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Speaker 1: Also media a welcome back to Behind the Bastards, our

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Speaker 1: special edition episodes on Sam Bankman, who is not freed

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Speaker 1: because he is still in jail. That's it's the intro

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Speaker 1: I've got. It's the same as the last episode.

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Speaker 2: No, you're hilarious. It's still very funny. Sophie's favorite.

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Speaker 1: This is the only time I've made Sophie laugh in years.

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Speaker 1: That's not true. Well, okay, Switzerland on this issue. You're

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Speaker 1: Swiss on this issue. Swiss you Jamie. Speaking of Switzerland,

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Speaker 1: you also were neutral in World War Two? Is that correct? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: I was sort of like kidding. You made me laugh again.

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Speaker 1: Congrats two for two, baby, So we took a couple

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Speaker 1: of days and tween recording part one and part two.

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Speaker 1: Really let it sink in. How are you feeling on

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Speaker 1: our technically not a Behind the Bastards on Michael Lewis,

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Speaker 1: but basically a behind the Bastards on Michael Lewis, author

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Speaker 1: of The Big Short.

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Speaker 2: I So in the interesting days, I've talked about the

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Speaker 2: Michael Lewis of it all with a couple of different people,

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Speaker 2: just to see if I was like if I had

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Speaker 2: just missed something. But every single person I talked to

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Speaker 2: I found had a similar experience to me, where they

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Speaker 2: did not know that he wrote The blind Side. Oh good, okay, yeah,

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Speaker 2: and then when they found out that he wrote the

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Speaker 2: blind Side, they were like, oh, yeah, I could see

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Speaker 2: that he is a you know, he's an honorary bastard.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe he is kind of a hack. Yeah right, well.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they were like, yeah, Michael Lewis Moneyball the Big Short,

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Speaker 2: And You're like, and another thing, how did that? How

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Speaker 2: how do we collectively forget that he wrote that? It

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Speaker 2: feels like he got away with something.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And I guess I've been thinking about what he's

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Speaker 1: doing with Sam Bankman Freed as I think about the

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Speaker 1: upcoming Napoleon movie, which I will have watched by the

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Speaker 1: time this comes out, but it's not out yet. So

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Speaker 1: excited about that time. I'm ready. Everyone, especially like all

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Speaker 1: of these history Twitter podcast people, are so livid that

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Speaker 1: Ridley Scott's basically like, who can say what the truth

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Speaker 1: of Napoleon's life was, which is it is a ridiculous

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Speaker 1: thing to say. He's very well documented. We actually know

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Speaker 1: a lot about Napoleon. But also, I don't give a shit.

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Speaker 1: It's the guy who made Gladiator, like well, and also.

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Speaker 2: I appreciate because all biopics are you know, nonsense, yeah

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Speaker 2: or shit right, And so you're like, well, this is

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Speaker 2: the one director who's going to say my biopic is kind.

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Speaker 1: Of horse, it's just lies, which also very appropriate for Napoleon.

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Speaker 1: But what is the line with that? Why Why am

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Speaker 1: I angry at Michael Lewis for what he's doing? And

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Speaker 1: I don't really care.

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Speaker 2: He's a journalist, there is he's a journalist.

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Speaker 1: One he's not the director of fucking Gladiator, the least

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Speaker 1: accurate movie about Rome ever made.

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Speaker 2: It's been a great it's been a great week for

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Speaker 2: like weird old guys who we could argue had have

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Speaker 2: peaked creatively, although I wouldn't say that for Scorsese. But

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Speaker 2: there was a great quote that was floating around in

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Speaker 2: the last couple of days where I guess Scorsese said

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Speaker 2: on the Killers of the Flower Moon press stor that

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Speaker 2: he was like always worried about running out of time

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Speaker 2: and he never knew what his last movie would be.

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Speaker 2: And Ridley Scott was asked to like react to that,

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Speaker 2: and he said, since he started Killers of the Flower Moon,

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Speaker 2: I've made four films. No I don't think about it.

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Speaker 2: I get up in the morning and say, ah, great,

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Speaker 2: another day of stress.

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Speaker 1: Honestly, those are both completely valid answers. Yeah, I refuse

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Speaker 1: to be a part of some sort of like pretending

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Speaker 1: that what Scott is saying isn't as valid as what

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Speaker 1: Scorsese's saying. There are two ways to deal with mortality,

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Speaker 1: one of the.

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Speaker 2: Two genders of creative march Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. One is oh my god, I will die and

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Speaker 1: I won't have said everything I need to say, And

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Speaker 1: the other is what the fuck I got I got

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Speaker 1: shit to do, I gotta move, I gotta have time

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Speaker 1: with the answer to this fucking question. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Robert Paul Schrader is on Facebook, and Paul Schrader's

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Speaker 2: posting about Taylor Swift in a kind of horny way,

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Speaker 2: so like, yeah, the old men are just there on

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Speaker 2: one this week, and Michael Lewis walks among them.

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Speaker 1: There's only one old, great creative who has taken the reasonable,

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Speaker 1: respect like answer to mortality, and it's John Carperdue, who's like, Nah,

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Speaker 1: I'm done directing movies. I'm gonna get high, play video games,

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Speaker 1: watch basketball the rest of my life, and God, bless God,

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Speaker 1: bless him. Yeah, God bless them. There's a man who

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Speaker 1: understands what's valuable in life, a thing that Sam Bankman

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Speaker 1: Freed never understood. And we're and we're back. Yeah, we're back.

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Speaker 1: So one of the things that comes up a lot

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Speaker 1: in Michael Lewis's book is he's sort of going into

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Speaker 1: the mind and psyche of Sam Bankman Freed, is that

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Speaker 1: Sam had this belief that no one ever does anything

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Speaker 1: useful after like age forty to forty five, somewhere around

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Speaker 1: there is the last time you have a useful thought

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Speaker 1: in your entire life, which I guess is relevant to

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Speaker 1: our discussion of aging aging powerful men.

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Speaker 2: I will say that that's true of many stand up comedians,

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Speaker 2: but I can't speak of that outside of that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's true, especially like

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Speaker 1: once you get really rich, it's you tend to like

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Speaker 1: lose complete touch with the world and go insane. So

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Speaker 1: I think that is somewhat accurate, at least for some

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Speaker 1: creative professions. But Sam is not in a creative profession,

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Speaker 1: and it's actually kind of ridiculous to me the idea

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Speaker 1: that like people in business after age forty four, like

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Speaker 1: Steve Jobs did all of his best shit like well

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Speaker 1: after that point, like his most influential like evil things

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Speaker 1: and most like really successful businessmen are just kind of

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Speaker 1: getting started by their mid forties, right, because it takes

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Speaker 1: that much time to get that's momentum.

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Speaker 2: You've got a lot of evil like you got.

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Speaker 1: He's lot of horrible things left to do, plenty of time.

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Speaker 2: First is in front of you.

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Speaker 1: I think he's got three to five ethnic cleansings in

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Speaker 1: a minimum minimum Jamie, Yeah, maybe eight. You know, I

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Speaker 1: could see him having eight more ethnic cleansings.

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Speaker 2: He does seem like someone who just will like have

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Speaker 2: a kissinger like affinity for life.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so bankman Freeds, I understand belief that, like after

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Speaker 1: age forty five, he's not going to be capable of

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Speaker 1: having any useful ideas. This is what pushed him, you know,

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Speaker 1: along with his effective altruist idea. This is why he

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Speaker 1: felt like he had to he had to continually gamble

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Speaker 1: rather than like taking the slow, sustainable path making money

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Speaker 1: off of his exchange at like a reasonable pace. No, no, no,

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Speaker 1: I only have a few more years left before my

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Speaker 1: brain shrivels up. And so if I'm going to do

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Speaker 1: anything good for the world, I have to keep putting

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Speaker 1: every dollar I've made on a fifty to fifty bet endlessly, right,

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Speaker 1: mm hmmm, which isn't it? Which is like, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: you should probably get help if you feel that about

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Speaker 1: the world world, because that's a deeply self destructive way

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Speaker 1: to think about yourself and about your assets. This is

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Speaker 1: a big part of why FTX did not have a

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Speaker 1: really crucial thing for any company, particularly a financial company,

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Speaker 1: to have, which is a risk officer.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: A risk officer's job is to analyze the deals the

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Speaker 1: company is doing and go, well, that's an insane risk,

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Speaker 1: so let's not do that one. Or you know, that's

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Speaker 1: an insane risk. We need to offset it with this stuff.

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Speaker 1: They also did not have a chief financial officer or

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Speaker 1: a bunch of other critical executive positions.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, no CSOs, that's one I've heard of. You should

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Speaker 2: have that one.

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Speaker 1: It's a really basic job, and its job is basically

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Speaker 1: to know how much money you have, right, Like, there's

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Speaker 1: other stuff to it, but it's pretty critical. FTX also

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Speaker 1: did not have a board of directors, and they're lacking

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Speaker 1: a bunch of other very basic executive positions, and a

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Speaker 1: big part of why is that the only people Sam

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Speaker 1: feels like he can trust are like his friends, and

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Speaker 1: he has this deep aversion to bringing in adults, like

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Speaker 1: people who were not in their twenties, like his the

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Speaker 1: friends he went to college with. And shit, he said

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Speaker 1: in one interview with Michael, we tried having some grown ups,

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Speaker 1: but they didn't do anything. This was true for everyone

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Speaker 1: over the age of forty five. All they did was worry, which, like, again,

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Speaker 1: given what happened, perhaps they auto have been.

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Speaker 2: Maybe I'm just like sort of on one with the

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Speaker 2: idea that very few stand ups have a valuable thought

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Speaker 2: after forty five. But I would say now reflecting on it,

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Speaker 2: like Sam Bankminfried is using the improv troop approach to

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Speaker 2: a very high stakes business. Yes, Like he's like, no,

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Speaker 2: I will only work with people I went to college with,

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Speaker 2: we know best. I don't want no fucking crusties in

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Speaker 2: the room, like if he I mean, And we could

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Speaker 2: debate all day about whether Sam bankmdfried would have done

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Speaker 2: more evil in his life so far or in his

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Speaker 2: life as an improv comedian, because I think they should

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Speaker 2: all be in forever jail. So it's kind of like,

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Speaker 2: it's difficult, it's difficult.

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Speaker 1: This is what Levenworth should be right. Military needs to

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Speaker 1: take stand up comedians into custody. I've always had and

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Speaker 1: I'm on a lot of lists.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you know how many bars have performed in to

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Speaker 2: know people, I'm on a lot of lists.

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Speaker 1: So Sam's response when he was asked by Michael, like,

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Speaker 1: why don't you guys even have a CFO? That seems important?

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Speaker 1: He says, there's a functional religion around the CFO. I'll

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Speaker 1: ask them why do I need one? Some people cannot

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Speaker 1: articulate a single thing the CFO was supposed to do.

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Speaker 1: They'll say, keep track of the money or make projections,

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Speaker 1: And I'm like, what the fuck do you think I

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Speaker 1: do all day? You think I don't know how much

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Speaker 1: money we have? Which is funny because his whole legal

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Speaker 1: defense in court was I had no idea how much

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Speaker 1: money we had or where it was, and that's why

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Speaker 1: I didn't commit a crime, right because I just was incompetent.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know where the money was. But it's all

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Speaker 1: somewhere Like, very silly thing to say, given what he's

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Speaker 1: about to say. Okay, So after Sam's life fell apart,

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Speaker 1: Michael Lewis continued to talk and visit multiple sometimes would

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Speaker 1: call like three or four times a day through the

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Speaker 1: eight months that Sam was on house arrest. And it's

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Speaker 1: interesting to me because, like Michael, if I was a

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Speaker 1: journalist like Michael Lewis, and I had had a conversation

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Speaker 1: with somebody when they were one of the biggest names

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Speaker 1: in an industry, being like a CFO is useless. I

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Speaker 1: know where the money is, and then their entire life

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Speaker 1: explodes because they didn't know what the money is. I

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Speaker 1: would at some point asked him the question, Hey, was

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Speaker 1: that maybe a bad idea? Michael does not bring this

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Speaker 1: up to Sam after the collapse in any of the

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Speaker 1: dozens of conversations that they've had, and in fact, and

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Speaker 1: this is why that's weird. The actual villain of his book,

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Speaker 1: Going Infinite, the one person that Lewis is super critical

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Speaker 1: of in like a really uncharitable way, is the CEO

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Speaker 1: brought into takeover the FTX after Sam like leaves and

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Speaker 1: declares bankruptcy, a guy named John ray the Third. Now,

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Speaker 1: I am not going to go to bat for John

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Speaker 1: ray the Third because he he's John His name is

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Speaker 1: John ray the Third, Like that name.

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Speaker 2: To go to bat Ford, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But he Is. You know, he's the guy who got

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Speaker 1: brought into liquidate in Ran and he's he's kind of

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Speaker 1: a corporate undertaker, right when a when there's a huge

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Speaker 1: scandal at a company, when it like collapses, goes into bankruptcy,

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Speaker 1: and you need someone to kind of do the post mortem.

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Speaker 1: You bring in John Ray and he's like, as far

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Speaker 1: as I know.

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Speaker 2: Not the first or second.

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Speaker 1: No, not the first or second. Those guys are useless.

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Speaker 2: No fucking clowns. Okay, you're gonna want to bring in

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Speaker 2: the third.

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Speaker 1: You need a j R. Three.

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Speaker 2: I'm with you, so yes, sir.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting, like the degree to which he has

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Speaker 1: because this guy comes in later and I think because

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Speaker 1: he's boring, Michael Lewis finds him disgusting. Like I haven't

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Speaker 1: run into any info that he's like bad at what

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Speaker 1: he does. It's certainly not his fault, but Michael is

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Speaker 1: livid because he's this kind of like stodgy old businessman

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Speaker 1: and he doesn't understand sam spe playground or like the

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Speaker 1: wonderful thing that he built, and he's just kind of

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Speaker 1: exasperated at how badly it all works.

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Speaker 2: See that's fascinating to me because to me that says

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Speaker 2: like Michael Lewis is, I mean, either just hates boring people,

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Speaker 2: which fair enough, but you know he should know as

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Speaker 2: a journalist that boring people are often and maybe most

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Speaker 2: often tremendously capable of doing bad shit. But it seems

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Speaker 2: like he's looking more for like, well, Bradley Cooper can't

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Speaker 2: play you in a movie. You're useless to me, your garbage,

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Speaker 2: you're boring.

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Speaker 1: There's nothing. Yeah, there's nothing sexy about him. He's just

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Speaker 1: trying to deal up, like clean up after a disaster.

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Speaker 1: And there's some really funny lines in the book because

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Speaker 1: like one of the things that Lewis has to do

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Speaker 1: in order to kind of defend Sam as a genius

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Speaker 1: is explain how he didn't steal nine billion dollars, right,

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Speaker 1: And the answer that Lewis has come to is that

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Speaker 1: money is all there, that he just didn't know where

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Speaker 1: nine billion dollars was. Oh yeah, he didn't steal it

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Speaker 1: or gamble it away. He just misplaced it, dude, rank

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Speaker 1: and competence that he committed because he was too smart

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Speaker 1: to keep track of things. And there's a I'm going

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Speaker 1: to read you a very uh yeah, there's a really

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Speaker 1: fun quote there he describes like Lewis describes FTX as

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Speaker 1: a real business, but he says that John Ray, who

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Speaker 1: like attacked it as the worst run company I'd ever seen,

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Speaker 1: was just too much of an idiot to like understand

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Speaker 1: it right. He describes Ray trying to figure out what

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Speaker 1: company assets actually existed in what didn't, as quote like

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Speaker 1: an amateur archaeologist who had stumbled upon a previously unknown civilization,

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Speaker 1: unable to learn anything about its customs or language. He

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Speaker 1: just started digging, right, Like really, he's too dumb to

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Speaker 1: understand the brilliant thing that Sam built up, so he

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Speaker 1: just starts like churning about in the wreckage without really

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Speaker 1: appreciating everything that went into making this monufental edifice.

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Speaker 2: And I really wonder, like what I mean, this is

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Speaker 2: like getting into the weeds a little bit. But I'm

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Speaker 2: very curious, like what, like who on Michael Lewis's editorial

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Speaker 2: team is keeping him in check. It doesn't sound like

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Speaker 2: he's hired a fact checkers to sound like he has

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Speaker 2: a personal Jimminy Crickett, So he's just saying shit like

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Speaker 2: his personal biases couldn't be more out.

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Speaker 1: They wanted to rush this thing out, so you don't

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Speaker 1: have much time to edit it, right, True? Yeah, a

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Speaker 1: year to write and release a book is not a

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Speaker 1: long time.

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Speaker 2: No, not enough time one might, not enough.

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Speaker 1: Time, one might argue. And also Michael Lewis has the

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Speaker 1: kind of clout to make that not happen. Right, And again,

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Speaker 1: I also kind of think that his hatred of Ray

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Speaker 1: here is based on the fact that Ray did not

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Speaker 1: fall for Sam's bullshit the way Michael did. Right. Here's

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Speaker 1: what Ray said shortly after taking over and getting a

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Speaker 1: look at ftx's finances, and this is from an our

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Speaker 1: article in Business Insider. At the hearing, Congresswoman an Wagner

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Speaker 1: of Missouri asked Ray to elaborate on the specific ways

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Speaker 1: FTX was worse than quote one of the largest corporate

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Speaker 1: frauds in history. Ray explained that FTX was unused and

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Speaker 1: then it had no record keeping whatsoever. He said that

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Speaker 1: employees would exchange invoices and expenses on Slack, the ubiquitous

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Speaker 1: workplace chat room. They used QuickBooks, he added, referring to

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Speaker 1: the accounting software quick Books. Congresswoman Wagner asked for clarification,

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Speaker 1: QuickBooks very nice tool, not for a multi billion dollar company.

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Speaker 1: Rake confirmed and that's like basically they're using the kind

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Speaker 1: of thing that you would use if you're like a

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Speaker 1: person keeping track of you, or maybe your small business

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Speaker 1: is accounting.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I've done that and like that. That's nuts.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that is like the close attitude too.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I was like, that's the closest thing I've come to debuting. Like, Wow,

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Speaker 2: if I was also the tasked with multi billion dollars,

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Speaker 2: I'd be like, I don't know, yeah books, Well we

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Speaker 2: go to turbo tax, what do we do? I would

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Speaker 2: hire a CFO.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I would hire someone who's done that before, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah QuickBooks. Holy shit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So you can decide whose interpretation sounds more realistic

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Speaker 1: John Ray recognize you can. Basically, the two possibilities are

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Speaker 1: like either John Ray just recognizes basic incompetence when he

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Speaker 1: sees it and gets angry, or he's just not brilliant

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Speaker 1: and special enough to understand Sam's world, which is is

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Speaker 1: what That's what Michael lewis, that's he in caps. That's

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Speaker 1: what Michael Lewis refers to FTX as is Sam's world, right,

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Speaker 1: this is a He basically treats the whole situation as like, yes,

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Speaker 1: Sam's Sam lived in this magical world, and you know,

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Speaker 1: his business was actually secretly good, but it encountered this

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Speaker 1: temporary issue and he was forced out. And then John

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Speaker 1: Ray came in and he tore it all apart because

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Speaker 1: he's just the mean, old, grumpy businessman.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: That's that's really like the thrust of Michael Lewis's book,

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Speaker 1: and part of how he kind of emphasizes the magical

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Speaker 1: inner world Sam lived in is this kind of obsession

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Speaker 1: with gaming returning to like Lewis is just sort of

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Speaker 1: fascinated with like the fact that Sam was an addict. Right,

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Speaker 1: Sam is a gaming addict. That's what when you can't

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Speaker 1: like handle your basic functions, but because you're too busy

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Speaker 1: playing Storybook Brawl, that's an addiction, right, yeah. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: it's interesting both because Storybook Brawl was made by his

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Speaker 1: childhood friend and he used consumer funds to purchase it.

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Speaker 1: It seems to have been a pretty mid game. It

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Speaker 1: shut down after he got arrested, so I can't play

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Speaker 1: it to tell you if it's actually good. But Lewis

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Speaker 1: doesn't describe it as like a middle brow app game.

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Speaker 1: He describes it as like better than chess, like more

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Speaker 1: complex than chess. A greater intellectual expert or exercise than chess,

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Speaker 1: and he writes this paragraph about it. Sam didn't care

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Speaker 1: for games like chess, where the players controlled everything and

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Speaker 1: the best move was, in theory, perfectly calculable chess. He'd

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Speaker 1: have liked better if robot voices wired into the board.

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Speaker 1: Hollered rule changes at random intervals. Nights are now rooks,

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Speaker 1: all bishops must leave the board, ponds can now fly,

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Speaker 1: or almost anything, so long as the new rule forced

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Speaker 1: all players to scrap whatever strategy they'd been pursuing and

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Speaker 1: improvise another better one. The game Sam loved allowed for

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Speaker 1: only partial knowledge of any situation. Trading crypto was like that,

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Speaker 1: and I think getting.

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Speaker 2: Fucking ridiculous, Like is there any chance that Sam Bankman

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Speaker 2: Freed paid Michael Lewis to say this shit?

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Speaker 1: Like I maybe I don't know that he was still

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Speaker 1: the money one of the things.

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Speaker 2: Not that there's no proof that he isn't dense, But

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Speaker 2: this is like above and beyond.

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Speaker 1: The reason why I get that a lot that like, well,

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Speaker 1: Michael Lewis is obviously bribed, but like Michael Lewis is

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Speaker 1: very rich, Like I don't know how you could bribe

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Speaker 1: Michael Lewis, especially after you lose your money.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and even and even if he wasn't from money,

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Speaker 2: he'd be there.

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Speaker 1: Yah. Yeah, Yeah, He's always been rich and always will be.

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Speaker 1: So I don't know how much I think that's that's likely.

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Speaker 1: I think he just this is his first time ever

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Speaker 1: hearing about games, and so he thinks Sam is brilliant

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Speaker 1: and special because he played them obsessively. I also think,

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Speaker 1: you know, we just did our episodes on Lord John

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Speaker 1: asked and all, who is like this this British gambling

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Speaker 1: maven who took away who like basically uh got the

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Speaker 1: upper class of the England and like the mid century

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Speaker 1: to just gamble away all of their fucking money. And

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Speaker 1: a big part of why this kind of like old

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Speaker 1: generation of the aristocracy lost so much is they were

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Speaker 1: into these specifically games of chance like Shamanda fair, which

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Speaker 1: is a kind of bacca where basically there's no skill involved.

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Speaker 1: It's pure it's as close to pure chance as possible.

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Speaker 1: Because there was this like change in the kind of

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Speaker 1: gambling the upper class like to do that I've heard

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Speaker 1: theorized it's basically just like, well, these people had nothing

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Speaker 1: in their life but gambling, right, They've always been rich,

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Speaker 1: they're born rich, they've always lived these super safe lives.

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Speaker 1: The only thrill they had was throwing a bunch of

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Speaker 1: money on like the effectively a complete chance.

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Speaker 2: And for understand that, because it's like, what's the worst

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Speaker 2: that's going to happen. You're going to become marginally less

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Speaker 2: rich but still maintain the same quality of life.

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Speaker 1: That sounds boring, Yeah, you've just they've they are just

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Speaker 1: insulated from anything thrilling because they're insulated from any real danger, right.

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Speaker 1: And so I think Sam being this kind of rich,

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Speaker 1: sheltered kid that's Lewis interprets. It's like he's too smart

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Speaker 1: to play a game like chess. He wants a game

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Speaker 1: where he doesn't actually know what's going on, and a

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Speaker 1: lot of that's random. It's like, well, I just see

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Speaker 1: these old British gamblers and Sam Bankman freed, where again,

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Speaker 1: this kid has nothing but the throw of the dice

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Speaker 1: inside him and that's what he liked, right, and he

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Speaker 1: put a lot of other people's money on those bets. Yeah, anyway,

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Speaker 1: this is a little beside the point, but I did

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Speaker 1: want to read the actual part of the book where

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00:20:34,320 --> 00:20:37,679
Speaker 1: Lewis describes Magic the gathering because it's it is very boom.

402
00:20:38,640 --> 00:20:41,480
Speaker 1: Magic had been created in the early nineteen nineties by

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Speaker 1: a young mathematician named Richard Garfield. It was the first

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Speaker 1: kind of a new kind of game, designed perhaps for

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Speaker 1: a new kind of person. Garfield had started with an

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Speaker 1: odd question, could a strategic game be designed that allowed

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Speaker 1: the players to come to it with different equipment? And again,

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Speaker 1: Games Workshop had started making Warhammer years before Magic came out,

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Speaker 1: Like all games have existed forever.

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Speaker 2: I couldn't hear you over the sound of imagining Garfield

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Speaker 2: the cat saying.

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Speaker 1: That, Yeah, which Garfield? Bill Murray? Are we talking Chris Pratt?

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Speaker 2: There's also a secret third Garfield Garfield whoever did the

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Speaker 2: voice acting on Garfield and Friends, which is my canonical

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Speaker 2: Garfield voice, certainly not Chris Pratt Garfield there. I forget

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Speaker 2: who tweeted this, but there is a vibe with the

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Speaker 2: new Garfield that Chris Pratt has been locked in a

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Speaker 2: room forced to voice every major ip. It's like a

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Speaker 2: it's his infinity punishment. He'll be rich, but he can

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Speaker 2: never leave the room.

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Speaker 1: I'm okay with that. Actually, yeah, let's keep.

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Speaker 2: Him in the room. He doesn't have any good ideas.

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Speaker 1: No, No, keep in the room. Every every six years

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Speaker 1: he can come out to do another interminable Jurassic World movie.

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Speaker 2: No, the villain was Locus.

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Speaker 1: So Lewis is so ignorant of kind of the basic

427
00:22:00,119 --> 00:22:02,040
Speaker 1: of youth culture to this day that he sort of

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Speaker 1: transposes a lot of completely normal millennial and zoomer behaviors

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Speaker 1: As evidence of Sam's unique brilliance. Here's another clip from

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Speaker 1: sixty Minutes where he describes how Sam treated effective altruism.

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Speaker 1: That that ties into this and this is remarkable.

432
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:18,800
Speaker 4: What it means in Sam's instance is you can go

433
00:22:18,880 --> 00:22:21,399
Speaker 4: out and have a career where you do good. You

434
00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:24,120
Speaker 4: can go be a doctor in Africa, or you can

435
00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:26,239
Speaker 4: go out and make as much money as possible and

436
00:22:26,320 --> 00:22:28,480
Speaker 4: pay people to be doctors in Africa. If you're a

437
00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:30,800
Speaker 4: doctor in Africa, you get you end up saving a

438
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:31,640
Speaker 4: certain number of lives.

439
00:22:31,640 --> 00:22:34,280
Speaker 5: But you're only one doctor. But if you can.

440
00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:38,080
Speaker 4: Pay forty people to become doctors in Africa, you're gonna

441
00:22:38,080 --> 00:22:40,040
Speaker 4: save forty times a number of lives.

442
00:22:40,040 --> 00:22:41,560
Speaker 1: This is like a strategy game.

443
00:22:41,640 --> 00:22:44,560
Speaker 5: Well, you don't understand sammcmcfreed. Unless you understand then he

444
00:22:44,600 --> 00:22:47,119
Speaker 5: turns everything into a game. Everything is gamified.

445
00:22:48,760 --> 00:22:51,720
Speaker 2: He's describing a pyramid scheme of doctors.

446
00:22:51,800 --> 00:22:55,240
Speaker 1: Yes, am I like, And he's.

447
00:22:55,119 --> 00:22:57,960
Speaker 2: Saying this on sixty minutes, I like, I cannot put

448
00:22:58,119 --> 00:23:01,200
Speaker 2: rout my Okay, now I am like taking him being

449
00:23:01,240 --> 00:23:04,879
Speaker 2: paid off like or paid on or off off the

450
00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:06,760
Speaker 2: table because you're just like, this is ridiculous.

451
00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:08,160
Speaker 1: This is like you stupid.

452
00:23:08,359 --> 00:23:12,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, like to like the fact that people somehow collectively

453
00:23:12,040 --> 00:23:15,280
Speaker 2: forgot that you wrote the blind Side on fire to

454
00:23:15,320 --> 00:23:18,000
Speaker 2: say this shit on sixty minutes, it just like, is

455
00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:22,119
Speaker 2: it's what he's describing a pyramid scheme.

456
00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:25,679
Speaker 1: He sure is, he is describing a fucking pyramid scheme.

457
00:23:25,760 --> 00:23:31,200
Speaker 1: And also like this hole he turns everything into a game,

458
00:23:31,359 --> 00:23:32,360
Speaker 1: like because.

459
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:35,680
Speaker 2: The through like connection there is like Jigsaw for good.

460
00:23:36,280 --> 00:23:39,239
Speaker 1: Sure, Sam could have been a doctor in Africa, but

461
00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 1: by making a lot of money, he could hire a

462
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 1: bunch of doctors in Africa. And the through line you're

463
00:23:45,320 --> 00:23:47,320
Speaker 1: meant to make is he was He was the guy

464
00:23:47,320 --> 00:23:50,040
Speaker 1: who was best suited making a lot of money because

465
00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:54,919
Speaker 1: he turned everything into a game. And man, that's again

466
00:23:55,119 --> 00:23:58,000
Speaker 1: not unique to Sam. A significant percentage of the US economy.

467
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:00,840
Speaker 1: It's based around taking the logic and addictive strategies game

468
00:24:00,880 --> 00:24:04,360
Speaker 1: developers use and applying it to every imaginable industry, right,

469
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:07,919
Speaker 1: like that's fucking everywhere, Like Sam is again not unique

470
00:24:07,920 --> 00:24:10,840
Speaker 1: in this, And also the it's just such a the

471
00:24:10,880 --> 00:24:13,240
Speaker 1: fact that Lewis seems to have bought into the basic

472
00:24:13,320 --> 00:24:15,320
Speaker 1: logic of like, well, it's better to pay a bunch

473
00:24:15,359 --> 00:24:20,760
Speaker 1: of doctors than becoming one is silly because like, well,

474
00:24:20,920 --> 00:24:23,280
Speaker 1: we have a shortage of doctors. We don't have a

475
00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:26,640
Speaker 1: shortage of assholes who gamble with other people's money. There's

476
00:24:26,840 --> 00:24:30,399
Speaker 1: there's not actually enough doctors for the people who need them.

477
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:33,800
Speaker 2: And also, I mean to that point, it doesn't sound

478
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:37,880
Speaker 2: like would I trust, knowing what I do, of Sam

479
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 2: Bankman Freed's ability to multitask that would I trust him

480
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:45,400
Speaker 2: doing surgery? I don't think I would. I don't think

481
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:47,720
Speaker 2: I would. I wouldn't trust him doing either of those

482
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:48,880
Speaker 2: in Africa?

483
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:51,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, he would, he would never have right,

484
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:54,480
Speaker 1: like but yeah, anyway, but.

485
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:56,639
Speaker 2: It sounds like he I mean, maybe I'm like, you know,

486
00:24:57,440 --> 00:24:59,480
Speaker 2: giving him too much credit and he's playing a game

487
00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:02,080
Speaker 2: of forty t but it doesn't seem that way, and

488
00:25:02,160 --> 00:25:04,040
Speaker 2: I like, he sounds ridiculous.

489
00:25:04,400 --> 00:25:08,119
Speaker 1: I kind of outside of he's just completely deluded. His

490
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:10,160
Speaker 1: two options are he's just so out of touch with

491
00:25:10,400 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 1: the youth that he thought Sam was unique in this,

492
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:17,360
Speaker 1: or he he decided from the moment he met him.

493
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:19,960
Speaker 1: This is the framing device I want to use for

494
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:22,159
Speaker 1: Sam's genius in my book because I can think. I

495
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 1: think they could film it easily, right, because I'm sure

496
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:26,560
Speaker 1: he thinks that way about the books he's written. He's

497
00:25:26,560 --> 00:25:29,159
Speaker 1: had so many of them adapted, and like, yeah, if

498
00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:30,840
Speaker 1: I you know, there's a lot of fun ways you

499
00:25:30,840 --> 00:25:34,520
Speaker 1: could film this super genius solving his math problems through

500
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:38,600
Speaker 1: like imagining games out in the real world, right, hmm, yeah,

501
00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:41,880
Speaker 1: So I my guess is that he just couldn't get

502
00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 1: himself off of this idea he had for like the

503
00:25:44,520 --> 00:25:48,040
Speaker 1: inevitable Sam Bankman Freed movie, you know, crafted for the

504
00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:49,240
Speaker 1: Big Bang Theory audience.

505
00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:51,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like sure, he's already he's like, oh yeah, who's

506
00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:55,120
Speaker 2: hot right now, Paul Mezcal, Well, well we'll dye his hair.

507
00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:56,359
Speaker 2: It's gonna be fucking great.

508
00:25:56,880 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: No, I think they should have had Timothy shallomeh I

509
00:25:59,280 --> 00:26:01,600
Speaker 1: think they should have had Timothy Shallo may do like

510
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:04,640
Speaker 1: a you know, what's his name the Batman guy where

511
00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:07,280
Speaker 1: he would like wildly change his appearance in ways that

512
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:08,720
Speaker 1: are bad for his health every since.

513
00:26:09,840 --> 00:26:11,679
Speaker 2: Don't talk about Robbert Pattens in that way.

514
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:18,240
Speaker 1: Or I want to see Timothy do a Christian bale

515
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:21,200
Speaker 1: to look like Sam Bankman Freed. That's that sounds fun.

516
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:23,560
Speaker 2: I just worry about Timothy shalmy. It looks like if

517
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:25,920
Speaker 2: you like touch him, he may shatter. I just worry

518
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:27,240
Speaker 2: about him. He looks a.

519
00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:30,200
Speaker 1: Frail Yeah, that's the right thing. He looks like he's

520
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:33,359
Speaker 1: got consumption. Yeah, but like that, they would say that

521
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:35,320
Speaker 1: about him in the in the in the in the

522
00:26:35,359 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: distant past. Yeah.

523
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:39,840
Speaker 2: And it's like if Sam Bankman Freed is looking heartier

524
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:41,800
Speaker 2: than you are, like you're in trouble my man.

525
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:44,359
Speaker 1: Uh huh. Yeah, Well I wouldn't say that about Sam.

526
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 1: But so there's an amusing coda to Lewis's loving descriptions

527
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:52,160
Speaker 1: of Sam as a compulsive gamer. This paragraph occurs right

528
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:54,680
Speaker 1: after the FTX customers pull a run on the bank,

529
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:57,720
Speaker 1: annihilating its cash reserves and starting its collapse. Is like

530
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:01,640
Speaker 1: the employees are all huddled inside thirty million dollar Bahamas

531
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 1: suites to try to figure out how to fix things.

532
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:07,520
Speaker 1: Nishad was agitated with Sam in a way that Romnik

533
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:10,560
Speaker 1: had never seen, at one point, turning on him and screaming,

534
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:15,800
Speaker 1: will you please fucking stop playing storybook brawl? And I

535
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:19,040
Speaker 1: like that anecdote, But it gets to another frustrating issue

536
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:21,160
Speaker 1: with Going Infinite, which is that Michael Lewis has all

537
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:24,720
Speaker 1: the ingredients for a great modern Icarius story of Hubris

538
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:27,920
Speaker 1: and the Fall, but making it work tonally would require

539
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:30,600
Speaker 1: him to see these things that are obvious warning signs

540
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 1: as warning signs and structure his book that way, right,

541
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:37,000
Speaker 1: and then you get some Catharsis in the payoffs. But

542
00:27:37,480 --> 00:27:40,240
Speaker 1: these warning signs are just sort of scattered around. They're

543
00:27:40,240 --> 00:27:42,280
Speaker 1: not given the significance he would give them if he

544
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,520
Speaker 1: saw them as warning signs, because he's clearly taken with

545
00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:48,680
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. Another example of a valid through

546
00:27:48,760 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 1: line Lewis seems to have missed is Bankman Freed's complete disregard,

547
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:54,880
Speaker 1: even distaste, for the competence of the women around him.

548
00:27:55,240 --> 00:27:58,720
Speaker 1: Lewis spends a fair amount of time on Sam's relationship

549
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 1: with Carolyn, and he he prints these letters between them

550
00:28:01,560 --> 00:28:04,720
Speaker 1: that certainly don't make Sam look great. It began with

551
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 1: a seriously compelling list titled arguments against this is arguments

552
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:10,600
Speaker 1: against her dating him in a lot of ways, I

553
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: don't really have a soul. This is a lot more

554
00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:14,520
Speaker 1: obvious in some context than others. But in the end

555
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:16,760
Speaker 1: there's a pretty decent argument that my empathy is fake,

556
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:19,600
Speaker 1: my feelings are fake, my facial reactions are fake. I

557
00:28:19,600 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 1: don't feel happiness. What's the point in dating someone you

558
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:24,440
Speaker 1: physically can't make happy. I have a long history of

559
00:28:24,440 --> 00:28:26,760
Speaker 1: getting bored in claustrophobic. This says the makings of a

560
00:28:26,800 --> 00:28:28,879
Speaker 1: time when I'm less worried about it than normal, but

561
00:28:28,920 --> 00:28:31,560
Speaker 1: the baseline prior might be high enough that nothing else matters.

562
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:34,040
Speaker 1: I feel conflicted about what I want. Sometimes I really

563
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:35,640
Speaker 1: want to be with you. Sometimes I want to stay

564
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:37,640
Speaker 1: at work for sixty hours straight and not think about

565
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:38,320
Speaker 1: anything else.

566
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:42,000
Speaker 2: And so I want to say that I have this

567
00:28:42,560 --> 00:28:44,800
Speaker 2: amount of self love to not fall for this, but

568
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 2: I can't even say that one hundred percent. I just

569
00:28:47,360 --> 00:28:50,360
Speaker 2: really feel for Carolyn, And at a lot of points

570
00:28:50,360 --> 00:28:53,840
Speaker 2: in this story, because it's oh my god, I feel

571
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 2: like there's a version of someone who would be like,

572
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 2: oh I can fix him, where you're like, oh no,

573
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:03,280
Speaker 2: this is like it's like queen fiction of like there's

574
00:29:03,280 --> 00:29:07,360
Speaker 2: only one and she loves me. I know, I know

575
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:10,120
Speaker 2: she's a disadvantage.

576
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:14,200
Speaker 1: And it's it's difficult because like Lewis come discusses kind

577
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: of Sam's inability to be like functional with the people

578
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:22,760
Speaker 1: in his life because and he clearly has a thing

579
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:27,840
Speaker 1: like he lets he funds another another exchange by another

580
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: woman in Crypto who he tries to date women in CRISTI. Yeah,

581
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 1: he's got this kind of thing going on. But Lewis

582
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 1: kind of always writes off his his his behavior is

583
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 1: like well, you know, he just he was too depressed.

584
00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:43,560
Speaker 1: He was too he can't vooe. He's too brilliant to

585
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 1: like be it's.

586
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:47,160
Speaker 2: A torture genius playbook of just like oh, and he's

587
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:52,120
Speaker 2: horrible to women, but only because his mind. Like there's

588
00:29:52,280 --> 00:29:56,120
Speaker 2: I mean, they did the same and this happens every

589
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 2: ten years, like that happened with Zuckerberg. They're like no,

590
00:29:59,080 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 2: he's like he's a rampant misogynist because like his business

591
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:06,280
Speaker 2: started off of misogyny because he just had so many

592
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:08,880
Speaker 2: good ideas that it was like pressing on the woman

593
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:13,160
Speaker 2: respect Like yeah, it's ridiculous kind of.

594
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:16,920
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, when Lewis is describing like why Carolyn did what

595
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:19,600
Speaker 1: she did, he includes Lane, which she's like. He's like,

596
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:21,760
Speaker 1: he quotes someone as saying she would throw away all

597
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 1: of her principles to be loved, Like she's the only

598
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:26,800
Speaker 1: one of the effective altruist kids who doesn't really believe

599
00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 1: in it. She's just so desperate for affection that she

600
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:34,600
Speaker 1: would like do anything for it, which like, I don't know,

601
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 1: Like I don't know the person, but it's it's weird

602
00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:40,760
Speaker 1: that Louis is so cynical about her and so full

603
00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:42,040
Speaker 1: of excuses for Sam.

604
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:44,600
Speaker 2: I would have I would have a fair amount of

605
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:48,280
Speaker 2: guesses as to why that may be. Uh, And the

606
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:50,920
Speaker 2: way that it seems like in many ways that you

607
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:55,320
Speaker 2: know Lewis has seen himself in Sam, and like, if

608
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:58,200
Speaker 2: you're especially if you're used to like writing profiles of

609
00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 2: very successful, eccentric people, which he is, if this is

610
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 2: the precedent you've set for the kind of behavior that

611
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:11,320
Speaker 2: you would excuse, such as clear racism or sexism, why

612
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:15,239
Speaker 2: would this be any different? Likes it fucking And then

613
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:18,480
Speaker 2: also on the other end of Carolyn being characterized as

614
00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 2: this like desperate for affection. Person I try to like

615
00:31:24,760 --> 00:31:28,600
Speaker 2: tap into that of like God, if any of my

616
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 2: personal correspondents came out, I'd be fucking cooked.

617
00:31:32,400 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 1: Oh it would be devastating so.

618
00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:38,720
Speaker 2: Many people and being singled out. Yeah, of course, Yeah,

619
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:40,320
Speaker 2: everyone's desperate for affection.

620
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: So you know, anytime you see Lewis writing about Sam,

621
00:31:43,600 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 1: he writes in kind of the terms Sam as one

622
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 1: of the people in this weird effective altruism cult. He

623
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 1: uses terms like he talks about his priors, which is

624
00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 1: like it's a way of like bringing Baysian mathematics into

625
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:58,040
Speaker 1: personal decisions, and all you all you're saying when you're

626
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:00,560
Speaker 1: saying like, well, these are my priors, is like, well,

627
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 1: this is the shit I believe without any kind of evidence. Right,

628
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:06,840
Speaker 1: That's largely what that means. These are like my pre

629
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 1: existing biases. But saying pre existing biases like doesn't sound

630
00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:14,760
Speaker 1: as smart as my priors. And likewise, Sam would always

631
00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: talk about like, well, every decision I make is like

632
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:20,160
Speaker 1: a mathematical decision, and I calculate what's the expected value

633
00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:22,040
Speaker 1: of this outcomers is this outcome? And then I do

634
00:32:22,080 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 1: the thing with the highest expected value, right, which is

635
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 1: another way of saying I do whatever will make me

636
00:32:26,680 --> 00:32:29,000
Speaker 1: feel good, which is you know, a lot of us

637
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: are like that a lot of the time. That's human nature.

638
00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:31,960
Speaker 2: We are.

639
00:32:33,680 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 1: Creatures of comfort in a lot of ways. But there's

640
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 1: Sam is just dressing up selfishness in lines like this,

641
00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:43,840
Speaker 1: Sam wanted to do whatever at any given moment, off

642
00:32:43,840 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 1: her the highest expected value, and his estimate of her

643
00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:49,440
Speaker 1: Carolyn's expected value seemed to peak right before they had

644
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:52,600
Speaker 1: sex and plummet immediately after. And like, oh, that's no

645
00:32:52,800 --> 00:32:55,080
Speaker 1: different than a lot of guys in their twenties.

646
00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:58,520
Speaker 2: It just sounds like a fucking guy.

647
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:01,040
Speaker 1: Oh so you're saying he got horny and then he

648
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: didn't care about her afterwards. Well that's not special, Like.

649
00:33:04,720 --> 00:33:07,360
Speaker 2: How I I can't relate?

650
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:10,360
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, that is. That's not just millions of men,

651
00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 1: that's millions of people.

652
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 2: Like it's so, I mean, even just outside of his

653
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:20,080
Speaker 2: relationships with women, in his relationship with Carolyn, I don't know.

654
00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 2: It gives me sort of like mensa PTSD, where there

655
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:28,720
Speaker 2: is this like two hander where it's either, uh, you

656
00:33:28,800 --> 00:33:31,480
Speaker 2: can't understand what I'm doing because I am a super

657
00:33:31,480 --> 00:33:33,480
Speaker 2: genius and you are not operating on my level. You

658
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 2: could never understand why I am fucking up at this

659
00:33:36,760 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 2: tremendous rate. And then if they're challenged enough, it's like, well,

660
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 2: actually I'm you know it. I don't know the correct

661
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:47,720
Speaker 2: way to like characterize this, but it almost becomes like

662
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 2: internet speak where it's like, no, I'm actually just like

663
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:53,560
Speaker 2: I don't give a shit. It's actually I'm using quick

664
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:55,680
Speaker 2: books because I don't give a fuck. It's like either

665
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 2: I am a genius or I don't care, and there's

666
00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 2: nothing in but and it's like what is in between

667
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:05,200
Speaker 2: is just the fact that they're full of shit.

668
00:34:05,680 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and you know who else is full of

669
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:22,479
Speaker 1: no time to head to ads? Ah? Boy, I sure

670
00:34:22,520 --> 00:34:26,319
Speaker 1: do love ads. Those were some good ones. So yeah,

671
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:29,320
Speaker 1: so we're back. We're talking about Sam Bakman Free's issues

672
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:31,799
Speaker 1: with women, as chronicled by Michael Lewis, who does, to

673
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 1: his credit, make a point of noting that all of

674
00:34:34,440 --> 00:34:37,480
Speaker 1: the company's moves as CEO from the US to Hong

675
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:40,080
Speaker 1: Kong and then from Hong Kong to the Bahamas were

676
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 1: prompted by like he and Ellison would have some big

677
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:45,840
Speaker 1: relationship conversation and she would say like, I want to

678
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:48,640
Speaker 1: have a closer relationship and then he would move the

679
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:52,720
Speaker 1: entire company without telling anybody, which, again, like the instant

680
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:54,759
Speaker 1: you hear that anecdote, you're like, oh, well, this guy,

681
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 1: there's nothing. This guy is not a super genius, Like

682
00:34:57,760 --> 00:35:04,719
Speaker 1: this guy is just a can't deal with confrontation. Like, yeah,

683
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:07,799
Speaker 1: that's not special again, millions of us.

684
00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:13,400
Speaker 2: Every conflict avoidant person has their approach. It knows no gender,

685
00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:17,799
Speaker 2: but it skews towards one. Yeah, my last boyfriend bought

686
00:35:17,840 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 2: an upright base. That was how bless is sorry? I

687
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:25,720
Speaker 2: don't think.

688
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:30,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, the real shame here is that I don't think

689
00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:33,600
Speaker 1: Lewis draws any sort of connection between how Sam treats

690
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:36,280
Speaker 1: the women at his company and how like Sam treats

691
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: adults with the specialized financial knowledge that might have saved

692
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 1: his company, because there is a relate. Like, I'm not

693
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:44,239
Speaker 1: trying to discount his misogyny, which is certainly a thing,

694
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:46,880
Speaker 1: but like, I think the bigger through line with Sam

695
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 1: that is present outside of justice dealing with like the

696
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:52,319
Speaker 1: women that he was in relationships with and worked with,

697
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 1: is that Sam doesn't think anyone besides him has worthwhile

698
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:59,520
Speaker 1: thoughts or ideas, and that anything he doesn't understand is

699
00:35:59,560 --> 00:36:02,279
Speaker 1: not worth paying attention to, which is a big thing

700
00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 1: in tech guys, right, this attitude that like you're seeing

701
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:07,359
Speaker 1: it now with these AI freaks where there they don't

702
00:36:08,080 --> 00:36:10,600
Speaker 1: think that there's any value in the human creation of

703
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:13,799
Speaker 1: art because they don't understand it. Like they're willing to

704
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:16,239
Speaker 1: like have an AI just like come up with some

705
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:20,160
Speaker 1: crap that's vaguely patterned off of a historical See, isn't

706
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:23,320
Speaker 1: this picture of like, you know, isolation and anomy in

707
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:26,320
Speaker 1: modern society? Better now that we've turned it into a

708
00:36:26,360 --> 00:36:28,879
Speaker 1: bunch of friends having brunch outside of a cafe. Look,

709
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:32,000
Speaker 1: it's much brighter now and prettier. It's like, No, that's

710
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:33,640
Speaker 1: not the point of the art. You don't understand, but

711
00:36:33,719 --> 00:36:35,880
Speaker 1: like they don't. Yeah, it's this thing.

712
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:39,279
Speaker 2: That a computer could come up with the image of

713
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:43,120
Speaker 2: Hal Walker and Brian the Dog in a convertible. No,

714
00:36:43,239 --> 00:36:48,840
Speaker 2: that's a uniquely human artistically instinct we would created. Only

715
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:50,279
Speaker 2: humans would get it.

716
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 1: This idea that like I am smart, and therefore if

717
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:56,919
Speaker 1: I don't understand something, it's not important, right, It's it's

718
00:36:56,960 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 1: something for like people who are less than me to

719
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:02,239
Speaker 1: deal with. This is why the company fell apart, And

720
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 1: it's interesting to me that like Lewis, he clearly does

721
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:08,480
Speaker 1: see aspects of how Sam treats women unfairly, but he

722
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:11,480
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sort of leaps between the way Sam

723
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:15,400
Speaker 1: treats like everybody who's not him and I find that interesting.

724
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:16,479
Speaker 2: I do too.

725
00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:20,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, good good stuff. So perhaps the biggest major

726
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:23,800
Speaker 1: through line in Going Infinite is Michael Lewis not getting

727
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:27,520
Speaker 1: the joke. That section where he quotes SBF explaining why

728
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 1: CFOs are dumb is a perfect example. On a casual reading,

729
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:32,799
Speaker 1: you might even assume that we were supposed to find

730
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:35,000
Speaker 1: the line what do you think I do? What the

731
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:36,880
Speaker 1: fuck do you think I do? All day? Do you

732
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 1: think I don't know how much money we have? Funny

733
00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:41,399
Speaker 1: because Sam did not know how much money they had.

734
00:37:41,840 --> 00:37:45,320
Speaker 1: At the climax of the book, after FTX is crumbled,

735
00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:47,759
Speaker 1: Lewis goes into detail to discuss all the money that

736
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 1: was recovered by John Ray quote at the end of

737
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 1: June twenty yeah the third. At the end of June

738
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:56,719
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, John Ray filed a report on his

739
00:37:56,840 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 1: various collections. Today the debtors have recovered an approximate least

740
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:02,920
Speaker 1: seven billion in liquid assets, he wrote, and they anticipate

741
00:38:02,960 --> 00:38:06,399
Speaker 1: additional recoveries seven point three billion to be exact. Ray

742
00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:08,400
Speaker 1: was inching towards an answer to the question I'd been

743
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:10,480
Speaker 1: asking from the day of the collapse, where did all

744
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:14,160
Speaker 1: that money go? The answer was nowhere. It was still there,

745
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:17,360
Speaker 1: And that's not true. The reason he's writing this is

746
00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 1: that earlier in Sam's career, a bunch of people leave

747
00:38:21,239 --> 00:38:25,120
Speaker 1: Alameda because he loses four million dollars and they think

748
00:38:25,160 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: that he's lost four million dollars in investor money, and

749
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 1: he's a dick about it, and later they find it

750
00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:34,280
Speaker 1: like he had just misplaced it, basically, and so Lewis

751
00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:36,879
Speaker 1: is being like, that's just what happened. They were never

752
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 1: really in bankruptcy. See, it was a good business. Like

753
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:42,560
Speaker 1: they just didn't have any record keeping, so they lost

754
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:45,600
Speaker 1: the money. In this meanie, John Ray thinks it's bad

755
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:49,440
Speaker 1: to lose several billion dollars, but Lewis is saying is

756
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:52,640
Speaker 1: not true. He is kind of lying here. Maybe he

757
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 1: just maybe it's an honest mistake. I don't know, but

758
00:38:55,080 --> 00:38:59,799
Speaker 1: it's not accurate because for one thing, seven ish seven

759
00:38:59,840 --> 00:39:03,600
Speaker 1: point three billion has been found, almost nine billion is missing.

760
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:07,480
Speaker 1: So that's one and a half billion dollars unaccounted for. Still,

761
00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:11,120
Speaker 1: that's still one of the largest financial frauds in history.

762
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:15,319
Speaker 2: Right, significant, that's why maybe as much as two billion, yeah,

763
00:39:15,719 --> 00:39:17,840
Speaker 2: does even if you're trying to get through to someone

764
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:22,440
Speaker 2: who knows nothing about finance, the second number, the missing number,

765
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:24,240
Speaker 2: is bigger than the first.

766
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:28,239
Speaker 1: The number if not good. He tries to cut close

767
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:29,920
Speaker 1: that hole by being like, and a lot of that

768
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:31,960
Speaker 1: money is in these you know, money they paid to

769
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:34,440
Speaker 1: these companies that they'll probably get back. And it's like,

770
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:36,520
Speaker 1: why would you think that a lot of that money

771
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:39,319
Speaker 1: went to other shady crypto people who don't bank in

772
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:41,719
Speaker 1: the US. Why do you think the money's gonna come back?

773
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 2: Well, see, this is interesting because now, ugh, I feel

774
00:39:45,080 --> 00:39:46,960
Speaker 2: back because I know Michael Lewis is not the bastard

775
00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:50,400
Speaker 2: of the episode. However, he's kind of applying Yeah, Sam,

776
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:53,239
Speaker 2: if we're applying Sam bankman Free's theory that you do

777
00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 2: not do any valuable work after forty five, that may

778
00:39:55,719 --> 00:40:00,719
Speaker 2: in fact apply to Michael Lewis. Yeah, Like, maybe he's

779
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:03,600
Speaker 2: lost the thread because it's the way that he's talking

780
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:07,440
Speaker 2: about money. I mean, and I have not read this book.

781
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:07,960
Speaker 1: Well, you're just.

782
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:13,480
Speaker 2: That's why they pay you the big buss, But like

783
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:17,560
Speaker 2: to hear how he talks about money in this book

784
00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:20,359
Speaker 2: and to know that his most famous works have to

785
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:25,440
Speaker 2: do with finance, with the exception of the of the Blindside,

786
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:28,719
Speaker 2: which everyone forgets that he wrote like it calls his

787
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 2: entire body of.

788
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:32,919
Speaker 1: Work in the question yeah yeah, and it's like, yeah,

789
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: just the ridiculousness of being like, well, look, guys, seven

790
00:40:37,200 --> 00:40:40,560
Speaker 1: you know, they've recovered seven billion out of nine point

791
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 1: three billion, so things are basically good, Like that's insane.

792
00:40:44,520 --> 00:40:47,319
Speaker 1: But also, as we'll get to later, he is he

793
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:49,759
Speaker 1: that even that doesn't tell the whole truth, Like this

794
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 1: idea that everyone's going to get their money back is

795
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:56,120
Speaker 1: not true. But Lewis in order to continue believing that

796
00:40:56,160 --> 00:40:58,200
Speaker 1: Sam was a super genius, he has to have this

797
00:40:58,280 --> 00:41:00,520
Speaker 1: kind of tragic store where like he didn't really lose

798
00:41:00,560 --> 00:41:03,440
Speaker 1: the money, it was a misunderstanding. It's all unfair. And

799
00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:05,680
Speaker 1: because he needs to believe this, I think for the

800
00:41:05,719 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 1: sake of his own ego, bringing up the fact that

801
00:41:08,280 --> 00:41:11,040
Speaker 1: there's a lot of money missing is a really easy

802
00:41:11,080 --> 00:41:12,600
Speaker 1: way to piss him off. And I'm going to play

803
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:14,759
Speaker 1: you this clip. It's the most revealing clip that I

804
00:41:14,960 --> 00:41:17,319
Speaker 1: found And this is from an interview he did with

805
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:21,480
Speaker 1: on a YouTube channel called Intelligence Squared after the FTX collapse,

806
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:23,719
Speaker 1: like after his book came out. So while Sam is

807
00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:25,160
Speaker 1: on trial, basically.

808
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:28,000
Speaker 6: Okay, seven point three billion, So it's one point three

809
00:41:28,000 --> 00:41:31,080
Speaker 6: billion that's missing plus it, and there's still.

810
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:34,240
Speaker 1: More to be and it's more than that, it's more thought.

811
00:41:34,600 --> 00:41:40,919
Speaker 6: This is where today today the prosecution, the prosecution sent

812
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 6: a motion to the court saying, can we please not

813
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:45,920
Speaker 6: talk about the possibility the customers are all going to

814
00:41:45,920 --> 00:41:50,080
Speaker 6: get their money back? And that in particular, can we

815
00:41:50,160 --> 00:41:51,040
Speaker 6: you're gonna let me finish?

816
00:41:54,680 --> 00:41:58,440
Speaker 7: Oh my god, I think, well, I care. Is the

817
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 7: fact that I do think it's important. I think at

818
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:06,120
Speaker 7: the very least he's irresponsible.

819
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:09,799
Speaker 6: Of course, I'm not saying he's not irresponsible. I'm saying

820
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:11,200
Speaker 6: it's just different than you think.

821
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,399
Speaker 2: Okay, okay. A few observations. First of all, to pay.

822
00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:23,719
Speaker 2: Second of all, uploaded four second that right, his haird

823
00:42:23,719 --> 00:42:28,240
Speaker 2: does not looking real colors. It's not giving matching color.

824
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 2: Second observation upload date four weeks ago, gnarly. Third observation,

825
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:39,240
Speaker 2: obviously he cuts off a woman aggressively to be wrong,

826
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:44,200
Speaker 2: and then Finally, it's just the because the listeners cannot

827
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:47,640
Speaker 2: see the size of that venue. It gave me a

828
00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 2: brief like it. I felt it in my stomach to

829
00:42:50,520 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 2: be like, wow, that many people will gather to be

830
00:42:53,320 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 2: to see Michael Lewis just spew bullshit and yet fifteen

831
00:42:57,239 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 2: people show up to watch me but chug a quart

832
00:42:59,640 --> 00:43:00,280
Speaker 2: of milk.

833
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:03,719
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous, Yeah, Jamie. Though, here's the thing. This is

834
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:07,040
Speaker 1: the difference between you know, it's the same. This is

835
00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 1: the difference between what I call vulgar art, which is

836
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:13,239
Speaker 1: the stuff that will be forgotten, you know, within a generation,

837
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:17,399
Speaker 1: and immortal art, right like the Parthenon. You know, you

838
00:43:17,480 --> 00:43:21,239
Speaker 1: butt chugging the contents of infinite jest was a Parthenon

839
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:23,279
Speaker 1: level work of art. It will be with us.

840
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:27,440
Speaker 2: Years time misunderstood it, just.

841
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:28,360
Speaker 1: Like the Parthenon.

842
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:31,680
Speaker 2: He's in like a fucking cathedral. Though, I mean it.

843
00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:36,680
Speaker 1: Does look like Sophie. Can you bring up a freeze

844
00:43:36,719 --> 00:43:39,040
Speaker 1: frame of his face at like twelve fifty seven in

845
00:43:39,040 --> 00:43:40,760
Speaker 1: that because he is doing and I think you should

846
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 1: leave face like he is. He is almost a perfect

847
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:46,120
Speaker 1: character from one of those fucking sketches.

848
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:50,080
Speaker 2: Tim Robinson could do this.

849
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:53,799
Speaker 1: Tim Robinson could do an amazing job of this. There's

850
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 1: that sketch from the recent season where he's being like

851
00:43:56,239 --> 00:43:58,720
Speaker 1: an on air pundit who like gets on his phone

852
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 1: and gets real quiet whatever he loses an argument that

853
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:04,359
Speaker 1: like Lewis is definitely doing that kind of.

854
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:09,560
Speaker 2: Face in this God right there.

855
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:14,399
Speaker 1: That's he's doing it, Tim Robinson.

856
00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 2: He's really, oh boy, doubling down on my two on

857
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 2: the two pay theory.

858
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: Right yeah, that hair isn't to.

859
00:44:25,680 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 2: See if we've got the if we've got the veneers

860
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:28,160
Speaker 2: to match.

861
00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:31,160
Speaker 1: But he's too rich to not have veneers.

862
00:44:31,480 --> 00:44:34,600
Speaker 2: I aspire to the veneers. That's I just want to

863
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:36,000
Speaker 2: have exactly that much money.

864
00:44:36,080 --> 00:44:38,560
Speaker 1: I wanted to you how angry he gets there, because

865
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:41,000
Speaker 1: we're going to address the actual facts of his claim. Now,

866
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:43,480
Speaker 1: even if you take Lewis at his word, which is

867
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:46,480
Speaker 1: that it's basically fine because they were covered seven point

868
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:49,879
Speaker 1: three out of like nine point three billion dollars, he's

869
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:53,080
Speaker 1: he's obfuscating the truth. It is accurate that Ray has

870
00:44:53,120 --> 00:44:56,520
Speaker 1: announced FTX customers will see ninety percent of every dollar

871
00:44:56,560 --> 00:44:59,440
Speaker 1: of recovered assets returned, which I would still call that

872
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:02,560
Speaker 1: problematic because if somebody stole ten percent of your bank account.

873
00:45:02,800 --> 00:45:06,120
Speaker 1: You'd be kind of miffed. But that is even not

874
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:08,920
Speaker 1: what it seems like. And I'm quoting from Investipedia here

875
00:45:09,680 --> 00:45:11,880
Speaker 1: To be clear, the ninety percent number refers to the

876
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 1: funds FTX is able to gain access to, rather than

877
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:18,280
Speaker 1: total customer deposits at the time of the exchange's collapse.

878
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:21,520
Speaker 1: That doesn't necessarily mean customers will gain access to ninety

879
00:45:21,560 --> 00:45:24,359
Speaker 1: percent of their assets that were left on the exchange. Rather,

880
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:27,000
Speaker 1: customers will gain access to ninety percent of the funds

881
00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 1: FTX is able to distribute to their creditors. FTX and

882
00:45:30,719 --> 00:45:34,120
Speaker 1: FTXUS had an estimated eight point seven billion dollars combined

883
00:45:34,239 --> 00:45:37,960
Speaker 1: shortfall by the time the crypto firm filed for bankruptcy,

884
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:41,440
Speaker 1: roughly six point nine percent roughly six point nine billion

885
00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:44,600
Speaker 1: dollars of that shortfall, including a Bahama's real estate portfolio,

886
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:48,359
Speaker 1: has been recovered. Let's consider bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by

887
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:51,440
Speaker 1: market capulation, as a capitalization as a proxy for the

888
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 1: broader cryptocurrency markets. On November eleventh of last year, the

889
00:45:54,920 --> 00:45:58,480
Speaker 1: petition date, bitcoin was trading at around seventeen thousand. On Friday,

890
00:45:58,520 --> 00:46:01,359
Speaker 1: it crossed thirty thousand. So simply put, if the current

891
00:46:01,400 --> 00:46:03,680
Speaker 1: plan goes through, you'd likely get eighty five percent of

892
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:06,520
Speaker 1: the dollar value of your cryptocurrency had held on FTX

893
00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:08,719
Speaker 1: as a last November, even if the same points have

894
00:46:08,800 --> 00:46:11,839
Speaker 1: almost doubled in value today. So one of those like both,

895
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:14,840
Speaker 1: he's kind of overestimating the amount that they're going to

896
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:17,719
Speaker 1: get back. And also because they lost, like they still

897
00:46:17,760 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 1: lost access to that money for it'll probably turn out

898
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:22,640
Speaker 1: to be two or three years, Like people have had

899
00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:24,799
Speaker 1: to sell their homes and shit, because like they had

900
00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:27,960
Speaker 1: all of their money. Like that, there's harm here, right,

901
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:29,839
Speaker 1: that's what the courts are taking. Not only is there

902
00:46:29,920 --> 00:46:32,880
Speaker 1: still money missing and not an insignificant amount, but like

903
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:35,760
Speaker 1: people suffered in the interim where they didn't have access

904
00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:38,359
Speaker 1: to their money, and yeah, they're crypto gamblers. I'm not.

905
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:41,239
Speaker 1: This isn't the most sympathetic population, but that is not

906
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:45,120
Speaker 1: relevant to determining whether or not Sam has legal He's

907
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:48,760
Speaker 1: stealing fifteen or twenty percent of a bunch of people's

908
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:51,320
Speaker 1: savings accounts is a substantial crime.

909
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:55,479
Speaker 2: The legal question is is it a scam? Which like yes,

910
00:46:56,040 --> 00:46:59,600
Speaker 2: you know, and I'm sure that like everyone who understandably

911
00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:02,920
Speaker 2: because I walk amongst them, like everyone who was seeing

912
00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 2: this happen a couple of years ago up to very recently,

913
00:47:05,640 --> 00:47:08,920
Speaker 2: We're like, yeah, you're what are you talking about? This

914
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:11,000
Speaker 2: happening is like a very you know, it's like easy

915
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:12,680
Speaker 2: to cheer it on, but it's also like, yeah, no,

916
00:47:13,200 --> 00:47:18,440
Speaker 2: Sam Bankmintrede was taking advantage of every possible mark he could.

917
00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, and people are still suffering ongoing harm

918
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:24,840
Speaker 1: as a result of it. He's acting like Lewis is

919
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:28,400
Speaker 1: acting as if there wasn't really anyone hurt, and it's like, well, no,

920
00:47:28,960 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 1: like even if all of them, which will not happen,

921
00:47:31,520 --> 00:47:34,640
Speaker 1: at least about twenty percent of that money of depositor

922
00:47:34,680 --> 00:47:38,520
Speaker 1: money is just gone, probably more. But even if he

923
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:40,839
Speaker 1: hadn't done that, if you're still locked out of your

924
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:43,960
Speaker 1: money for two years because a guy illegally gambled with it,

925
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:47,120
Speaker 1: are you going to be fine that it came back eventually. No,

926
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:49,560
Speaker 1: you still didn't have that money for years, and that's

927
00:47:49,600 --> 00:47:52,480
Speaker 1: a problem for you. That's a crime, I.

928
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:56,680
Speaker 2: Mean, And I would be more amenable to that perspective

929
00:47:57,080 --> 00:48:00,840
Speaker 2: if it was coming from someone who isn't as like

930
00:48:01,520 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 2: historically fabulously rich as Michael Lewis is, because it's like

931
00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:08,440
Speaker 2: a rich gaming the rich story can be really satisfying,

932
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:10,400
Speaker 2: but this is not the guy to be making it,

933
00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:13,160
Speaker 2: and he's falling on the wrong side anyways.

934
00:48:12,840 --> 00:48:15,280
Speaker 1: And it's like gaming the rich, gaming the rich because

935
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:18,480
Speaker 1: like Larry, you didn't they didn't hire Larry David to

936
00:48:18,480 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: do a commercial so they could scam billionaires, right, they

937
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 1: hired Larry David to do a commercial so they could

938
00:48:24,680 --> 00:48:28,680
Speaker 1: scam your mom, you know, because your mom likes Larry David.

939
00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:31,719
Speaker 1: I'm not saying the rest of the show. I mean

940
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 1: most moms do. Right, He's pretty popular amongst the moms.

941
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:37,520
Speaker 2: In the comments. I don't know if my mom knows

942
00:48:37,520 --> 00:48:37,960
Speaker 2: who I.

943
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:41,160
Speaker 1: Mean, the women in my family Seinfeld fans.

944
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:43,480
Speaker 2: Does your mom watch curb Message?

945
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:45,360
Speaker 1: No? No, no, but Seinfeld?

946
00:48:45,719 --> 00:48:48,919
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, I'm back, come back.

947
00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:54,120
Speaker 1: Yeah. So anyway, Michael Lewis, Yeah, it's interesting to me,

948
00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: like the fact that the I the fact that Sam

949
00:48:56,640 --> 00:49:00,200
Speaker 1: bankmin Freed stole money from depositors, because that that's what

950
00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:02,600
Speaker 1: it is. When you take money out of one company

951
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:05,840
Speaker 1: illegally and use it to gamble in another company, that's stealing.

952
00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:09,640
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis never uses the term stolen to describe what

953
00:49:09,800 --> 00:49:13,120
Speaker 1: Sam did, and he basically goes to great lengths to

954
00:49:13,120 --> 00:49:17,080
Speaker 1: claim that Sam misplaced all this money. This is again

955
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:21,160
Speaker 1: wildly inaccurate, and a good example of that is Alameda's

956
00:49:21,640 --> 00:49:24,640
Speaker 1: hashtag fiat account, which is like that was one of

957
00:49:24,640 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 1: the names for the account where they were putting all

958
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:29,960
Speaker 1: of the actual US dollars that customers put in the exchange,

959
00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:34,200
Speaker 1: So customers would put US dollars into FTX and then

960
00:49:34,320 --> 00:49:38,240
Speaker 1: use it to buy cryptocurrency, right, But those US dollars

961
00:49:38,280 --> 00:49:40,040
Speaker 1: needed to stay in the exchange so that people could

962
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:44,480
Speaker 1: cash out their positions, right, Otherwise you're not doing legitimately

963
00:49:44,520 --> 00:49:47,040
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do as a business. FTX was

964
00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:49,279
Speaker 1: not a bank. A bank is allowed only has to

965
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:51,960
Speaker 1: keep a certain amount in reserve, right, That's what a

966
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:54,760
Speaker 1: reserve currency is. This is an exchange. They were supposed

967
00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:57,640
Speaker 1: to keep enough reserve in there to cover the value

968
00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:01,000
Speaker 1: of their deposits. Sam instead took all that money and

969
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:04,400
Speaker 1: put it into Alameda, and there's evidence that it like

970
00:50:04,520 --> 00:50:07,680
Speaker 1: never it went directly into Alameda. The money people thought

971
00:50:07,719 --> 00:50:11,880
Speaker 1: they were depositing into FTX went into another company entirely,

972
00:50:12,480 --> 00:50:15,560
Speaker 1: I would call that. And in fact, Sam was convicted

973
00:50:15,600 --> 00:50:19,239
Speaker 1: because this is an example of fraud. Lewis depicts it

974
00:50:19,280 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 1: as an honest mistake, and here's the New Yorker quote.

975
00:50:22,600 --> 00:50:25,360
Speaker 1: Lewis finds it not only wholly implausible that this was

976
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:29,040
Speaker 1: in fact a gigantic accounting error, explained by ftx's difficulty

977
00:50:29,080 --> 00:50:32,839
Speaker 1: securing bank accounts. As Lewis concludes, his story implausible as

978
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:36,680
Speaker 1: it sounded, remained irritatingly difficult to disprove. And Lewis very

979
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:39,640
Speaker 1: gently insinuates that Ellison, in over her head, might have

980
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:43,840
Speaker 1: made some very bad decisions. And in court, which again

981
00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:45,920
Speaker 1: is a couple of weeks after his book comes out,

982
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:48,880
Speaker 1: it is proven with data from the company that Sam

983
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 1: not only did not like not only knew what he

984
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:54,640
Speaker 1: was doing, but he ordered other people to obscure this

985
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 1: fact from customers. Right, he ordered his employees to hide

986
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:02,360
Speaker 1: from customers that their money going straight into another company.

987
00:51:02,600 --> 00:51:05,399
Speaker 1: This was proven when they like actually, during the court case,

988
00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:09,240
Speaker 1: they had the people who programmed the exchange on Sam's

989
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:13,040
Speaker 1: behalf like post code. And I found an analysis of

990
00:51:13,160 --> 00:51:16,520
Speaker 1: ftx's code by Molly White, who does a newsletter called

991
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:20,160
Speaker 1: Citation Needed, which is quite good. Molly knows code and stuff.

992
00:51:20,200 --> 00:51:24,040
Speaker 1: So here's her analyzing that, prosecutors questioned Wang, who was

993
00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:26,440
Speaker 1: the guy who was coding the exchange, about the FTX

994
00:51:26,480 --> 00:51:29,760
Speaker 1: insurance fund, which was ostensibly supposed to protect both FDx

995
00:51:29,800 --> 00:51:32,680
Speaker 1: and its customers from trades that went badly, even more

996
00:51:32,760 --> 00:51:36,080
Speaker 1: quickly than the exchange's risk engine could account for. FTX

997
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:38,960
Speaker 1: published the funds supposed balance on their website and bragged

998
00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:43,040
Speaker 1: widely about its existence, including a testimony to US Congress. However,

999
00:51:43,120 --> 00:51:46,399
Speaker 1: according to Wang, the numbers showed on the website was falsified.

1000
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:49,920
Speaker 1: And the question is like, is this a real number, Wang, No,

1001
00:51:50,120 --> 00:51:52,560
Speaker 1: so it's a fake number. Yes. Was the real number

1002
00:51:52,600 --> 00:51:56,600
Speaker 1: higher or lower than the fake number? Lower? And yeah.

1003
00:51:56,840 --> 00:51:58,680
Speaker 1: The way that they would do this so like they're

1004
00:51:58,680 --> 00:52:01,680
Speaker 1: supposed to have this urance fund, which is part of

1005
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:04,840
Speaker 1: what makes FTX safer than the other exchanges is that

1006
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:06,959
Speaker 1: we keep you can't do a run on the bank

1007
00:52:07,040 --> 00:52:10,520
Speaker 1: because our entire like like all of our deposits are

1008
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:13,279
Speaker 1: backed up by cash, right, so we can't collapse the

1009
00:52:13,320 --> 00:52:17,160
Speaker 1: way that other exchanges do. And like to make people

1010
00:52:17,239 --> 00:52:20,080
Speaker 1: feel comfortable they had, they would show them they had,

1011
00:52:20,120 --> 00:52:23,000
Speaker 1: like you could see like what the insurance fund was.

1012
00:52:23,040 --> 00:52:25,280
Speaker 1: That they would regularly brag, we have this much money

1013
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:26,279
Speaker 1: in our insurance fund.

1014
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:28,400
Speaker 2: It can number accurate.

1015
00:52:28,640 --> 00:52:33,200
Speaker 1: Like No, all they were doing is so the code

1016
00:52:33,200 --> 00:52:36,680
Speaker 1: snippets show that, like they had Sam ordered Nashad Singing

1017
00:52:36,760 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 1: to write some code that would update the insurance fund

1018
00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:43,040
Speaker 1: amount randomly by adding it to the daily trading volume,

1019
00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:45,520
Speaker 1: like the amount of Basically they would it would calculate

1020
00:52:45,880 --> 00:52:49,160
Speaker 1: how much has been traded today, and that would multiply

1021
00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:52,760
Speaker 1: that by a random number somewhere around seventy five hundred

1022
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:55,360
Speaker 1: and then divide it by a billion. So it would

1023
00:52:55,920 --> 00:52:59,840
Speaker 1: was how it was just describe how you do business.

1024
00:53:00,040 --> 00:53:03,719
Speaker 1: They're like bus, there was never an insurance a real

1025
00:53:03,840 --> 00:53:07,319
Speaker 1: insurance fund of any like meaningful amount of money. They

1026
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:10,080
Speaker 1: just pretended it was there by having a computer do

1027
00:53:10,239 --> 00:53:12,799
Speaker 1: a random equation, so it seemed like it was fluctuating

1028
00:53:12,840 --> 00:53:13,359
Speaker 1: over time.

1029
00:53:13,840 --> 00:53:16,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's not legal to do.

1030
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:19,160
Speaker 1: No, that's that there.

1031
00:53:19,640 --> 00:53:22,399
Speaker 2: And I feel like this, like this level of like

1032
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:27,640
Speaker 2: splitting hairs in The New Yorker wouldn't happen unless the

1033
00:53:27,680 --> 00:53:31,120
Speaker 2: two main players, Michael Lewis and Sam Bak Midfried, weren't

1034
00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:36,279
Speaker 2: tremendously privileged like for any other people, you would be like, yeah,

1035
00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:38,799
Speaker 2: so this was a lie and then this happened, like

1036
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:40,479
Speaker 2: you wouldn't be splitting hairs like this.

1037
00:53:40,600 --> 00:53:42,919
Speaker 1: To be fair. The actual thrust of that New Yorker

1038
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:45,800
Speaker 1: article is like, Michael Lewis is what the fuck is

1039
00:53:45,840 --> 00:53:48,600
Speaker 1: happening with this guy? Because he's clearly falling, Like the

1040
00:53:48,600 --> 00:53:50,800
Speaker 1: New york article is very critical of him. It's bringing

1041
00:53:50,880 --> 00:53:54,480
Speaker 1: up that he is not calling Sam Bankman free to

1042
00:53:54,520 --> 00:53:56,359
Speaker 1: fucking con man when he clearly is right.

1043
00:53:56,840 --> 00:54:00,759
Speaker 2: So they're like headline, Michael Lewis, low key, he fell off?

1044
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:04,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, looking, he fell off, that's right, Molly. I also

1045
00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:06,960
Speaker 1: brings up something else that was left out of court,

1046
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,480
Speaker 1: but the prosecution published evidence of it, and I found

1047
00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:12,560
Speaker 1: this really telling. Elsewhere in the code, it's possible to

1048
00:54:12,600 --> 00:54:15,200
Speaker 1: observe that the amount of FTT, which is the token

1049
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:19,279
Speaker 1: created that represented basically voting shares, was like it was

1050
00:54:19,400 --> 00:54:22,920
Speaker 1: ftx's funny money, was actually represented by a hard coded

1051
00:54:23,200 --> 00:54:25,480
Speaker 1: value in the user interface and was not pulling from

1052
00:54:25,520 --> 00:54:28,120
Speaker 1: an external data source to get a real number. So

1053
00:54:28,160 --> 00:54:31,320
Speaker 1: again they're lying about how much money is in this fund.

1054
00:54:31,400 --> 00:54:33,400
Speaker 1: And part of how you can tell is when you

1055
00:54:33,440 --> 00:54:36,719
Speaker 1: would ask to see the insurance fund, it wouldn't consult

1056
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:39,719
Speaker 1: back to the servers. It was just it was doing

1057
00:54:39,719 --> 00:54:43,480
Speaker 1: the calculation on your own machine, right, which is evidence

1058
00:54:43,480 --> 00:54:45,400
Speaker 1: that like, there was never any attempt to give people

1059
00:54:45,440 --> 00:54:51,160
Speaker 1: accurate information. Wow, it's fun stuff. There's other fund reveals

1060
00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:53,520
Speaker 1: during the court case, for example, twists.

1061
00:54:53,600 --> 00:54:53,839
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1062
00:54:53,920 --> 00:54:57,200
Speaker 1: During ftx's days as a functioning business, a lot of

1063
00:54:57,239 --> 00:54:59,920
Speaker 1: crypto people notice there was a potential conflict of entr

1064
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:03,320
Speaker 1: between FTX and Alameda. They were like, hey, it seems

1065
00:55:03,320 --> 00:55:07,319
Speaker 1: like you run both these companies, and traders on Alameda

1066
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 1: are our trading on FTX. Is it possible that they're

1067
00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:14,360
Speaker 1: getting preferential treatment on the exchange that you also owned.

1068
00:55:14,719 --> 00:55:17,799
Speaker 1: There's a really telling Twitter conversation on Molly's blog where

1069
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:21,880
Speaker 1: someone asks this and SBF says, Alameda is the liquidity provider,

1070
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:24,360
Speaker 1: but their account is just like everyone else's, and the

1071
00:55:24,400 --> 00:55:27,440
Speaker 1: respondent rightfully says, I guess we're just supposed to trust you.

1072
00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:29,560
Speaker 1: And it turned out they were right to be worried.

1073
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:31,840
Speaker 1: One of the chief selling points about FTX is that

1074
00:55:31,880 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 1: it's crash proof. Right. Crypto exchanges have this weird habit,

1075
00:55:35,800 --> 00:55:38,120
Speaker 1: like twenty years old now, of getting really big and

1076
00:55:38,160 --> 00:55:41,320
Speaker 1: then collapsing, taking everyone's money with them. Sometimes this is

1077
00:55:41,400 --> 00:55:44,000
Speaker 1: due to hacks, but also there's a lot of because

1078
00:55:44,040 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 1: there's no regulation, a lot of times major traders will

1079
00:55:47,040 --> 00:55:50,400
Speaker 1: go bust and that causes losses for the whole exchange,

1080
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:53,879
Speaker 1: which gets socialized. Right, everybody loses money because one bad

1081
00:55:53,960 --> 00:55:58,960
Speaker 1: gambler gambled too much. One of ftx's like selling points

1082
00:55:59,000 --> 00:56:01,560
Speaker 1: was that it was different. They had an algorithm to

1083
00:56:01,640 --> 00:56:04,839
Speaker 1: automatically freeze trades on an account once that account had

1084
00:56:04,920 --> 00:56:07,600
Speaker 1: suffered losses equal to the amount of money they'd put

1085
00:56:07,600 --> 00:56:10,560
Speaker 1: in the exchange, right, So you can't lose more money

1086
00:56:10,880 --> 00:56:14,520
Speaker 1: than you put in is the basic idea. So that's

1087
00:56:14,560 --> 00:56:16,360
Speaker 1: how it was supposed to work, and that's how it

1088
00:56:16,360 --> 00:56:20,120
Speaker 1: worked initially. But the limit that Alameda had for its

1089
00:56:20,160 --> 00:56:22,160
Speaker 1: gambling to make sure that it couldn't get in over

1090
00:56:22,200 --> 00:56:26,120
Speaker 1: its skis, was removed later on Sam Bankman Freed's orders,

1091
00:56:26,400 --> 00:56:29,759
Speaker 1: and in court, Gary Wang, Sam's business partner, explained how

1092
00:56:29,840 --> 00:56:33,759
Speaker 1: Sam directed them to do this. Wang explained that Alameda

1093
00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:35,799
Speaker 1: had not started out with such a high credit limit,

1094
00:56:35,840 --> 00:56:38,280
Speaker 1: but that periodically the trading firm had run into issues

1095
00:56:38,320 --> 00:56:41,600
Speaker 1: placing trades because they didn't have enough collateral. Sam Bankman

1096
00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:43,920
Speaker 1: Freed kept asking him to increase their credit limit to

1097
00:56:43,920 --> 00:56:46,520
Speaker 1: prevent it from happening. According to Wang, the limit was

1098
00:56:46,520 --> 00:56:49,239
Speaker 1: originally set to a few million dollars, but then it

1099
00:56:49,320 --> 00:56:51,600
Speaker 1: was increased to a billion. After they ran up against

1100
00:56:51,600 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 1: that limit too, bankman freed asked him to set it

1101
00:56:53,640 --> 00:56:55,799
Speaker 1: to a number so large they wouldn't likely hit the

1102
00:56:55,800 --> 00:56:58,480
Speaker 1: limit at that point. Wang set it to around sixty

1103
00:56:58,480 --> 00:57:00,480
Speaker 1: five billion. And when I read that, what I see

1104
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:03,280
Speaker 1: is this is a gambler in Vegas who's like taking

1105
00:57:03,320 --> 00:57:06,120
Speaker 1: out loans to keep gambling because he's run out of money.

1106
00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:09,120
Speaker 2: Like he's like, hey, you just imagine like someone like

1107
00:57:09,239 --> 00:57:13,040
Speaker 2: on their knees in like shitty pinstripe. Ye can't being

1108
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:14,680
Speaker 2: like come on, man.

1109
00:57:14,440 --> 00:57:16,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, give me, just give me some credit. Man, I'm

1110
00:57:16,840 --> 00:57:17,520
Speaker 1: good for it.

1111
00:57:17,920 --> 00:57:21,000
Speaker 2: But he got up to sixty five billion in credit.

1112
00:57:20,960 --> 00:57:23,880
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, which is insane. Now, when you pair all

1113
00:57:23,920 --> 00:57:26,880
Speaker 1: this with the stories that SBF tells that Lewis tells

1114
00:57:26,880 --> 00:57:30,200
Speaker 1: of SBF's gaming addiction, you might conclude was this kid

1115
00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:32,880
Speaker 1: just a fucking gambling addict, Which is, by the way,

1116
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:34,479
Speaker 1: that's my interpretation there.

1117
00:57:34,600 --> 00:57:37,560
Speaker 2: I mean there. To me, it sounds like this shit

1118
00:57:37,640 --> 00:57:40,760
Speaker 2: is Neo points to him, Like it really is. Like,

1119
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:44,880
Speaker 2: if there's anything that got the millennial generation hooked on

1120
00:57:44,960 --> 00:57:50,880
Speaker 2: capitalism and random gambling, it was Neopets. And if anyone

1121
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:53,760
Speaker 2: has proof that Sam Bankminfreed was a Neopets user, he

1122
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:56,880
Speaker 2: just sounds like the worst version of a Neopets user.

1123
00:57:57,200 --> 00:58:00,680
Speaker 2: To me, the worst endgame for a neo Pets user

1124
00:58:00,840 --> 00:58:03,960
Speaker 2: is what you've been describing to me for for several hours.

1125
00:58:04,240 --> 00:58:06,400
Speaker 1: And I think you and I were not invested in

1126
00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:10,160
Speaker 1: Sam Bankmanfreed ever being particularly smart, So we can see.

1127
00:58:09,960 --> 00:58:14,160
Speaker 2: This, Lewis, he's a Neopets users. I bet it was

1128
00:58:14,240 --> 00:58:15,240
Speaker 2: better at it than him.

1129
00:58:16,160 --> 00:58:18,000
Speaker 1: Well, that's the other thing. He was never very good

1130
00:58:18,040 --> 00:58:20,960
Speaker 1: at games. Like people found his like League of Legends

1131
00:58:20,960 --> 00:58:23,439
Speaker 1: account and were like, yeah, he was mid Like I'm

1132
00:58:23,480 --> 00:58:26,200
Speaker 1: sure he wasn't good at Storybook Brawl, right, Like he's

1133
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:27,800
Speaker 1: just he was never good at this.

1134
00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:30,040
Speaker 2: But it was the first time that Michael Lewis had

1135
00:58:30,080 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 2: heard of story But yeah, so Sam bank Fred said

1136
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:35,640
Speaker 2: he was the best at it. Why not believe him?

1137
00:58:35,720 --> 00:58:38,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's just the idea. Like again, Lewis can't

1138
00:58:38,240 --> 00:58:40,920
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, this kid had a gambling problem and

1139
00:58:41,000 --> 00:58:44,920
Speaker 1: he also owned a bank, so it became everyone's issue.

1140
00:58:45,080 --> 00:58:48,040
Speaker 1: But like, you're not a bank man. It's hard to

1141
00:58:48,080 --> 00:58:51,280
Speaker 1: portray someone as smart if they're just addicted to gambling, right,

1142
00:58:51,320 --> 00:58:53,400
Speaker 1: because that's not a smart person thing. It Actually a

1143
00:58:53,400 --> 00:58:55,520
Speaker 1: lot of smart people are horrible addicts in a variety

1144
00:58:55,560 --> 00:58:58,240
Speaker 1: of ways. But like, but it's a serious press in

1145
00:58:58,240 --> 00:59:01,000
Speaker 1: the Hollywood way. Make it look like somebody's a genius

1146
00:59:01,040 --> 00:59:04,080
Speaker 1: if they just can't control themselves, right.

1147
00:59:04,040 --> 00:59:06,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a serious, serious problem.

1148
00:59:06,560 --> 00:59:08,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and again no shame on people who have

1149
00:59:09,040 --> 00:59:11,880
Speaker 1: that problem. But like that that does not work with

1150
00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:16,400
Speaker 1: how Lewis wants to portray him, right, And yeah, speaking

1151
00:59:16,440 --> 00:59:18,120
Speaker 1: of things that don't work.

1152
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:23,800
Speaker 2: Shit, everything you're about to advertise, we.

1153
00:59:23,800 --> 00:59:26,560
Speaker 1: Won't have to work if you purchase these products.

1154
00:59:26,800 --> 00:59:30,520
Speaker 2: Okay, good good self crush. Yeah, I actually will continue

1155
00:59:30,560 --> 00:59:32,880
Speaker 2: to work more accurate.

1156
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:45,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, both both true. We're back. So you know, I

1157
00:59:45,800 --> 00:59:47,520
Speaker 1: think it's clear from the stuff that came out in

1158
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:49,439
Speaker 1: the court case that I just read some of there's

1159
00:59:49,440 --> 00:59:52,560
Speaker 1: no way Alameda NFTX would have done the things that

1160
00:59:52,800 --> 00:59:55,560
Speaker 1: I just described if they hadn't meant to disguise the

1161
00:59:55,600 --> 00:59:58,240
Speaker 1: reality of their business from the world, which is fraud. Right.

1162
00:59:58,440 --> 01:00:01,080
Speaker 1: The reality is that Sam Bankman Freed used to positor

1163
01:00:01,120 --> 01:00:04,120
Speaker 1: money to gamble, and he was gambling in part on

1164
01:00:04,200 --> 01:00:06,720
Speaker 1: his own chances. He wasn't just gambling. This is the

1165
01:00:06,720 --> 01:00:09,560
Speaker 1: thing that is important to understand past a certain point.

1166
01:00:10,120 --> 01:00:13,600
Speaker 1: Most of his gambling was not him betting on cryptocurrencies.

1167
01:00:13,760 --> 01:00:13,920
Speaker 2: Right.

1168
01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:15,920
Speaker 1: The big shit he did that made the news, the

1169
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:19,720
Speaker 1: billion dollars that he pumped into naming, renaming that stadium

1170
01:00:19,720 --> 01:00:22,400
Speaker 1: in Florida, to bringing in all these celebrities to these

1171
01:00:22,480 --> 01:00:25,520
Speaker 1: high dollars Super Bowl ads, that was a gamble. He

1172
01:00:25,600 --> 01:00:28,560
Speaker 1: was pulling a slot machine on his own chances of

1173
01:00:28,600 --> 01:00:33,000
Speaker 1: ascending to the halls of power. Right, sounds like him, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1174
01:00:33,040 --> 01:00:35,520
Speaker 1: One of my favorite aside bits from the court case

1175
01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:38,080
Speaker 1: is that on the stand when she was being questioned,

1176
01:00:38,160 --> 01:00:41,400
Speaker 1: Carolyn Ellison told everybody that Sam confided in her he

1177
01:00:41,480 --> 01:00:44,160
Speaker 1: thought he'd had a five percent chance of becoming president

1178
01:00:44,200 --> 01:00:45,640
Speaker 1: of the United States.

1179
01:00:45,520 --> 01:00:50,280
Speaker 2: Which, well, I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but also like,

1180
01:00:50,720 --> 01:00:53,040
Speaker 2: look at some of the dumbasses we've got. He's probably

1181
01:00:53,080 --> 01:00:55,040
Speaker 2: not wrong that he eman. He at least could have

1182
01:00:55,120 --> 01:00:58,920
Speaker 2: been like, who is that fucking loser from Starbucks? He

1183
01:00:58,960 --> 01:00:59,840
Speaker 2: could have only s been.

1184
01:00:59,800 --> 01:01:01,720
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, he could have. I think he could have

1185
01:01:01,760 --> 01:01:04,520
Speaker 1: had a failed presidential but no, like yeah, oh yeah,

1186
01:01:05,160 --> 01:01:08,040
Speaker 1: they're all dumb, Like Joe Biden and Donald Trump are

1187
01:01:08,040 --> 01:01:11,440
Speaker 1: both have both done very stupid things, different kinds of

1188
01:01:11,560 --> 01:01:14,600
Speaker 1: very stupid things, but they both have charisma.

1189
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:16,000
Speaker 2: Right, that's true.

1190
01:01:15,840 --> 01:01:18,520
Speaker 1: That's they But like, like you could again say what

1191
01:01:18,560 --> 01:01:20,080
Speaker 1: you will about Joe Biden, he wouldn't have been in

1192
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 1: politics this long if you couldn't make enough people like him.

1193
01:01:23,400 --> 01:01:27,320
Speaker 1: And obviously Donald Trump is very charismatic, Sam Bankman free

1194
01:01:27,360 --> 01:01:29,800
Speaker 1: just isn't like you don't become the president if you

1195
01:01:29,840 --> 01:01:31,840
Speaker 1: are avoid of charisma.

1196
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:34,200
Speaker 2: No, we and we've learned that time and time again.

1197
01:01:34,440 --> 01:01:36,680
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, And that's the thing, like he was

1198
01:01:36,720 --> 01:01:39,920
Speaker 1: always all of his his his sudden rise to public

1199
01:01:40,000 --> 01:01:43,080
Speaker 1: prominence was not based on him actually being interesting. It

1200
01:01:43,160 --> 01:01:45,640
Speaker 1: was based on him spending tens of millions of dollars

1201
01:01:45,680 --> 01:01:47,960
Speaker 1: to get like Bill Clinton, to pretend to be his buddy.

1202
01:01:48,520 --> 01:01:50,840
Speaker 1: Like that was all there ever was to it. You know,

1203
01:01:51,320 --> 01:01:54,480
Speaker 1: in my general research on the crypto industry, and if

1204
01:01:54,480 --> 01:01:57,560
Speaker 1: you're looking for actual good reading, don't buy Going Infinite.

1205
01:01:57,560 --> 01:01:59,720
Speaker 1: You won't get anything valuable at it. If you do

1206
01:01:59,760 --> 01:02:02,480
Speaker 1: want to get something valuable in a deeper understanding about

1207
01:02:02,520 --> 01:02:05,000
Speaker 1: like how grifty this whole industry was, and also how

1208
01:02:05,040 --> 01:02:07,960
Speaker 1: grifty Sam was. There's a book called Number Go Up

1209
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:13,320
Speaker 1: by Zeke Foe Zeke Faux really good book, Number Go Up,

1210
01:02:13,320 --> 01:02:15,880
Speaker 1: which I do recommend to people curious for the dark

1211
01:02:15,920 --> 01:02:19,960
Speaker 1: side of crypto. Zeke also spent time with Sam in

1212
01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:22,479
Speaker 1: the Bahamas, and I found this passage from his book

1213
01:02:22,520 --> 01:02:25,200
Speaker 1: relevant to what I just mentioned. A few hours into

1214
01:02:25,240 --> 01:02:27,520
Speaker 1: our conversation, Bankman Freed told me he had to make

1215
01:02:27,520 --> 01:02:29,120
Speaker 1: a call. I had asked him if there was anyone

1216
01:02:29,120 --> 01:02:31,680
Speaker 1: who'd support his version of events, and he said I

1217
01:02:31,720 --> 01:02:33,880
Speaker 1: could talk with one of his few remaining supporters. While

1218
01:02:33,880 --> 01:02:36,640
Speaker 1: I waited, in walked a haughty man with a long,

1219
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:39,920
Speaker 1: scraggly beard, a pot belly, and mismatched socks, one of

1220
01:02:39,920 --> 01:02:42,360
Speaker 1: them with a pac Man design who was an employee

1221
01:02:42,400 --> 01:02:45,200
Speaker 1: of FTX who'd stuck around to help Bankman Freed try

1222
01:02:45,240 --> 01:02:47,720
Speaker 1: to find an investor to rescue the exchange. I threw

1223
01:02:47,720 --> 01:02:50,360
Speaker 1: out an easy question, why are you still here? I asked.

1224
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:54,600
Speaker 1: He started off by saying he wanted to help ftx's customers, Then, unprompted,

1225
01:02:54,640 --> 01:02:56,200
Speaker 1: he told me he thought there wasn't much of a

1226
01:02:56,280 --> 01:02:58,680
Speaker 1: risk that bankment freed would ever get in trouble. I

1227
01:02:58,760 --> 01:03:01,400
Speaker 1: firmly believe once somebody he becomes a certain level of rich,

1228
01:03:01,440 --> 01:03:04,040
Speaker 1: they're never poured again. He said, they don't go to jail,

1229
01:03:04,200 --> 01:03:05,600
Speaker 1: nothing bad happens to them.

1230
01:03:06,080 --> 01:03:10,040
Speaker 2: Wait, he has his own Zuckerberg quote. He has his

1231
01:03:10,160 --> 01:03:12,560
Speaker 2: own You could be unethical and still be lad. That's

1232
01:03:12,560 --> 01:03:14,680
Speaker 2: the way I live my life. Haha. Wait, read it

1233
01:03:14,720 --> 01:03:16,840
Speaker 2: again for me so I can really take it in again.

1234
01:03:17,360 --> 01:03:20,240
Speaker 1: This is Sam's friend who stuck by him after his

1235
01:03:20,320 --> 01:03:23,959
Speaker 1: business collapsed. I firmly believe once somebody becomes a certain

1236
01:03:24,040 --> 01:03:26,360
Speaker 1: level of rich, they're never poured again. They don't go

1237
01:03:26,440 --> 01:03:29,200
Speaker 1: to jail, nothing bad happens to them.

1238
01:03:29,440 --> 01:03:30,000
Speaker 2: Poetry.

1239
01:03:30,280 --> 01:03:32,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing to think in

1240
01:03:32,880 --> 01:03:35,240
Speaker 1: that moment too, where all of the smarter people have

1241
01:03:35,360 --> 01:03:38,400
Speaker 1: just fled the island, and in that moment he was.

1242
01:03:38,400 --> 01:03:41,760
Speaker 2: Infinite that yeah, wow, wow.

1243
01:03:41,720 --> 01:03:44,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm speechless. It's so funny too, because like I

1244
01:03:44,680 --> 01:03:47,600
Speaker 1: don't know, man, just historically, do you remember, like Marie

1245
01:03:47,600 --> 01:03:50,640
Speaker 1: Antoinette was pretty rich and like that didn't end well,

1246
01:03:50,880 --> 01:03:54,480
Speaker 1: you know, like like there's a lot christ had a

1247
01:03:54,520 --> 01:03:57,840
Speaker 1: lot of money. It didn't go well for him. You know,

1248
01:03:58,000 --> 01:04:00,600
Speaker 1: bad things happened to rich people too.

1249
01:04:01,040 --> 01:04:04,920
Speaker 2: And that's that's your main political stance, as I recall.

1250
01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:07,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I will hang out with anybody rich because

1251
01:04:07,400 --> 01:04:12,480
Speaker 1: nothing bad can happen to them, obviously untrue. I kind

1252
01:04:12,480 --> 01:04:16,560
Speaker 1: of suspect that that that sort of I don't know,

1253
01:04:17,400 --> 01:04:20,280
Speaker 1: you know, the fact that so much of what was said,

1254
01:04:20,440 --> 01:04:22,840
Speaker 1: like Zeke foe Is probably is clearly someone who's smart

1255
01:04:22,960 --> 01:04:25,600
Speaker 1: enough to like understand when he's being lied to by

1256
01:04:25,640 --> 01:04:28,280
Speaker 1: these people and understand their fundamental absurdity, and that comes

1257
01:04:28,320 --> 01:04:32,040
Speaker 1: across in his book. I don't think Lewis got that right.

1258
01:04:32,120 --> 01:04:36,040
Speaker 1: He believed fundamentally in the fundamental honesty at the center

1259
01:04:36,120 --> 01:04:38,919
Speaker 1: of Sam Bankmin Freed, and I kind of suspect that's

1260
01:04:38,960 --> 01:04:41,240
Speaker 1: why he covered his face with his hands that day

1261
01:04:41,280 --> 01:04:44,120
Speaker 1: in court. He's not a dumb man, and he must

1262
01:04:44,120 --> 01:04:46,480
Speaker 1: have realized by that point the evidence that came out

1263
01:04:46,520 --> 01:04:49,320
Speaker 1: in the trial was undenied and made it undeniable that

1264
01:04:49,360 --> 01:04:52,200
Speaker 1: he got conned too. One of the most remarkable things

1265
01:04:52,240 --> 01:04:55,160
Speaker 1: about Going Infinite is how much detail Lewis provides about

1266
01:04:55,200 --> 01:04:59,040
Speaker 1: ftx's collapse without ever calling Sam a liar. The Guardian's

1267
01:04:59,120 --> 01:05:02,160
Speaker 1: review noted this too. He thought Bankman Freed hadn't lied

1268
01:05:02,160 --> 01:05:03,760
Speaker 1: to him at all, or at least that he'd only

1269
01:05:03,800 --> 01:05:06,439
Speaker 1: lied by a mission, not by commission. Late in the book,

1270
01:05:06,480 --> 01:05:08,880
Speaker 1: Lewis asks bankman Freed, what would you have done if

1271
01:05:08,920 --> 01:05:12,120
Speaker 1: I'd ask you specifically about FTX customer funds being used

1272
01:05:12,120 --> 01:05:14,760
Speaker 1: by Alameda. Bankman Freed admits that he would have changed

1273
01:05:14,760 --> 01:05:17,600
Speaker 1: the subject or rustled up a word salad and whatever

1274
01:05:17,640 --> 01:05:21,280
Speaker 1: the facades erected by other effective altruists. Lewis considers bankment

1275
01:05:21,280 --> 01:05:24,480
Speaker 1: Freed to be enigmatic, but essentially genuine, and certainly not

1276
01:05:24,560 --> 01:05:26,960
Speaker 1: out to enrich himself because he has no desire for

1277
01:05:27,000 --> 01:05:30,440
Speaker 1: the things that money can buy. Lewis's refusal to believe

1278
01:05:30,480 --> 01:05:32,480
Speaker 1: that Sam Bankman Freed is a liar in the most

1279
01:05:32,600 --> 01:05:35,640
Speaker 1: venal base sense of the word is based, I think,

1280
01:05:35,720 --> 01:05:38,440
Speaker 1: on a sense of professional pride. That explains why he's

1281
01:05:38,440 --> 01:05:40,560
Speaker 1: so adamant about pushing the line that there was no

1282
01:05:40,720 --> 01:05:43,560
Speaker 1: money missing, and it's why he continued to defend Sam's

1283
01:05:43,600 --> 01:05:46,640
Speaker 1: dissembling as a fun, quirky character trait while the trial

1284
01:05:46,760 --> 01:05:49,560
Speaker 1: was going on. See as part of the Cash in

1285
01:05:49,640 --> 01:05:54,640
Speaker 1: Ongoing Infinite Michael Lewis launched a podcast Judging Sam the

1286
01:05:54,720 --> 01:05:56,480
Speaker 1: Trial of Sam Bankman Freed.

1287
01:05:56,840 --> 01:06:01,080
Speaker 2: Oh it was a dough is he and oho? But

1288
01:06:01,440 --> 01:06:05,080
Speaker 2: everyone on this call knows that the first sign that

1289
01:06:05,160 --> 01:06:09,160
Speaker 2: your life is about to be fucking torched, yes, is

1290
01:06:09,200 --> 01:06:10,200
Speaker 2: starting a podcast.

1291
01:06:10,840 --> 01:06:13,840
Speaker 1: That's right, right, it's the last refuse, refuge of fools

1292
01:06:13,840 --> 01:06:17,920
Speaker 1: and scoundrels. Yeah, please pay for the cool sound free

1293
01:06:17,960 --> 01:06:22,200
Speaker 1: subscription at what do we call it, Sophie so uh.

1294
01:06:22,240 --> 01:06:24,840
Speaker 1: The trial Judging Sam is part of Lewis's Against the

1295
01:06:24,920 --> 01:06:27,600
Speaker 1: Rules podcast on Pushkin, and I can't speak for the

1296
01:06:27,600 --> 01:06:30,200
Speaker 1: regular episodes of that podcast. I have not listened to

1297
01:06:30,320 --> 01:06:33,160
Speaker 1: any of the other ones, but I can say his

1298
01:06:33,240 --> 01:06:37,320
Speaker 1: Sam Bankman Freed Trial podcast is an uneven effort at best.

1299
01:06:37,720 --> 01:06:40,080
Speaker 1: Most of the work is done by Lydia Jean. She's

1300
01:06:40,320 --> 01:06:43,800
Speaker 1: a journalist, she's okay. I don't have any huge issues

1301
01:06:43,800 --> 01:06:45,720
Speaker 1: with her. I think we get a little too much, like,

1302
01:06:45,800 --> 01:06:48,440
Speaker 1: here's what the court kitchen is like, here's anecdotes from

1303
01:06:48,480 --> 01:06:50,480
Speaker 1: the fun lives of the journalists covering it.

1304
01:06:50,760 --> 01:06:53,880
Speaker 2: That also gets Yeah. Then it's like my least favorite

1305
01:06:53,920 --> 01:06:56,600
Speaker 2: part of every public radio and I love public radio,

1306
01:06:56,680 --> 01:06:59,640
Speaker 2: but the broadcast where it begins with six minutes of

1307
01:06:59,680 --> 01:07:02,640
Speaker 2: a guy stepping on leaves, and you're like, oh my god,

1308
01:07:02,680 --> 01:07:04,640
Speaker 2: I get it. You're in fucking New Hampshire in.

1309
01:07:04,600 --> 01:07:10,120
Speaker 1: October fall, where you NPR people leave. We understand, yes,

1310
01:07:11,000 --> 01:07:13,440
Speaker 1: but every podcast on this trial does something like that.

1311
01:07:13,480 --> 01:07:15,080
Speaker 1: I think it's just because they have to. They were

1312
01:07:15,080 --> 01:07:18,240
Speaker 1: doing like basically daily episodes and needed to fill run time,

1313
01:07:18,440 --> 01:07:21,400
Speaker 1: and like, look, is that lazy? Yes? Have we all

1314
01:07:21,400 --> 01:07:25,760
Speaker 1: been there? Yes? So I simply can't throw stones at

1315
01:07:25,800 --> 01:07:26,600
Speaker 1: this classhouse.

1316
01:07:26,640 --> 01:07:32,080
Speaker 2: What are what are you talking about? As someone who's

1317
01:07:32,120 --> 01:07:35,640
Speaker 2: never had a daily podcast, I condemned this behavior because

1318
01:07:35,720 --> 01:07:37,080
Speaker 2: I've never had to do it.

1319
01:07:38,000 --> 01:07:42,640
Speaker 1: So LUs Lydia takes most of the have the lifting

1320
01:07:42,680 --> 01:07:45,880
Speaker 1: on this show because Lewis was on tour for his book, right,

1321
01:07:45,960 --> 01:07:48,480
Speaker 1: and so he couldn't be there for most of it.

1322
01:07:48,520 --> 01:07:49,760
Speaker 1: He was barely at the trial.

1323
01:07:49,880 --> 01:07:52,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was screaming at women in cathedrals.

1324
01:07:52,400 --> 01:07:56,280
Speaker 1: He was busy, Yeah, But he does occasionally come on

1325
01:07:57,320 --> 01:08:00,960
Speaker 1: and one of the episodes that does like he shows

1326
01:08:01,040 --> 01:08:03,200
Speaker 1: up to court on the day that Sam takes the

1327
01:08:03,240 --> 01:08:05,800
Speaker 1: trial or it takes the stand in his own defense,

1328
01:08:07,040 --> 01:08:09,480
Speaker 1: and you know during this portion where he's like Sam's

1329
01:08:09,480 --> 01:08:11,920
Speaker 1: being cross examined, he says, I don't recall more than

1330
01:08:11,920 --> 01:08:14,640
Speaker 1: one hundred times. Here's how a right up from the

1331
01:08:14,760 --> 01:08:18,599
Speaker 1: verge summarizes his time on the stand. Bankman Freed's demeanor

1332
01:08:18,640 --> 01:08:21,559
Speaker 1: suggested a spoiled child complaining he didn't get the biggest

1333
01:08:21,560 --> 01:08:23,840
Speaker 1: scoop of ice cream at his birthday party. He didn't

1334
01:08:23,880 --> 01:08:26,719
Speaker 1: want to answer the prosecutor's questions or his lawyer's questions.

1335
01:08:26,720 --> 01:08:29,519
Speaker 1: He wanted to answer his own questions, which he liked better.

1336
01:08:29,720 --> 01:08:32,480
Speaker 1: He often replied to yes and no questions with nonsense.

1337
01:08:32,920 --> 01:08:35,320
Speaker 1: We were getting introduced to a document where bankman Freed

1338
01:08:35,320 --> 01:08:39,320
Speaker 1: listed his priorities, including getting accounting right on FTX. Cohen

1339
01:08:39,360 --> 01:08:42,000
Speaker 1: and Bankman Fried, Cohens's lawyer and bankman Freed used this

1340
01:08:42,080 --> 01:08:44,200
Speaker 1: to show how devoted bankmn Freed was to getting to

1341
01:08:44,280 --> 01:08:47,400
Speaker 1: the bottom of the general fiasco with Alameda's money. The

1342
01:08:47,520 --> 01:08:50,759
Speaker 1: idea was to display in real time ftx's revenue in expenses,

1343
01:08:50,760 --> 01:08:53,120
Speaker 1: where its bank accounts were, how much investor money it had,

1344
01:08:53,160 --> 01:08:56,360
Speaker 1: and so on. This did reveal Bankman Fried's priorities. Getting

1345
01:08:56,360 --> 01:09:01,559
Speaker 1: accounting right was ranked ninth oh for the stories Bankman

1346
01:09:01,600 --> 01:09:04,320
Speaker 1: Freed wanted to tell, we had to rely on Bankman Freed.

1347
01:09:04,640 --> 01:09:07,240
Speaker 1: We moved on to bankman Freed's argument about hedging, which

1348
01:09:07,280 --> 01:09:09,120
Speaker 1: I still do not understand except as a way for

1349
01:09:09,200 --> 01:09:11,760
Speaker 1: him to say he's a smarter trader than his ex girlfriend,

1350
01:09:11,960 --> 01:09:14,520
Speaker 1: the former Alimeter Research CEO Carolynellis.

1351
01:09:14,640 --> 01:09:16,680
Speaker 2: God, this is more stand up behavior.

1352
01:09:17,720 --> 01:09:20,160
Speaker 1: The actual evidence suggests that Ellison is both a better

1353
01:09:20,200 --> 01:09:23,320
Speaker 1: trader and much savvier than Bankman Freed. She modeled out

1354
01:09:23,320 --> 01:09:26,360
Speaker 1: her risk scenario that matched almost exactly what happened to FTX,

1355
01:09:26,360 --> 01:09:28,320
Speaker 1: for instance, to try to keep him from sinking two

1356
01:09:28,360 --> 01:09:32,479
Speaker 1: billion into venture investing. And like, what happens is he's putting,

1357
01:09:32,680 --> 01:09:36,360
Speaker 1: you know, all this money and advertising into like playing celebrities.

1358
01:09:36,360 --> 01:09:38,800
Speaker 1: He's putting like two billion dollars into these random series

1359
01:09:38,840 --> 01:09:42,320
Speaker 1: of investments. And she's like, hey, we've taken depositor money

1360
01:09:42,320 --> 01:09:44,800
Speaker 1: to gamble with. We have to keep more cash on hand,

1361
01:09:44,840 --> 01:09:48,559
Speaker 1: otherwise the whole exchange could collapse. Sam ignores her, the

1362
01:09:48,600 --> 01:09:52,240
Speaker 1: exchange collapses, and then he blames her for not hedging right.

1363
01:09:52,600 --> 01:09:54,759
Speaker 1: And a hedge is when you take like a bet

1364
01:09:55,080 --> 01:09:57,760
Speaker 1: that one thing will happen, you take the opposite bet

1365
01:09:57,800 --> 01:10:01,320
Speaker 1: at a smaller amount of money, so that no matter

1366
01:10:01,320 --> 01:10:04,680
Speaker 1: what happens, you can't lose too much money, right, But

1367
01:10:05,080 --> 01:10:07,840
Speaker 1: there's no hedging the kind of risks that FDx was

1368
01:10:07,880 --> 01:10:10,280
Speaker 1: taking because the fundamental risk was we don't have enough

1369
01:10:10,320 --> 01:10:12,000
Speaker 1: money if there's a run on the bank, you.

1370
01:10:11,960 --> 01:10:14,160
Speaker 2: Know, well, it was like there risk goes, We're never

1371
01:10:14,240 --> 01:10:17,519
Speaker 2: gonna die, Like you can't, you can't hedge that.

1372
01:10:17,960 --> 01:10:18,160
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1373
01:10:19,200 --> 01:10:21,600
Speaker 2: What is wild to me is like everything you're describing

1374
01:10:21,920 --> 01:10:25,840
Speaker 2: is ridiculous, and it makes total sense that it fucking

1375
01:10:25,880 --> 01:10:28,800
Speaker 2: imploded in the catastrophic way that it did. But then

1376
01:10:28,840 --> 01:10:32,360
Speaker 2: you also, I mean, so much of it sounds like

1377
01:10:33,040 --> 01:10:36,000
Speaker 2: the kind of stuff that, for example, Michael Lewis might

1378
01:10:36,040 --> 01:10:40,040
Speaker 2: report on is a tremendous scam that worked out great

1379
01:10:40,160 --> 01:10:41,040
Speaker 2: for everybody.

1380
01:10:41,479 --> 01:10:45,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's so you know, again, that quote from

1381
01:10:45,760 --> 01:10:49,639
Speaker 1: the Verge is pretty similar to how most reporters who

1382
01:10:49,640 --> 01:10:53,240
Speaker 1: were there at the trial described it. It is wildly

1383
01:10:53,360 --> 01:10:57,240
Speaker 1: different from how Michael Lewis describes how Sam reacts on

1384
01:10:57,320 --> 01:11:01,120
Speaker 1: the stage, right, Oh okay, Yeah, And it's interesting because

1385
01:11:01,160 --> 01:11:03,240
Speaker 1: like obviously most people were able to see, Oh yes,

1386
01:11:03,280 --> 01:11:06,040
Speaker 1: Sam is just lying on the stand, he's obfuscating, he's

1387
01:11:06,080 --> 01:11:09,920
Speaker 1: refusing to answer the question. But Michael Lewis not only

1388
01:11:09,960 --> 01:11:12,840
Speaker 1: does Michael Lewis like being lied to by Sam Bankman Freed.

1389
01:11:13,120 --> 01:11:16,160
Speaker 1: He thinks Sam's defensive cloud of bullshit right this like

1390
01:11:16,280 --> 01:11:19,439
Speaker 1: word salad, is better than the truth. And he says

1391
01:11:19,520 --> 01:11:22,879
Speaker 1: this in his fucking podcast Jamie, You're gonna love this clip.

1392
01:11:24,040 --> 01:11:26,360
Speaker 5: Today he didn't get in as much trouble as he

1393
01:11:26,479 --> 01:11:27,639
Speaker 5: got yesterday, though.

1394
01:11:28,120 --> 01:11:31,280
Speaker 3: Not as nothing, but still a little bit more than

1395
01:11:31,400 --> 01:11:32,240
Speaker 3: other witnesses.

1396
01:11:33,040 --> 01:11:35,760
Speaker 5: That's true. The bigger point is the judge is sitting

1397
01:11:35,840 --> 01:11:39,240
Speaker 5: there listening to see if Sam is actually answering.

1398
01:11:38,840 --> 01:11:41,240
Speaker 3: The question because he knows he doesn't do that yet.

1399
01:11:41,200 --> 01:11:43,559
Speaker 5: Or generating a word salad for us all to consume.

1400
01:11:44,040 --> 01:11:46,679
Speaker 5: And I was thinking about this again to day. Why

1401
01:11:46,800 --> 01:11:49,439
Speaker 5: Sam's word salads are so.

1402
01:11:49,600 --> 01:11:52,639
Speaker 8: Fun, like why he gets waiting Like most people when

1403
01:11:52,640 --> 01:11:55,760
Speaker 8: they don't answer a question, your alarm bells go off

1404
01:11:55,800 --> 01:11:58,679
Speaker 8: pretty quickly, like that you just redirected in some way.

1405
01:11:59,439 --> 01:12:02,600
Speaker 8: He's really really good at starting the answer in a

1406
01:12:02,640 --> 01:12:05,080
Speaker 8: place where you think, oh, that's where the beginning of

1407
01:12:05,120 --> 01:12:08,479
Speaker 8: the answer belongs, and then making a little jump into

1408
01:12:09,200 --> 01:12:12,400
Speaker 8: things are actually interesting to know about, so you're not bored,

1409
01:12:12,840 --> 01:12:14,320
Speaker 8: You're actually interested in what he's saying.

1410
01:12:14,360 --> 01:12:16,240
Speaker 3: You're saying like there's substance to it. He's not just

1411
01:12:16,240 --> 01:12:19,080
Speaker 3: saying nothing. He's saying something that's substantive and makes you

1412
01:12:19,120 --> 01:12:22,160
Speaker 3: think it's just not what you asked. But then you're

1413
01:12:22,200 --> 01:12:23,920
Speaker 3: thinking and you forget what you asked.

1414
01:12:24,280 --> 01:12:25,679
Speaker 5: That's exactly what happens.

1415
01:12:26,360 --> 01:12:31,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's like he's he's just saying that, like, yeah,

1416
01:12:31,040 --> 01:12:35,080
Speaker 1: Sam's lies. He's really good at lying, like and it's

1417
01:12:35,080 --> 01:12:37,640
Speaker 1: fun to listen to him lie as if that's a

1418
01:12:37,680 --> 01:12:40,439
Speaker 1: defense right where they're saying, like, well, they really painted

1419
01:12:40,439 --> 01:12:43,880
Speaker 1: a different picture of Sam because they you know, he

1420
01:12:43,960 --> 01:12:46,679
Speaker 1: got to get up on the stage and bullshit, that's good.

1421
01:12:46,960 --> 01:12:49,720
Speaker 2: That's a very interesting exchange to listen to as well,

1422
01:12:49,760 --> 01:12:52,200
Speaker 2: because it's like, you know, because it's very clear that

1423
01:12:52,200 --> 01:12:55,280
Speaker 2: Michael Lewis has very little to do with this podcast.

1424
01:12:55,840 --> 01:12:57,960
Speaker 2: I don't know, like I can think of a number

1425
01:12:57,960 --> 01:13:01,880
Speaker 2: of examples of a like big name a podcaster coming

1426
01:13:01,920 --> 01:13:04,080
Speaker 2: on their show to like be combative with the people

1427
01:13:04,080 --> 01:13:06,000
Speaker 2: who are actually making the show for them, and that

1428
01:13:06,200 --> 01:13:08,280
Speaker 2: like exchange too is like no, like I know what

1429
01:13:08,320 --> 01:13:12,800
Speaker 2: you're saying, but yeah, and even in what she's describing,

1430
01:13:13,040 --> 01:13:16,240
Speaker 2: like the court approaches either he's a genius or he's

1431
01:13:16,320 --> 01:13:20,559
Speaker 2: like an incompetent sweetie pie, but you're just like or

1432
01:13:20,680 --> 01:13:23,320
Speaker 2: he's a malevolent dumb ass, or he still seem to

1433
01:13:23,360 --> 01:13:23,599
Speaker 2: be the.

1434
01:13:23,600 --> 01:13:26,600
Speaker 1: King con Man. Yeah, but like, yeah, I love this

1435
01:13:26,760 --> 01:13:31,559
Speaker 1: idea that like, yeah, we're getting to see the real Sam,

1436
01:13:31,600 --> 01:13:34,639
Speaker 1: who is a guy who never answers your actual question.

1437
01:13:35,000 --> 01:13:37,639
Speaker 1: But like I want to continue the clip because Lewis

1438
01:13:37,680 --> 01:13:40,240
Speaker 1: says something very very ridiculous right after this.

1439
01:13:40,560 --> 01:13:44,360
Speaker 5: Okay, he's really really good at starting the answer in

1440
01:13:44,439 --> 01:13:46,839
Speaker 5: a place where you think, oh, that's where the beginning

1441
01:13:46,920 --> 01:13:49,880
Speaker 5: of the answer belongs, and then making a little jump

1442
01:13:50,120 --> 01:13:53,760
Speaker 5: into things are actually interesting to know about. So you're

1443
01:13:53,760 --> 01:13:56,240
Speaker 5: not bored, You're actually interested in what he's saying.

1444
01:13:56,280 --> 01:13:58,160
Speaker 3: You're saying like there's substance to it. He's not just

1445
01:13:58,160 --> 01:14:01,000
Speaker 3: saying nothing. He's saying something that substantive and makes you

1446
01:14:01,040 --> 01:14:04,080
Speaker 3: think it's just not what you asked. But then you're

1447
01:14:04,120 --> 01:14:05,839
Speaker 3: thinking and you forget what you asked.

1448
01:14:06,200 --> 01:14:11,040
Speaker 5: That's exactly what happens. It's engaging. It's like, maybe it's

1449
01:14:11,120 --> 01:14:13,960
Speaker 5: even better than the answer to the question.

1450
01:14:14,680 --> 01:14:17,439
Speaker 1: Right, Maybe it's what you should ask Yes.

1451
01:14:17,240 --> 01:14:19,200
Speaker 5: Maybe it's not even what you should have asked. That's

1452
01:14:19,280 --> 01:14:20,080
Speaker 5: exactly right.

1453
01:14:20,840 --> 01:14:24,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Sam. The answer the question Sam answers that

1454
01:14:24,080 --> 01:14:26,960
Speaker 1: aren't what he's being asked or what you should have asked, right, Like,

1455
01:14:27,040 --> 01:14:29,400
Speaker 1: he's smarter than you, the interviewer, and he knows what

1456
01:14:29,439 --> 01:14:31,680
Speaker 1: you actually should have asked, which I just thought was

1457
01:14:31,720 --> 01:14:35,120
Speaker 1: a wild thing for a journalist to say. This is

1458
01:14:35,160 --> 01:14:36,600
Speaker 1: you know, we're getting to the end here. But the

1459
01:14:36,640 --> 01:14:38,840
Speaker 1: last thing I wanted to bring up was maybe the

1460
01:14:38,880 --> 01:14:42,160
Speaker 1: most interesting case of Michael Lewis following Sam's crap, which

1461
01:14:42,200 --> 01:14:45,920
Speaker 1: is him believing that Sam's outfit, his hairstyle, his poor

1462
01:14:46,000 --> 01:14:49,519
Speaker 1: hygien oral evidence of his brilliance. Right, Sam just didn't

1463
01:14:49,560 --> 01:14:52,600
Speaker 1: have time to like take care of his appearance in

1464
01:14:52,640 --> 01:14:54,880
Speaker 1: any way. He was too smart to waste any of it,

1465
01:14:55,000 --> 01:14:58,000
Speaker 1: like his brain power on that And that article in

1466
01:14:58,080 --> 01:15:01,240
Speaker 1: Jacobin gives a really good summary of the actual testimony

1467
01:15:01,280 --> 01:15:03,960
Speaker 1: of Sam's former friends in court blew this idea out

1468
01:15:04,000 --> 01:15:07,639
Speaker 1: of the water. The prosecutor followed with questions about Sam's

1469
01:15:07,680 --> 01:15:11,000
Speaker 1: approach to public relations. Ellison explained he was trying to

1470
01:15:11,040 --> 01:15:13,080
Speaker 1: cultivate an image of himself as a sort of very

1471
01:15:13,080 --> 01:15:16,200
Speaker 1: smart competence somewhat acentric founder. I was sitting in an

1472
01:15:16,200 --> 01:15:18,800
Speaker 1: overflow room on that day. So when the prosecutor asked,

1473
01:15:18,800 --> 01:15:21,360
Speaker 1: how would you describe the defendant's personal appearance through twenty

1474
01:15:21,400 --> 01:15:23,960
Speaker 1: twenty two, the room was allowed to erupt into laughter.

1475
01:15:24,280 --> 01:15:26,519
Speaker 1: Ellison replied, he looked like he didn't put a lot

1476
01:15:26,560 --> 01:15:29,679
Speaker 1: of effort into his personal appearance. He dressed sort of sloppery, sloppily,

1477
01:15:29,720 --> 01:15:31,760
Speaker 1: and didn't cut his hair often. He said he thought

1478
01:15:31,800 --> 01:15:33,840
Speaker 1: his hair had been very valuable. He said ever since

1479
01:15:33,920 --> 01:15:36,400
Speaker 1: Jane Street. He thought he had gotten higher bonuses because

1480
01:15:36,439 --> 01:15:38,160
Speaker 1: of his hair, and it was an important part of

1481
01:15:38,280 --> 01:15:39,879
Speaker 1: fdx's narrative and image.

1482
01:15:40,520 --> 01:15:46,160
Speaker 2: God yeah, first embarrassing, but also I think, you know,

1483
01:15:46,600 --> 01:15:52,040
Speaker 2: clearly predicated on the dipshit billionaires that came before him,

1484
01:15:52,240 --> 01:15:56,640
Speaker 2: Like there is a clear aesthetic and a clear like

1485
01:15:56,840 --> 01:15:59,360
Speaker 2: you know, slovenly genius thing that he'd like.

1486
01:15:59,360 --> 01:16:02,960
Speaker 1: It's strategic and that's interesting, right, the fact that Sam

1487
01:16:03,040 --> 01:16:06,240
Speaker 1: is standing on the shoulders of giants of Steve Jobs,

1488
01:16:06,360 --> 01:16:11,880
Speaker 1: unwashed shoulders like you know, Mark Zuckerberg's hoodie and whatever.

1489
01:16:12,960 --> 01:16:14,599
Speaker 2: Genocideary that he wears.

1490
01:16:14,800 --> 01:16:17,960
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and it's like yeah. Lewis describes it as

1491
01:16:18,000 --> 01:16:20,559
Speaker 1: like everything in Sam's appearance felt less like a decision

1492
01:16:20,600 --> 01:16:22,960
Speaker 1: than a decision not to make it decision and no,

1493
01:16:23,120 --> 01:16:26,000
Speaker 1: what everyone says at FTX is like he was obsessed

1494
01:16:26,040 --> 01:16:28,720
Speaker 1: with like his hair. When they were spending trying to

1495
01:16:28,720 --> 01:16:31,480
Speaker 1: build their two hundred million dollars or whatever new headquarters.

1496
01:16:31,760 --> 01:16:34,320
Speaker 1: His only design note was that it should be shaped

1497
01:16:34,360 --> 01:16:36,600
Speaker 1: so it looked from the side like his hairs do,

1498
01:16:37,280 --> 01:16:39,519
Speaker 1: because he thought that, like he thought it was iconic,

1499
01:16:39,720 --> 01:16:40,760
Speaker 1: right like.

1500
01:16:41,120 --> 01:16:43,880
Speaker 2: Which is also based on the what we were just

1501
01:16:44,320 --> 01:16:48,559
Speaker 2: listening to. What the like logo to that podcast is

1502
01:16:48,560 --> 01:16:50,800
Speaker 2: is the shape of his hair. Everyone's playing into it.

1503
01:16:50,880 --> 01:16:54,680
Speaker 1: It's yeah, fuck, it's fucking wild. Anyway, Jamie, that's my episode.

1504
01:16:55,040 --> 01:16:57,599
Speaker 1: Do you think we should fire Michael Lewis into the sun?

1505
01:16:58,600 --> 01:17:00,960
Speaker 2: Well, I was, I was thinking earlier. I am very

1506
01:17:01,000 --> 01:17:03,719
Speaker 2: curious because you know, I think it's like a waste

1507
01:17:03,720 --> 01:17:06,439
Speaker 2: of time to ask, like, well, Michael Lewis have another

1508
01:17:06,520 --> 01:17:08,840
Speaker 2: opportunity to course correct his career. Of course he will,

1509
01:17:09,120 --> 01:17:09,800
Speaker 2: of course you will.

1510
01:17:10,120 --> 01:17:13,759
Speaker 1: Yes, He's gonna write seventy more books.

1511
01:17:14,240 --> 01:17:17,120
Speaker 2: Well, what I'm curious about is like where he goes

1512
01:17:17,200 --> 01:17:19,200
Speaker 2: from here. I feel like it's pretty telling if you've

1513
01:17:19,240 --> 01:17:22,400
Speaker 2: been con to this fucking degree, because no one clocked

1514
01:17:22,479 --> 01:17:25,559
Speaker 2: him in the blind Side, But now he's been pretty

1515
01:17:25,600 --> 01:17:31,040
Speaker 2: severely clocked as like giving in to his worst biases

1516
01:17:31,479 --> 01:17:34,320
Speaker 2: and reporting it as fact. And I do wonder, like,

1517
01:17:35,200 --> 01:17:37,880
Speaker 2: if that's the position you're in, and you will absolutely

1518
01:17:37,960 --> 01:17:42,000
Speaker 2: read another book because you're unkillable financially, Like, I wonder

1519
01:17:42,080 --> 01:17:44,559
Speaker 2: which direction he's going to go in. Is he going

1520
01:17:44,600 --> 01:17:47,160
Speaker 2: to be hyper cautious, is he going to play it safe?

1521
01:17:47,360 --> 01:17:49,559
Speaker 2: Is he going to be self reflective at all? Or

1522
01:17:49,600 --> 01:17:52,160
Speaker 2: is he going to double down on the falling for

1523
01:17:52,280 --> 01:17:55,120
Speaker 2: it kind of stuff? I genuinely don't know, because I

1524
01:17:55,200 --> 01:17:57,439
Speaker 2: just like it's very hard to discern what kind of

1525
01:17:57,439 --> 01:18:01,400
Speaker 2: person Like it seems like he's certainly, you know, like

1526
01:18:01,520 --> 01:18:03,920
Speaker 2: high in his own supply and is like, well, you know,

1527
01:18:04,000 --> 01:18:06,400
Speaker 2: of course anyone could have fallen for it, but he

1528
01:18:06,640 --> 01:18:09,160
Speaker 2: is sort of conceding to the fact that he fell

1529
01:18:09,200 --> 01:18:11,320
Speaker 2: for it. I just am curious what happens to someone

1530
01:18:11,320 --> 01:18:11,920
Speaker 2: from there.

1531
01:18:12,120 --> 01:18:14,640
Speaker 1: My suspicion, and maybe I'll be wrong about this. I

1532
01:18:14,640 --> 01:18:16,960
Speaker 1: think we'll know pretty soon. I think he's going to

1533
01:18:17,040 --> 01:18:20,839
Speaker 1: do another SAM. I specifically think he's going to yeah

1534
01:18:20,880 --> 01:18:24,800
Speaker 1: a second, a second SAM has hit the Michael Lewis bibliography,

1535
01:18:25,200 --> 01:18:27,439
Speaker 1: and it's going to be Sam Altman, like he's going

1536
01:18:27,520 --> 01:18:29,679
Speaker 1: to do with Sam Altman, the open AI guy who

1537
01:18:29,760 --> 01:18:32,280
Speaker 1: just got fired from his job. He's going to do

1538
01:18:32,320 --> 01:18:36,960
Speaker 1: a book on Sam Altman. I suspect you're probably right.

1539
01:18:37,000 --> 01:18:39,519
Speaker 2: You're probably because then he'll be like and I would

1540
01:18:39,640 --> 01:18:42,719
Speaker 2: know I can see through Sam's now having been conned

1541
01:18:42,720 --> 01:18:45,160
Speaker 2: by one. I certainly won't becoming.

1542
01:18:45,040 --> 01:18:48,479
Speaker 1: Sammy wants Sam on you, Sam me twice, won't get

1543
01:18:48,520 --> 01:18:50,599
Speaker 1: Sammed again. You know, I am just like.

1544
01:18:50,720 --> 01:18:55,280
Speaker 2: Other Sam Sammy chit Wow, Yeah no, that.

1545
01:18:55,800 --> 01:18:58,880
Speaker 1: That's my guess as to where this goes is Sam Altman.

1546
01:18:59,439 --> 01:19:02,599
Speaker 2: What why is Michael Lewis being presented with a second

1547
01:19:02,640 --> 01:19:04,280
Speaker 2: Sam doesn't seem fair?

1548
01:19:04,720 --> 01:19:06,840
Speaker 1: Second Sam? Is it that? Well, I've already done that

1549
01:19:06,920 --> 01:19:10,759
Speaker 1: joke once and it worked and all. It always works,

1550
01:19:10,840 --> 01:19:13,560
Speaker 1: j it always works. Yeah.

1551
01:19:13,760 --> 01:19:19,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well I don't feel well. You know, I've I

1552
01:19:19,600 --> 01:19:22,479
Speaker 2: would say that this is like in the top twenty

1553
01:19:22,520 --> 01:19:26,120
Speaker 2: percentile of Bastards episodes. I've come out feeling like, you know,

1554
01:19:26,200 --> 01:19:29,599
Speaker 2: I don't feel that bad. I usually feel like really dire.

1555
01:19:30,000 --> 01:19:33,120
Speaker 2: I feel pretty good. Yeah, he's in forever. He's in

1556
01:19:33,200 --> 01:19:33,880
Speaker 2: forever jail.

1557
01:19:34,920 --> 01:19:39,040
Speaker 1: He's in he is in forever jail, right, Yeah, speaking

1558
01:19:39,040 --> 01:19:43,640
Speaker 1: of forever jail, Jamie talent is like a jail that

1559
01:19:43,800 --> 01:19:48,559
Speaker 1: locks you into, for example, making a weekly podcast. And

1560
01:19:49,080 --> 01:19:51,000
Speaker 1: I am happy that you and I are about to

1561
01:19:51,000 --> 01:19:51,759
Speaker 1: be cell mates.

1562
01:19:52,680 --> 01:19:56,120
Speaker 2: We are I'm so excited. Yeah, we get to do

1563
01:19:56,200 --> 01:19:58,080
Speaker 2: the fun thing where we're like, we can't talk much

1564
01:19:58,120 --> 01:19:59,280
Speaker 2: about it yet, but there's.

1565
01:19:59,080 --> 01:20:02,320
Speaker 1: A weird podcast about it. But Jamie Loftus Weekly is

1566
01:20:02,360 --> 01:20:05,240
Speaker 1: coming to the cool Zone Network. You were going to

1567
01:20:05,360 --> 01:20:08,480
Speaker 1: be the cool hand Luke of our podcast.

1568
01:20:08,560 --> 01:20:12,040
Speaker 2: Pure welcome God. I would love to be the cool

1569
01:20:12,040 --> 01:20:14,960
Speaker 2: hand look of the podcast. I gotta get some new outfits.

1570
01:20:15,160 --> 01:20:17,559
Speaker 1: Gotta get some new outfits. Gotta No, that's not the one.

1571
01:20:17,680 --> 01:20:19,120
Speaker 1: Is that the one where he throws a baseball at

1572
01:20:19,120 --> 01:20:20,639
Speaker 1: the wall or is that the Great Escape?

1573
01:20:22,000 --> 01:20:24,120
Speaker 2: I feel like that was cool hand a long time.

1574
01:20:24,240 --> 01:20:26,400
Speaker 1: Neither of I not since I was like seven, So

1575
01:20:26,600 --> 01:20:27,040
Speaker 1: I don't know.

1576
01:20:27,520 --> 01:20:29,639
Speaker 2: Why are you a cool hand look when you were seven?

1577
01:20:30,080 --> 01:20:31,599
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mom loved that movie.

1578
01:20:32,000 --> 01:20:32,320
Speaker 2: Nice.

1579
01:20:32,880 --> 01:20:35,479
Speaker 1: My mom had very strict rules on like what I

1580
01:20:35,479 --> 01:20:38,320
Speaker 1: could watch on as movies as a kid unless it

1581
01:20:38,360 --> 01:20:40,479
Speaker 1: was a movie she liked, which is why I was

1582
01:20:40,520 --> 01:20:42,799
Speaker 1: in first grade when we watched Alien.

1583
01:20:43,600 --> 01:20:47,840
Speaker 2: So that explains so much about you too.

1584
01:20:49,920 --> 01:20:52,960
Speaker 1: She was so excited that all the men die and

1585
01:20:52,960 --> 01:20:55,400
Speaker 1: and and the woman didn't. But like, yeah, she wanted

1586
01:20:55,439 --> 01:20:57,519
Speaker 1: me to see that movie at a very young age.

1587
01:20:57,760 --> 01:21:02,080
Speaker 1: What a legacy, truly, The sentence because men are stupid

1588
01:21:02,200 --> 01:21:04,599
Speaker 1: was uttered two or three times during that.

1589
01:21:04,520 --> 01:21:09,160
Speaker 2: Movie, which does unpack a lot of the plot intended

1590
01:21:09,240 --> 01:21:12,360
Speaker 2: or not there. My mom would let me watch soap

1591
01:21:12,400 --> 01:21:14,640
Speaker 2: operas very young, and would I would be like, what

1592
01:21:14,680 --> 01:21:16,920
Speaker 2: do they mean when they say making love? And she

1593
01:21:16,920 --> 01:21:18,920
Speaker 2: would say, what do you think?

1594
01:21:19,040 --> 01:21:19,519
Speaker 1: I don't know?

1595
01:21:19,600 --> 01:21:20,320
Speaker 2: I'm seven?

1596
01:21:21,800 --> 01:21:24,360
Speaker 1: Yeah you haven't. You have not equipped me to answer

1597
01:21:24,400 --> 01:21:24,960
Speaker 1: that question.

1598
01:21:25,080 --> 01:21:25,280
Speaker 4: Mother.

1599
01:21:28,200 --> 01:21:32,000
Speaker 2: Well, yes, weekly podcast coming soon early next year? Was

1600
01:21:32,040 --> 01:21:35,240
Speaker 2: it about you? Guess? But don't contact me about it

1601
01:21:35,240 --> 01:21:36,000
Speaker 2: because you're wrong?

1602
01:21:36,520 --> 01:21:41,400
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, A second Jamie has hit the cool zone.

1603
01:21:41,600 --> 01:21:43,920
Speaker 1: I mean, you've done more than two podcasts. This joke

1604
01:21:44,000 --> 01:21:44,680
Speaker 1: never worked, But.

1605
01:21:46,360 --> 01:21:50,519
Speaker 2: A first Jamie has hit the cool zone. Weekly. That's right, Amy,

1606
01:21:50,800 --> 01:21:55,120
Speaker 2: What podcast is this of ours? Oh? God? How many?

1607
01:21:55,280 --> 01:21:55,679
Speaker 2: How many?

1608
01:21:55,720 --> 01:21:56,040
Speaker 3: This is?

1609
01:21:56,240 --> 01:21:56,640
Speaker 2: This will be?

1610
01:21:56,680 --> 01:21:56,760
Speaker 4: What?

1611
01:21:56,920 --> 01:21:57,559
Speaker 2: Oh my god?

1612
01:21:57,680 --> 01:21:59,840
Speaker 1: Oh it's possible to say it's impossible.

1613
01:22:01,200 --> 01:22:04,800
Speaker 2: I think it's like six. Yeah, I think it's like six.

1614
01:22:05,280 --> 01:22:07,880
Speaker 2: We've entered the half dozen range. It's getting dangerous.

1615
01:22:08,000 --> 01:22:09,360
Speaker 1: That's so cool for us.

1616
01:22:09,640 --> 01:22:13,000
Speaker 2: I know we're forever wives, Sam Bankman freed forever, Jill

1617
01:22:13,360 --> 01:22:15,600
Speaker 2: ever jail us forever wives.

1618
01:22:16,080 --> 01:22:20,200
Speaker 1: Oh uh so, Jamie, anything else you wanted to plug

1619
01:22:20,280 --> 01:22:22,880
Speaker 1: before we ride on out of here, like Michael by.

1620
01:22:22,920 --> 01:22:27,080
Speaker 2: Raw Dog bitches. Yeah, it's the holidays. Are you looking

1621
01:22:27,120 --> 01:22:30,240
Speaker 2: for something to get for your loved or hated one?

1622
01:22:30,360 --> 01:22:33,080
Speaker 2: I won't know. Buy a copy of Raw Dog. It's

1623
01:22:33,080 --> 01:22:35,439
Speaker 2: my book about hot dogs. And if you don't like

1624
01:22:35,520 --> 01:22:38,320
Speaker 2: hot dogs, the title's funny, and I think that's you know,

1625
01:22:38,360 --> 01:22:41,080
Speaker 2: about sixty percent of the purchases I've gotten have been

1626
01:22:41,160 --> 01:22:43,439
Speaker 2: off that alone, So you should buy Raw Dog.

1627
01:22:44,000 --> 01:22:48,800
Speaker 1: And yeah, buy raw Dog. And now I'm not going

1628
01:22:48,880 --> 01:22:50,439
Speaker 1: to make a raw Dog jake. That's just gonna get

1629
01:22:50,479 --> 01:22:55,040
Speaker 1: me in trouble anyway. Buy a Cooler Zone Media subscription

1630
01:22:55,240 --> 01:22:58,200
Speaker 1: and you won't have to hear ads, Or don't buy

1631
01:22:58,200 --> 01:23:01,519
Speaker 1: a Cooler Zone Media subscription and continue to listen to ads.

1632
01:23:02,040 --> 01:23:04,960
Speaker 1: It's I don't care, live your life. I'm not your

1633
01:23:04,960 --> 01:23:05,639
Speaker 1: fucking dad.

1634
01:23:06,200 --> 01:23:10,400
Speaker 2: If you really want to hear the advertisings that Robert's disparaging,

1635
01:23:10,560 --> 01:23:12,760
Speaker 2: I personally think it's more fun to imagine it. So

1636
01:23:12,800 --> 01:23:14,840
Speaker 2: you should get a cooler Zone Media subscription.

1637
01:23:15,200 --> 01:23:18,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, once everyone's on cooler Zone Media, then we can

1638
01:23:18,160 --> 01:23:22,760
Speaker 1: finally get that sweet Lockheed Martin subscription that I've or

1639
01:23:22,840 --> 01:23:24,760
Speaker 1: whatever ad deals that I've been wanting to have.

1640
01:23:26,439 --> 01:23:29,639
Speaker 2: Robert can finally live inside a grenade like it's always

1641
01:23:29,680 --> 01:23:30,240
Speaker 2: been his dream.

1642
01:23:30,280 --> 01:23:33,719
Speaker 1: That's been my dream, that's been my dream, Jamie. Yeah,

1643
01:23:34,880 --> 01:23:36,200
Speaker 1: all right, we're done.

1644
01:23:36,200 --> 01:23:41,080
Speaker 2: We did it. Behind the Bastards is a production of

1645
01:23:41,120 --> 01:23:44,160
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit

1646
01:23:44,160 --> 01:23:47,760
Speaker 2: our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out

1647
01:23:47,800 --> 01:23:50,760
Speaker 2: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

1648
01:23:50,760 --> 01:23:51,560
Speaker 2: your podcasts.