, and also selling us on the idea that he knew it was wrong from the beginning and questioned eBay on apparently asking him to do something against their terms of service and also warned the other company (blanking on the name) about what eBay was asking him to do but was backed into a corner without a reasonable option to take aside from just walking away from his business. I also don't buy that he was between a rock and a hard place for one second when the rock is apparently eBay supporting him and allowing him to make money, and the hard place is violating the terms of service with the other company. That's basically like saying that you were faced with a difficult situation when a cashier accidentally gave you a $100 in change instead of a $10 and you had to face choosing between giving back the money that wasn't yours or getting $90 by pretwnding you did nothing wrong.
All that out of the way, I do have one specific question for Steve, if he'd like to answer it. During the interview, you stated multiple times that you didn't understand multiple central facts of the case against Brian and wanted him to clarify. It very much painted a picture of you asking him to inform you so you could form an opinion on his guilt, both morally and legally. My question is: if his answers convinced you that he actually was guilty of fraud and that he actually illegally and unethically obtained money for his own personal gain, would you have allowed him to go on to not just promote his current work on your show, but also solicit donations from your listeners? If so, why do you see that as OK? If not, what would you have done? Would you have even aired the interview?