Latest / Masters in Business / Michael Lewis on the Power of Intelligent Leadership (Podcast)

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Michael Lewis on the Power of Intelligent Leadership (Podcast) · Masters in Business

0:02
Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
0:07
Speaker 1: This week. One of my favorite guests Michael Lewis. What
0:11
Speaker 1: what can I say about him? His books are just
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Speaker 1: required reading for anyone interested in finance or psychology of money,
0:20
Speaker 1: and we speak about a lot of really interesting things.
0:24
Speaker 1: We talk about season two of his podcast Against the Rules.
0:28
Speaker 1: The first season was about referees. The second season is
0:32
Speaker 1: about coaches. And this doesn't just apply to sports. This
0:37
Speaker 1: is about referees in the real world. Uh, coaches in
0:41
Speaker 1: the real world, How how things operate, How coaches affects
0:45
Speaker 1: students and children and and everybody essentially, including Michael Lewis,
0:51
Speaker 1: who claims he would not have been a writer but
0:54
Speaker 1: for coach Fits in high school changed his life. Really
0:59
Speaker 1: just quite fascinating. We also discuss his book The Fifth
1:04
Speaker 1: Risk and how prescient it was about ignoring the importance
1:12
Speaker 1: of government in trying to create an entity that can
1:18
Speaker 1: respond to sudden and unexpected events such as the COVID
1:24
Speaker 1: nineteen pandemic. H The discussion about what went right and
1:28
Speaker 1: wrong in the prep for that is really quite fascinating. Lewis,
1:33
Speaker 1: isn't some sort of uh left wing um you know,
1:38
Speaker 1: Berkeley based ideologue. He just cares about management and competency
1:44
Speaker 1: and organizational um excellence, and he's frustrated when when we
1:49
Speaker 1: don't have that. So, rather than me continue to talk
1:53
Speaker 1: with no further ado. My interview with Michael Lewis v
1:59
Speaker 1: see his Master's in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
2:05
Speaker 1: My special guest today needs no introduction. He is the
2:09
Speaker 1: author of Flyers, Poker, money Ball, The Big Short, The Blindside, Flashboys,
2:14
Speaker 1: The Undoing Project. I'm gonna stop there and just say,
2:17
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis, welcome to Bloomberg. Well, thanks for having me back. Yeah,
2:22
Speaker 1: this is our third or fourth one. That's uh. We
2:24
Speaker 1: did one live and two in the students. This will
2:26
Speaker 1: be the second one in the studio. Last we spoke,
2:29
Speaker 1: you were just launching your first season of a new
2:32
Speaker 1: podcast called Against the Rules. What was that experience? Like,
2:36
Speaker 1: what what did you learn being a podcaster? So it's
2:39
Speaker 1: been that long, um, because that would have been that
2:42
Speaker 1: would have been a little more than a year ago, right,
2:46
Speaker 1: it is, it's been. It's at this stage of my career,
2:51
Speaker 1: it's amazing and delightful to find a whole new thing
2:54
Speaker 1: to do. This is as sort of enriching as this
2:58
Speaker 1: thing has been. So he's I found. Um One, the
3:02
Speaker 1: audience is huge, and and it's and and different in
3:06
Speaker 1: nature from a book audience. People listen to these things
3:09
Speaker 1: differently than they read, and it's a more emotional connection
3:15
Speaker 1: you have with with the audience. So people, um will
3:18
Speaker 1: come up to me and say, oh, I really liked
3:21
Speaker 1: your book, but it's a cool kind of thing. And
3:24
Speaker 1: when people come up and they like the podcast, it's
3:27
Speaker 1: almost like they want to hug you. Uh. Then they
3:31
Speaker 1: feel like, I think there's something about the human voice.
3:33
Speaker 1: They feel like they know you in a different way.
3:36
Speaker 1: And I was gonna say something you had said to
3:38
Speaker 1: me that I've slowly come around to accepting the book
3:42
Speaker 1: people read isn't necessarily the book you wrote. And originally
3:47
Speaker 1: I pushed back, and now I'm kinda okay. I kind
3:50
Speaker 1: of see that when you're doing an interview, when it's
3:53
Speaker 1: just having a conversation or discussing stuff in an audio format,
3:58
Speaker 1: people really think like they know you personally. It's a
4:02
Speaker 1: very different connection between author and reader versus podcasting r
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Speaker 1: podcaster and listener. So there's some overlap, and the overlap
4:11
Speaker 1: nature of my podcast is the storytelling podcast. And it's scripted,
4:15
Speaker 1: and it's laid out and structured in the same way
4:17
Speaker 1: a long piece of writing would be laid out in structured.
4:20
Speaker 1: But but it um the form encourages the creator to
4:26
Speaker 1: move in certain directions, and in particularly encourage the creator
4:30
Speaker 1: moving emotional directions. It's an emotional it's an emotional connection
4:34
Speaker 1: you have. People are more likely to laugh and more
4:37
Speaker 1: likely to cry than they are with the printed the
4:39
Speaker 1: word on the page, and they're less likely to like
4:43
Speaker 1: sit through a description of a collateralized debt obligation. It's
4:47
Speaker 1: it's it's it's harder and it's harder to do that
4:50
Speaker 1: kind of thing, but it but but the raw ingredients
4:55
Speaker 1: of a story in some ways work better in the
4:57
Speaker 1: audio than they do on on the printed page. They're
5:00
Speaker 1: both great, you know, I don't I'm not leaving one
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Speaker 1: for the other. It's just been I feel like almost
5:06
Speaker 1: like I spent my career um as a as a
5:11
Speaker 1: like a weightlifter with only using my legs, and now
5:15
Speaker 1: someone has allowed me to lift with my arms. Uh,
5:18
Speaker 1: and I'm working all these other muscles that I just
5:21
Speaker 1: I've never worked and and it just feels. It feels
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Speaker 1: both it's fun to do. It's a way to get material,
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Speaker 1: get to material I would have a hard time getting
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Speaker 1: to in print, and and it will make the print
5:34
Speaker 1: stuff better. I mean, I just have no question about
5:37
Speaker 1: that now. So, so, the first season of Against the
5:40
Speaker 1: Rules was about referees in sports and finance and life.
5:44
Speaker 1: What brought you to that concept of referees? And are
5:48
Speaker 1: you staying with a theme about now? The new season
5:52
Speaker 1: is about coaches, So there is there will be a
5:56
Speaker 1: theme that runs through. I sort of laid out seven
5:59
Speaker 1: sea reasons in my head at some point and seven
6:02
Speaker 1: and seven seasons, seven seasons of seven episodes each. Um.
6:07
Speaker 1: Now whether those get done or not, well, I we'll see.
6:10
Speaker 1: But the but, but the the The idea in the
6:13
Speaker 1: beginning was to look at to look at American life
6:20
Speaker 1: through through characters in American life, in particular roles that
6:25
Speaker 1: have been in flux where you've seen some movement in
6:28
Speaker 1: the status the situation of the role. So the referee
6:32
Speaker 1: was an easy one to start with because you could
6:35
Speaker 1: you could kind of show that, I mean, even in sports,
6:38
Speaker 1: it was easy to show the way refs have gotten
6:40
Speaker 1: kind of better and better and better but people hated
6:42
Speaker 1: him more and more and more. And it was that
6:44
Speaker 1: you could see that and you could this is extend
6:47
Speaker 1: that from sports to other things where you see referees
6:50
Speaker 1: under attack for various reasons. And and um that that
6:55
Speaker 1: character interested in me because I did feel like the
6:59
Speaker 1: theme that would run through all the episodes was fairness. Um,
7:03
Speaker 1: it would be kind of like inequality, fair and unfairness,
7:07
Speaker 1: the feelings that are very much alive right now in
7:11
Speaker 1: in American life. And I was just gonna and I'd
7:14
Speaker 1: be playing with that those ideas through this character and
7:19
Speaker 1: the character, and we do a number of different stories
7:21
Speaker 1: about the character. So going to the second season, it
7:24
Speaker 1: was never gonna be about reveres. It's gonna be about
7:26
Speaker 1: something else. And I had seven characters in my mind.
7:29
Speaker 1: It was a question of which came next, and coach
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Speaker 1: I went to coaches. I went to coaches one because
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Speaker 1: it preserved, it reserved an option that I thought maybe
7:40
Speaker 1: I'd want to have of keeping the entire seven seasons
7:43
Speaker 1: inside of an arena. That every role is is someone
7:47
Speaker 1: who's actually inside of an arena during a sporting of it. Um. Now,
7:52
Speaker 1: in the second season, it's not all sports. Coaches in fact,
7:55
Speaker 1: it's very seldom sports coaches. There are only two or
7:57
Speaker 1: three of the episodes that have sports coaches in them.
7:59
Speaker 1: Uh but but but the you know, the spirit and
8:03
Speaker 1: thing still right arises out of athletics. Yeah, that that
8:08
Speaker 1: was pretty obvious as soon as I started listening to
8:12
Speaker 1: the season two. It's like, okay, so first referees, now coaches.
8:16
Speaker 1: I wonder when he's gonna start getting into you know,
8:19
Speaker 1: the guy that tapes up your rankles and and and
8:21
Speaker 1: the ticket seller. How much is it gonna stay with sports?
8:24
Speaker 1: But the other thing that stands out writing is a
8:29
Speaker 1: pretty solitary act. You can still speak with people and
8:33
Speaker 1: do research and interview people, but ultimately it's you sitting
8:36
Speaker 1: in front of a keyboard or a pen and paper.
8:39
Speaker 1: How have you transitioned to sort of the ensemble um approach?
8:45
Speaker 1: And I know that Pushkin Industries who puts out your podcast.
8:49
Speaker 1: It was founded by Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg, who
8:52
Speaker 1: were too old buddies of yours, yes, and who now
8:56
Speaker 1: sit around at a table during a table read when
8:58
Speaker 1: I have a rough draft and tell me what what
9:01
Speaker 1: what sucks about it? Um? It's it's one of the
9:06
Speaker 1: joys of the form that it's not an individual sport
9:09
Speaker 1: like writing books is basically an individual sport UM, but
9:13
Speaker 1: this is that the other people who participate in this UM,
9:19
Speaker 1: the producers, the editors, Malcolm and Jacob, have huge effects
9:25
Speaker 1: on the product, on what on how it all turns out.
9:28
Speaker 1: And that's been great. It took me a little while
9:31
Speaker 1: to get used to people telling me that I'm wrong
9:35
Speaker 1: or people are people taking you know, it's more of this.
9:37
Speaker 1: It's like people taking stuff that I thought, Wow, that's
9:40
Speaker 1: great and sort of saying that's not really great. Uh,
9:44
Speaker 1: we can do you can do this this way. And
9:47
Speaker 1: it's a it is a new form, you know. I
9:48
Speaker 1: have a lot to learn. UM. So that's been it's
9:52
Speaker 1: been stretching, it's been it's just like been a really
9:55
Speaker 1: great thing. And I like all the people, love all
9:56
Speaker 1: the people who I'm working with. UM. So we have
9:59
Speaker 1: a little TA team, and the team kind of gets
10:03
Speaker 1: each other. Now we've now done it. I'm just I'm
10:06
Speaker 1: about to put to bed the last episode of the
10:09
Speaker 1: second season. So that's our fourteenth episode. So we've done
10:12
Speaker 1: this fourteen times together, and they're getting I think they
10:15
Speaker 1: know me now and I know them. And that's a
10:17
Speaker 1: lovely feeling. I mean, I haven't had that feeling in
10:19
Speaker 1: a long time. Um and and it's you get it
10:23
Speaker 1: in businesses. I'm sure I don't have one. You get
10:26
Speaker 1: it in sports. You know you missed. I missed. I've
10:30
Speaker 1: missed that feeling. So that's been just like another another
10:34
Speaker 1: another thing about it. It's been all pleasure. My extra
10:39
Speaker 1: special guest is Michael Lewis. You know him from I'm
10:41
Speaker 1: not even gonna list the books, but I do want
10:44
Speaker 1: to talk about two of his recent books. One is
10:47
Speaker 1: The Fifth Risk, which is about the transition team uh
10:51
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other things with the current president.
10:55
Speaker 1: And also his audio only book, The Coming Storm. Uh.
10:59
Speaker 1: Let's let's day with the Fifth Risk. So that turned
11:02
Speaker 1: out to be a shockingly precedent depiction of all of
11:06
Speaker 1: the unfilled jobs in this administration. And they were literally
11:11
Speaker 1: thousands of political appointees and very senior folks that just
11:16
Speaker 1: never ever got appointed to a position, which is kind
11:20
Speaker 1: of shocking because that's how you control the government, that's
11:23
Speaker 1: how you affect your policies. First of all, it was
11:27
Speaker 1: incredibly precedent depiction. But second, how did you ever find
11:31
Speaker 1: this story? People really were not all that plugged into
11:35
Speaker 1: what was going on here. You know, It's funny. It
11:38
Speaker 1: seemed to me kind of low hanging fruit, but only
11:41
Speaker 1: to me. This is so, this is what happened. I
11:45
Speaker 1: woke up, uh from surgery I had. I had hip
11:50
Speaker 1: surgery the day before Trump walked into the White House. Uh,
11:54
Speaker 1: the day before therefore he actually became president. And Um,
11:59
Speaker 1: I was laying in bed, we all drugged up, and
12:02
Speaker 1: and I hadn't yet remember. I had on my mind
12:05
Speaker 1: what the book I just finished, which was The Undoing Project,
12:08
Speaker 1: which is all about the way people misperceived risk. And
12:12
Speaker 1: I'd always seen Trump as a watching his campaign, it
12:16
Speaker 1: just felt like he was a risk distorting machine. Uh.
12:20
Speaker 1: And I was anyway, I had this thought this and
12:23
Speaker 1: and it was watching part of the White House. I thought,
12:27
Speaker 1: I don't know how he's gonna kill me. How's he
12:30
Speaker 1: gonna kill me? He's gonna do something. He's gonna do
12:32
Speaker 1: something that's gonna kill me. It was like an existential dread. Uh.
12:37
Speaker 1: And I thought, how do I get this across to
12:39
Speaker 1: people that what they just put in there is unbelievably risky?
12:43
Speaker 1: And uh, And my first thought, this is this is
12:46
Speaker 1: relevant right now. Was and I've got some way to
12:49
Speaker 1: actually doing it, was to creating in Times Square something
12:53
Speaker 1: I wanted to call the Trump death Clock. And it
12:56
Speaker 1: was gonna just scroll the number of deaths caused by
13:00
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's mismanagement of the federal government. So I'm already
13:03
Speaker 1: framing in my head, the federal government is this management
13:05
Speaker 1: of manager of existential risks. Um that seemed kind of obvious.
13:10
Speaker 1: But but the death clock, you know, I got it.
13:12
Speaker 1: I found someone who was willing to pay for it.
13:14
Speaker 1: I just couldn't find an intellectually respectable way to get
13:17
Speaker 1: to determine the death count, right. It was gonna look
13:20
Speaker 1: like the debt clock and it but and it was
13:21
Speaker 1: gonna like scroll and you have pictures of people who
13:23
Speaker 1: had died who shouldn't have died and all the rest. Well,
13:26
Speaker 1: that's actually gone up. I don't know if you've noticed it,
13:28
Speaker 1: but two days ago someone put up something called the
13:31
Speaker 1: Trump Death clock in Times Square. Uh, and it's and
13:35
Speaker 1: it's just measuring the number of people who have died
13:37
Speaker 1: from the coronavirus, who wouldn't have who wouldn't have died
13:40
Speaker 1: if we had different policies in place. Anyway, that's it's funny.
13:44
Speaker 1: It's funny you bring that up because I have not
13:46
Speaker 1: been in Manhattan in sixty four days since we've been
13:49
Speaker 1: sheltering in place. And my version of the death clock
13:53
Speaker 1: is this wonderful infographic from a website called Information is Beautiful.
13:58
Speaker 1: I'll send you the link, and they it's global and
14:01
Speaker 1: there are a couple of great info sources, but they
14:04
Speaker 1: every day you get the updated version of number of
14:07
Speaker 1: new infections, number of deaths not and it's state by state,
14:11
Speaker 1: country by country, and it's both incredible and depressing at
14:16
Speaker 1: the same time. Because this really I'm I'm coming to
14:20
Speaker 1: that question, but we might as well jump to it. Um,
14:23
Speaker 1: how much of an avoidable error? Are are a hundred
14:27
Speaker 1: thousand American deaths? A lot of it? So here's to
14:32
Speaker 1: get back because to the fifth risk picks up at
14:36
Speaker 1: the beginning of this story, right, I mean the Trump
14:39
Speaker 1: there's there's meant to be a transition where which is
14:41
Speaker 1: an exchange of knowledge and expertise, re election likes put together.
14:48
Speaker 1: And you write that of all people, New Jersey Governor
14:51
Speaker 1: Chris Christie is leading Donald Trump's transition team exactly, and
14:56
Speaker 1: and by law, you know they've got to have this thing,
14:59
Speaker 1: and the and the federal government subsidizes it, and the
15:02
Speaker 1: Obama administrations required to do it. And Obama knows the
15:05
Speaker 1: value of it because Bush did such a great job
15:07
Speaker 1: apparently handling the government. And there was just lots of stuff.
15:10
Speaker 1: They are in the middle of a financial crisis, a
15:12
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that needed to go from one group
15:14
Speaker 1: to the other. As as naturally hostile as they might
15:17
Speaker 1: have been to each other, there was a general recognition that,
15:20
Speaker 1: like ninety percent of the federal government is not not
15:23
Speaker 1: an ideological matter. It's a problem solving and and problem
15:26
Speaker 1: dealing with situation. And you've got these people who do
15:29
Speaker 1: who do it like civil servants, but it's run by
15:32
Speaker 1: political appointees. It's run by four thousand people you're putting
15:35
Speaker 1: in charge of these this operation. And and so Trump has,
15:41
Speaker 1: through Chris Christie, a team of hundreds and hundreds of
15:43
Speaker 1: people who are supposed to go into the federal government
15:45
Speaker 1: the day the day after the election and learn how
15:48
Speaker 1: the nuclear arsenals works, or learn you know. One of
15:50
Speaker 1: the things on the top of this was how they
15:52
Speaker 1: old a bowl of uh crisis was epidemic, was was
15:56
Speaker 1: dealt with um and Trump fires every body, everybody. Christie, Wait,
16:02
Speaker 1: they're supposed to start November nine, Yeah, before January twenty.
16:06
Speaker 1: If they get like a four month head start, two
16:09
Speaker 1: months start, yeah, and uh. And Crump had always been
16:12
Speaker 1: dismissive of this. He told Christie at some point when
16:16
Speaker 1: Christie is trying to explain him how important this was
16:18
Speaker 1: that Chris, you and I can take two hours away
16:20
Speaker 1: from the victory party and learned everything we need to
16:22
Speaker 1: know about the federal government. Uh. He had He had
16:24
Speaker 1: no interest at all. And he's the guy who's supposed
16:28
Speaker 1: to be running it. So when things happened, the big
16:31
Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing they did. They missed the
16:34
Speaker 1: apropos of our current crisis. They missed um, the lessons
16:39
Speaker 1: learned from not just to Bola, but the flu um,
16:43
Speaker 1: the flu potential pandemic um. I can't remember burger swine,
16:48
Speaker 1: I get a mixed it was the previous coronavirus, it
16:52
Speaker 1: was it wasn't it was the it was influenza, and
16:55
Speaker 1: it was, but wasn't. No one of them, so many
17:02
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. It's it's either the bird or the swine flu.
17:05
Speaker 1: I get one of them have been in the Bush administration.
17:07
Speaker 1: And one happened in the Obama administration, and it's a
17:10
Speaker 1: it's it actually is very telling that I can't remember
17:12
Speaker 1: which is which because it never happened. You know, it
17:15
Speaker 1: was dealt with, but it was dealt with not perfectly
17:18
Speaker 1: in either case, but in each case they learned and
17:22
Speaker 1: it got better and better. And one of the things
17:24
Speaker 1: they learned in the Obama administration is it is absolutely
17:27
Speaker 1: critical that there be someone in the White House who
17:30
Speaker 1: is coordinating the entire federal response because you've got all
17:33
Speaker 1: these different agencies doing all these different things, and the agencies,
17:36
Speaker 1: you know, compete with each other their power grabs that
17:39
Speaker 1: you need to check them. So you need to know
17:41
Speaker 1: if the Center for Disease Control says, oh, we have
17:44
Speaker 1: a good test, uh for the for the for the coronavirus,
17:48
Speaker 1: you have someone there says show me, and and I
17:51
Speaker 1: want to see it, and I want to make sure
17:53
Speaker 1: that that we have you know, we we have um
17:56
Speaker 1: fallibility built built into this. There's there's there are other
18:01
Speaker 1: places we can go if this doesn't work. Trump fired
18:06
Speaker 1: the people on the National Security Council who oversaw the
18:09
Speaker 1: the federal government's response to pandemic and the threat of pandemic.
18:15
Speaker 1: It's one of the several things he did that that
18:18
Speaker 1: that um had a huge effect early on to in
18:21
Speaker 1: our ability to respond to it. But as a result,
18:25
Speaker 1: I mean, I think what you've got to do is
18:26
Speaker 1: compare our experience here with the experience of governments that
18:30
Speaker 1: have been more competent, like South Korea or Germany or
18:33
Speaker 1: you know, they've been most almost everybody. I mean, we
18:37
Speaker 1: are what what percentage of the world's population are we
18:40
Speaker 1: and what percentage of the world's infections are were like
18:43
Speaker 1: like a quarter of the inflections and we're like five
18:46
Speaker 1: of Yeah, I mean that's crazy, especially since it took
18:51
Speaker 1: a little while to get here. UM. So I don't um,
18:56
Speaker 1: it's it's been shocking. How shocking if you didn't know,
19:00
Speaker 1: like if you didn't know how Trump had approached the
19:03
Speaker 1: federal government, it's totally shocking how they how they responded.
19:07
Speaker 1: But if you knew, like if you if you've done
19:10
Speaker 1: the work I did to do the book, you know
19:12
Speaker 1: you think, well, that's gonna happen, you know. I mean
19:14
Speaker 1: that I don't know what. I don't know what the
19:17
Speaker 1: crisis is going to be, but whenever it comes, we're
19:19
Speaker 1: not gonna be ready for it. So I know the
19:21
Speaker 1: immediate pushback that some people are gonna make is, Oh
19:25
Speaker 1: that Michael Lewis lives in Berkeley. He's in California. He's
19:28
Speaker 1: a lefty. But from everything I've read that you've written
19:32
Speaker 1: about this, you're not talking politics and partisan policies. You're
19:39
Speaker 1: talking organization and management. Am I getting that right? Yes?
19:43
Speaker 1: It's it's it's just like, how do you do this intelligently? Um?
19:49
Speaker 1: I mean, how partisan is a pandemic? It's crazy? And
19:54
Speaker 1: let me you know, it's funny. I live in Berkeley.
19:57
Speaker 1: I'm actually not that much of a lefty. I mean
20:00
Speaker 1: I I I if the people in Berkeley knew my politics,
20:03
Speaker 1: they run me out of I mean really, it's much
20:07
Speaker 1: messier than that. I am not like this, Oh, identify
20:10
Speaker 1: as a lefty nowhere near I'm not even tell you
20:15
Speaker 1: who I voted for in my life. But it's I'm
20:18
Speaker 1: all over the map in my political feelings. Uh so
20:23
Speaker 1: that but yes, even if you label me a Berkeley lefty, um,
20:28
Speaker 1: this Berkeley left he is asking like, why can't we
20:30
Speaker 1: have a smart management of a pandemic instead of a
20:33
Speaker 1: stupid one? And why? You know the amazing thing about
20:36
Speaker 1: it to me is even now that he is refusing
20:40
Speaker 1: to accept the responsibility from managing the problem that is
20:44
Speaker 1: a it is a problem that naturally demands a centralized response,
20:49
Speaker 1: a coordinate. It's like a war a court. You know,
20:52
Speaker 1: you don't want California raising their army and Alabama raising
20:55
Speaker 1: their army and deciding, you know, where the attack Japan
20:57
Speaker 1: independently is in the world. You know, you you you,
21:01
Speaker 1: you need to coordinate the enterprise. And it's even even
21:04
Speaker 1: it's almost even more demanding of a centralized response than
21:09
Speaker 1: a war, because everybody's behavior affects the outcome. That you know,
21:14
Speaker 1: if if half the population says, all right, this is
21:18
Speaker 1: no big deal. We're gonna go run around the streets
21:20
Speaker 1: and infect each other, and the other half the population
21:22
Speaker 1: shuts down the economy, you get the worst of both worlds.
21:27
Speaker 1: And that's what's happening. And I have to ask about
21:31
Speaker 1: the coming storm, which is sort of based on the
21:34
Speaker 1: whole um weather n o A a part of fifth risk.
21:37
Speaker 1: So it was so what it was. So what I've
21:40
Speaker 1: always done is almost always done with the books, is
21:44
Speaker 1: I've tricked them out in magazines beforehand, and not all
21:49
Speaker 1: of them, not all of it, but pieces of it,
21:50
Speaker 1: you know, sort of tests, run them in in shorter form.
21:54
Speaker 1: And the Coming Storm was the magazine version of the
21:57
Speaker 1: Fifth Risk. It was a it was a chapter in
21:59
Speaker 1: the and um it was a chapter about So I
22:03
Speaker 1: was wandering around once I realized that Trump had not
22:06
Speaker 1: got the briefings, and I could go get the briefings
22:09
Speaker 1: for the first time and turn up in some poor
22:11
Speaker 1: person's office who was wondering when someone was gonna show
22:13
Speaker 1: up and have them explain to me how you manage
22:16
Speaker 1: the nuclear arsenal, or or how you predict the weather.
22:19
Speaker 1: And these things have not happened. Nobody's been told in
22:22
Speaker 1: the Trump administration. It started. And this is why I
22:24
Speaker 1: thought it was a low hanging fruit. I thought, oh
22:26
Speaker 1: my god, what a story. You know, you can go anywhere.
22:28
Speaker 1: There there the risks, they're being managed, your spectacular risks,
22:32
Speaker 1: um the weather. So I was in this position writing
22:38
Speaker 1: the book where do I Go? And I had on
22:41
Speaker 1: my floor of my office that you're watching me in
22:43
Speaker 1: there were manilla folders for every department of the government,
22:46
Speaker 1: and each got fatter and fatter and fatter, and and
22:49
Speaker 1: at some point one would make the argument to me
22:51
Speaker 1: you really got to go there. And and I thought,
22:54
Speaker 1: and the way I chose where to go was I
22:56
Speaker 1: want to go places where people don't imagine there's a problem.
22:59
Speaker 1: Like every it's gonna know there's a problem in the
23:01
Speaker 1: Defense Department. If the Defense Department is not well runned
23:04
Speaker 1: or or Treasury, people kind of get treasury um, but
23:07
Speaker 1: they don't know what goes on in the Commerce Department.
23:10
Speaker 1: And in the Commerce Department there's this thing called the
23:12
Speaker 1: National Weather Service, among other things. The Commerce Department is
23:15
Speaker 1: really what it really is is the department of data.
23:19
Speaker 1: So much of the data that we use as a
23:21
Speaker 1: society resides there in one way or another. And the
23:24
Speaker 1: weather data, in climate data, is part of that story.
23:28
Speaker 1: And so I went to go ask, like, what happens
23:31
Speaker 1: if nobody gives a rats ass about this data? And
23:34
Speaker 1: and and Wilbert Ross, who've been put in charge of
23:38
Speaker 1: the Commerce Department as much as said, I don't give
23:40
Speaker 1: a rats ass about the data. All I care about
23:42
Speaker 1: his trade, which has nothing to do with the converment
23:45
Speaker 1: wrong department. Uh So I the National Weather Service ends
23:52
Speaker 1: up being a really interesting case study in Trump management,
23:56
Speaker 1: because what happens when you don't it isn't the Trump
24:00
Speaker 1: is some libertarian. I mean it's that he just that
24:04
Speaker 1: he thinks the federal government shouldn't exist in some way.
24:08
Speaker 1: He's not there in his head. He gets there when
24:10
Speaker 1: it's convenient. He'll say it because then he doesn't have
24:12
Speaker 1: to manage it, like if it shouldn't be doing things
24:15
Speaker 1: like managing a pandemic, then it's not his fault. It's
24:17
Speaker 1: not managing a pandemic. But but it's uh. But but
24:20
Speaker 1: he has no particular He just doesn't care about it all.
24:23
Speaker 1: He cares about himself. And so what happens when you
24:26
Speaker 1: don't care about it? Who shows up to run it?
24:29
Speaker 1: And when you don't care about it? And the only
24:32
Speaker 1: rule you have for who you're gonna put in the
24:34
Speaker 1: jobs is they have to have demonstrated total loyalty to
24:37
Speaker 1: you and not said anything bad about you. Well, who
24:40
Speaker 1: shows up are people who have got narrow interests in
24:42
Speaker 1: these things? Um And he put in charge of the
24:46
Speaker 1: weather Service and or the operation that runs the weather service,
24:50
Speaker 1: or tried to put in charge the guy who who
24:53
Speaker 1: owned and ran ACU Weather. Now ACU Weather has been
24:57
Speaker 1: a hell bent for twenty five years, essentially making it
25:01
Speaker 1: extremely difficult for the National Weather Service to communicate weather
25:05
Speaker 1: forecast the American public because it gets in the way
25:08
Speaker 1: of ACCU Weather's profits. That's how accuate what ACU weather does.
25:12
Speaker 1: And and once you do that, I mean, this is
25:15
Speaker 1: a this is once you all of a sudden say
25:18
Speaker 1: all right, um, yes, yeah. Everybody in that Weather Service
25:24
Speaker 1: knew this was an existential threat to the Weather Service.
25:27
Speaker 1: And the Weather Service is in itself a wonderful story
25:31
Speaker 1: that you know, you go back forty years, not even
25:34
Speaker 1: forty years, the three day forecast wasn't any good, uh,
25:38
Speaker 1: you know, much less the ten day forecast. The progress
25:41
Speaker 1: has been made in weather prediction. It's like one of
25:44
Speaker 1: those great, very slow moving stories like I don't know,
25:48
Speaker 1: I grew up in New Orleans. When I was growing
25:50
Speaker 1: up in New Orleans, the way you found out whether
25:51
Speaker 1: the hurricane was about it as you went outside, you know,
25:55
Speaker 1: yeah this you know it was the frisbee still still
25:57
Speaker 1: in the yard when you throw it. Um. But but
26:01
Speaker 1: you know, and now you can evacuate entire cities and
26:03
Speaker 1: you have a really good sense of where it's going,
26:05
Speaker 1: and all that Weather Service achievement. Uh, And there's there's
26:10
Speaker 1: a lot left to do. So let me just stop you.
26:13
Speaker 1: There is said, because there's a part of the book
26:15
Speaker 1: that you just said something that triggered me. So you said,
26:20
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go meet with these various people and get
26:23
Speaker 1: the briefings that the incoming Trump administration didn't get. Can
26:29
Speaker 1: anybody say, hey, I want to learn how to dispose
26:32
Speaker 1: of spent nuclear fuel rods or how do we maintain
26:36
Speaker 1: the safety of our nuclear weaponry? You can't just walk
26:40
Speaker 1: into d O E and get that briefing. How did
26:43
Speaker 1: you arrange that? Because I would imagine a lot of
26:46
Speaker 1: that stuff is pretty classified. Well there's stuff people had
26:49
Speaker 1: to tiptoe around um, but but I got to For example,
26:55
Speaker 1: the guy who had just walked out of the Department
26:58
Speaker 1: Energy and had been he was a Wall Street guy
27:00
Speaker 1: named John McWilliams. Uh worked at Goldman Um. It was
27:04
Speaker 1: a very successful private equity investor, has made his fortune
27:08
Speaker 1: and wanted to kind of give something back, and he
27:11
Speaker 1: he was He was asked by the the Obama's Secretary
27:16
Speaker 1: of Energy, Earnest Monies Too, to come in and evaluate
27:20
Speaker 1: the risks inside of the Department Energy, and he became
27:22
Speaker 1: the chief risk officer. So all this stuff classified and
27:26
Speaker 1: unclassified ended up kind of percolating up to him and
27:30
Speaker 1: he so I could go see him, and I went
27:33
Speaker 1: and sat down with him, and it was true. He
27:35
Speaker 1: would have to say, I gotta stop right there in
27:38
Speaker 1: this description of how we're dealing with the South Koreans
27:40
Speaker 1: and the North Koreans and their missile program, because we
27:44
Speaker 1: just hit classified. But but you can get a long
27:46
Speaker 1: way before you got the classified. You didn't have to.
27:49
Speaker 1: He but he as we were actually what I was
27:50
Speaker 1: talking to, he said, you know, just assume the Chinese
27:52
Speaker 1: are listening to this, because because I'm almost sure they've
27:56
Speaker 1: listen to everything I've done since I've been here. Um,
27:59
Speaker 1: it was amazing. He's sitting in his backyard in Long Island,
28:03
Speaker 1: uh and and the Chinese are there. But he but
28:05
Speaker 1: he but he could walk me through if not, if
28:11
Speaker 1: not in the most granular detail where we got two
28:14
Speaker 1: places where there was the issue of like is it classified,
28:18
Speaker 1: But he could walking through broadly what this, what the
28:21
Speaker 1: problems were that he was most worried about. And in
28:24
Speaker 1: a way that he and the thing was, I sat
28:27
Speaker 1: there listening with my jaw on the ground, thinking, God,
28:30
Speaker 1: I hope someone's they're dealing with this stuff. And he's
28:33
Speaker 1: he's telling me, no, nobody's there dealing with this stuff.
28:37
Speaker 1: And um, and not only that, nobody's talked to me
28:41
Speaker 1: that all you'd have to do, all they have to
28:43
Speaker 1: is call me up and I could tell you everything
28:44
Speaker 1: I'm telling tell them everything I'm telling you, and and
28:49
Speaker 1: and they the fact they didn't want to know. I
28:51
Speaker 1: just couldn't get past that because it was not ideological.
28:55
Speaker 1: It's not ideological. How you stopped the North Koreans from
28:59
Speaker 1: from being able to deliver a missile to California. That's
29:02
Speaker 1: not an ideological issue. Uh, really, it isn't. At least
29:06
Speaker 1: it never used to be. Never it seemed to have
29:08
Speaker 1: become one. Right, And so they're all these there. There
29:12
Speaker 1: was all this knowledge that just seemed essential if you're
29:15
Speaker 1: going to manage the enterprise. And the endifference to to
29:18
Speaker 1: the knowledge was in a way, it was gold for me, right,
29:21
Speaker 1: because it was it gave me a way to justify
29:26
Speaker 1: my presence inside the federal government. And I never would
29:30
Speaker 1: have thought if you'd ask me, you can write a
29:31
Speaker 1: book bout the federal government? I mean, my god, no,
29:34
Speaker 1: I mean, it's what a horrible subject. But Trump electrified
29:38
Speaker 1: the material. All you had to do was totally ignore
29:40
Speaker 1: the federal government to make it interest. You describe the
29:45
Speaker 1: power of a coach to change a life and in
29:48
Speaker 1: and in the second episode of the series, you say,
29:51
Speaker 1: in this case mine, tell us how coach Fits changed
29:55
Speaker 1: your life. Um. Yes, So my coach Fits was my
30:00
Speaker 1: high school baseball coach. And he was when he arrived
30:03
Speaker 1: at the Newman's School in New Orleans, Louisiana, he was
30:06
Speaker 1: the most terrifying thing any of us had ever seen.
30:09
Speaker 1: He was six ft four, he had been he had
30:11
Speaker 1: been a catcher in the Oakland, a system, big time
30:14
Speaker 1: college basketball and baseball player, and he was from the
30:17
Speaker 1: Bobby Knights school of coaching. Uh but but he he
30:22
Speaker 1: he but with with a twist. Unlike Bobby Knight. There
30:26
Speaker 1: was never any doubt that he cared about you, that
30:30
Speaker 1: that he was coming from a place where he was
30:32
Speaker 1: just trying to fix you and not just make you
30:35
Speaker 1: a better baseball player, but like make you a better man.
30:39
Speaker 1: And um and he's he when he when I collided
30:42
Speaker 1: with him, I was just trouble. I was like I
30:45
Speaker 1: was when I was thirteen years old, fourteen years old,
30:48
Speaker 1: I guess I was thirteen, and he was, um, you know,
30:52
Speaker 1: my idea of of of a day of hard work
30:57
Speaker 1: was going out on a ripping hood or him and
30:58
Speaker 1: and keep covers off cars. I mean, I was like
31:00
Speaker 1: a little vandal. I didn't go to I didn't care
31:02
Speaker 1: about school. I was kind of like indifferent to the
31:05
Speaker 1: world around me. And he just first he jolted me
31:08
Speaker 1: with by scaring the hell out of me and sort
31:10
Speaker 1: of like, this is a guy who I don't want
31:12
Speaker 1: to displease. But second he sort of then he created
31:16
Speaker 1: a series. The best way to put it is, he
31:18
Speaker 1: created a series of dramas not just for me, but
31:21
Speaker 1: for everybody who was he, whoever played for him. And
31:24
Speaker 1: in these dramas, you were you were doomed to fail,
31:29
Speaker 1: you were doomed to be incredibly uncomfortable. You were doomed
31:34
Speaker 1: to experience real fear, but you were destined to overcome
31:39
Speaker 1: it all. You were going to learn how to deal
31:41
Speaker 1: with your fear, learn how to bounce back from failure,
31:44
Speaker 1: learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable, learn how to
31:46
Speaker 1: compete in a really difficult situation. And there are lots
31:50
Speaker 1: of little anecdotes and stories, but these dramas in the
31:54
Speaker 1: end he starts. What he actually starts to do is
31:57
Speaker 1: build new identities for kids. And the identity is I'm
32:01
Speaker 1: someone I can win, i can fight, I'm not afraid.
32:05
Speaker 1: You know that, I'm i can be a hero. And
32:09
Speaker 1: and and he starts kids on a kind of a
32:12
Speaker 1: new track how they think about themselves. Uh. And he
32:15
Speaker 1: did it over and over and over and over and
32:16
Speaker 1: the punchline all this And what got me interested in
32:18
Speaker 1: telling the story in the first place was some years
32:22
Speaker 1: ago I got a call from someone who played for
32:26
Speaker 1: him basketball for him, and they were raising the money
32:29
Speaker 1: to rename the school gym from millions of dollars, and
32:32
Speaker 1: the money was being thrown in this guy. The school
32:34
Speaker 1: let him do it without a whole lot of help
32:36
Speaker 1: from the school, but parents of former players and foreign
32:40
Speaker 1: players were saying, man, this guy changed my life. This
32:43
Speaker 1: this guy did all the hard, hard work and raising
32:45
Speaker 1: my child. And at the same time, the very same time,
32:51
Speaker 1: the parents of his then current players were trying to
32:55
Speaker 1: get him fired because they thought he was too hard
32:58
Speaker 1: on their kids. And I thought, this is a moment
33:00
Speaker 1: the culture that that this a thing that I went
33:04
Speaker 1: through that wasn't abusive, It was just really difficult um
33:09
Speaker 1: that somehow kids aren't allowed to go through anymore, aren't
33:13
Speaker 1: being allowed to go through anymore, And I think you're
33:16
Speaker 1: gonna pay a big price for this. At the bottom
33:18
Speaker 1: all I was this guy. I think I maintained to
33:21
Speaker 1: this day, Uh that if I had never had this
33:24
Speaker 1: experience with this coach, I never would have become a writer. Yeah.
33:27
Speaker 1: I was astonished when you said that, because you seem
33:30
Speaker 1: like such a natural writer. So coach fits takes you
33:35
Speaker 1: from Michael Lewis the Hooligan two. I love the story
33:39
Speaker 1: one out bottom of the ninth man, first and third
33:42
Speaker 1: the best picture picture gets pulled and income second stringer
33:47
Speaker 1: Mike Lewis tell us what the coach says to you
33:51
Speaker 1: that seems like a lifetime turning point, that moment in
33:55
Speaker 1: your baseball. Uh so this is what you know. They're
34:00
Speaker 1: lots of other people in the podcast with me sent
34:02
Speaker 1: telling a similar sort of story. It's sort of like
34:04
Speaker 1: where he said, where how he uses the sport to
34:08
Speaker 1: create to start to create a new identity. So I
34:11
Speaker 1: just joined the team I was. I was thirteen. Uh
34:14
Speaker 1: it was the summer team. I was the younger picture,
34:16
Speaker 1: so it wasn't my turn to pitch. I was sitting
34:18
Speaker 1: on the bench watching us play, and like, you know,
34:20
Speaker 1: it was one of those games where you felt like
34:23
Speaker 1: all the grown ups in New Orleans were in the
34:24
Speaker 1: stands screaming and drinking and and and it got very intense,
34:28
Speaker 1: and for complicated reasons, he had to pull the picture. Uh.
34:32
Speaker 1: And it was the bottom of the last inning and
34:34
Speaker 1: runners on first and third, one out, and it was
34:36
Speaker 1: just I was so over my head, you know, i'd
34:39
Speaker 1: been I I just restarted my baseball career six months before.
34:44
Speaker 1: I just learned a curveball. He comes and he grabs
34:47
Speaker 1: me off the bench and he said and pulls me
34:48
Speaker 1: out into the mount He says, he says, you know,
34:51
Speaker 1: I'm kind of glad we're doing this because there's no
34:53
Speaker 1: one I'd rather have in this situation. And you know,
34:58
Speaker 1: in retrospect, it's funny. It At the time I thought
35:01
Speaker 1: I believe him, you know, like he he thinks I
35:04
Speaker 1: can do this, and and he kind of looks over
35:07
Speaker 1: at the guy. He first he hands me the ball,
35:10
Speaker 1: he says, shove this up their ass, and then he
35:12
Speaker 1: looks over at the guy in the third base and
35:14
Speaker 1: he goes and then pick his ass off and and
35:16
Speaker 1: and and so, and it's exactly what happened. I picked
35:19
Speaker 1: the guy off third base, I struck out the next guy.
35:21
Speaker 1: We won. And afterwards he says, this is who you are.
35:25
Speaker 1: This moment is who you are. It was so different
35:27
Speaker 1: than anything I've ever been. But it was such a
35:30
Speaker 1: good feeling coming from this. You know, it was like
35:32
Speaker 1: God talking to you. Zeus was talking to you, and
35:35
Speaker 1: he says, this is who you are. So all of
35:37
Speaker 1: a sudden, you start to be this. You start to
35:39
Speaker 1: tell yourself this story, this is who I am. And
35:42
Speaker 1: to be this. But to be this person, I have
35:44
Speaker 1: to be a different person. I have to work, I
35:46
Speaker 1: have to care, I have to try, I have to suffer.
35:49
Speaker 1: I have to be brave. You know. It's like one
35:51
Speaker 1: thing after another. And so all those qualities started to
35:55
Speaker 1: come and come out of him. It's almost like and
35:58
Speaker 1: we are. I argue this in the podcast cast, the
36:00
Speaker 1: really great coaches are giving you a piece of themselves,
36:04
Speaker 1: and they're taking some little piece of their character and
36:06
Speaker 1: they're putting it inside of you. And and like anybody
36:09
Speaker 1: can call themselves a coach, but that the role is
36:12
Speaker 1: a very funny roles. As I say, it's like a
36:14
Speaker 1: rubber suit. It's our strengths and and expands to fit
36:18
Speaker 1: the character of the person who's wearing it. And and um,
36:21
Speaker 1: you know, the man makes the clothes. And and when
36:24
Speaker 1: you have a character who is as powerful as that character,
36:27
Speaker 1: you can have an enormous influence on a person, to
36:30
Speaker 1: say the very least. So let's talk about a very
36:32
Speaker 1: different coach. I am very late to the game of tennis.
36:37
Speaker 1: I started in my I don't know, early fifties, so
36:41
Speaker 1: I am not playing all that long. And one of
36:43
Speaker 1: the few books I purchased that I found to be
36:47
Speaker 1: of help is The Inner Game of Tennis. Tell us
36:51
Speaker 1: a little bit about the author of that book, and
36:54
Speaker 1: he's completely different approach to coaching than coach fits. So
36:59
Speaker 1: this is the episode that follows the Coach Fish Jerald episode,
37:02
Speaker 1: which will be released next next week. Um. So there's
37:07
Speaker 1: been this movement and coaching and I kind of wonder
37:09
Speaker 1: where to come from. And the movement has a couple
37:13
Speaker 1: of aspects to it. One is, um, the thing that's
37:18
Speaker 1: being a coach more than anything else is the state.
37:20
Speaker 1: It's the state of mind in which you're doing whatever
37:23
Speaker 1: you're doing. So it's sort of mental coaching. Uh. And
37:27
Speaker 1: it's everywhere you see it. You see it in with
37:30
Speaker 1: chief executives, you see with Wall Street traders, you see
37:33
Speaker 1: it various forms of life coaching. And these people call
37:37
Speaker 1: themselves performance coaches, and they're all over the economy where
37:40
Speaker 1: the Tony Robin of America. Yes, but it's really the
37:45
Speaker 1: Tim Galway of vacation of the It's the guy the
37:48
Speaker 1: inner game of tennis is really the beginning of all this. Um.
37:52
Speaker 1: I mean you talked to talk to some talked to
37:54
Speaker 1: some big time coaches like Pete Carroll or Steve Kerr,
37:58
Speaker 1: and they will tell you their inspiration is that book
38:02
Speaker 1: and that guy, uh and and the eye and the idea, Yes,
38:05
Speaker 1: and the idea is um your words, like, you can't
38:11
Speaker 1: really manipulate players or the people you're trying to coach
38:15
Speaker 1: as simply as you think you can just by telling
38:17
Speaker 1: him to do things, just by criticism and praise, And
38:20
Speaker 1: in fact, criticism and praise are both often counterproductive there
38:25
Speaker 1: they create that what you're trying to do is get
38:27
Speaker 1: the the player into a state of mind where they're
38:33
Speaker 1: almost unseelf conscious in what they're doing and and to
38:37
Speaker 1: focus or put in another way, to move their focus
38:42
Speaker 1: onto things that are very helpful to focus on, and
38:44
Speaker 1: away from things that aren't helpful. To focus on. Someone
38:48
Speaker 1: who's going out to um to pitch in a in
38:52
Speaker 1: a in a in a pressure situation, the last thing
38:56
Speaker 1: you want to be thinking is, oh, please God don't
38:58
Speaker 1: let me walk him, or please God throw a strike.
39:02
Speaker 1: What you want to be thinking is, um, push off
39:06
Speaker 1: the rubber, you know, really push when you you're thinking
39:10
Speaker 1: about physical things that actually control the outcome, not the
39:14
Speaker 1: outcome itself. I can take a funny story. So Tim Goalaway,
39:17
Speaker 1: who writes this book, he's it was just a tennis pro.
39:20
Speaker 1: Like how many tennis pros in the world have started
39:22
Speaker 1: a revolution? Uh, He's he's a he's a tennis pro
39:25
Speaker 1: in the early seventies who starts teaching in this different way,
39:28
Speaker 1: not telling people where to hold their racket, just showing
39:30
Speaker 1: them strokes and saying just watch me and then just
39:33
Speaker 1: do it. Uh. And and he his book is published
39:38
Speaker 1: and he thinks it's a tennis book. It's like, ah,
39:41
Speaker 1: you know, you know, it'll sell twenty thou copies. It
39:43
Speaker 1: sells like ends up selling like two million copies. But
39:46
Speaker 1: and people are grabbing it. Who aren't interested in tennis,
39:49
Speaker 1: but teaching other things. He gets a call from the
39:52
Speaker 1: Houston Philharmonic, and he knows nothing about music, like doesn't
39:56
Speaker 1: even know the notes, never played anything. He's not a
39:58
Speaker 1: musical guy. But he goes down to see these people.
40:02
Speaker 1: And the guy who's the the who's the conductor of
40:05
Speaker 1: the symphonies kind of skeptical and he kind of and
40:07
Speaker 1: after they listen to go always talk about the end
40:09
Speaker 1: of game of tennessee, is okay? Pick someone here to coach?
40:13
Speaker 1: And he and and and and Go always says, any volunteers,
40:17
Speaker 1: and he says. The tuba player raises his hand and
40:20
Speaker 1: he goes like this is really bad, Like I don't
40:22
Speaker 1: I don't even know where to end of the tuba
40:23
Speaker 1: you blow on and and so the tuba player gets
40:26
Speaker 1: up and Go always says to him, what's your what's your?
40:30
Speaker 1: What worries you? Like, what's the problem? And the guy says,
40:34
Speaker 1: sometimes the notes are the notes are not coming out
40:37
Speaker 1: quite as full as as I like them too, And
40:40
Speaker 1: I'm straining to hear it, and it's very hard to
40:42
Speaker 1: hear it because you know the two but where they
40:45
Speaker 1: come out so far away from my ear? And always says, well, like,
40:50
Speaker 1: what do you what do you notice in your body
40:53
Speaker 1: when things aren't working? And the guy says, oh, my
40:56
Speaker 1: tongue gets dry and almost it starts to condoms, almost
40:58
Speaker 1: get swollen. And so go always says, forget about the notes,
41:02
Speaker 1: don't listen to the notes. He says, just focus on
41:05
Speaker 1: your tongue. Well, just keep the tongue moist. Don't worry
41:08
Speaker 1: about anything but keeping the tongue moist. So the guy
41:12
Speaker 1: you know always says. The guy picks up the tube
41:14
Speaker 1: and goes boom boom, and he says, I couldn't tell
41:16
Speaker 1: any difference. I didn't know I did, I could tell
41:18
Speaker 1: whether it was good or bad. But the guy does this,
41:21
Speaker 1: and the entire orchestra stands up and gives him a
41:23
Speaker 1: standing ovation. He said, and that it was like focusing
41:27
Speaker 1: on the right thing as opposed to the outcome outcome,
41:32
Speaker 1: process over outcome. And there are lots of different ways
41:35
Speaker 1: to say it, and there are lots of different ways
41:36
Speaker 1: to teach it. But it creates a movement inside of coaching,
41:40
Speaker 1: and and it creates an opportunity different kind of opportunity.
41:43
Speaker 1: It means you don't need to know anything about the
41:45
Speaker 1: thing you're coaching, you just need to know about states
41:47
Speaker 1: of mind that lead to good performance. And so there's
41:50
Speaker 1: a guy in that episode. He's twenty nine years old.
41:53
Speaker 1: He is he is a direct descendant of Tim Galway
41:56
Speaker 1: and he's coaching. You know, any given day you would
41:59
Speaker 1: find in him with New York Giants football players, New
42:03
Speaker 1: York Mets baseball players, New York City Firefighters, Goldman Sachs, traders,
42:09
Speaker 1: my daughter, seventeen year old softball player. I hired him
42:12
Speaker 1: just to see how that work out. But he that
42:14
Speaker 1: he's able to move from one space to the next.
42:16
Speaker 1: And you talk to the people who work with him,
42:18
Speaker 1: and actually I saw it. The effects. The effects are
42:21
Speaker 1: actually kind of great. Uh. That that you you just
42:24
Speaker 1: gives people in a in a kind of a relaxed
42:27
Speaker 1: frame of mind to perform underpression. My special guest this
42:32
Speaker 1: week is Michael Lewis uh and he has been writing
42:35
Speaker 1: almost a weekly series of columns at Bloomberg Opinion about
42:41
Speaker 1: things that are going on with the coronavirus and and
42:43
Speaker 1: they've been kind of fascinating. Like most Michael Lewis topics,
42:48
Speaker 1: you find a corner of this that other people are
42:53
Speaker 1: either overlooking or having dove is deeply into it, and
42:56
Speaker 1: then you reveal something interesting. The first one you wrote no,
43:00
Speaker 1: is gee, we really don't have a lot of data
43:03
Speaker 1: about the effect of social distancing and what it means
43:06
Speaker 1: for the spread of of the coronavirus. What made you
43:10
Speaker 1: start doing these weekly calms, Well, it was the ineptitude
43:14
Speaker 1: of the response, I think was the first thing. Also
43:16
Speaker 1: the size of the problem, but it was I was
43:19
Speaker 1: just struck that we live in this society that has
43:24
Speaker 1: lad the world in exploring the importance of data. We
43:29
Speaker 1: coined the phrase data scientist. We revolutionize sports by using
43:34
Speaker 1: data and analytics in new and different ways. Every business
43:37
Speaker 1: in America has has been swept up in this data revolution.
43:40
Speaker 1: We faced this existential threat and we lack data because
43:44
Speaker 1: we're not collecting enough of it. It's the most amazing thing.
43:47
Speaker 1: I you know that the so the initial failure of
43:51
Speaker 1: the of the Center for Disease Controls tests and then
43:55
Speaker 1: the seeming lack of enthusiasm interest in the Trump administration
43:59
Speaker 1: in in in rapidly figuring out that problem and testing
44:04
Speaker 1: more um got me interested in the first place. And
44:08
Speaker 1: then the question became like, I mean, I still think
44:11
Speaker 1: this is an opportunity, and I still may try to
44:13
Speaker 1: do this with the pieces. I think you could take
44:16
Speaker 1: some of the best like baseball stats geeks, the guys
44:19
Speaker 1: who are in front offices now, guys who are running teams,
44:22
Speaker 1: and throw throw them into this problem because like, where
44:25
Speaker 1: do you what's the data you want? Right now? There's
44:28
Speaker 1: a lot of data that really help us with this.
44:30
Speaker 1: One is like one is data in in who's got
44:34
Speaker 1: about how many people have the disease and how it
44:37
Speaker 1: how it spreads. I mean that's this is this is knowable. Uh,
44:41
Speaker 1: we don't know it, but it's knowable. You mentioned in
44:44
Speaker 1: one of the columns that we haven't really explored why
44:48
Speaker 1: churches and synagogues seemed to be focal points. Is it's
44:52
Speaker 1: something about singing as opposed to working with a family
44:55
Speaker 1: member who has it that you don't get yet A
44:58
Speaker 1: church or synagogue seems to be a giant hotspot. Yes,
45:02
Speaker 1: I mean the places where people are in each other's
45:06
Speaker 1: presence and breathing heavily, uh, for a long periods of
45:10
Speaker 1: time seems to be a big, big problem. Whereas you
45:13
Speaker 1: don't really it's not doesn't. I mean, it's all anecdote, right,
45:15
Speaker 1: This is just so tri it shouldn't be anecdote. I
45:19
Speaker 1: don't get the sense that anybody's getting it by, you know,
45:22
Speaker 1: from a jogger who's passing by, uh, or from a
45:26
Speaker 1: surface of a table or I mean, I don't know
45:29
Speaker 1: that's true. But we should know this already and we don't.
45:32
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question when when you go
45:35
Speaker 1: shopping and or if you have food delivered from the supermarket,
45:38
Speaker 1: are you wiping everything down with h either Clorox wipes
45:42
Speaker 1: or something like that, or is it just get thrown
45:44
Speaker 1: right into the fridge and freezer gets thrown right into
45:47
Speaker 1: the fridge and freeze. Really yeah, but I but I
45:51
Speaker 1: would not go to a restaurant right now if they no,
45:54
Speaker 1: not no, no, it's gonna be. I don't know. I'll
45:56
Speaker 1: go to a restaurant before there's a vaccine now, but
45:59
Speaker 1: if there's a tree eatment, but not that, I'm going
46:02
Speaker 1: to restaurant this have you? Have you been following this
46:04
Speaker 1: about the Llama antibodies much smaller than human anybody's that
46:08
Speaker 1: seem to a lock onto the spike projections of the
46:12
Speaker 1: outer part of the coronavirus. I think Fiser is testing
46:15
Speaker 1: that with their German partner. And the downside is you
46:18
Speaker 1: get a very long neck and you start spitting and everything.
46:21
Speaker 1: But other wise, but you won't get the coronavirus. That's
46:24
Speaker 1: that's a fair trade off. Yeah, totally fair. Uh So
46:27
Speaker 1: there are so the data. You asked me why they
46:29
Speaker 1: got interested. I got interested because it seemed like we
46:32
Speaker 1: figured out how to value baseball players, but we haven't
46:35
Speaker 1: figured out how to measure, how to how to how
46:37
Speaker 1: the coronavirus works, and we and there's there's social data,
46:41
Speaker 1: like the movement of people. It's being collected, it's being analyzed,
46:46
Speaker 1: it's just but I I get the sense it's being
46:49
Speaker 1: done in the kind of very crude ways that say,
46:51
Speaker 1: baseball stats were looked at in the early seventies, and
46:54
Speaker 1: I think I think there's just like So that's one
46:57
Speaker 1: threat of the columns is I'm very interested in the
46:58
Speaker 1: whole data story. So before we leave data, the Google
47:01
Speaker 1: Apple project to trace people who are moving about through
47:05
Speaker 1: their mobile phones. That seems to be pretty detailed data set,
47:10
Speaker 1: although we don't really know of that data, who has it.
47:14
Speaker 1: We could just tell how much people are moving around
47:17
Speaker 1: the country. So all I have actually written about this yet,
47:21
Speaker 1: But but there's also the Facebook data that's being essentially
47:25
Speaker 1: laundered through epidemiology departments at universities. So the Facebook, these
47:29
Speaker 1: companies can't give their data to the government's privacy issues,
47:33
Speaker 1: but they can give it to academics who can anonymize
47:36
Speaker 1: it and and give it in a different package to
47:40
Speaker 1: policy makers. And I do know that they've been able
47:44
Speaker 1: to determine that that just increase increases in human movement.
47:50
Speaker 1: I mean, this is kind of mind blowing, but increases
47:52
Speaker 1: in human movement. So so let's say Gavin Newsom in
47:56
Speaker 1: California says, Okay, it's okay to go to the beach,
47:58
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you see an up
48:00
Speaker 1: tick in actually how many how many yards people are
48:03
Speaker 1: moving every day? Um, there's a direct correlation between that
48:07
Speaker 1: and deaths from coronavirus. Yes, a couple of weeks later,
48:12
Speaker 1: they've already figured that out. And and if they think
48:15
Speaker 1: about how many steps there are in there, you know,
48:17
Speaker 1: you can imagine a world where everybody's moving around a
48:20
Speaker 1: lot more, but they're just in their cars and they
48:22
Speaker 1: never get out of their cars, and they would have
48:23
Speaker 1: no effect at all. But actually, movement is a pretty
48:26
Speaker 1: good proxy for spread of disease. Uh And and so
48:31
Speaker 1: that data is gonna be usable if they get their
48:34
Speaker 1: minds around it in all kinds of interesting ways, they'll
48:36
Speaker 1: be able to see the effect of the policy on
48:38
Speaker 1: movement and you know, the effective movement on the spread
48:41
Speaker 1: of the disease. Um. So that I think we're headed
48:44
Speaker 1: in a direction where data is is going to be
48:47
Speaker 1: our solution short of a vaccine or treatment that the
48:50
Speaker 1: data offers the most hope. What do you think about
48:53
Speaker 1: these anti lockdown protests that we've seen in places like
48:57
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and Michigan. Um, I think they're horrible. Uh. I mean,
49:04
Speaker 1: it's sort of like if you it's not just yourself
49:09
Speaker 1: you're affecting when you wander, when you when you decide
49:12
Speaker 1: to get together with lots of other people, you're making
49:15
Speaker 1: it more likely I get this thing and and um.
49:18
Speaker 1: But although a lot of them have gotten it is
49:20
Speaker 1: so from what we've read since those events, it's symptomatic
49:24
Speaker 1: of a bigger problem. And this circles back to the podcast.
49:28
Speaker 1: We are we are an uncoached team right now. We're
49:31
Speaker 1: a team. We're a team. We're a team where everybody
49:34
Speaker 1: wants the ball to shoot. We're a team where that
49:36
Speaker 1: does not playing together. It's really it's it's it's and
49:38
Speaker 1: it's a moment where we really need to act as
49:40
Speaker 1: a team that play and and play together. So we
49:43
Speaker 1: we need to have a strategy and everybody, everybody buy
49:47
Speaker 1: into the strategy. That is going to be the title
49:51
Speaker 1: of this We are an uncoached team. If somebody is
49:54
Speaker 1: to write a book about this era, and I have
49:57
Speaker 1: to imagine we're gonna see dozens of them. Um who
50:00
Speaker 1: should write that? Is that a Michael Lewis book? Or
50:03
Speaker 1: is that somebody else's book. I think I have an idea,
50:06
Speaker 1: but I'm not. I'm not ready to talk about it.
50:08
Speaker 1: I'm glad to hear that, because anytime you get a
50:11
Speaker 1: an idea, other interesting things come about. All right, So
50:16
Speaker 1: season one was referee, Season two is coaching. What is
50:20
Speaker 1: season three going to be about? I don't want to
50:22
Speaker 1: say yet because because I'm not quite sure whether I'm
50:24
Speaker 1: going to keep it in the arena or leave the arena, right,
50:27
Speaker 1: But if you do seven, you're gonna keep The original
50:31
Speaker 1: concept was everything sports related within that everything It's sort
50:36
Speaker 1: of like the roles are all roles you find inside
50:38
Speaker 1: of a stadium, inside of inside of an arena of ambition.
50:42
Speaker 1: But but it may, I may I may break that
50:46
Speaker 1: rule and just and and it just may be. You know,
50:49
Speaker 1: there may be other roles that I just i't want
50:51
Speaker 1: to explore. I have not figured out what the third
50:54
Speaker 1: season is yet. And um, I have to ask about
50:57
Speaker 1: the book Coach. You wrote about Coach Fit. That's a
51:01
Speaker 1: deeply personal book. You reference yourself in Liars Poker, But
51:07
Speaker 1: I don't think I've read anything of yours that looks
51:11
Speaker 1: as deeply personal as as Coach appears to be. Well,
51:17
Speaker 1: and the podcast, so that this is right, there's nothing.
51:20
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever written anything quite like that,
51:24
Speaker 1: just because um, I'm generally not my material this Usually
51:28
Speaker 1: it's generally something else. But this was just an odd
51:30
Speaker 1: moment where I was useful. Let's talk about podcasts and
51:35
Speaker 1: streaming video. What are you watching during lockdown and what
51:39
Speaker 1: are you listening to? I have been working so hard
51:42
Speaker 1: on the podcast that I've been watching very little. But
51:45
Speaker 1: the one thing I have been watching is Fouda. Uh.
51:49
Speaker 1: It was so stressful. It's it is stressful, but it's
51:52
Speaker 1: unbelievably good. Great. Uh. So Fauda is the only thing
51:58
Speaker 1: I've been watching regularly. In fact, I think I learned
52:01
Speaker 1: in one of your columns. I don't remember if this
52:04
Speaker 1: was you were somebody else, that Fouda was originally written
52:07
Speaker 1: for an Israeli audience, and it's watched throughout the Arab world,
52:12
Speaker 1: which is sort of surprising when you consider the subject
52:16
Speaker 1: is Israeli intelligence officers going after terrorists. It's the Narcos
52:21
Speaker 1: story all over again. Narcos. Narcos was written for an
52:24
Speaker 1: American audience, and it's all over the South, all over
52:27
Speaker 1: Latin in South America. So I think I asked you
52:30
Speaker 1: this last time, and I don't recall much of an answer.
52:34
Speaker 1: I asked who who your mentors were? And I don't
52:36
Speaker 1: remember you saying coach fits. But now I have to
52:39
Speaker 1: re ask the question intense, who were your mentors? We'se
52:45
Speaker 1: after you know you have you know they're meant your
52:47
Speaker 1: mentors at different stages of your life. Right, He's probably
52:52
Speaker 1: the most important, certainly the most important, because he caught
52:54
Speaker 1: me at that stage. My father has always been a
52:57
Speaker 1: mentor mentor to me and still is um the uh.
53:03
Speaker 1: Tom Wolfe was a mentor to me when I very
53:06
Speaker 1: early early stages of my writing career. UM, my editor
53:11
Speaker 1: star Lawrence at at Norton has been a really important
53:15
Speaker 1: mentor to me. Uh, those are the I would say
53:18
Speaker 1: those are the main ones. That's a good list, UM,
53:21
Speaker 1: favorite books. What are some of your old time favorite books?
53:24
Speaker 1: And what are you reading now? If anything? I just
53:27
Speaker 1: started in on you on Hillary Mantell's UM trilogy. Wolf
53:33
Speaker 1: Hall was the first novel and I never got around
53:35
Speaker 1: to it, and so I've just started to read that. Um.
53:38
Speaker 1: I just finished the single best pandemic novel. It's called
53:43
Speaker 1: The Gentleman in Moscow by Amer Tolls, and it's it's
53:47
Speaker 1: the it's the novel to read in the pandemic because
53:49
Speaker 1: it's about a Russian aristocrat who's locked up inside of
53:51
Speaker 1: a hotel for fifty years. He can't leave, he can't leave,
53:55
Speaker 1: and it's this it's this wonderful exploration of of a
54:00
Speaker 1: of a mind adapting to a smaller space. Um. Anyway,
54:04
Speaker 1: so that I love that book. Um, I'm reading novels
54:07
Speaker 1: that I'm not really I haven't been reading any nonfiction.
54:10
Speaker 1: Give us a third one. Well, I can't read more
54:12
Speaker 1: than one a time. So the the the I'll give you,
54:15
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you one. Um. Uh, I'll give you
54:21
Speaker 1: one that I read a while ago. But it's sort
54:24
Speaker 1: of like it should have been. It's it should have
54:28
Speaker 1: occupied the place in the American curriculum and Catcher in
54:31
Speaker 1: the Ride does. It's called Red Sky at Morning and
54:34
Speaker 1: uh um, pick that up and you won't be You'll
54:39
Speaker 1: you'll be happy. Fantastic And and our final two questions,
54:43
Speaker 1: what advice would you give a recent college graduate who
54:46
Speaker 1: was thinking about writing as a career. It's really simple,
54:51
Speaker 1: and that is, make sure that you actually want to
54:53
Speaker 1: write rather than be a writer. Uh They are always
54:56
Speaker 1: people who want to be writers, but they actually don't
54:58
Speaker 1: want to write. And if you don't actually love it,
55:02
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be good at it. It's gonna be miserable.
55:05
Speaker 1: And you can spend all your life posing and pretending
55:08
Speaker 1: to have written, and it's just it's just it's a horrible,
55:11
Speaker 1: horrible path. And it's something about the because nobody can
55:15
Speaker 1: you can nobody can really call you on it. Uh
55:17
Speaker 1: for a long time. You can spend your whole life
55:20
Speaker 1: pretending to be a writer without actually writing. So uh
55:23
Speaker 1: so just right, you know, And then the second part
55:26
Speaker 1: that is what you write about, right, because then when
55:28
Speaker 1: you come out of college is usually don't have that
55:29
Speaker 1: much in the way of material. Go do stuff. It's
55:32
Speaker 1: just interesting because maybe you can write about that. So
55:36
Speaker 1: don't just be a writer right right and be something
55:39
Speaker 1: else right and then and the two will go to
55:42
Speaker 1: eventually the two will find each other. And our final question,
55:46
Speaker 1: what do you know about the world of writing and
55:49
Speaker 1: investing and risk today that you wish you knew thirty
55:54
Speaker 1: years or so when you ago when you were first
55:55
Speaker 1: getting started. So, when I was first getting started at Solomon,
56:00
Speaker 1: oh those other when I was first getting started as
56:01
Speaker 1: a writer. Well, I love the story about you, you know,
56:05
Speaker 1: writing it Sally and having them call you into the
56:08
Speaker 1: office and you had someone figured out was it chevy
56:12
Speaker 1: Chase's dad figured out that I was writing at her
56:15
Speaker 1: a pseudonym, and chevy Chase's dad was an editor Simon
56:17
Speaker 1: and Schuster. He's want to put in my head that
56:20
Speaker 1: I could write a book. So I'm so at that era.
56:23
Speaker 1: What do you what do you know today? You wish
56:24
Speaker 1: you knew back then about the writing process? I don't
56:28
Speaker 1: think I would you know. I like the way I
56:31
Speaker 1: I learned about the writing process. I wouldn't I wouldn't
56:34
Speaker 1: want to put a lot of stuff in my head
56:35
Speaker 1: when I was starting out, that I didn't have to
56:38
Speaker 1: sort of earn the knowledge, you know. I think I
56:43
Speaker 1: was blessed that I didn't have any writers in my life,
56:45
Speaker 1: that I didn't know any writers, that I didn't know
56:47
Speaker 1: anybody knew any writers, that I was sort of making
56:49
Speaker 1: it up as I went along. I would hate to
56:52
Speaker 1: have gone at it in a more knowing way. I
56:54
Speaker 1: made a lot of dumb mistakes, but I like those
56:56
Speaker 1: mistakes like I don't I don't rewind the tape and say, oh,
56:59
Speaker 1: I wish I had known that it would have been worse.
57:03
Speaker 1: Anything I would have known would have made me works.
57:05
Speaker 1: That was my conversation with Michael lewis always a delight.
57:09
Speaker 1: We decided to release this as a special bonus podcast
57:14
Speaker 1: for Memorial Day weekend. I hope you found it interesting.
57:18
Speaker 1: Um all the usual things apply. If you enjoy this conversation, well,
57:23
Speaker 1: be sure to look up or Down an Inch on
57:26
Speaker 1: Apple iTunes and you can see any of the other
57:28
Speaker 1: three D plus conversations we've had since we began recording these,
57:33
Speaker 1: or check out your favorite podcast source Spotify, Google Overcast, Stitcher,
57:38
Speaker 1: wherever find our podcasts are sold. We love your comments,
57:42
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m I Be
57:47
Speaker 1: podcast at Bloomberg dot net. You can check out my
57:51
Speaker 1: weekly column on Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion, Follow me
57:55
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Rid Halts. Sign up for our daily
57:58
Speaker 1: reads at Rid hal dot com. I would be remiss
58:02
Speaker 1: if I did not thank the cracked staff that puts
58:04
Speaker 1: these conversations together each week. Michael Boyle is my producer
58:10
Speaker 1: slash booker. Charlie Volmer is our audio engineer. Michael Batnick
58:15
Speaker 1: is my head of research. A taker Val Brunn is
58:18
Speaker 1: our project manager. I'm Barry Retults. You've been listening to
58:22
Speaker 1: Master's in Business on Bloomberg Radio