Latest / Pod Save America / Michael Lewis on Bravery in Politics and Why Elon Musk Seems so "Disturbed"

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Michael Lewis on Bravery in Politics and Why Elon Musk Seems so "Disturbed" · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pond Save America. I'm John Lovett. For this
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: week's Sunday show, I'm sitting down with author Michael Lewis.
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  Speaker 3: Michael's most recent book, Who Is Government?, showcases the thankless,
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  Speaker 3: unglamorous work of doctors and engineers and civil servants inside
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: the government at a time when the government is under attack.
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  Speaker 3: We'll talk about that and what he's learned by looking
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  Speaker 3: at industry contrarians and brilliant freaks. Michael Lewis, welcome to
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  Speaker 3: the pod.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you, John. It's a pleasure to be back.
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  Speaker 3: So, There's something that you've been talking about as you're
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: sharing stories from this book, which is about how good
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: the government is at counting things. Right now, in just
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: the past couple of days, one example, Doge has shut
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: down the research arm of the Department of Education. This
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: is the entity that collects all kinds of data. including
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: data that presumably you would want if you were studying
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: government efficiency, because it collects data on what kinds of
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: schooling are effective, what kinds are ineffective, including a bunch
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: of longitudinal data. So this is data that's collected over
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: years that is basically now being flushed down the toilet.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: Can you just talk a bit about this role that
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  Speaker 3: the government plays in just keeping track of the numbers
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  Speaker 3: and how important it is and why it gets so
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  Speaker 3: little attention.
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  Speaker 2: So yes, I can do this a bit, but we
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  Speaker 2: must be aware that I'm stealing someone else's material to
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  Speaker 2: do this because the book is, you know, I wrote
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: about a third of the book, but I invited six
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: other writers to do the same thing. We just parachuted
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: these writers into the government and said, find a story.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: And it was oddball writers. It wasn't normal, like daily journalists.
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  Speaker 2: It was novelists, standup comedians, And there was a novelist
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: slash nonfiction book writer named John Lanchester, and they're all
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: my favorite writers kind of thing, who decided he wasn't
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  Speaker 2: going to write about a person. He was going to
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  Speaker 2: write about a statistic. And he wrote about, he made
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: the consumer price index his subject. And he makes this
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: really interesting point that the gathering of statistics, the counting
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  Speaker 2: of things, isn't just incidental to the government. It's like
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  Speaker 2: they're at the founding of the democracy. You can't distribute
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  Speaker 2: power unless you have a census. You don't know how
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  Speaker 2: to distribute the power. And then he goes on to
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  Speaker 2: list all the things that the government counts and then
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: focuses on this one thing. And it's diabolically difficult to
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  Speaker 2: do it well. And it isn't just the Department of
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: Education in which Doge and the Trump administration has started
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  Speaker 2: to gut the statistical operation. It's across the board. And,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, Consumer Price Index is a good example that
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  Speaker 2: they fired. There's a panel, a free panel, people who
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  Speaker 2: are just advising the government for free, professional statisticians, people
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: who formerly worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics to
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  Speaker 2: try to always improve the Consumer Price Index. They just
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  Speaker 2: dismiss them. And it's really interesting. There are a whole
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  Speaker 2: bunch of questions that arise from that. But one is why? Like,
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  Speaker 2: why would you do this? I mean, they can say
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  Speaker 2: at the Department of Education they're doing it to cut costs.
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  Speaker 2: But you don't fire a free expert advice to cut costs.
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  Speaker 2: And the other is like, what are the consequences of it? Like,
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  Speaker 2: what does it mean if all of a sudden... the
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  Speaker 2: government either stops counting it or the White House just
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  Speaker 2: politicizes it all and kind of makes stuff up. And
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: with the Department of Education, you probably know more about
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: the Department of Education than I do. But I do
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  Speaker 2: know that one purpose of what they count is to
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  Speaker 2: determine who's failing and who's succeeding across the country. It
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: isn't to say that they're telling the school systems what
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  Speaker 2: to teach. It's just like, is this working? Are kids
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  Speaker 2: learning how to read and write and add and subtract
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  Speaker 2: and stuff? And So when you lose that ability, you,
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  Speaker 2: of course, then lose the ability to go in to
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  Speaker 2: figure out even what the problem is that you need
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  Speaker 2: to fix. The larger thing that is just mind bending
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  Speaker 2: to me is what happens if we actually can't trust
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  Speaker 2: any government statistics? Play that game. We have no portrait
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  Speaker 2: of ourselves anymore. People can just, all of a sudden
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  Speaker 2: you're divorced. You're in like a fantasy land. You could
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  Speaker 2: say anything, which is, of course, a land they like
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  Speaker 2: to be in.
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  Speaker 3: Well, this is where I kind of, Like, do they
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  Speaker 3: or do they just think that's a land they like
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  Speaker 3: to be in?
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  Speaker 2: Well, that's a good question.
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  Speaker 3: Because no, but this I've been this specific example that
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  Speaker 3: you mentioned about the panels of people that help make
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  Speaker 3: sure that our understanding of of inflation and other metrics
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  Speaker 3: are accurate. I understand why they think they will benefit
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  Speaker 3: from politicizing these figures. You know, they don't mind if
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: we live in a world where where, you.
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  Speaker 1: Know, everything.
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  Speaker 3: Chocolate prices just keep falling, you know? But they also
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  Speaker 3: benefited from a society that was built on this reliable data.
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  Speaker 3: And there is something deeper here more than just the politicization,
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  Speaker 3: which is our collective taking for granted of what the
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  Speaker 3: government does day to day. And I just want to
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  Speaker 3: open it up to you to talk a little bit
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  Speaker 3: about what led you to want to examine some of
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  Speaker 3: these sort of unsung heroes inside of the government and
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  Speaker 3: what you took away from it?
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  Speaker 2: Can I have five minutes? Because it's going to take
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  Speaker 2: me five minutes.
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  Speaker 3: Great.
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  Speaker 2: It's going to sound like I'm droning on and I
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  Speaker 2: don't want to monologue.
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  Speaker 3: We just need enough to get to the next mattress set.
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  Speaker 2: All right. It starts because I got interested way back
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: in the first Trump administration, right in the beginning when
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: he fired the transition team. And so there are 500
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: and some people who are supposed to go in and
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: receive from the Obama administration the briefings across the government.
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  Speaker 2: And I thought that was, and he told Chris Christie
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  Speaker 2: that we're so smart, we can figure out what goes
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  Speaker 2: on inside the federal government in an hour. And I
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: thought that was just like a great comic premise. I
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: was going to go in, wander around the obscure parts
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: of the government, get the briefings. And the reader would
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: have this weird experience of knowing they knew more about
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: the government than the administration. And so it started that way.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: So that's what gets me into the government. And then
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: what happens is over a year, I'm just shocked by
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: the quality of the characters I'm meeting, these permanent civil servants.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, over and over, story after story that I'm
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: not actually even using for what I'm writing. But it's
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: like you go into the National Weather Service, like the
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: extreme weather forecasting unit down in Oklahoma. It's in Norman, Oklahoma.
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  Speaker 2: And it's filled with these smart young people all of
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: whom were traumatized in youth, but like a tornado taking
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: their house away. And then they got into it because like,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: I don't want bad things to happen to other people.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: So people who had kind of some, like something deep
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  Speaker 2: driving them that led them to want to serve the country,
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: build an expertise, had nothing to do with like self-promotion
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: or making money. They walked away from the fame and
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: the fortune that every other American wants. So I just thought,
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: I started getting interested in the characters. And then I
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: found this character at the end of The Fifth Risk.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: I just picked him basically out of a hat. I
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: picked him off a list. It was a list of
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: thousands of civil servants who had been furloughed during the
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: government shutdown in 2019, early 19. and who had been
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: told they were inessential and sent home without pay, but
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: who had also been nominated, not necessarily won, but nominated
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: for some civil service award. But it was thousands of names.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: And I thought, what am I going to do with this?
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: I'll just take the first name on the list. It
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: was alphabetized. His name was Arthur A.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: Allen.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: And Arthur A. Allen was turned out to be the
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: lone oceanographer in the Coast Guard Search and Rescue Division.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And I went and visited him, spent a few days
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: with him. And what he had done, he created a
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: science of how objects drift at sea. This is important
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: because if you know when a person fell off a
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: boat and you're looking three hours later, you need to
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: know how they drift to predict where even to look.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: And he had done this in response to watching people
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: die because nobody knew how to do this in the world.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: His work, it was so dramatic that he spent years
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: and years and years doing this. But when he built mathematical,
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: basically algorithms for like 300 different kinds of objects, you know,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: person in a life raft, person in a life preserver,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: et cetera. Right after he hands this over to the
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Coast Guard to use, like a 350-pound man goes off
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: the side of a cruise ship 80 miles east of Miami.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: They don't discover him gone for several hours. They go
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: to the cruise ship cameras so they can see where
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: he fell off the ship. The Coast Guard just goes
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: right to the spot and plucks him out of the water,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: like never in human history. Like the progress in knowledge
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: that had happened because of Arthur A. Allen ends up
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: saving thousands of lives. And the moment, so the moment
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  Speaker 2: I thought, Man, it was kind of like a combination of, oh,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: here's why nobody's writing about them. And oh, here's kind
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: of why we should. I'd spent three days with Arthur A.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Allen learning all about his life, learning how he has science.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: And I ended up writing him up at the end
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: of the book. I'm on my way back to the
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: airport and he calls me and he says, hey, you're
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: a writer. And I said, yeah, yeah, I'm a writer.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Of course I'm a writer. I thought, I'm sure I
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: told you that when I called you in the first place.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: And he said, no, my son said, like, you write
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: books that could turn into movies. And like, he said,
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: are you going to write about that? All this stuff
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: we were talking about? And I said, yeah, you know,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: why'd you think I was there? And he said, I
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: just thought you were really interested in why objects, how
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: objects drift. And at that moment, it's like, that's the
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: civil servant. He has no idea that anybody could make
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: a character of him or that anybody would be interested
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: in what he does, that no ability to dramatize his
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: own story. And I thought, Like someone should be doing this.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: These stories are so good that someone should be doing this.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: And so that seed was in my head a year
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: ago when I went to an editor of the Washington
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: Post and said, let me hire some writers to go
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: do this.
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• 14:10
  Speaker 3: Just to come back to what you were saying here,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: that these are the kinds of stories that just aren't
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: being told.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: You find these fascinating characters that are doing incredible and
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: important work. You talk about as a society, we're more
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: interested in politics than government. How do you explain that?
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: I'll take a stab, but I think you should.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Take a stab too, because you probably thought about this
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: at least as much as I have. But From the
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: perspective of not just me, but the other six writers,
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: all of whom have clever, diabolical strategies for getting inside
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: people's lives, this is what we discover. One is that
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: our government, compared to other democracies, is politically very top-heavy.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: The White House appoints 4,000-something people to run this administration.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: And all the communications people are political people. And they're
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: all answering to the White House. And those communications people
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: have just got a reflex instinct that anything that gets
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: written is likely going to be bad. Like if a
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: reporter shows up, if a writer shows up, the downside
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: far outweighs the upside. And so right away, you're kind
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: of shut out. And to write these stories, I got
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: to live with people. And I can't go talk to
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: them for 40 minutes in their office with a communications
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: person present, which is what they would do naturally. So
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: every one of us had to go get through that
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: phalanx of communications people. And it was not pleasant. It
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: was not easy. So that's one thing. It's like the
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: political process has gotten used to the idea that we
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: just need to minimize the story because the story can
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: be used against us. And there's not a whole lot
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: of upside to any given administration to good stories about
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: permanent civil servants. A lot of downside if they find disaster.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: but not a lot of upside if, oh, this guy's
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: just saved thousands of lives. You know, nobody gets credit
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: for that politically kind of thing. I think that's maybe
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: one thing. The second thing is these people don't tell
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: their own story. Like, not only are they the kind
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: of people who don't tell their own story, the kind
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: of person at the dinner party who doesn't speak up
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: and at the end you realize they should have been
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: talking the whole time because they're more interesting than everybody
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: who spoke. They're like that. But they are in an
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: environment where they know that the likelihood that attention is
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: going to be positive attention is minuscule, that, that attention
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: is bad and that you're going to, you know, so
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: you hop, you keep your head down because you don't
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: want attention. So they're not out there to, they're not,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: they don't step forward and they've got a wall between
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: them and people who would tell their story. And then
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: the third thing, it's kind of like a counter narrative, right? Like,
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: We've been living in this country with a narrative that
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: the government's just like wasteful and fraudulent and blah, blah, blah,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: civil service, bureaucrats they are. And so it's, you're challenging
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: a stereotype in readers' heads to tell this story. And
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: when you do that, you do meet resistance. Like, not
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: everybody likes it. So, I mean, those are some of
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: the reasons. It's a really good question because just generally,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: when I find something like a vein of material, it's
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: a bit like finding a trade in the stock market
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: or the financial markets. It's like, why does this exist?
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Because maybe it's just not true. Like maybe I'm finding
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: a false vein of ore. But in this case, it's
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: true and it is mysterious because the literary material is
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: just so good.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, what I'm also interested in the ways in
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: which the reaction that you're dealing with when you're trying
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: to get these stories are fair, a reasonable reaction to
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: how how the government is covered because there is a
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: bias on the part of mainstream press towards negativity and scandal.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: That is usually why if the government is calling about
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: the FAA, it's because planes are touching.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: And so that is a reasonable result. The other is government,
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: somebody that's not trained in politics is gonna be a
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: little less savvy about how to engage with a reporter
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: may say the wrong thing, right? And they don't trust
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: correctly that that interesting but poorly phrased sentence won't be
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: taken out of context. And then the other piece of
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: it is there's a lot of scientific research that sounds silly,
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: that sounds ridiculous, that ultimately saves lives. And if it
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: gets in front of the right-wing press, suddenly you've got
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Marjorie Taylor Greene waving a copy of your abstract in
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: a congressional committee. And that's never a good idea.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: So there you go. I knew you'd have something to
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: say that I didn't say. And that's it. Imagine Arthur A.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Allen at the very beginning of inventing his science. And
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: he's out in the Long Island Sound with these mannequins,
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: tossing them into the water and putting little gauges on them.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: And it costs a little money to do it. Nothing
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: has been yielded by this work. At that moment, if
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Marjorie Taylor Greene entered into it, she could ridicule him
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: and mock him. Like, why are we paying someone to
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: do this? That's exactly right. That's exactly right. That early
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: science can be made to look ridiculous.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: And then the question, right, is sort of why is
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: that good politics? And I do want to, we like
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: to take a moment to blame Democrats here when we can.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: And some of it, right, is just, Viewing a lot
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: of what the government does as self-perpetuating that you don't
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: have to defend it because it's what the government has
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: always done. But in a deeper way, we pay for
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: a lack of collective memory of what life was like
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: before the government collected this data, right? Before, you know,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: not a lot of people left who remember when the
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: rivers caught fire and And all the people that were
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: old enough to know what life was like before Social
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: Security and Medicare are now dead, right? And so I
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: guess I'm wondering what you've learned about how to convey
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: and really kind of fight that stereotype to allow the
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: idea of government as good to reenter our collective imagination.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: And maybe it is just through a book like this.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: So first off, as to your first point there, so
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: I actually went and ran down Another man who fell
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: off a boat and was rescued by the Coast Guard
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: in the Pacific Ocean, fell off the back of a
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: fishing boat. And to talk to him about why he
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: thought he was alive. And he was alive because Arthur
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Allen figured out how he drifted. And he would not
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: have been alive at any other time in human history.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: They would not have known where to look. And he said, yeah,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: I do know why I'm alive. He said, while I
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: was at sea, I discovered Jesus. I accepted Jesus Christ
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: as my Lord and Savior.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: So.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: So he told himself the story that the Coast Guard
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: had found him miraculously because of Jesus. The Coast Guard
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: had found him miraculously because of Arthur A.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Allen.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Now why, there's a like, there's a, I think something
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: like that repeats itself over and over and over. People
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: build whatever narrative they want out of whatever happened. So
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: that's a problem. The second part, your second part, remind
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: me what your second question is here. It's a, Just that.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: We all live, like we live in a world that
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: government has made safer, healthier, freer, cleaner. And it is
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: so taken for granted. It is the status quo ante.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: And we can't imagine things getting worse again.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Correct. That's true. And how you remind people that you
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: shouldn't take this for granted. I mean, so the answer
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: really is this book is an exercise. It is that exercise.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: It's sort of like, but having said that, and this
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: is one reason I did it this way. I didn't
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: tell the writers anything about what they needed to do.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, I wrote the first big one and the
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: last big one, and they wrote the middle of it.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: And I just said, find a story, wondering what they
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: would find. And they found over and over a version
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: of the same story. Like, it is amazing what this
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: thing has accomplished. So it inadvertently ends up being this.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: The book could have turned out a lot of different ways.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: And I don't know. When you ask how you repair
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: this mental mistake that the population makes, this is a
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: small attempt. It's a book. Whatever. It will introduce stories
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: into people's minds that will make it harder for them
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: to live with the stereotype in their head of the lazy,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: inefficient government worker. That's helpful. Unfortunately, I think the only
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: way you get to like a radical readjustment is some
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: sort of crisis, some sort of really existential crisis. And
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: COVID wasn't enough.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: Right. We just did that. We just did that. And
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: by the way, we created a vaccine. The government led
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: the charge to create a vaccine miracle. One of the
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: greatest achievements in human history is the rapid scientific breakthrough
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: that was mRNA vaccines. And the president responsible is now
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: realizing when he's talking to his own crowds that they
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: don't like it. Yeah.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: No, it's amazing. It is amazing. Uh, and I wouldn't rush.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, Trump deserves some credit for it, I guess,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: but this goes, this is these, this was a long-term
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: project that starts back in like the Bush administration, uh, that,
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: that in it then begins with, uh, uh, a pandemic
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: planning exercise that, that, and seeding these companies or investing
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: in these companies that develop the mRNA, uh, vaccines was
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: a government. Triumph and it was long and slow. Not dramatic,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: though the result was kind of dramatic, very dramatic, and
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: kind of a hard story for people to internalize. They
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: use hard stories to tell. I think that's part of
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: the problem. And I have a question for you, but
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: you're a good person to answer this question. I thought
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: on the back end of Trump and seeing the way
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: he approached the federal government and the disaster that was
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: his COVID response. That there was a chance that Democrats
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: would engage in a full-throated, not just defense, but sort
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: of full-throated explanation of government. That government would be, that
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: they would, that they want to sell the government in
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: a way, explain it. And they didn't. You know, it
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: was sort of like government, sort of like something you
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: don't want to talk about when you're running for office.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: And I don't know why that is.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: I don't either. there is a kind of big difference
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: between Republicans and Democrats. And I think it is in
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: part because Republicans have always viewed themselves as, uh, uh,
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: against the mainstream political establishment inside the government, inside the media.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: And of course, uh, uh, uh, against Democrats, uh, and
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: Democrats have a different relationship with those institutions, but you know,
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: it's not, I remember, you know, George W. Bush, uh,
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: maybe it was Karl Rove or one of his advisors
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: talking about that they were in the reality distortion business,
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: that they were gonna change reality, remember this? And Republicans
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: are much more comfortable understanding that for them to get
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: the world to look the way they want the world
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: to look, they're gonna have to change how, they're gonna
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: say what they're gonna say, and their job is to
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: change the perspective, change how people see it. And Democrats
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: are a bit more afraid of that, right? Right now,
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: poll after poll shows that people don't think the government works.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: They think the status quo is failing them. There's a
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: lot of truth to that, by the way. And that's
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: one place I want to get to, right? One part
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: of this, why don't people like the government? One aspect
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: of it is they don't think the government works and
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: maybe parts of it, they're right. But they look at
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: that and they say, oh, people don't want me to
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: defend the government. They want me to say, I hate
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: the government. I think the government's bad. But there's a
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: kind of a failure of imagination, right? to think about
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: what it would look like if Democrats collectively decided to
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: try to persuade people, and not just on the margins
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: on a specific policy question, but to have a vision
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: that fundamentally alters the perspective the American people have on
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: an issue. Republicans have been much more willing to do that,
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: in part, I think, because Republicans understood that some of
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: their positions were far more unpopular, right? Like being pro-life,
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: was unpopular. Being for tax cuts for the rich is
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: deeply unpopular. Being against environmental regulations are fundamentally unpopular. They
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: know they start from behind. They may, you know, dissemble
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: about the media or blame bias or whatever it may be.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: But on some level, they know that they're fighting for
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: unpopular policy. And Democrats are just, I think, more afraid
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: to do that. And also, I think some of them,
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: it's just not there. They are institutionalists. They are kind
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: of establishment types and they don't like bucking the trend.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: You know, you think about Anyway, I don't know the answer,
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: but I do think that's part of it.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: And it's, it, Republicans have the benefit of the kind
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: of the, of the guerrilla warfare tactics. If they're, if they're,
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: they're operating, when you know you're going to lose, you
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: play the same game, you have to play a different game.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: And so that's the game they've chosen to play. But it's,
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: there is, there, I mean, on the evidence of the
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: two books I've now published on the subject, there's a,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: big market for just for discussing these subjects, for one,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: explaining what government is doing and talking about where it works,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: not just where it doesn't work. I mean, we spend
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: a lot of time talking about where it doesn't work, right?
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Whenever anything bad happens, whenever there's a little scandal, it
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: gets amplified. There's very little attention paid to the bright spots.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: And the bright spots are just sort of taken for granted.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: You know, it's just like, oh, that happened. Oh, I
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: got plucked out on the ocean by the Coast Guard, whatever.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know how they did that. And it's interesting
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: to see, you know, why it works when it works.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: And one of the patterns that emerges through the stories,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: I think in the book is that it works better
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: if it's at some distance from the political process. If it,
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: if it's, if, if the person is, is, is not
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: constantly being somehow monitored by the political process, if they're
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: on a longer leash, that's, that's, that's, it's true of
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: all the bright spots that we've written about. It's like,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: The person was given, for whatever reason, different reasons in
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: different places, latitude to operate kind of the way you
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: might be given latitude to operate in the private sector.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: And then we don't usually do that in the public sector.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: The idea that the Elon Musk idea, I guess it's
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: his idea. Who knows? He says something different every day.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: But that they're going in to find corruption, fraud in
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: the federal government, it's insane. it's that there's so much
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: more fraud in the private sector than there is in
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: the public sector, Everything there is watched. Like, you can't
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: take a federal worker out for a sandwich without them
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: insisting that they got to pay for it. Because they
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: know this is reflexive fear. And they are, you know,
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: every agency used to have an inspector general who would
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: get them in trouble if they did stuff they shouldn't do.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: There are mechanisms for identifying and preventing fraud in the
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: federal government that don't exist in the private sector. So
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: there are problems in government, but they're not the problems
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: that everybody thinks are the problems.
• 30:20
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• 31:26
  Speaker 3: I do think there's a nuance because you're right, right?
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: The examples that you're talking about are people that are
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: able to operate outside of the kind of evil eye
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: of politics. But then I also think of moments when
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: government has worked well or better because of politics. And
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: what I always, I remember when, you know, right now
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: there's a bipartisan fury at the idea that we're not
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: going to fund PEPFAR. And I remember when Bush was
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: setting up PEPFAR, he stood it up outside of USAID.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: because they understood that USAID was a bureaucratic mess, had
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: tons of problems. And so what we're gonna do is
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: we're gonna stand this up outside so it can be
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: efficient and effective and move quickly. It's gonna be more political.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: You look at what happens when the Biden administration goes
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: to implement the CHIPS Act, they look for a bunch
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: of exemptions to a bunch of government rules so that
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: it could be run quickly and move quickly, right? Sometimes
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: political passion and attention can help and make things happen.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: And I think that comes back to the kind of
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: a problem from both directions, which is you catalog in,
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: this is in the premonition, this is in the fifth
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: risk and you and your fellow writers in this book,
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: these sort of heroes inside of a machine, but there
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: is often a machine, right? There is often a slow
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: moving kind of feckless bureaucracy that they're trying to fight against,
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: and I'm just wondering if you have any reflections on
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: not the heroes, but the water they're swimming against.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: The Centers for Disease Control is a really interesting case study.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is the premonition. And it wasn't, I
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: didn't have any, it's like, just generally where I operate
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: is I don't come in with a big theory and
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: try to prove it, that I'm just kind of watching
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: and the story emerges.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: And people hate that about you, by the way.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: It really annoys, it really irks a lot of reviewers.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: I know. Sometimes it does. It's funny. It's, um, but
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: I learned long ago that like editors sitting around a
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: table deciding what the story was always yielded really boring
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: journalism and, and false kind of like, go get this story.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: That's not, and you don't know what the story is
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: until you're out there talking to people and watching. Um,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: but we, and I, this was true of the premonition
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: and I, I, But I was kind of shocked to
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: learn that the Centers for Disease Control had suffered over
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: several decades, a decline in prestige, a decline in internal morale,
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: a decline in a sense of its own ability to
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: do anything except sort of observe and study disease, not
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: control it. And that you could trace it back, according
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: to people inside it, the old timers, to a decision
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: made by the Reagan administration to turn the head of
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: the centers, the director, into a politically appointed position, as
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: opposed to a career civil servant who endured through administrations.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: And that this had had the effect from the very
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: top down, keeping one eye on the White House and
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: the political process, and that when they made decisions, and
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: this was a very bad Influence when you were trying
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: to control disease so the This does not mean this
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: is a universal like truth that having political Influence in
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: a problem is a bad idea but I think there's
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: some problems that are best dealt with with the the
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Politicians at arm's length controlling the money supply would be
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: a very good example of that you know sort of
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: like we put the we put the Fed on it's
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: it's a political institution and At some point, the political
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: process touches it, but it doesn't micromanage it. So that
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: one observation is that when there are problems that they're
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: very clear, a set of problems that are best dealt
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: with by a permanent staff that has, it's not completely
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: detached from the political process, but it's on a longer
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: leash kind of thing. But maybe there are other problems that,
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: would be better dealt with on a shorter leash. I mean,
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: I think all problems are not the same problems. The
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: bigger thing is that the government is dealing with all
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: the problems the private sector can. It's like when the
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: private sector has no interest in a problem because there's
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: no money to be made, but the problem needs to
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: be addressed, it winds up in the government. It's a
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: bit like President Obama told me when I went and
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: wrote about President Obama. He said, this job is a
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: decision-making job. And all the decisions that get to my
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: desk are horrible decisions because any easy decision got made
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: way below me. And the government's a bit like that.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: It's like all the problems that are really hard problems
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: that the private sector can't make a fortune off of
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: end up in the government. So no wonder it's tough, right? Already,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: you're dealing with a set of problems that are very
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: tough problems and that they're hard to find the financial
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: incentive to deal with them. So it's a thorny and
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: difficult subject. I mean, I'm coming at it not as
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: an intellectual or a theorist. I'm coming at it as
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: a writer and an observer. But the one big observation
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: of who is government of the book is there's so
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: much to learn from the things that work. And all
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: we do is look at the things that don't.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: So let's talk about that, too. So in the fifth risk,
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: you mentioned this earlier, you talked that basically at the
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: Department of Energy, they've set up desks for the for
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: the incoming Trump administration to sit at because they assume
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: somebody is going to show up and nobody comes.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: And I wonder, like thinking back, like, is the fifth
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: risk at this point almost like naive about how bad
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: this could get. I'm wondering what lessons you take from
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: the fifth risk about their kind of carelessness about what
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: government does or doesn't do and how that is now
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: being applied sort of in the extreme by Doge under
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: Trump now.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: The indifference that Donald Trump had to the federal government
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: he was meant to run was breathtaking. And at the time,
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: I remember thinking, I understand why he didn't He never
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: had in mind that he was going to be running
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: the federal government because he never had in mind he
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: was going to win, that he was running as a
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: marketing stunt in the beginning. And it just kind of,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: the dog caught the car. And so that's Trump one.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: Trump two, the dog's trying to drive the car. And
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: that's a different story. But Trump one, the, that, so
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: there was, what does it say about a man that
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: he has given this awesome responsibility of managing this two,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: three million person workforce and by surprise. And his response is,
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: I don't need to know about it. Um, it, it wasn't,
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: it wasn't just, it wasn't just negligence. It was negligence.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: It was actually a feature of his way of moving
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: through the world that he didn't want to know and
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: not wanting to know. It's sort of like when you
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: don't accept the responsibility of having to know of acquiring
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: knowledge of learning, it puts you in a different position
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: in relation to the institution. You can say and do
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: anything without any kind of responsibility because you don't have
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: anything in your head saying, oh, I shouldn't do that.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: So I think the lack of knowledge was sort of
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: a feature nut bug of his MO of running things.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: It wasn't that he didn't know, it was he really
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: didn't want to know, which is such an odd way
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: of moving through the world. And But I thought Trump won.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: I thought, as I said, I kind of thought comedy
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: at first, like that he doesn't care enough to go
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: and really screw it up. That he'll just, it will be,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: it will be neglect kind of thing. And we'll see
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: the consequences and neglect, but we can recover from that.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: What I didn't, where I didn't jump to in my
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: mind right away, but eventually did, was that if he
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: doesn't care enough to pay any attention, There are lots
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: of other people who do care, who will attach themselves
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: to him and do what they want to do with
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: this enterprise. And he won't care about whatever they do.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: He will be indifferent to it until it affects him
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: in some personal way. So Project 2025 is that, I think.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: These people at the Heritage Foundation dreaming up a whole
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: new plan for how we govern or don't govern ourselves.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: and insinuating themselves into his world in various ways. And
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: then he doesn't care enough to stop them. And so
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: there they are. And then, I mean, now it gets more,
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, the fifth risk, it didn't feel, I didn't
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: feel like I was watching an autocrat take over an
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: enterprise and try to bend it to his will. I
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: felt like I was watching a doofus who didn't have
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: any idea what he was doing, letting all kinds of
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: unqualified people in to maybe do nothing. appoint Rick Perry
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: to the head of the energy department when it prepared,
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: didn't know what was in the energy department kind of stuff.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: And this time it feels like, no, this is a
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: purposeful warping of the enterprise to reduce it to nothing
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: more than an instrument for Donald Trump's personal ambition. That
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: instead of taking an oath to the constitution, the millions
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: of federal workers are basically supposed to take an oath
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: to Donald Trump and that anything that an that impedes
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: anything he wants to do, scratch whatever itch he wants
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: to scratch, will be eliminated.
• 41:17
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• 43:20
  Speaker 3: There's a way in which this is sort of a
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: kind of traditional first term, second term dynamic playing out,
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: but in this sort of bizarro evil version, which is
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of presidents in their first term
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: feel like they work for the White House. And then
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: in the second term, they've gotten their bearings and now
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: the White House works for them.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: They, they, that when Donald Trump became president, it was,
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: there was a fear in him. I think there was
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: a fear in how Donald Trump was going to operate, right?
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: He had all these sort of, you know, he, he
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: wanted good press and he wanted the stock market to
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: do well and he wanted to get credit for being
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: the best president ever. But when the deep, when the,
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: when what they call the deep state pushed back, they, they, they,
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: they were cowed by it, right? There's a lot of
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: things that Trump administration was stymied from doing. And this
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: time they feel like they're not willing to be stymied.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: And yet they still don't know what the government does.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: They are still people who don't seem to know what
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: it does. And I'm wondering, Donald Trump and Elon Musk
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: are different people. Elon Musk is not as stupid as
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump, and he's done real things in his life.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: He is genuine mastery in his life. And yet he
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: has now spent months going inside of the government and
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: seems to have learned nothing about it. And I'm wondering,
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: how you explain someone who clearly has moments where he's
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: able to understand the deep functioning of a rocket ship,
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: a car company, whatever, approaching this in such a cavalier way.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: I haven't spoken to him, and I'm guessing. I'm flying
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: by radar here, but a couple of thoughts popped to mind.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: The more reasonable interpretation is that He comes from the
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: private sector, and his one experience of really reforming an
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: institution is Twitter. I mean, it's funny. He didn't found
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: any of the companies he's famous for founding, right? He
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: didn't found Tesla. And presumably, someone else is mostly managing it.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: But he, in a great public way, took over Twitter
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: and clearly thought that if you wanted to reduce headcount,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: the way you do it is this traumatic way. You
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: just basically fire everybody and hire back who you need. And, um,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: which may or may not work in the private sector.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: It certainly doesn't seem to work for Twitter. It's hard
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: to know, but I, before he just sold it to
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: himself at a, at, it looks like an inflated price
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: to me. Um, I know people who invested alongside him
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: who had a lot, felt they lost half their investment.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: So I, I, I'm not sure even that was a
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: smart way to do that, but he has that metaphor
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: in his head, like run it like the private sector
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: and the private sector, you're ruthless to the employees and
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: all that. It's not really true. Like, I don't think
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: there's any, a whole lot of smart managerial types in
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: the private sector who think the best thing to do
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: is traumatize your workforce first and insult them and condescend
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: them and all the rest. And I don't think, you know,
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: I think there's this halo thing that goes on with
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Elon Musk. Because he's got a lot of money and
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: he's been present and involved in marketing things very well
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: and with startups, he's a good front man for businesses,
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: that he has some managerial gift. And I'm not sure
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: he's ever really displayed that managerial gift, but he may
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: think he has it and other people do. So the
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: polite explanation is this is his model for how you
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: do it in the private sector, and that's better than
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: the public sector, and he's just going to impose this.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: So maybe that's one explanation. It doesn't really ring completely
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: true to me. I think that Um, I think he
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: gets off. I think there's some psych a lot. He's just,
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: I think he's a disturbed person, uh, and like mentally
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: not stable. And he's clearly kind of addicted to controversy
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: and to back and forth on little duels on Twitter
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: and all the rest. And so anything he does that
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: provokes those kind of gets him high. It's like a drug. And,
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: and this is a way to do it to the
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: opposition and no one immediately around him comes back at
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: him on it because he's got like-minded people just around him.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: And so the actual controversy is what he's after. And
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: that may be part of it. I mean, Donald Trump's
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: letting him do it. The other part of it is,
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: like Trump, he may be seeking to eliminate anything that
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: gets in the way of his personal ambition. And one
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: thing that gets in the way is regulators. I mean,
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: they essentially seem to be gutting regulation everywhere they turn.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: And they're refereeing function of the federal government. Another thing
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: that gets in the way is law. So it's congruent.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: What he's doing is congruent with his own narrow interests,
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: or seems to be, but isn't fully explained by it.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: I think that in some ways, to some extent you
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: can't explain it, that you're dealing with someone who's not,
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: he's kind of unhinged and he's got a screw loose. And,
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: and so he's doing things just cause he can do them.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: And the, the, when you get upset, he, it makes
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: him happy. Literally you, when you literally, you know, when
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: you all get upset, you are, he thinks, he thinks
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: that works. That, that shows it's working. He's owning you. Right.
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: Well, there, there's, the reason I ask about it is
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: there's a, I don't know if you would agree, but
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: to me, there is some kind of a through line here.
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: You look at people who, for various differing motivations, some good,
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: some not, look at a consensus in an industry, inside
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: an institution, and decide that they see a better way
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: to do it. And they're willing to take a risk,
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: whether it's risking their professional lives or risking financial success
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: in order to pursue something that a lot of people
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: are telling them is either dumb or wrong or going
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: to hurt them in some way. And I'm wondering if
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: you like, look, I don't know. High frequency traders with
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: like a Pepsi Rolex are not the same as a
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: charity Dean. You know, these are. these are not the
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: same kinds of people, but I'm wondering if you see
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: a connection between the kinds of people that are willing
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: to say, hold on a second. Uh, the way we're
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: doing things, uh, doesn't make sense. I see a different
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: path yet.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: No, you know, in a funny, in a very big time,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: in the very beginning, I had a sliver of hope.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: That's what we were going to be watching with him.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: The government does need work. It's not like it's all great.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's got a pay system that goes back
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: to 1949. It's too hard to fire people. There's a
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: lot of problems. People aren't incentivized properly. The problem with
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: trying to rationalize what he's doing is that the specific
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: things he's doing are the opposite of what he says
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: he's doing. So let's just take them. In the beginning,
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: he said he was going to cut $ 2 trillion out
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: of the deficit, and he was going to eliminate waste, fraud,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: and abuse. That was the mission. And he focused entirely
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: on the civilian, the civil service, which is, you know,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: like 86% of the budget is, you know this, it's
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: either military interest payments on the debt or entitlements. So
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: that's off the table in the very beginning. And so
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: he's looking at 14% of the budget. And of that,
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: a fraction is the pay of these people he's trying
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: to get rid of. So he's not going to get
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: to his eliminate the deficit this way. That doesn't make
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: any sense to go at it this way. And then
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: he starts by firing inspector generals. And those are the,
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: that's the quickest way to identify the fraud and the
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: abuse and even the waste. And so you do, he's
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: doing the opposite of what you would do. If you
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: or I walk in there, we would go right to
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: the inspector general and say, let's beef you up and
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: let's go. And so he's doing, it's a little hard
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: to figure out what he's even trying to achieve because
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: he's saying something is obviously quite different from what he
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: intends to do. So you're in the land of.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: Guessing Uh, because, well, there's the, it's guessing, but then
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: it's also like, even if you look, it's, I think
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: there's like sort of an original sin here, which is
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: thinking that one person can do any of this, right?
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: Like forget going to the inspector. Like if you were
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: trying to go in and say, let's cut, we need
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: to cut a trillion dollars from this budget. you would
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: go to the department heads and you'd say, you have
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: a month.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: Come to me, come to me with cuts.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: You know, your agency better than me. I don't care
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: how you do it. I need to see results. Yep.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: But he doesn't do any of that. No. He fires
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: the people that do that. Right.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: And he thinks he's smarter. And it's a funny, it's
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: just a funny reflex we have in American life right now.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: And it's probably a by-product of inequality that he has
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: $ 300 billion. So therefore he's smarter than everybody and everything. And, um,
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: as opposed to having some narrow skill set that because
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: he lives in this very indulgent society has yielded him
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: $ 300 billion. It doesn't mean, it doesn't mean he's best
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: at managing the federal government and it comes in knowing nothing. So, um,
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: so no, it's, that's not the way you would go.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: You or I were any sensible person would go about it. Um,
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: but because he is got this glow of a very
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: rich person, uh, it's just assumed he knows what he's doing.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: And I'm convinced he doesn't. But back to your original
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: point was like, I think you were saying, like maybe
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: we need something like this to jar this institution because
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: otherwise it's unmovable. And it isn't how you do it,
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: but that idea might not be completely wrong. And the
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: other idea, so the other hope I had for it
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: was one of the big problems with the federal government
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: is it just has real trouble for reasons we've been
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: discussing implicitly in attracting talented young people to work for it.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Because like who would want to work for a place
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: where they're only slappier around when you do something bad,
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: but don't celebrate you when you do something good and
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: it doesn't pay very well and all the rest. And
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: I thought like he's bringing all these young people in
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: and they encode and like this could yield something. But
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: then again, one of the first things they do is
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: fire all the probationary workers and Those are the ones
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: that don't have the civil service protections. And who are
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: those people? They're the young people. They're the ones who've
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: just joined. And they're the young people and the people
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: who've been hired to handle some specific problem that is
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: urgent now. So he's firing exactly the wrong people if
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: you're trying to do that. Nobody thinks they're stupid. Nobody
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: thinks they're crazy. No doubt, if we sat down with him,
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: would have a story to tell us that sounds more
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: intelligent than what we're groping for here. But he hasn't
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: told it. Like, whatever it is, it's behind closed doors.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: We haven't heard it.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: Right. And it's not clear, right? It's not clear when
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: he makes up stories about how the Democrats are using
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: Social Security to bribe people to become voters. It's not
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: clear whether he genuinely believes that or if he believes
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: that that's a valuable way to describe what would be
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: ultimately seen as a deeply unpopular gutting of the federal government.
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: I think the reason I was asking about that, though,
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: is putting Musk aside. You write about people that go
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: inside of institutions and say, I'm going to do this
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: a different way. And I look at the Republican Party.
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: And if you would have sent gave me a list
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: of of 100 Republicans in 2007 and said, hey, 10
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: of these people are going to blow up their lives
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: because they believe Donald Trump is a threat and 90
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: of them are going to go along. I probably would
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: have picked the wrong people.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, you know.
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: Oh, I. But I but I but like you you
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: write about people.
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: That are inside to stop you on that. Who would
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: you have picked?
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: I have no I have no idea. I have no idea.
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: But I don't think I would have expected like Bill
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: Kristol to be applauding Bernie Sanders. Right. And I and
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: I would have been, I think, surprised by the number
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: of politicians that acquiesced and the number of consultants who
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: actually showed great courage. Right. It's been a number of
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: Republican right wing political consultants that have refused to go
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: along while all the kind of politicians have caved. I
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: probably would not have picked Dick Cheney. Yep. I wouldn't
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: have picked Liz Cheney. When Liz Cheney ran for the
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: Senate in Wyoming, I thought she was disgusting because she
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: was campaigning against what they called the ground zero Moss, right?
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: Like she was to me, the Republican party at its worst.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: And then here she is campaigning with Kamala Harris, which obviously, uh, worked, uh,
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: pretty poorly, but, uh.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: You never, you never know who's going to be brave
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: and who's going to be a coward.
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Right. And I'm curious what you've looked, but like you,
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: you know, charity Dean had post-it notes, right. About how
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: to be brave. Right. And, and that's, you know, that's
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: a shameful thing, right. It's, it's shameful for a system
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: to require bravery in order to do the right thing.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: That's a, that's a problem.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: But I'm wondering what, what you learned about what, like,
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: why are some people brave in these moments and, and
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: what do we do to encourage that?
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a great question. It's not a question
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: I've ever asked. So I'm going to be answering this
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: on the fly.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: My first step in answering that question is I think
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: that people... First place, red badge of courage. Danny Kahneman
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: used to love... The psychologist who I wrote about in
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: the Doing Project used to love this story as an
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: example of what he thought was true, that behavior is
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: so context-dependent. And the same soldier... who runs away in
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: one battle is incredibly brave in another. It's not that
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: the person is brave, the person is entirely brave or
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: entirely cowardly, but that it's some combination of the person
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: and the situation. And so you never know because it's
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: not just the person you're evaluating. You're valuing a complicated thing.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: The mood they're in when they're required to make a
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: decision of whether they're gonna be brave, how vulnerable they
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: feel in that moment, whatever it is. So that's part
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: of my answer is that this isn't stable. They're brave
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: acts and cowardly acts, but it's not exactly right that
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: they're brave people and cowardly people totally. However, I do
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: think like one precondition for the brave behavior is having
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: a firm narrative in your head about who you are
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: and what your life is about. And this was Charity Dean.
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: She had insisted on this narrative for so long that
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: she didn't know how to do anything else. Or if
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: she did anything else, it made her very uncomfortable. And
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: there are different ways to acquire this narrative. John McCain
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: had this narrative in his head, right? If John McCain
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: was around, he wouldn't be sucking up to Trump. He
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: would have blown up his political career before he sucked
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: up to Trump. So I think Um, I think narrative
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: is a personal narrative is a very powerful thing. And
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: when your narrative, so, so what is the, what is, uh,
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: the substitute or what's inside of people when they don't
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: have that narrative of I'm going to do what's right.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: And I'm willing to pay a price. They usually have
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: a narrative, a kind of vague narrative of personal ambition.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: It's like, I'm going to win. I'm going to get ahead.
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: I'm shrewd. I'm a winner, you know, all that. And
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: that when you, when that's the narrative. then you're really susceptible.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: Like it comes along, something like Trump goes along and,
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: you know, you want to win. You don't, want to,
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: there's no point. It's very easy to say it would
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: be no point to being brave because I'll just get
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: plowed over and I won't make any difference at all.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: I'm sure that's what most of these people are telling themselves.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: I'm remaining relevant for the good of my country. Not
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: saying that, in fact, they've rendered themselves a part of
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: the problem.
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I think there's something deeper to what you're
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: saying too, right? Because implicit of what you're saying is,
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: I don't live in a society that rewards bravery anymore.
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: You can't win by being brave, right? And that does
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: seem to be part of what Trump is doing as well, right?
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: When you fire the inspectors general, when you shut down
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: the CDC's FOIA office, right? When you make accountability something
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: you'll never have to face, right? When there's no price
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: to doing the wrong thing, suddenly it becomes an advantage.
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: And he wants everyone to think, people think and act
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: like him. And one way you do that is making
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: bravery a bad investment. Yes.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: And he's hostile to bravery, right? Remember how hostile he
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: was to John McCain's personal bravery? He's hostile to that
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: and he's hostile to, I think this is a corollary,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: he's hostile to trust that I found, and if you're
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: going to kind of try to predict what Donald Trump's
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: going to do next, look for where there is still
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: trust and assume he's going to come for it. That
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: our money, the dollar is a natural target. But it's like,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: assume that we're, you may not even, the press is
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: usually assumed. Once you've got it, you're not really, it's
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: there in there, you breathe. But be careful about taking
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: it for granted because he doesn't like it. He doesn't
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: like it for, I think, a really specific sort of
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: lizard brain reason. He's so untrustworthy. I mean, it's not
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: even an insult to say, right? It's just a fact.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: It's like, you have to, like he just lies all
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: the time. He lies so much that- He lies so
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: much that when he says something is true, it feels
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: like an accident. And it's just like, it's an impulse.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: It's almost like a reflex. I just, lying is better,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: is sort of how, and he cheats people. You know,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: it's just like one thing after another. So if he's
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: in an environment, if he's in a small environment where everybody,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: it's trust-based and people can trust each other, that environment
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: spits him out very quickly. He does not succeed. But
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: if he's in an environment where nobody can trust anybody,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: He's really good in that environment. He's really good at
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: taking advantage of all his dishonesty.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: It works.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: He's better at being dishonest than other people. And so
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: I think that one way, one through line in our
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: government is there's lots of trust that's sort of built
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: into it. We just take for granted. We take for
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: granted that someone's keeping our water clean and that we
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: can take our the pills that our doctor prescribes and
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: it's safe and that we can eat the food and
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: not get sick and whatever it is. And that those
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: things are in some way antagonistic to his purpose on earth.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: And so watch out because he's coming for him.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: One aspect of trust in a society is journalism. And
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: I was thinking about how much The ability to report
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: on powerful figures has changed since you wrote, say, Liar's Poker, right?
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: And I'm wondering if you feel that change, right? Today,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: there would be non-disclosure agreements. Today, you'd be getting phone
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: calls from lawyers.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: It's really changed.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: And do you feel that? Do you feel that when
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: you're doing work?
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: Let me just tell you a story. It's amazing how
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: it changed. So I worked for the most powerful firm
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: on Wall Street. Solomon Brothers. When I joined, they were
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: making so much more money than everybody else on Wall Street.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: It looked like they were in a different business. It
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: was a force. I left three years later. When I
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: was walking out the door, I told my bosses I
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: was going to write a book about Wall Street. And
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: their response was, it didn't even occur to them they
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: could stop me. And in addition, they weren't even worried
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: about it. They were worried about me. Like, you're leaving
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: all this money behind. Is something wrong with you? Like,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: don't blow up your career. It was their attitude. It
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: was sweet in a way. The book comes out. There's
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: a brief attempt to sort of add a counter-narrative from
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: a weak Solomon Brothers PR firm kind of thing, but
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: not much. And that's it. The book just had its life.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: If I were coming out of the equivalent institution now,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: and the equivalent institution would be, say, Jane Street or Citadel.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: It would be a high-frequency trading firm. I would have
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: signed non-disclosure agreements going in. They'd be lawyered up from
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: the moment I walked out if I was going to
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: do anything like this. I mean, well, look what happened
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: to the woman who just wrote the Facebook book.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: Facebook, yeah. Right?
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, she couldn't get on TV all of a
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: sudden because she had signed agreements that said she wouldn't
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: disparage Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook. But the big thing is
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: the fear of lawsuits that the publisher or that whatever
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: media enterprise I was dealing with would have deterred them
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: from publication. Uh, and would it have stopped publication of
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: liar's poker? I don't know. Maybe, I don't know. I
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: doubt it, but, but it would have been harder. And
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: what happens is, you know, it's the equivalent of what
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: is that Timothy Snyder line about, uh, the guy who
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: wrote on tyranny, anticipatory obedience. You're seeing a lot of
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: it now. You're seeing a lot of people sort of
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos, you know, it's sort of reconfigure their lives
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: and the way they go through the world. So as
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: not to run afoul of Donald Trump. There's a kind
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: of anticipatory obedience that goes on in the head of
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: a writer or a journalist when they know that it
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: is going to be a huge pain in the ass
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: and a great risk to me to write about Ken Griffin,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: head of Citadel. I'll hear from the lawyers right away.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: I don't want to do it. And why is this?
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: Why has this changed? It's changed because we all of
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: a sudden have not millionaires among us, but billionaires who
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: use the law as a weapon. And it makes it
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: really hard for the truth about people like Elon Musk
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: to come out. Elon Musk might not be the best example,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: but it's just that, so it is a harder environment
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: to do this sort of, to get transparency about the
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: most powerful people in the society.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: Last question, and I have no knowledge, but I was
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: thinking about this before the interview, and if I were
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: a betting man, and I am, I'd bet you're interested
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: in artificial intelligence. That would be what I would bet
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: you're interested in. And I'm wondering if that's true. And
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: I'm wondering if you have questions about the way artificial
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: intelligence companies are kind of recklessly putting this technology into
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: the world while behind the scenes lamenting that it may
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: lead to the destruction of humanity. And whether it's Flash
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: Boys or Going Infinite leads you to wonder about what
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: these companies are doing.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: So when I think about taking on subjects, one of
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: the things I ask is, what can I add? Like,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: it's highly unlikely that I'm going to add anything to
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: high-level discussions about artificial intelligence. I can't code a computer.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on in there. I do
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: know that it's pretty clear that the people who are
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: the leaders of the movement, they don't know either. That
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: nobody seems to know anything. It feels like what people
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: used to say about Hollywood, that they say lots of
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: stuff about where this is headed. A lot of what
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: they say is connected to their financial interest. And so
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: it's very hard to know what to think. And so
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: my response to it, my literary response to it, I
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: have one, I have one, one, I mean, I have
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: all kinds of other responses. It bothers me some that
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: they're stealing my books to train their models and that
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: kind of thing. But, but I, I've enjoyed my, interactions
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: with Sam Altman. I think he's a really interesting person.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: And I had a dinner with him. That's like two
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: years ago. And I thought, there is a great book
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: to do if you want to do it. I said
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: this to him, that all kinds of people want to
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: write his biography. And he was asking me about who
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: might do it. And I said, don't let anybody do it.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: When you are comfortable with your machine, with chat, GPT, whatever,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: writing your biography, let me supervise it. Let me let
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: it write your biography and let me write the biography
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: of it while it's writing your biography. So I can
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: watch because this is what interests me. I want to
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: understand how it thinks and how it's different from how
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: I think. And because I don't think it'll ever be
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: the same. I think it's powerful. It can replicate functions
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: that humans do and it will replace jobs and all
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: the rest. but I don't think it's going to replace
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: human thought. And so it's like, what's the gap there?
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: And like between what I'm doing when I'm telling a
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: story and understanding the world around me and what it's doing.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: And he was interested, but he did say it's not
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: good enough to do it yet. So when it's good enough,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: let's revisit. And I'm hoping he just kind of picks
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: up the phone at some point, calls and says, let's
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: do this because it would be, I think it could
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: be really useful to have someone who doesn't think like it,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: coming at it, trying to analyze what it's doing when
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: it's trying to do what I do when I think.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: Fascinating. The book is Who is Government? There's a lot
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 3: we need to do to figure out how to kind
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: of repair trust, especially in institutions and people. I think
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: one good place to start is throw in jail anyone
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: who asks Michael Lewis who should write my biography. I
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: think that's a good starting place. Michael Lewis, thank you
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: so much for your time. It's been great to talk
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: to you.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: John, totally enjoyed it.
• 1:09:09
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