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