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'Who is Government' with Michael Lewis · Masters in Business

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  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is Masters in
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Business with Barry Ritholts on Bloomberg Radio.
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  Speaker 2: This week on the podcast what can I say? Every
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  Speaker 2: time I am afforded an opportunity to sit down with
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  Speaker 2: Michael Lewis, it's just delightful. He's such a fascinating character.
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  Speaker 2: The people and ideas he writes about are absolutely fascinating.
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  Speaker 2: His new book, he has this just absolutely insane way
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  Speaker 2: of seeing around a corner. I asked him, how come
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  Speaker 2: every time you find yourself covering the subject, six months
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  Speaker 2: later it blows up and it's in the headlines. He's
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  Speaker 2: done it with The Big Shorty, a big short that
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  Speaker 2: was mostly after the fact, But he did it with Flashboys,
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  Speaker 2: and he did it with Moneyball, and he certainly did
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  Speaker 2: it with Going Infinite, and now he's doing it again
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  Speaker 2: with Who Is Government. We talk a little bit about
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  Speaker 2: the Elon Musk and Doge, but we mostly talk about
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  Speaker 2: these nameless, faithless civil servants who dedicate their career to
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  Speaker 2: providing a service to the American taxpayer, and whether it's
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  Speaker 2: saving lives in coal mines, or stopping cybercrime or keeping
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  Speaker 2: the food supply safe. The book is just filled with
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  Speaker 2: all these stories and it's absolutely a nonpartisan. It's not
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  Speaker 2: a left right thing. It's Hey, there are certain things
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  Speaker 2: that only government can do. The private sector is in
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  Speaker 2: building the Interstate Highway System on NASA. In fact, when
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  Speaker 2: you see private sector services in these spaces, it's because
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  Speaker 2: they've built on top of the seminal work the government
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  Speaker 2: has done that. No one would undertake these projects that
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  Speaker 2: are billions of dollars and take decades. The ROI just
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  Speaker 2: is too far, too long, too expensive. The book is fascinating.
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  Speaker 2: Michael's fascinating. If you're listening this far into the intro,
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  Speaker 2: it's because you know this is going to be delightful,
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  Speaker 2: with no further ado. My discussion with Michael Lewis about
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  Speaker 2: his new book, Who Is Government. Michael Lewis, I don't
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  Speaker 2: have to welcome you. Let's just jump right into this
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  Speaker 2: and we'll start with your prior book, The Fifth Risk,
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  Speaker 2: which is really the predecessor to Who Is Government. Tell
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  Speaker 2: us about that earlier book on presidential transitions.
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  Speaker 3: Trump had just been elected for the first time and
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  Speaker 3: he had fired his transition team, and I didn't I
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  Speaker 3: learned all this after the fact, but outgoing presidents are
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  Speaker 3: required by law to prepare a transition, and so the
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  Speaker 3: Obama administration had deputed one thousand people inside the government
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  Speaker 3: to prepare where the best course ever given on how
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  Speaker 3: the government works, and not just the White House, right
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  Speaker 3: the Department Energy and all those other places. And Trump
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  Speaker 3: had fired the mechanism for getting the briefings. He fired
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  Speaker 3: all five hundred and fifty people and told Chris Christy
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  Speaker 3: that he didn't need to know because he could figure
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  Speaker 3: out everything he needed to know in an hour about
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  Speaker 3: how the federal government worked. When I saw this, I thought,
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  Speaker 3: it's like a great comic premise. I'm going to get
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  Speaker 3: to roll around the government and get the briefings, and
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  Speaker 3: the reader will be on the joke that we know
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  Speaker 3: more about the government than the president does because they
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  Speaker 3: haven't bothered to learn. And so I and it was
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  Speaker 3: just sort of like where you start and I and
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  Speaker 3: they're two things. Where I started, and what kind of
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  Speaker 3: the spirit in which I did it. The spirit was
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  Speaker 3: go to places that no one has any idea what
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  Speaker 3: they do. Like most I mean, I'm surround I'm in Berkeley,
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  Speaker 3: I'm surrounded by people who talk about politics all the
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  Speaker 3: time and just want to inflict their political opinions on
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  Speaker 3: me constantly. But if I ask them, what is the
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  Speaker 3: Department of Commerce? Do they have no.
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  Speaker 2: Idea to do commerce? Right? Yeah, some business something.
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  Speaker 3: What they do is weather, you know, but it would
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  Speaker 3: never mind. Uh. And but I didn't know that. So
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  Speaker 3: I just thought, I'm going to go to the places
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  Speaker 3: that that are most opaque to the American people, and
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  Speaker 3: so I picked. I picked the Department of Agriculture, Commerce,
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  Speaker 3: and Energy, and thinking like, if I can make these
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  Speaker 3: swing on the page, I can make anything swing on
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  Speaker 3: the page. And Energy, but I started with Energy because
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  Speaker 3: it was so great. He had appointed Rick Perry, former
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  Speaker 3: Governor of Texas, to be the Secretary of Energy. And
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  Speaker 3: Rick Perry had called for the elimination of the Department
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  Speaker 3: of Energy when he was round for president, like all
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  Speaker 3: this waste and fraud and the government, we're gonna get
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  Speaker 3: rid of whole departments. In one of them's department Energy,
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  Speaker 3: and now he's supposed to run it. He found out
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  Speaker 3: quickly what I found out when I walked in and
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  Speaker 3: got the briefings that oh, they run the nuclear stockpile. Oh, oh,
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  Speaker 3: they gave the loan that created Tesla. You know, Oh, oh,
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  Speaker 3: this like this one thing after another in it, and
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  Speaker 3: he had to backtrack in his hearing and saying, oh,
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  Speaker 3: I didn't mean that, you know, really we need the
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  Speaker 3: department energy and so so anyway, I don't want to
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  Speaker 3: go too long about this, but to say that I
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  Speaker 3: wrote these things in vanity fair long form narrative journalism.
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  Speaker 3: I stapled them together into the book The Fifth Risk.
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  Speaker 3: It sold half a million copies.
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  Speaker 2: That's a lot for a finance book, right, and people
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  Speaker 2: don't understand.
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  Speaker 3: It's a lot for a book. This was an indication,
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  Speaker 3: this was market testing. This was an indication to me that,
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  Speaker 3: oh my god, people really do actually want to know
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  Speaker 3: that there is these stories interest me. But it's not
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  Speaker 3: just me. So I had in the back of that
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  Speaker 3: in the back of my mind over the last few years,
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  Speaker 3: because I had this other takeaway from The Fifth Risk,
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  Speaker 3: and it was although I'd written a lot about what
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  Speaker 3: these place has done, it was like a travel They
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  Speaker 3: were like travel pieces. It wasn't till the very end
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  Speaker 3: in the paperback where I did a deep dive on
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  Speaker 3: a single character, on a single bureaucrat, and he was
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  Speaker 3: and I had picked him his name kind of out
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  Speaker 3: of a jar it was. The material was literary, the
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  Speaker 3: material was just epic. It was so good. I thought, Man,
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  Speaker 3: I want to come back and just do more of that,
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  Speaker 3: like grab people out of the government and just receive
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  Speaker 3: right about a person I'm going to get. At some point,
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  Speaker 3: it's gonna the accusation is going to arise. And it
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  Speaker 3: always does, like, oh, this is just Michael Lewis making
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  Speaker 3: it up, or this is Michael Lewis with his own
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  Speaker 3: view or whatever. And uh so I thought, grab a
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  Speaker 3: bunch of other writers and and I do it with them,
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  Speaker 3: drop them in, parachute them in wherever they want to go,
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  Speaker 3: and have them write stories so that you can see
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  Speaker 3: just how rich and interesting a place this is. And
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  Speaker 3: that's what that's that idea is what led to who
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  Speaker 3: is Government?
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  Speaker 2: So I have to point out what an incredible knack
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  Speaker 2: you have for finding yourself in the right place at
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  Speaker 2: the right moment in history. You did it with FTX
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  Speaker 2: and Sam Bankman Freed in the Pure Luck. Okay, So
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  Speaker 2: so now you write a book about the transition in
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  Speaker 2: the first Trump administration, and lots of things you write
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  Speaker 2: about in the fifth risk turn out to be very
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  Speaker 2: prescient for how the administration in many different ways. I
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: don't want to make a blanket statement about them, but
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  Speaker 2: in specific area, specific policies kind of drop the ball
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  Speaker 2: and bad things happen. But the thing that's so fascinating
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  Speaker 2: is this book about all these different government agencies and
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  Speaker 2: the really amazing work these people do comes out right
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  Speaker 2: into the doze elimination of we're going to close the
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  Speaker 2: Department of Education. We're going to fire all these people,
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  Speaker 2: whether we have the authority or not. Your timing is
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  Speaker 2: really exquisite. Twice so you can tell me this is
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  Speaker 2: dumb luck four times in a row.
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  Speaker 3: All right, let me try so kinda, but let me.
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  Speaker 2: Let me at a certain point. I know you're fairly humble,
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  Speaker 2: and it's not a false humility, but at a certain
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  Speaker 2: point us readers of your work have to say, hey,
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  Speaker 2: this guy really sees around a corner, finds an area
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  Speaker 2: before anyone else has any inkling. Big things are going
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  Speaker 2: on there, and by the time we realize it, he
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  Speaker 2: already has the full story out in paperback.
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  Speaker 3: I love how much more credit you give me than
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  Speaker 3: I deserve.
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  Speaker 2: How are you saying it's luck? I don't believe it.
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  Speaker 3: So if I were trying to explain me how if
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  Speaker 3: I was trying to give myself some credit for the
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  Speaker 3: serendipity of my book publication dates, I guess what I'd
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  Speaker 3: say is that the best way to predict the future
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  Speaker 3: is just observed very closely the present. So it's close
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  Speaker 3: observation of what's going on at a moment. And it's
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  Speaker 3: also the other thing is being interested in the thing
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  Speaker 3: you're interested in rather than the thing everybody's talking about.
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  Speaker 3: And so nobody is talking about this, but it's interesting thing.
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  Speaker 3: That's that's good because it means that it's going to
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  Speaker 3: be fresh and different. And I guess it maybe it's
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  Speaker 3: true that when I'm closely observing something I'm really interested in,
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  Speaker 3: that the world is not all that interested in that
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  Speaker 3: some of those things end up being the future, and
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  Speaker 3: that that's true, and so that's but it isn't like,
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  Speaker 3: you know, you know, all kinds of people who make
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  Speaker 3: a decent living on the lecture servant circuit being able
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  Speaker 3: to pretending to be able to tell the future, pretending.
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  Speaker 2: You were written.
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  Speaker 3: I've just gotten how not to invest. And I assume
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  Speaker 3: I will find in this book a chapter about false prognostication.
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  Speaker 3: We know that you know the future. It's too complicated.
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  Speaker 3: So all you could tell is the present really well.
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  Speaker 3: And if you tell the present really well and you're
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  Speaker 3: not just defaulting to what everybody's talking about in the moment,
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  Speaker 3: you will get the future sometimes.
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  Speaker 2: Huh. I love that now.
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  Speaker 3: It's similar to It's similar to investing. I bet right.
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  Speaker 3: It's like, Oh, this company really interests me. Why isn't
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  Speaker 3: any Boddy here? Why isn't anybody investing in it? But
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  Speaker 3: I'm really interested in it. That's like a great sign
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  Speaker 3: that you're interested in nobody else has figured it out yet.
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  Speaker 3: And that's the that's a great sign with writing too.
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  Speaker 2: So something interests you. What I find fascinating is you
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  Speaker 2: end up kind of embedding yourself in unfamiliar places and
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  Speaker 2: fields that you haven't necessarily studied before.
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  Speaker 3: I don't know anything about it.
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  Speaker 2: Right like you like? So, by the way, that is
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  Speaker 2: a sign of a of a curious intellect. Hey, I
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: don't know anything about this. I'm going deep down the
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  Speaker 2: rabbit hole learn. But a lot of these things are
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: kind of big institutions that don't trust outsiders, that don't
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  Speaker 2: trust the media or authors. How do you win these
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  Speaker 2: people over? I mean, you know twenty twenty is Michael
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  Speaker 2: Lewis's well known guy. And maybe you have an ability
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  Speaker 2: to gain the trust of people now, but you've been
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  Speaker 2: doing this your whole career. How do you win the
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  Speaker 2: trust and how do you get close to people who
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: are skeptical and reserved and holding the public in arms distance.
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  Speaker 3: So we've seen you've seen how Elon Musk has approached
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  Speaker 3: government employees over the last sixty days with hostility and
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  Speaker 3: malice and condescension, and that it's the opposite of the
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  Speaker 3: way to approach someone if you actually want to learn.
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  Speaker 3: So I don't have a perfect answer to this, but
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  Speaker 3: I'll say a couple of things that I think help me.
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  Speaker 3: One is I'm usually just genuinely curious, Like I really
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  Speaker 3: have some questions I want to answer. Why are you
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  Speaker 3: winning baseball games? You know, like, explain it to me.
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  Speaker 3: How did you figure out to short the market in
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  Speaker 3: two thousand and seven? How did you figure out how
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  Speaker 3: to stop coal mine rules from falling in on the
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  Speaker 3: heads of coal miners? Like I just like, it's like
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  Speaker 3: something has happened here and you know the answer, and
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  Speaker 3: I genuinely want to know the answer. People respond to
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  Speaker 3: genuine curiosity, which is different from I have a theory
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  Speaker 3: and I want you to sort of dance inside my theory,
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  Speaker 3: which is like I've sat in a room and I
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  Speaker 3: decided there's a story here. This is the story. I'm
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  Speaker 3: just going to gather some quotes to fill in the story.
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  Speaker 3: Nothing I've done this any good. Is that it's always
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  Speaker 3: like just a glimmer of an interest and I just
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  Speaker 3: want to know. And so it creates a natural learning environment.
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  Speaker 3: That's one. Two. Don't be boring, like if if it's
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  Speaker 3: if it's tedious for me to show up, like that's bad,
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  Speaker 3: and which you want almost the opposite. It's like I
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: hope he comes because I learned something last time just
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  Speaker 3: from the questions he asked, and he adds value in
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  Speaker 3: some other way, like he brings good sandwiches or whatever.
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  Speaker 3: So no, it's so it's like you want to create
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  Speaker 3: an incentive system, right, people respond to incentives you want
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  Speaker 3: to create. You want to make them want you there.
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  Speaker 3: It's not not just not want you there, it's like
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  Speaker 3: want you there. So that's that's a second sort of prerequisite.
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  Speaker 3: And thed is I try to make it clear what
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  Speaker 3: I'm thinking when I'm thinking it and so I'm not
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  Speaker 3: hiding like myself from the person I'm writing about. I'm
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  Speaker 3: letting them get to know me a little bit. If
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: I'm letting them bouncing theories off them and listening to
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  Speaker 3: respond and object or whatever, and so that they don't
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  Speaker 3: they aren't shocked. They're often shocked when they read the
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  Speaker 3: book because they're surprised what I've decided is important and
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  Speaker 3: what isn't. They're sometimes shocked by the way I see
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  Speaker 3: them or describe them, a little shocked, but they aren't
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  Speaker 3: shocked by like what I'm interested in. They don't have
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  Speaker 3: a feeling I'm being sneaky, so that all those help
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  Speaker 3: I think, and I say this that people I write
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  Speaker 3: about they often are really interesting people with really interesting stories.
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: And while they may not think of themselves and usually
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: don't think of themselves as characters, they're very aware they're
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  Speaker 3: in the middle of something interesting. That's why they're doing it.
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  Speaker 3: So they can understand why I'm so interested, Like, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: I get it. I get why you have all of
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: a sudden gotten interested in local public health, says Charity Dean,
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  Speaker 3: because it's broken and that's why we're not responding well
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  Speaker 3: with this. You know, it's like, or I get why
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  Speaker 3: Sam bgmanfreed. He understood I thought of him as weird,
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  Speaker 3: Like you are a weirdo moving through the world with
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  Speaker 3: a very weird view of the world, and you're seeking
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: to impose this sort of abstract idea about how to
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  Speaker 3: live on the world around you, and I just want
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  Speaker 3: to watch it. And he's like, yeah, I get that.
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  Speaker 3: I know I'm weird. I know what's happening is weird,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: and I understand why you're amused by it. Go ahead,
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: watch you know that? So that it has to be
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: an honest relationship, right, it just has to be an
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: honest relationship.
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  Speaker 2: So I'm curious. You've delved into baseball, into football, into
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  Speaker 2: high frequency trading, psychology, now government. What what's been the
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: biggest surprise that you found in all these areas, Like
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: you're delving into things that interest you, But what what
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  Speaker 2: really sticks out in any of your books where you say, huh,
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  Speaker 2: didn't see that coming? Not counting SBF getting buss.
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  Speaker 3: Are you took away the easy one?
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  Speaker 2: Right? That's how I know I did that on purpose?
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  Speaker 2: That's the obvious one. Although as as I was reading
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: that book, your book going infinite, like like there are
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: all sorts of little signposts along the way. I'm sure
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: a lot of that's just hindsight biased. But as you
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: were writing those chapters that hadn't yet happened, but as
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: you're reading it, it's like, oh, this.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: Can't be good.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: You know, all these little little it's like a fault
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: line with an earthquake. All these little pressures are building
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: up along the book. I don't know if that's intentional.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: Oh, totally intentional. I didn't start writing it until it
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: all blew up.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Oh you didn't, all right, So yeah, it's intention But
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: that was an obvious one. What what like? I didn't
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: see that coming.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: All right. So here's one from this book. This is
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  Speaker 3: illustrating a general point. And the general point is the
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: difference between what you imagine a story is and what's
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: going on in the world. What you're what's going on
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: here when you're just doing through abstract kind of speculation,
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: compared to when you go out and report and learn
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: and collide with the world, And how much more interesting
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: the world ends up being than you imagine, even when
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: you imagine it being interesting. So the first story in
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: this book, Christopher Mark, how do I find it? I
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: find it because I get a list of nominees for
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: Civil Service Awards. It's like six hundred people on this list.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: How do you pick one of them? It's all these
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: names and descriptions of things they've done. Joe Blow with
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: the FBI has broken up a child porn ring, but
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: doesn't say aything about Joe Blow. I get to a
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: name on the list. It says, Chris Mark solve the
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  Speaker 3: problem of coal mine ruse falling in on the heads
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: of coal miners, which killed fifty thousand coal miners in
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  Speaker 3: the last century. A former coal miner, it says, all right.
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  Speaker 3: Sitting at my desk, I'm thinking, man, there's a story,
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: and IDY think I know what the story is. I
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: think the story is all right. This guy probably grew
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: up in West Virginia, former coal miner. He's there's gotta
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: been some personal if it's killing all these coal miners,
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: and he got out of the coal mine to fix it.
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  Speaker 3: A friend, a relative, someone got killed by a coal mine.
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  Speaker 3: He that it was like there's a movie in this
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: kind of I already had it into my head, but
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  Speaker 3: then I call him up. I find him. He lives
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: in Pittsburgh. He knows who I am, because he's read Moneyball.
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  Speaker 3: He's like, why the hell you calling me? Like it
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: was just bizarre, Like he took me a while to
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: believe it was me. And I said, I just like
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: I saw this line on a list. He didn't even
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: know he'd been nominated for a prize, so it was
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: especially weird. And I said, I said, like, I just
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: just give me the five minute summer of your story.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: And he says the first thing A's mouth is, I
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and my dad was
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: a professor at the university. I thought, oh, there goes
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: my story.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: Right, so much of presumptionswhe for the movie, right, well,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: but hold on.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: In the next ten minutes, he tells me this he
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: had been a radical in the sixties as a little kid,
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: radically I started calling throwing around words like bourgeois at
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: his father said that he was like, didn't want to
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: join the ruling class, didn't want to go to Harvard,
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: which he could have, and leaves high school early to
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: go join the working class, much to his father's chagrin.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: Like his father really upset. His father is a famous guy,
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: I mean in his world. Robert Mark, Robert Mark, was
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: a civil engineer who took technology he used to like
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: stress test fighter planes for the Air Force and nuclear
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: reactors for Princeton. He took it and used it to
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: figure out to stress test Gothic cathedrals. He built little
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: models of like sharks and rim and he could show
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: what was holding the roof up basically, and he could
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: also show why it might collapse and where it was weak.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: And so he actually taught all architectural historians how the
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: medieval builders had built the Gothic cathedrals. And there's actually
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: documentaries about him in this so anyway, that's his dad.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: Chris rebels against his dad, not gonna have anything to
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: do with your way of life, not having to do
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: anything with you, ends up working in an auto factory,
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: in a ups plant, and finally in a coal mine
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: in West Virginia. He ends up with like his fellow
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: Young Radicals, nineteen years old, working in a coal mine.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: The Young Radicals last like a day because it's so awful.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: Chris actually likes the working in the coal mine, He's
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: interested in it, but it's incredibly dangerous. He almost is
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: killed twice by falling roofs. Eventually figures I could get
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: out of this and figure out how to stop this.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: He goes back to Penn State, gets his degree. Then
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: he's got his own intellectual journey, right. This is which
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: I don't get into. While I'm talking to him in
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: this first phone call, he says, it took, you know,
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: took thirty years, but I figured out how to keep
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: the roofs of coal mines from falling on the heads
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: of coal miners. And I say, oh, so you tell
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: me get your dad who was figuring out how the
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: rooms of goth The cathedrals didn't fall down, and you
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: just do the same thing underground. You figure out like
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: how to keep the roof of a coal mine up.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: And he in the first twenty minutes, he's pissed at me.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: He says, I have nothing to do with my dad.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: It has nothing whatsoever to do with what my father did.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: And I thought, oh my god, this is even better
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: than I thought. It's a father son's story, and the
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: son thinks he's rebelling against his father, and in fact
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: he goes and sort of lives out a different version
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: of his father's life. And what's wild about the story.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: So I have that thought, and when I start to
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: get to know him. It takes a while before he
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: says to me, like days of spending time with him, Oh,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: and my dad and I finally kind of collaborated. I
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: said what, and he says, yeah, yeah. The government called
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: my father because they thought the National Cathedral in Washington
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: was falling down. And I don't know that National Cathedral
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: in Washington was built over a centuries tilted. They what
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: happen was they built insufficient foundation for what they redesigned
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: on top of it. And the father is brought into like, oh, Jesus,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: can you tell us how to keep this thing from falling?
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: And the father gets there and realizes the problems underground,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: and so he has to call his son, and together
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: they write a paper explaining why it's not going to
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: you know, how it's all working and why it's probably
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: not going to fall down. But it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful,
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: like an amazing story, and it was so different from
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: what my feeble imagination had dreamed of. And this happens
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: over and over and over and over.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: You know the most amazing thing about that chapter And
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: we'll talk about the book in more detail in a
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: few minutes. You kind of buried the lead in your discussion.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: He is studying this problem for thirty years, like this
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: isn't like he keeps coming back to it. This is
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: three decades of his life, and he eventually figures it out.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Issues like a set of guidelines to coal companies and
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: every engineer and every safety person in every coal mine
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: that now becomes the standard. Plus the government makes it
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: a regulatory requirement. And it wasn't that. Oh, the free
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: market figured this out. But for the regulations, we would
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: still be having all these coal mine collapses.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: What's wildly cool about Christopher Mark is it not only
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: does he do all this, he becomes the historian of
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: his own subject. He becomes and he writes these papers
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: explaining why coal mine safety was so poor, and he
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: finds the whole world in this very narrow subject. And
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: there's a moment that's actually really interesting where he shows
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: that the technology had been created to actually just prevent
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: a lot of the disasters. And the coal mine industry was.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Talking about the ceiling, the roof bolts the boats.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: You bolt the roof to itself. It's not intuitive like
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: when they first started doing it, the miners like, what
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: the hell, how you going to bolt the roof to itself,
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: but you both you drill. Essentially you're attaching more less
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: unstable rock to deeper, more stable rock, and you anchor
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: it in what's in the mountain above it. But I mean,
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: this is a long time ago. This is invented fifty
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: sixty years ago or whatever. But instead of using the
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: technology properly, like in a way that really prevents reduces
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: roof falls, the industry uses it to make it cheaper,
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: to make it just as safe as it's always been,
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: meaning not safe. So they maintain the same level of mortality,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: like the same level of risk. It's just less cost
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: and just reducing the cost of what they're doing to
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: hold the roof up. And so what they've done, and
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: it's because it's because the industry was so competitive that
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: nobody could take this step of making the extra expense
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: of making the mind really safe. And they had acclimated
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: the working guys in West Virginia mainly, but the coal
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: miners who work everywhere in the country to this level
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: of risk, so they were just used to it. It
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: was really interesting that the market. You would think, if
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: you were sitting in a room alone thinking about it,
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: you think, oh, some coal mine company is going to
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: make their mind safer, and that's going to make it
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: easier to tract workers less expense because the roof is
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: not falling in as much. But no, that's not what happened.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: You're familiar with.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: You're familiar with the Peltzman effect. Does that ring a bell?
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: No, tell me what it is?
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Soo, Sam Peltzman, And this is in twenty forty my
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: next book. Sam Peltzman's a guy who studies seat belts
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: and air bags and abs and all that stuff, and
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: what turns out to happen is exactly what happened with
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: the coal mine. Oh, as soon as you get a
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: seat belt and an air bag, you're driving. Oh, this
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: car feels solid and safe. So I could drive a
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: little faster. And so we have all the safety equipment
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: that keeps getting built into cars, and yet the fatality
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: rates don't drop. It's not that we're all going to
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: just do fifty five and with that much safer, all
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: this great crumple zones and lane detection and all these things.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: They make us complacent and comfortable, and so we drive faster,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: and the fatality rates are the same. So you can
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: either maintain the same behavior and have the fatality rate drop,
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: or like drivers and coal mine companies, you could have
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: the same fatality rate but with a whole lot more
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: speed and or coal mining. It's a fascinating psycholophal Then.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: What is I want you to apply that effect to investing?
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: What's the aversion of the the Peltzman effect.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: I think what it really is about is the broader
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: picture is unintended consequences. You think, when the seat belt
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: laws are passed, the result will be we'll have fewer
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: deaths and safer vehicles. But instead the actual unintended consequence
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: is that people dress drive faster. So from investing perspective,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: you know, Paul Volker famously said there have been no
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: other than the ATM, there's been no innovations in finance,
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: But there actually have been between ETFs and online trading,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: and now trading is free, and I in the book,
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: I go through a whole long list and what ends
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: up happening, and now you have the gamification of robinhood.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: So instead of making things cheaper and easier and faster
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: for investors, we're still encouraging, or at least the industry
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: is encouraging many of our own worst instincts and of
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: course the outcomes. Instead of saying, hey, I could buy
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: an ETF and buy the whole market for three BIPs
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: and it costs me nothing to trade and wow, isn't
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: that great? Instead of doing that, a lot of people say, oh,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: I could day trade. I could you know, jump in
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: and out of Nvidia. This is a this is great.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: It is the airbags, abs and seatbelts of investing. And
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: instead of taking the win, we just keep pushing our risk.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Aversion slides up with the lack of friction.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: That the greater the illusion of safety we create in
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: the markets, the more people, the more recklessly the people.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Behave, especially if you're in the midst of a bull market. Yeah,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: because at that point, hey, markets only go up, that's
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: all they do. So I say this to you all
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: the time and you push back, But I got to
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: bring it up again. All of the characters in the
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: book are very Michael Lewis. They're all outsiders, they're quirky,
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: they're pushing against the grain because they've discovered some great
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: out of consensus. True, you've disagreed with that description before.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Has this book changed your mind? Because it's even the
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: chapters you didn't write are still Michael Lewis characters.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: All right, so I want you to all right, I'm
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: going to push back again. These writers who did this
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: with me are some of my favorite writers on the planet.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: And they are all excellent.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: So only just name them so people know. It's Dave Eggers,
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: Geraldine Brooks, cam Al Bell, Casey Sepp, Sarah val and
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: John Lanchester. So John Lanchester English writer, and they all
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: have they were I picked them one because they're all fun,
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: two because they're all able to kind of go in
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: and find stories that other people don't see. And three
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: their voices are so different from each other. I thought
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: they'd find very different things. John Lanchester, he doesn't find
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: a person. He finds the Consumer Price Index. The whole
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: chapter about I just found riveting about what the United
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: States does to count things. And then the United States
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: government is like the greatest counting mechanism in the world.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: And then it's that it's the one democracy where counting was.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: It was it was built into the constitution. You couldn't
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: distribute power unless you had a census to count where
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: the population was. And he says as example, he and
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: how complicated this is and how much you know how
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: much expertise is deployed within the government to do it well.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: He explains over many pages how the consumer Price Index
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: is put together. So right there, there you go. There
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: is something that I that is not a Michael Lewis character.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: That's the exception that proves the rule. And I'm gonna
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna put this back.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: Exceptions don't prove rules. Just so you know, exception when
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: that that expression means it tests the rule, okay, And
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: so that I just tested your rule. So you gave
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: me again.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: You gave me the one chapter that wasn't a Michael
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: michael Lewis character. So the conversation we just had about
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Christopher Mark and the coal mines, Oh my god, how
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: is he not a total Michael Lewis Right, next chapter
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: and you didn't write this. I think this was Casey
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Seff's chapter about Ronald Walters and the National Cemetery Administration.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: For this is a little bit of a cheap because
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: Casey asked me if I had anything back them on
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: the cut she had She said, we said, do you
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: have anything on the cutting room floor from the fifth risk?
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: And I had all this stuff on the cutting room
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: floor because there was so much stuff, and I said,
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: you know, there is this dude who wouldn't take my calls,
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: like I couldn't get him really, Oh yeah, no, it
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: was it was like they didn't want to and I
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: of course was going through communications as officials, and they
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: don't never respond properly. But his name was Ron Walters.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: And what I knew was this that they're inside the
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Veterans Administration. There's something called the there's a function, the
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: management of the National Cemeteries where we bury our war dead,
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: we bury our veterans. It is a sacred duty of
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: the society. And that this that, like all the functions
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: of the all the different ages and sees, this place
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: has its customer satisfaction measured by survey and that when
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: Ron Walter came into the job of running the National Cemeteries,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: it had very mediocre customer satisfaction. I don't know why.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: I don't know what was going on. I don't know
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: anything in the story. Casey wrote the story, but that
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: over a couple of decades he took the place from
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: being kind of mediocre to having the highest customer satisfaction
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: of any institution in America, private or public. That includes Costco, Walmart, FedEx.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: He somehow figured out the problem, and no one knew
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: he was. He didn't advertise himself. If he had done
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: this in business, he'd be like on the cover of
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: business magazines and giving lectures for money on the lecture circuit,
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: you know that. But he he was just a faceless
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: bureaucrat who would figure something out. And I said to
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: Casey go, I'd write about him, And for whatever reason,
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: he took her call and she and she she walks
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: us through his story.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: First of all, that that chapter made me cry. Number one.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly touching, and it makes you proud to be
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: an American. It really I know that's corny, but it
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: really does. But all right, so that's a cheat.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: Let me so the next one, Dave, it's probably Dave Eggers.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: Dave Eggers, and he goes and finds the people in
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: Nasau who looking for little green men in deep outer.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Space, oh searchers.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, so maybe not a little green men,
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: they're looking for life out of it.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Well, and the fascinating thing is we're going to clearly
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: find the first line I highlighted in all likelihood in
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: the next twenty five years we'll find evidence of life
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: on another planet. I want to say this because I'm
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: not a scientist and I don't work in media relations, Vanessa.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: What he's talking initially about is not intelligent star trek,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: star wars life. But hey, there's hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen everywhere.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Those are the fundamental building blocks. And we'll find some
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: bacteria somewhere.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: You know what they're gonna find. They're going to find
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: the Peltsman effect. You're gonna find somewhere way out there.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: They're gonna someone will have discovered the Peltzman effect. But
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: the yes, so Dave, so, how Dave? So, Dave is
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: working with these characters? I thought Dave I told Dave this, Uh,
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: just the other day that Dave when he announced he
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: was doing Nasau and these people who were doing this
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: incredibly cool work at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: Geraldine Brooks, another the writer, said, Yep, Dave is way
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: too talented to do this. This is such an easy
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: thing to make interesting. He needs to pick something that's
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: harder to write about. That this was. She thought he
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: was cheating, that it was just like, of course, everybody's
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: gonna love to read about this and Geraldine said to him,
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: said to me, to say to him, if he does that,
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: I'm going to find the most repulsive government worker to
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: write about. I'm going to go into the IRS, the
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: most hated, loathed branch of the government, and I'm gonna
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: write about the IRS. So she did that in response
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: to Dave's piece. And she does do that so that
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't. I mean, Dave has more Those characters are
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: not characters I would have naturally sought out. They are characters.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: So as he puts it, he was like, he has
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: no scientific aptitude. He like he stopped doing math and
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: science when he was like seven years old. He's a
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: poet at heart. So he finds it riveting when when
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: scientists can make comprehensible to him complicated stuff they're doing.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: And he had found these people and they could explain
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: in a way, he could explain how they were doing
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: what they were doing. And it is riveting.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: But but it's also very Michael Lewis, these are quirky.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: You know, these are very quirky characters.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: All Right, I'm gonna push back.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: I'm right, But before you push back, you just brought
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: up Geraldine Brooke Brooks and the cyber sleuth in the IRS.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: Here's a guy who's an accountant, teaching classes in Brazilian
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: jiu jitsu and like like becoming a ninth level black
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: Like that is not your run of the mill. I
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: need your papers to get your taxes filed.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: No, he'd he works in the cyber crime division of
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: the I R S and has collected billions of dollars
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: for the government busting up cyber crime rings. Jared Coopman
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: his name. And here's here's a kicker for you. His unit,
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: which is like a huge profit maker. They I mean,
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: they cost nothing and they generate billions. Has been gutted
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: by Doge in any case, but this is before it
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: was gutted. Geraldine found this dude. I don't know how
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: she found him. Actually she just went off. She said,
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: I'm going in the IRS and I'm coming out with
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: a story. And so she went into the IRS and
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: found him and and called me. You know, it's funny
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: she did call me, So this is not pushing back
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: on you. When she was done with the story, she
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: had to go back to a novel she was writing
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: kind of thing, and she said, this is such your
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: kind of story. She said, there's there's all this stuff
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: behind it. You really need to look into it, like
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: it might be a book for you. So she had
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: the thought she'd run into a story that I might
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: have written, and that might be true there. But here's
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: what I'm going to. Let me say this. Maybe I'm
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: so jazzed by our federal government because when you walk
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: into these places, they're all these really curious characters doing
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: really curious things, and you haven't heard of them, and
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: you might not think they're important until you do. And
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: they are characters in the best sense. They don't think
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: of themselves as characters. They just like they are who
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: they are, and they can be kind of shockingly interesting
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: without realizing how interesting they are, and that the stuff
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: they're doing is breathtakingly important, like existential risk level of importance.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: So yes, I'm interested in that. And they're all over
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: the government. And I think that if you said you
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: have to spend the rest of your career wandering this
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: institution writing about these people, I could pull it off.
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: That I could. I I could. I could use it
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: as a launch pad for every other book I ever wrote.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: If I had to.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: You mentioned dosee. One of the things that comes up
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: in the book in her chapter is these guys that
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: are literally saving tens of billions of dollars in cyber fraud.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: They're paytops out at like one hundred and thirty thousand
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: dollars something crazy, Like any one of them could go
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: to a Wall Street bank and ten x their salary.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: Like, stop and think about how insane that is. And
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: we got to cut those jobs and.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Then we don't. Yeah that you fire them, and not
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: only that, you insult them before you fire them, give
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: me a list of the five things you did last week.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: You know. It's just it's obscene what's going on right now.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: And that's one of that that would be a place
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: where you would dramatize some of the obscenity. Yeah. So
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: I don't think there's a character in the book that
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: couldn't be paid a whole lot more money outside of
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: the federal government. And this is another thing. I think
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: this is between the lines of the book. But all
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: these people are much more interested in mission than money,
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: and this is hard for Wall Street people to get
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: their minds around sometimes. But I don't think entirely there
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: are a lot of Wall Street people who really get
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: the joy of mission. And these are people who are
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: taking pay cuts because they want to do this thing.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: And nobody says this in any of the chapters, but
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: I think all of the chapters say this. All these
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: people have found the secret to a meaningful life. They've
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: all they None of these people on their deathbeds are
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: going to look up and say, well, I wish I
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: wish I'd gone to Goldman, you know that I wish
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: I'd made a whole lot of money. That they all
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: full feel like they did what they were supposed to do,
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: and that that's kind of cool.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: There is this thing going on how to lead your
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: life right through it, right through the whole book. And
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: I and as a moment when I'm talking to Chris Mark,
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: who I mean, one of the reasons I find it
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: hard to report Chris Mark, the coal mine guy, is
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: that you know, he won't stay in the Ritz, They'll
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: stay in the hampton In. So I got to stay
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: in the hampton In. You know, you know, he wants
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: to sit in the back of the plane, so I
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: got to sit in the back of the plane. And
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: so you know it's like that I have, you know,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: a standard of comfort. I've gotten used to that he
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: finds like immoral, maybe too strong a word, but like unnecessary.
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: And at one point he said to me, and I
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: put it in the book because he has decided to
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: live a life that's materially modest but spiritually rich. He
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: said to me. We taught our kids there there are
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: two ways to be rich. One is to make a
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: lot of money, and the other one is to not
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: need very much. And I just thought, wow, you know,
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: it's interesting.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Say what you will about the luxury quality of the
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: Hampton end. It ain't a coal mine if you spent
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: and he spends a year or two working in a
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: coal mine. Wait, I'm above ground on clean sheets, with
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: air conditioning and heat.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: And a peloton. Now, I couldn't believe it. There's a
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: peloton in there.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: By the way. When I first saw this title, I
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: picked up the book and I'm like, huh, I wonder
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: if Michael is going to get a little partisan. This
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: is one of those things that could really red state
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: blue state. But there's none of that. This is all
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: about you pay taxes and here's what the government does
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: to serve you. Whether you're the family of a deceased
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: veteran or relying on weather forecasts, or stopping cybercrime, or
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: you know, on and on it goes. These are really broad,
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: non partisan topics. Did did it ever enter your mind? Oh,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: someone's gonna accuse me. Oh that that punk Berkeley rider
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: is really a libtard and we really don't care what
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: he has to say. Did that ever enter your mind
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: as you were putting this together?
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: Of course, I mean it was, It was top of mind,
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: but in a way, I mean because it has happened
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: already and it will happen that you It is a
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: feature of our society right now that everything gets quickly politicized,
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: and you're either you're either in tribe or tribe tribe b.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: You're either you're either an Ole miss rebel or Alabama
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: Crimson Tide player. You know, it's it's you're you're on
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: one team or the other. That people need to need
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: to see you that way, especially the people who are
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: most absorbed with the politics. And if you write anything,
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: the challenge is the assumptions, prejudices, bigotry of one side
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: or the other. They're going to try to dismiss it
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: by just saying you're a member of the other tribe.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: So I can't you just can't do anything about that
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: except try to come at the material pure of heart
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: and open to mind. You know, it's like, these are
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: stories that are true stories. You can maintain your prejudice
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: and bigotry and whatever you think of federal workers. You
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: know you could if you want to preserve that stereotype
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: in your head. Fine, but you've got to acknowledge the
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: truth of the stories, Like, Okay, all federal workers are wasteful.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: Where do you put Chris Mark? Then he just he'es
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: saving thousands of lives of working classmen based Uh, what
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: do you do with that? So what do you do
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: with this and that and the other thing? I mean,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: there's so many of these stories.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: So on and on.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: It, So it's almost I'd say it's I think this
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: is true that to the extent you succeed in really
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: threatening either sides prejudices, you're going to elicit a violent reaction.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: And so I expected the book, given the current moment
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: where Elon Muskindoz is trying to basically fire all these people, uh,
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: that it would elicit a violent reaction. And I've stayed
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: off social media. I don't know exactly how much of
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: the violent reaction has happened. Uh, but I've gotten whispers
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: of it, like and and it's funny. I think it's
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: funny to find myself. I do live in Berkeley, and
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: people love to bring that up when they're trying to
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: classify me. But in Berkeley, i'd be a Republican, you know,
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, I mean that's not hard.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: But you originally from red I grew.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: Up in New Orleans. I'm like a kid who I'm
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: like a kid who played sports and didn't think about
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: politics and and like voted for Reagan once and like
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: John McCain was a close friend. And it's like the
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: idea that I'm like, oh, firmly, this lefty person is insane.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: It's just insane. I mean it's and it's it's a
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: tell for me when people try to shove me into
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: that box, because it means they're not dealing with the story.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: And it happens from the other side, the blind side.
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: There's the whole the crazy left has taken the blind
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: side story is like, oh, Michael's like a racist who's
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: told a white savior story.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: Seriously, I've read all about that.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: Listen, No, it's amazing.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: How many times have you and I just got to
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: be like our eighth tenth interview, I have lost track
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: when I'm prepping stuff and I have my research assistant
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: go out, hey, find me something I haven't we haven't
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: talked about in these previous eight conversations. Well, you know,
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: the pushback to the blind Side is the whole story
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: is fake and and here's the litigation and he's the depositions,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm not buying into this.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: This is this is clearly someone has a grudge.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but so but but I mean, the New York
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: Times ran a cover story like a year. It's like
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: trying to trying to sort of I don't know exactly
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: what it was trying to do, but it is between
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: the lines, was trying to say, like the story. Now,
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: now looking back on it, we can say the story
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: was false in some way. No one who was there
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: at the time disapproved of the stories. When the book
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: came out, Michael Lor himself loved the book. All everywhere
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: around him said this like true, great true story. You know,
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: there was never it's been. It got reinterpreted at High Woke.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: It got reinterpreted as a condescending story about a young
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: black boy, which is not what it was.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: You're, by the way, being generous to the people who
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: have changed. Your friend, Malcolm Gladwell would clearly call it
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: revisionist history, because oh, we gonna We're going to rethink
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: this in light of current moras.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: And but that's all flipped again. So it's it's it's gonna,
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: it's gonna make it come. It's there's this, there was
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: a revolution to counter revolution and the counter counter revolution.
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: It's it's. But my point is that that I have
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: had my work filtered through people's bizarre, perverted political prisms,
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: and uh.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: It happened last book Going It.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: Gets it gets distorted, My views get misrepresented to the
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: extent I have views that mostly it's not an expression
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: of you. It's a telling of a story that I'm doing.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: And I've had it from both sides, and it's not
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: pleasant from either side. And this one it was really
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: clear the side it's where the blow blow back is
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: gonna come is from the from the right. Now here's
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: it's funny. I have a little suspicion. I feel like
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: a little uncomfortable at at preaching to the converted at
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: cheap applause. I'm now finding myself on stages with this book,
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: and of course the audience is all kind of on
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: its side. The audience is all often liberal people, federal workers,
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: and you know, I have them at hello, and I
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: don't particularly like that. I mean, it's better than having
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: if I don't even hate you. But I want people
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: to just like the story, like judge it by the
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: quality of the thing, rather than judge it by whether
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: it confirms your prejudices. Uh. And that that's and it's
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: just increasingly this is coming that's changed in my my
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: literary career, in my life. It's getting harder and harder
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: to pierce people's prejudices that they're so they come in
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: so armored with some opinion that's very half baked that
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: they have possibly even uttered themselves on social media, so
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: that they've they've sort of like they're anchored in it
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: and they don't want to they don'tant to even think
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: about anything different than what they've said. Uh. And so
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: you're you've got this, You've got an army of kind
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: of prejudice readers that you that you have to deal
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: with it. It's just louder than it's ever been and
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: makes it hard to get the story told.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: What's really ironic is that a lot of the people
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: who are the beneficiaries of a lot of the government
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: work coal mine. Most obvious is they're in red states,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: and so there's a little there's a little bit of
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: craziness with that. But let's talk about the process of
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: the book. The eight or nine chapters you write, the
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: first one, you write, the last one, and then the
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: middle six are the six writers you mention, I don't
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: really think of you as an editor. I think of
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: you as a writer. What was that like, having not
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: only to edit this but edit friends.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: What I did was talk them into doing it. I
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: recruited them and I talked to them about what stories
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: that they might write. But after that I left everything
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: to David Shipley, who.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: Oh sure I know David.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: And and who's former Bloomberg editor and so so I
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: didn't have to do any of the line and I
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: didn't touch anybody's pieces. I kept I kept great distance
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: from that, and most of them didn't need that. A
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: couple couple did I do. I have often engaged with
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: other writers and having them bounce their stories off me
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: and talk about how they might do it. Do it
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: so that that's easy for me and fun. And all
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: these writers were kind of spoiled for choice. It wasn't
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: like throwing up their hands and saying, what am I
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: going to write about? I don't have a story. It
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: was more should I do A or B or C?
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: So that that book was fun, really fun. I can't
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: tell you how easy this thing was. I mean, it's
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: it's it's it's surprising. I thought when I involved, I
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: was a little trepidacious about involving other writers because they're
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: all neurotic, you know that you never know what you know,
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: it's hurting cats, you never know what they're going to
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: do or they're going to show or uh. And everybody
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: hit their marks and we're kind of Nobody was trub
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: they were all They all did what they were supposed
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: to do and and and I did you know? That
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: was the other thing, you know, The moment, the gut
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: check moment for me was I got them all riled up.
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: Are they going to be these great stories? Go do it?
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: And then I realized, oh, I got to write something.
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: And finding my I thought, oh, it's going to be
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: tough for me to like rise to this occasion again.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: And I found I think these are two of the
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: more interesting long form narrative stories I have ever written.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: And they are and that's saying something.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: It is saying. I mean, I've had some great material.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: I think the material I'm always good as my material, right,
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: I can't make I can't put in with God left.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: Out, agreed and disagree.
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: Oh it's true, though, It's true. If you I really,
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: if I have boring, really bad material, it wouldn't be
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: very good. But this case, the ingredients were there for
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: excellent meals and uh, and it just they turned out beautifully.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: I'm just really proud of them, you know.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: I love that feeling of like I don't know how
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: this is gonna when you start, I'm intrigued by this.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: I don't know where it's going to go. And then
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: when you're done, it's like, oh, this turned out like
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: I thought this was a good idea, and hey, this
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: turned out even better than unexpected. It really is a
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: lovely sensation.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: As it is, it is a completely lovely sensation. And
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: the whole book, when I look back on it, it
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: feels like the whole group was in a flow state,
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: that the whole group, everybody, nobody over nobody ever thought it.
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: People just went and did what they did. They played
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: their best game and I did too, and so it
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: was it was really gratifying. And it's had the response
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: to it. I mean, of course now with what's going on,
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: but you know, most of them appeared in the Washington
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: Post over running up to the election, and the response
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: was just I remember the letter after the first one,
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: the woman who adds the the comment section said, I've
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: never seen anything like this. Really, yes, I mean it
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: was just just exploded. And this is all before Trump's elected.
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: And now the thing's all together in one piece, in
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: one place in the the you know, there's this deconstruction
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: of the government going on. It sits in the middle
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: of the conversation. I mean, it's like it that the
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: world is smiling upon this work. There's no question, there
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: is no question.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: It could not possibly be more timely. I know I
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: only have you for a limited amount of time. There's
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: two questions I have to ask, one sports related and
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: the obvious question I always feel like I have to
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: ask you, is, Hey, what's the cause? You recall the
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: dinner with a bunch of people talking about SBF. So
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: I got to ask you, what's the next? Michael Lewis
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: story that's going to be told? What story haven't you told?
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: What subject? Haven't you touched that you're eager to attack?
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: Well, I kind of have a rule, and the rule
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: is I don't. I don't really like to talk about it.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: I know it takes the energy out of it.
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: Oh really, that's why I thought you just didn't want
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: to reveal.
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: No. No, it's like you're getting you're sort of getting
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: the response before you've done the work, and it's it's
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: sort of it's it's nice to build the tension just
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: in yourself. But having said that, I don't have it's
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: not I mean, I just finished this and I don't
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: I don't have a book I'm writing now. I'll tell
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: you what things that interests me? Okay, I think what
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: Elon Musk and Doge is doing is unbelievably interesting, Like
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: it's it is a tornado ripping through the culture. And
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: I think that that daily journalism does a really good
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: job of telling you just what kind of just happened
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: on the surface. It doesn't go below, and that there
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: is there's that that's worth paying close attention to. Another
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: thing that really interests me is the commercialization of youth
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: sports of college and college sports especially uh, the the
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: way this radical free agency has come to college sports
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: and you've got fifteen year old quarterbacks who have got
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: two million dollar name, image and likeness deals and that
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: that that it's an environment, it's just been upended. And
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: it interests me on the like who wins, who loses,
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: who succeeds, who can coach in this environment, who can
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: lead in this environment? I'm interesting in college sports and
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: a third area and I don't really want to get
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: in this too much, but grief. You know, I lost
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: a child four years ago and I'm starting to find
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: the words to describe that experience. And I don't think
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: it's a book, but I don't know, but these but
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you were here, Barry, in my office,
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: I have like, you know, fifty folders here of stuff that's,
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: you know, at least in the back of my mind
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: that might lead somewhere. And you never know what's going
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: to spark it. You never I really never know what's
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: gonna It's gonna the call I'm going to get, or
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: the person I'm going to meet, or the thing I'm
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: going to read where I think, oh, that's it, that's
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: where I need to go, and it happens very quickly.
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: I mean it's like slow, slow, slow, slow slow, and
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: then ooh, there we go, and I'm in.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: The gradually then all at once. You're quoting Hemingway, there
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: we go.
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: That's how it feels. It feels gradually then all at once,
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: and I'm in the gradual phase right now.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: Huh. That's really interesting. I'm going to come back to
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: sports in a minute, but I got to ask. So,
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: given all these files, and given how this book was
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: so different than prior books, and then Going Infinite was
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: so different than Flashboys, and on and on it goes,
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: I'm curious about what's your writing routine like and how
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: has it evolved over time? Like I am intimately familiar
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: with the Liar's Poker story, which I just love that
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: whole thing. We've talked about that many times. But from
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: kind of writing at night getting home from Salomon Brothers
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: to being a full time author, how has your process changed.
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: I had to shift when kids start. When we started
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: having kids, instead of a really late night life, it
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: became a really I became a morning writer. I may
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: go back. Our son, our youngest, is a senior in
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: high school and the mini is out of the house.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: I would not be surprised if I revert to nocturnal beast.
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: It's my that's my natural state. But the process. The
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: one thing I've noticed that's changed in my process is
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: a deeper and deeper appreciation of the importance of the
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: character of the subjects. That that I the premonition is
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: that it was. It was for me. It was a
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: sort of a breaking it was. It was a marking
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: point because I thought, I do want to write about
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: this thing that's happening the COVID, but I want to
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: do it. I want to I want to put the
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: characters first. And I almost cast it that I went looking.
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: I worried about the story less than I worried about
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: the people I was writing about. I put the and
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: and the same with SBF. It was like, this guy
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: is I don't know what's going to happen, but it's
• 56:07
  Speaker 3: he's interesting. Like there's a thing to do here because
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: this person is so interesting, the person will create the story.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: And I've tilted that direction. I mean there was always there.
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: I was.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: I've always been writing about curious characters. But I've gotten
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: more adamant. I've got to be more certain about the
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: character before I start Moneyball. I started with the idea
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: kind of it was. Uh, it was like how they
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: win a baseball games and oh my god, it's inefficient,
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, analytics blah blah blah. But it doesn't
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: work unless Billy Bean is a really good character. But
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't discover how good a character he
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: was for months. He kept himself hidden for a while.
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: And I think I now have to feel more confident
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: in the character before I start.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: Huh. And and you know, I'm thinking in the top
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: off the top of my head. So you have Billy Bean, right,
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: and then work you like bradcatching on at at I ea, uh,
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: Danny Kahneman, you just keep working your way through each
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: of the books, to say nothing of Michael Barry. Every
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: book leads to one of these characters leads to this again,
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: this Michael Lewis character who's quirky and thoughtful and discovers
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: a great out of consensus truth and uses it to
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: either affect change or challenge the status quo. I think
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: that shines through this certainly. SBF was that guy hold
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: aside the fraud and the end of money and all
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: that stuff, same sort of character. And what I'm hearing
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: from you is that you've become even though the stories
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: are always fascinating and amazing, they seem to become more
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: and more character driven as you've what's.
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: You It's true, It's true, like your theory of my
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: I don't know how you explained how Liar's Poker fits
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: into it, for example.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: Freshman Attempt and you're still get by the way. I
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: when you had the anniversary of that book and I
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: literally picked it up having not read it for twenty
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: five years, and I reread it. I'm like, oh, good writer,
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: shows potential. Not quite Michael Lewis yet, but you could
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: see and did you just a compliment? Oh it comes
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: through like, oh, I see exactly how all these little things,
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: like all the seeds of Michael Lewis are planted throughout
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: Liar's Poker, and then it just blossoms in every subsequent book.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: So the first your first book was like, all right,
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: this is real. Oh he's a first time author. This
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: is a really good book for first time author. But
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: that author wasn't a fully formed Michael Lewis. Nor how
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: old were you thirty something twenty?
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: I wrote it when I was twenty six.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: Okay, so a twenty six year old Michael Lewis is
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: certainly should never be expected to be a thirty forty
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: fifty sixty something Michael Lewis, seasoned, wizened and just having
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: lived life. So and I say, I want you to
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: understand I'm saying that as I don't.
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: No, I had to reread it when I did the
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: audio book, reread it.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: How bizarre is doing an audio book? By the way,
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: is it not the craziest thing you've ever done?
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: It's it's when I going back to something I wrote
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: thirty something years ago that was weird and it was
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: unselling because I wanted to fix all this.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: Stuff, you know, right, you want to hit it as.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: Your yeah yeah things. I didn't even notice at the time.
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: It's just like appalling to me, right, But doing my
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: own audio books, as I mostly do now, it's the
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: one thing I always noticed is how much how you
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: read it differently, how you see it differently. When you're
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: reading it aloud, you see stuff that you wouldn't you
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: don't see when you just read when you're doing it
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: on the page, And that you shouldn't let a book
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: out the door without having read it aloud.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: I had an editor who used to say to me,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: you should take your columns and read them out loud,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: and you'll have a totally different feeling for it. Plus
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: you discover half your vocabulary are things that you have
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: never spoken out loud and don't know how to pronounce
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: because you've only read them and written them.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: Hapittualization. It took me like ten minutes to get that
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: word iterative because I've only read and written them. How
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: often you get to say capitalization and you always mangle
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: it because you're so it's really fine, all right, So
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: I only have you for a few moments left. I
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: got to throw you a curveball. Since you've written about baseball,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: you've written about little league coaching, you've written about football,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: even you've written about basketball and Darryl Morey, which, by
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: the way, there's a book in basketball. Although maybe it's
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: too late because Steph Curry and Lebron James are already
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: towards the back part of their career. But I have
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: to ask what sports do you watch? What are your teams?
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: Who do you root for? And we're recording this just
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: as March Madness has already destroyed all the brackets.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: I had Drake. I had Drake over Oh yes, really,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: yeah I did. I didn't have a knee state, but
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: I came close. I thought about it, and then I
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: thought Clemson is going to bounce from losing the Duke.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: And I was wrong about that. Uh my bracket looks
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: great except for that. It's right now, it's intact, except
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: for the McNee steak game. I watched college basketball. I
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: watch it more like everybody else during March Madness. I
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: watch playoff baseball. I watched the Cubs. I watched the
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: You're not you Chicago guy. Nope, but Nico Horner. Nico
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: Horner is their second baseman. And Nico was in high
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: school with Quinn, my daughter and Quinn. And when Quinn,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: Quinn was a pictuer on the softball team and Nico
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: was pitcher on the baseball team, and the off season,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: Nico and his English teacher father and me and Quinn
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: would be out there, the only ones out there working out.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: And so I got to Nico a little bit, and
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: he's a He's this unbelievable kid, just a great kid.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: And so he has led me to become a Cubs fan,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: and it's actually a fun team. They they they're in
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: field before games. This is something I might they get.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: They sit in a circle and they pick a different
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: person and everybody has to say something nice about it. Exactly.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: It's a completely different model of how you like collaborate.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: But you know, for for guys in sports. But so
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: I watched that. I watch some w n B A
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: I watch the NBA. The Warriors are my team and
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: have been. I mean, we've been so blessed. Kerr is
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: a magician, and I think Curry has been I mean
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: the whole thing has just been magical to watch. And
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: the A's used to be my team, but they've left me.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: And football I watch obsessively. So football. I watched more
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: college and and NFL football than anything. And my team
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: in the in the NFL is the Saints, which is
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: we've had our ups and downs, but I never you
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: know that New Orleans has never left me and U
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: And in college football, I don't really have I like
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: the old Miss Rebels. I got very attached when Michael
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: Ore was there. I traveled around with that team. But
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: I don't have one team in basketball. The team that
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: I like college basketball I don't know why because I
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: didn't go there. I'm a duke basketball at it. It's
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: like you jump one way or the other. With duke,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: you either hate him or love them.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: Well. Their coach was so beloved for so many years.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: And they new coach will be too. I think Shire
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: is fabulous, So I think it's a different he's He's
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: managing a different environment, but clearly has the ability to
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: Michael, as always, every time we have one of these conversations,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: they're They're delightful, and I'm going to just announce here
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: anyone who wants to come listen to Michael discussed not
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: just this book, but his whole career April seventh at
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: the Gene Rimsky Theater in Port Washington. It's gonna be
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: a lot of fun. I get to pepper Mike with
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: all sorts of questions that we haven't gotten to here.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: We have been speaking with Michael Lewis. His new book
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: is Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: If you enjoy this conversation, well be sure and check
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: out any of the previous five hundred conversations we've had
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: over the past eleven years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: Bloomberg dot com, YouTube, wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: I would be remiss if I do not thank the
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: Crack team that helps put these conversations together each week.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: Sarah Livesey is my audio engineer. Anna Luke is my producer.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: Jean Russo is my researcher. I'm Barry Ritolts. You've been
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.