John Hockenberry, The Takeaway: Joining us now is Randy Cohen, who's the author of The Ethicist column in the New York Times Magazine, and a new blog on the New York Times Web site called The Moral of the Story. Randy, thanks for joining us.

Randy Cohen, author of The Ethicist column in New York Times Magazine: Good morning, John.

John Hockenberry: My first question to you, forgive me for digressing. Is it ethical for someone who lives in New York to not drag himself down to the studio to be a guest on The Takeaway?

Randy Cohen: Yeah, oh yeah. Anytime it involves the words "drag themselves down," you can be pretty sure the answer is, you're not obliged.

John Hockenberry: Well the reason we're talking to you, Randy, is that one of the things I like about your column is that it takes a story from the headlines and really sort of probes into a moral dimension, which actually has the possibility of revealing more about the news than we might have gotten looking at the story straight. The Bernard Madoff story, right? Now, of course, Bernard Madoff is awaiting sentencing for the so-called $65-billion Ponzi scheme which bilked all kinds of investors out of money. There was no investment fund that Bernard Madoff had, even though he was very, very wealthy, correct?

Randy Cohen: Yeah.

John Hockenberry: Now all along with him, faithfully, was his wife Ruth Madoff, correct?

Randy Cohen: That's right.

John Hockenberry: So the question, Is if you're an investor who lost money in the Madoff fortune, do you have any claim against Ruth Madoff, civilly or criminally, to get your money back, because she must have known, right?

Randy Cohen: Well, first of all I'm not a lawyer so I don't purport to give legal advice, but as I understand it, if what she has is ill-gotten gains, then yes, you have a claim on it. If it's money she's made in some other way then you don't. But, did she know? We don't know if she knew. That is something a court will determine. But from my perspective, the ethical question is should she have known? And can you ask that of people, can you say, well you should have known? Is that a legitimate moral question?

John Hockenberry: Well, of course, in all the mob movies from the 1930's, there's this principle of the wife can't testify against the husband, that the state can't compel a wife to testify against a spouse. But I guess does that mean that in our jurisprudence there is a notion that it is perfectly ethical to keep secrets within a marriage vow?

Randy Cohen: Well, that assumption of the law is the opposite. The assumption of the law is that spouses disclose themselves to one another, they reveal themselves to one another, and the bonds of marriage are something we respect so much that we would not force one spouse to testify against another. But that's also a question about what you should do with that knowledge. Once you know something, that your spouse has done something very, very wicked, what must you do? But the first question for me is, must you know? When you live intimately with someone like this, and more important, in the Ruth Madoff case, when you are profiting, and enormously, once you're buying your third house, the one in Palm Beach or your fourth house, the one in Antibes, did you ask yourself at some point, where is this money coming from that rains down upon me?

John Hockenberry: Alright, so ask me.

Randy Cohen: Where is this money coming from that rains down upon you?

John Hockenberry: Honey, we're just having a great year.

Randy Cohen: OK, that's fine. And I notice you seem to be having a great year every year.

John Hockenberry: I've had a lot of great years. See how hard it is?

Randy Cohen: No. If your spouse is determined to fool you, everyone can be fooled, but you can't persist in willful ignorance. You have to at least attempt to know and near as I can tell Ruth Madoff is not a shnook.

John Hockenberry: But does she have to be a shnook? Is she required morally for her to take out a spreadsheet and kind of reverse engineer the trends?

Randy Cohen: No, but nor is it allowable for her to simply close her eyes to what seems obvious to her, to go through life never wondering "Oh, this money we're enjoying, Miss Scarlett. You know I notice our cotton seems to be picked by slaves, did you ever notice that?" I mean she's an adult, she's not a four-year-old.

John Hockenberry: Slavery was legal in Georgia.

Randy Cohen: I don't write the legal list, I write the moral list. Slavery may have been legal for much of our history but it was never moral.

John Hockenberry: All I'm saying -- I'm certainly not saying that it was moral, but I am saying that if the SEC couldn't figure out what was going on with Madoff, why would you expect --

Randy Cohen: The level of knowledge she's required to attempt to have is not sufficient to bring a case in a court. Just to have some sense of where her enormous wealth that she's been enjoying for 50 years is coming from. Also, she's not the unsophisticated person you present her to be. She apparently, she actually worked at her husband's company for a while. She steered clients to her husband. With that comes some obligations, to have some understanding of how this all works.

John Hockenberry: Even if you give say $20 million to some charity?

Randy Cohen: That doesn't get you off the hook for how you acquire the $20 million.

John Hockenberry: You sure?

Randy Cohen: Morally? Absolutely not. If I go and come over to your house and steal your TV, my giving $10 to a charity when I sell it doesn't get me off the hook for robbing you. You have to judge each of those actions on their merit.

John Hockenberry: But isn't it karmic, OK, if you give $20 million to some charity, alright, that makes up for there fact that there's been some pain here for some investors who lost money.

Randy Cohen: Are you saying that -- This is a judgment God has to decide in the fullness of things.

John Hockenberry: We're talking to the right guy here.

Randy Cohen: Talk to me. Have your good deeds outweighed your bad deeds, that's a different way to look at morality than I do. To me the question is, each deed must be judged on its own merit. That if it's wrong to kill a guy, it's wrong to kill a guy even if you use your hefty killer's fee to help some puppies later on.

John Hockenberry: Alright well, Randy, thanks so much. This was a great conversation. Randy Cohen is the author of the ethicist column in the New York Times magazine and a new blog on the Times Web site called "The Moral of the Story" focusing on Ruth Madoff. Is there a moral issue with her observations of how Bernie was making all of his money? Thanks, Randy.

Randy Cohen: Nice to talk to you.