The Garden Theatre will host author and filmmaker Ben McKenzie on Tuesday, April 21, at 7 p.m. for a special screening of his documentary on cryptocurrency, Everyone is Lying to You for Money.

McKenzie will engage the audience in a post-film Q&A moderated by Princeton University professor and CNN political analyst Julian E. Zelizer. In collaboration with Labyrinth Books, there will be a book signing in the lobby after the discussion of McKenzie’s book Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud.

“Everyone is Lying to You for Money, which is based on his book, showcases McKenzie’s unique mode of investigation,” reads a press release on the event. “Leveraging his celebrity status to gain access to eager prospectors, he finds himself unraveling the loosely regulated world of cryptocurrency. This skeptical but evenhanded take on the present and future of what we consider money gives a firsthand account of the chaotic financial frontier of our time.”

McKenzie has been a fixture on television for two decades (Gotham, Southland, and The O.C.). In 2020, he starred in the Broadway play Grand Horizons, which received a Tony Award nomination for Best New Play. Alongside journalist Jacob Silverman, he has written about cryptocurrency for The Washington Post, The Intercept, The New Republic, and Slate.

He recently testified before the U.S. Congress as a witness in a Senate Banking Committee hearing on cryptocurrency and the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange. Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud became a New York Times bestseller and was longlisted for the Financial Times’ Business Book of the Year in 2023.

Everyone is Lying to You for Money premiered at SXSW London in 2025.

This screening is being made possible by Princeton University’s Effron Center and the Center for Migration and Development, the Griswold Center of Economic Studies, and the School of Public and International Affairs.