Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, Robert Evans here with Behind the Bastards, and
Speaker 2: we've got some kind of sad news today. This is
Speaker 2: going to hit members of the community pretty hard. But
Speaker 2: forty eight years ago, on November tenth, nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: the SS Edmund Fitzgerald went down in Lake Superior, killing
Speaker 2: all twenty nine crew members on board. This is a
Speaker 2: hard time of the year for everybody here at Behind
Speaker 2: the Bastards, for all of you at home, and the
Speaker 2: only thing that makes it easier is the knowledge that
Speaker 2: both the Russian Federation and the Chinese government have recently
Speaker 2: substantially increased the sizes of their nuclear stockpile, while the
Speaker 2: United States is in the process of renovating its own
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons. And my hope, I think all of our hope,
Speaker 2: is that the leaders of our world can kind of
Speaker 2: band together in this time of conflict and sadness to
Speaker 2: finally expect into the entirety of their nuclear stockpiles, detonating
Speaker 2: them over Lake Superior. You know that's my hope. I
Speaker 2: know it's all of your hope back at home, and
Speaker 2: I really think what can carry us through this is
Speaker 2: some classic MAO era propaganda posters sewing, Joe Biden, Zijen
Speaker 2: Ping and Vladimir Putin walking hand in hand, surrounded by
Speaker 2: a crowd of little kids in Red Guard uniforms, heading
Speaker 2: towards the light of a new atomic sun, while a
Speaker 2: series of mushroom clouds detonate over Lake Superior's debts. Anyway,
Speaker 2: welcome to the show, Jamie. That's so.
Speaker 3: I mean, first of all, thank you, thank you for that.
Speaker 3: I needed to hear it. I think we all the
Speaker 3: image you described, and I hate that my mind went
Speaker 3: here conjured the image of Paul Walker in the convertible
Speaker 3: next to Brian Griffin. That's right, that's right, sort of
Speaker 3: what I was picturing. The image you described has that
Speaker 3: exact same and it just acts just throw someone in
Speaker 3: the back seat, same exact ship.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's the dream, Jamie, that's the dream. God, what
Speaker 2: a beautiful, beautiful dream.
Speaker 3: I really think about being a member of Paul Walker's
Speaker 3: family at the time that image was circular. Well, you're
Speaker 3: just like.
Speaker 2: I mean, from your jacuzzie filled with one hundred dollars bills. Yes,
Speaker 2: even so, my.
Speaker 3: Loved one, my dearly departed, being thrown in a convertible
Speaker 3: next to a cartoon dog. Who to add insult to
Speaker 3: injury would be resurrected within months, and like Brian the
Speaker 3: Dog not to Okay, Brian the Dog was resurrecrected, I
Speaker 3: think on the same timeline as Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: It was like, yeah, very similar characters.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, and we can all agree that, Billow, they're
Speaker 3: both mar heads and they also and they both are
Speaker 3: you know, like middling authors.
Speaker 2: You could say, yeah, yeah, that's fair to say. So Jamie,
Speaker 2: speaking of mediocre men, how do you feel have you
Speaker 2: been keeping up with the story of Bastard's pot alumni,
Speaker 2: Sam Bankman Freed?
Speaker 3: Okay, so I have. I I know the broad strokes,
Speaker 3: but as soon as the joyous news became started coming in,
Speaker 3: I knew that we were going to be doing this.
Speaker 3: And I don't know any of the particulars except for
Speaker 3: tweets of yours that have been algorithm to the top
Speaker 3: of my feed. I'm just there's no one I would
Speaker 3: rather be with to let it just wash off for me.
Speaker 1: Robert Family, Robert, can I ask you to please share
Speaker 1: your working title for this episode because it's funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Sam Bankman, not Freed, and in parentheses because
Speaker 2: he is in jail.
Speaker 3: I think it's fun, and I think I think that
Speaker 3: that is far superior to Sam Bankman jailed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not creative at all. You got to spend
Speaker 2: a lot of extra words I could create.
Speaker 3: I'm not interested in other perspectives on that title. I
Speaker 3: think that you got it exactly right.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, brevity is some bullshit.
Speaker 2: As a great author once said, so Jamie, speaking of
Speaker 2: great authors, eighty percent of this episode is shitting on
Speaker 2: Michael Lewis, the author of The Big Shirt. Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 2: we're really This is gonna be a great one for
Speaker 2: the Lewis heads in the audience. Wow, okay, okay, this
Speaker 2: is gonna be Oh buckle up, yeah, now this is relevant.
Speaker 2: The man just said buckle up. Oh yeah, strap the
Speaker 2: fuck in and down.
Speaker 3: Fuck ahead, we are.
Speaker 2: We are starting with Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short.
Speaker 3: James, We're okay. I feel like when I recently saw
Speaker 3: a picture of my three year old niece going to
Speaker 3: a Wiggles concert and I just caught myself smiling in
Speaker 3: the same way.
Speaker 2: This is great. Yeah, this is great. So on January fifth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, Sam Bankman freed send a message to
Speaker 2: one of his many signal loops. For what it's worth,
Speaker 2: February eight through sixteenth, Michael Lewis is going to be
Speaker 2: in the Bahamas profiling us. Now, if you haven't been
Speaker 2: following this story, and if Michael Lewis is not familiar
Speaker 2: to you, then you probably do remember like the most
Speaker 2: famous result of one of his novels, which is the
Speaker 2: movie The Big Short. This was based on a book
Speaker 2: Lewis wrote about a group of traders who had the
Speaker 2: foresight to predict and profit off of the two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight financial crash. They realized that, like the subprime
Speaker 2: loan business was like a bunch of hooey, and they
Speaker 2: shorted it right, made a bunch of money while everybody
Speaker 2: else lost their jobs.
Speaker 3: You love to see it.
Speaker 2: You love to see it. His other best known work
Speaker 2: is probably Moneyball, which is about a baseball team manager
Speaker 2: who uses which called saber metrics, which, without getting into it,
Speaker 2: is basically being Nate Silver but also actually running a
Speaker 2: sports team. Right.
Speaker 3: That is also that in twenty twenty I started doing
Speaker 3: this bit on Cursed Zoom comedy shows called The Boyfriend
Speaker 3: Criterion Collection, and it's just like Blu Rays that are
Speaker 3: in your house against your living well, Yeah, mon Ball
Speaker 3: is very much a part of the boyfriend Criterion collection.
Speaker 3: It's right up there with Whiplash. It's like a disaster.
Speaker 1: I must say, if you, if you did not date
Speaker 1: the worst man you've ever dated in your entire life
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen that was obsessed with all things Michael Lewis,
Speaker 1: then were you really in Los Angeles?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, that's that's true. The problematic By the way, if.
Speaker 3: Your worst boyfriend couldn't read, really.
Speaker 2: Think you're you're the median American and honestly don't even know.
Speaker 3: Who I'm talking about, Like it's impossible to say that,
Speaker 3: but I know.
Speaker 2: The only non problematic piece of physical media that you
Speaker 2: can have on you in your house as a boyfriend
Speaker 2: is an original VHS tape of Trimmors. That's just the
Speaker 2: way it works.
Speaker 3: I I and I would fight with you if I didn't,
Speaker 3: if I didn't feel the same way. I think that
Speaker 3: that is very much as a good sign.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, that's excellent, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: The more prominently displayed, the better.
Speaker 2: To say that Michael Lewis is a famous writer or
Speaker 2: famous journalist. Puts it pretty lightly. He's probably the best
Speaker 2: known journalist in the country and almost certainly the wealthiest.
Speaker 2: There's not a lot of competition for that, but like,
Speaker 2: he's definitely in the running. He's what you'd call an
Speaker 2: access journalist. Who he is somebody whose stories come from
Speaker 2: his ability to get close to his subjects and just
Speaker 2: kind of exist with them during a crucial period of
Speaker 2: time as a fly on the wall. There's a number
Speaker 2: of ways to do this. There are a couple of
Speaker 2: like big Trump administration books written by journalists who basically
Speaker 2: just got to sit around Trump and his White House
Speaker 2: while things went insane. The route that Lewis takes is
Speaker 2: to befriend the people that he's writing about. Right, He
Speaker 2: is this guy and people who know him will say
Speaker 2: he just kind of makes people comfortable around him. He
Speaker 2: is a guy that you want to have at a party.
Speaker 2: He's a he's pleasant company. Enough people have said this
Speaker 2: that I assume it's true based on just like how
Speaker 2: he does his stories. People he's good at putting folks
Speaker 2: at ease and they don't mind him being around, and
Speaker 2: that's how he gets a lot of his stories. Now,
Speaker 2: as general rule, if you are in the position that
Speaker 2: Sam bankman Freed and his friends who are in circa
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two running a massive financial shell game, you
Speaker 2: would be hesitant and welcome very well.
Speaker 3: I think we can all agree based on kings talk
Speaker 3: about a game of four D chess.
Speaker 2: The last guy you might want hanging around your office
Speaker 2: is a dude who could literally, like Michael Lewis could
Speaker 2: literally in like the space of a phone call, get
Speaker 2: articles greenlit in every newspaper in the country. Right. He
Speaker 2: just is he has that kind of pull. He is
Speaker 2: that reliable a seller for his stories, Like nobody would
Speaker 2: not want to take a story that he had, so
Speaker 2: you would want to be cautious. You would think you'd
Speaker 2: want to be cautious about letting this guy into your house.
Speaker 2: But there's a reason why they said yes when he
Speaker 2: reached out to SBF, and it's that Michael Lewis's reputation
Speaker 2: among people in the finance industry was not oh, he
Speaker 2: wrote this book that's critical of us. Oh, he's this
Speaker 2: guy who exposes the diret of the finance industry. It's
Speaker 2: this is a guy who can make you into a celebrity.
Speaker 2: And in early twenty twenty two, that was the entire
Speaker 2: vision of everyone like connected business wise to Sam Bankman,
Speaker 2: Freed was, we need to turn this guy into a
Speaker 2: celebrity who's constantly everywhere to raise the profile of this exchange. Right,
Speaker 2: They spent something like a billion dollars on a variety
Speaker 2: of different corporate and celebrity endorsements. Of the nine billion
Speaker 2: that was missing, about a billion went towards shit to
Speaker 2: boost FTX and to boost Sam's profile.
Speaker 3: Right, I'm sorry, where's that. You gotta spend money to
Speaker 3: make money, I guess you because spent ten billion to
Speaker 3: make nothing. To go to jail. You have to see
Speaker 3: this has been ten billion dollars to go to jail.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying, to go to to go to
Speaker 2: Forever prison, Shamie. Let's be honest about this.
Speaker 3: He's going to. I for every time I've seen Forever prison,
Speaker 3: very often. For you, I hear it in the cadence
Speaker 3: of the Forever Purge trailer. You're like, Oh, it's the
Speaker 3: Forever prison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is where he's going. And that's you know again,
Speaker 2: everyone is kind of cut ties. Everyone legitimate has cut
Speaker 2: ties with not just Sam, but like Crypto in general.
Speaker 2: In the wake of Sam's collapse, But there was about
Speaker 2: a year and a half period where like every bank
Speaker 2: was looking into it, every tech company was putting shit
Speaker 2: on the blockchain. The last kind of holdout, and the
Speaker 2: reason why Sam put so much money into this was politicians. Right.
Speaker 2: There were a few who would cut but like most
Speaker 2: people who were in politics would not even take donations
Speaker 2: directly from crypto, right, you had to launder that shit.
Speaker 2: And Sam was looking to buy himself a sizable chunk
Speaker 2: of Congress so that he could make sure that regulations
Speaker 2: on crypto favored his company specifically, which is why he
Speaker 2: did stuff like you know, he spent tens of millions
Speaker 2: of dollars getting Tom Brady and Giselle Bunchen to like
Speaker 2: pretend to be his friends. He sat down next to
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton on fucking stage in a very cringey interview.
Speaker 2: He paid Larry Davis to make a Super Bowl lad
Speaker 2: But all of that, the potential, all of that had
Speaker 2: to legitimize him paled in comparison to having the big
Speaker 2: short dude treat you like a financial genius. Right, If
Speaker 2: Michael Lewis treats you like Michael Burry, who's one of
Speaker 2: the characters from the Big short who became a big
Speaker 2: name after Lewis wrote this book. If he's like, this
Speaker 2: guy is that kind of financial genius, then everybody's going
Speaker 2: to start taking your calls, even people who like have
Speaker 2: been hiding from Crypto because they don't they're worried that
Speaker 2: what happened would happen right, that you'd get ten million
Speaker 2: in donations, they have to pay them back because it
Speaker 2: turned out that it was a con man.
Speaker 3: You know, there's there's a note of it that it
Speaker 3: almost reminds me when like Errol Morris like profiled and
Speaker 3: worked for Elizabeth Holmes. You're just like, it's that level
Speaker 3: of profile versus l.
Speaker 2: Yes, this turns you into somebody who's like who can
Speaker 2: be taken seriously because that's what who Lewis is, right,
Speaker 2: he is that big a deal. I'm not like puffing
Speaker 2: him up. He doesn't need it right now.
Speaker 3: He is people to care about Moneyball the most, the
Speaker 3: most boring ass thing I've ever heard about my life.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's the thing. He is one of these guys.
Speaker 2: He's maybe the main character of this episode. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: call him quite a bastard, but one of the things
Speaker 2: you have to give him is. He is legitimately a
Speaker 2: very good writer. There's no other way you get people
Speaker 2: to give a shit about Moneyball. He's like, I read
Speaker 2: his whole Sam Bankman Freed book. I think it's bullshit,
Speaker 2: but I didn't. I didn't get bored at any point.
Speaker 2: You know, is at a pace a piece of writing,
Speaker 2: you know. So he decides to come knocking. Sam is
Speaker 2: immediately on board. All of their PR people are on board.
Speaker 2: Not everyone at FTX is on board. Carolin Edison, who
Speaker 2: is his on again, off again girlfriend who testified against
Speaker 2: him repeatedly. She is running Alameda, which is the company
Speaker 2: that bankrupts everything that he is illegally funneling consumer deposits into.
Speaker 2: She is basically like the and she does not like
Speaker 2: the idea of having Michael Lewis around. Now. She can't
Speaker 2: really confront Sam Bankman Freed when she has a bad idea.
Speaker 2: Nobody can, so she just kind of hedges it and
Speaker 2: says the signal chat makes sense. I feel like my
Speaker 2: instincts are more towards under the radar, but I might
Speaker 2: just be irrationally biased towards that in general. And then
Speaker 2: like an emoji of a face sticking its tongue out,
Speaker 2: and Sam replies, Sam, except exactly the opposite that, right, like.
Speaker 3: You know you're down bad if you're asking Sam Bankreant
Speaker 3: Freed to make sense. Yeah, it's challenging. Oh god, that's
Speaker 3: such I mean, I don't know, I know we've talked
Speaker 3: about her in the past, but that's like a what
Speaker 3: a mess, what a nightmare.
Speaker 2: She's in a rough situation. And he will talk a
Speaker 2: lot about how he treats her in this. But Will
Speaker 2: mccaskell is also in that signal chat, and Will is
Speaker 2: basically the founder. He's not like literally the founder, but
Speaker 2: he is the founder of what is most commonly talked
Speaker 2: about as the effect of altruism movement, and definitely its figurehead. Right.
Speaker 2: He is the big guy. He's this Oxford professor who
Speaker 2: he pills Sam Bankman Freed on the idea, and his
Speaker 2: response is kind of I think part of why this
Speaker 2: winds up going down. He says, I think either approach
Speaker 2: is reasonable, should just be a deliberate, coordinated plan. But
Speaker 2: if a whole bunch of attention is going to be
Speaker 2: on FTX, Sam and EA, whatever happens, then getting ahead
Speaker 2: of the game and controlling the narrative is necessary, yep,
Speaker 2: responded Sam, and they did it. Michael Lewis spends like
Speaker 2: a year with this guy, like he spends a lot
Speaker 2: of time around them. Everyone's very excited because what happened
Speaker 2: last year is Sam's world collapses and he gets charged
Speaker 2: with like seven felonies. And then right afterwards, Michael Lewis
Speaker 2: is like, by the way, I've been basically living with
Speaker 2: him for a year, and everyone's like, oh shit, this
Speaker 2: could be pretty good because like this guy can write.
Speaker 2: He's been front set, he's written about a financial collapse before.
Speaker 2: He's got front seat tickets to this whole thing. And
Speaker 2: then the book comes out, and unfortunately for Lewis, the
Speaker 2: book comes out, he times the release right for when
Speaker 2: the court case starts, so we get all of this
Speaker 2: right alongside his book. We get all of these signal
Speaker 2: texts and stuff that were not in his book book,
Speaker 2: and kind of the overwhelming thing that you see when
Speaker 2: you compare what comes out in the court case what
Speaker 2: comes out in the testimony of as Friends to the
Speaker 2: text of Lewis's book, is that like, oh, Michael got
Speaker 2: kind of fucking conned by this dude, right, Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: Like he fell for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean it speaks to the level of
Speaker 3: confidence one would have to have in their own reporting
Speaker 3: to time it with yep the trial, because if you
Speaker 3: had even a remote feeling that you have got you
Speaker 3: had gotten it wrong, I would be like release it
Speaker 3: a year after the trial, like bury it in the area.
Speaker 2: I can see if you're if you're just some journalists
Speaker 2: and this is your first book or you just don't
Speaker 2: have you're not like a huge hit. So like you
Speaker 2: are very Your publisher has a lot of power and
Speaker 2: they're like, we want this to drop when the case does,
Speaker 2: because that's when it'll sell best. I get that you
Speaker 2: might not have the suction necessary to move it. Michael
Speaker 2: Lewis can say we are putting this out this day
Speaker 2: and like, suck my dick. I'm Michael Lewis. It'll make
Speaker 2: you money, right, And he doesn't, which which suggests he
Speaker 2: has the same kind of hubris that Sam Bankman Freed
Speaker 2: did in a lot of ways. So to give you
Speaker 2: an example of how emotionally involved Lewis is in this case,
Speaker 2: here's a good write up on the court case by
Speaker 2: a journalist who was there during the trial, which was
Speaker 2: not filmed. Writing for Jacobin, and this is how they
Speaker 2: describe the devastating cross examination of Bankman Freed, who again
Speaker 2: chose to take the stand in his own defense despite
Speaker 2: every expert saying absolutely never do this. Quote across the
Speaker 2: aisle for me and the section reserve for friends and family.
Speaker 2: I could see Sam's parents growing increasingly agitated, his mom
Speaker 2: visibly shaking two rows behind them. I couldn't help but
Speaker 2: notice author Michael Lewis leaning forward, arms draped over the
Speaker 2: bench in front of him, with his head down between
Speaker 2: his arms.
Speaker 3: Nobody expects Michael Lewis in the court.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I you know, I do actually have I
Speaker 2: don't think they're very good people, but I have sympathy
Speaker 2: for Sam's parents. This is like a nightmare if like
Speaker 2: to know that your kid is going to forever prison,
Speaker 2: even if it's totally their faults.
Speaker 3: My empathy only goes so far. But also, like, what
Speaker 3: a scene, What a fucking scene.
Speaker 2: Absolutely phenomenal. Yeah, terrific. Can't wait for Jonah Hill to
Speaker 2: start as Sam Bankman Freed in the movie based on this.
Speaker 3: No, I really don't want.
Speaker 2: No, No, there's no one I want to see play
Speaker 2: him in a movie. Just do him. Like Maris and Frasier,
Speaker 2: have him always be off.
Speaker 3: That would be oh, I love yeah, like the Parents
Speaker 3: and Charlie Brown, Heather Sinclaire of Degrassi.
Speaker 2: And you know what, cast David Hyde Pierce as Michael Lewis.
Speaker 2: Then we got a movie. Then we got a fucking film.
Speaker 3: Then we got I mean, if if this whole ordeal
Speaker 3: results in David Hype Pierce winning an oscar a.
Speaker 2: Bad absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3: There's way is good.
Speaker 2: There's no way it's good. Yes, you know.
Speaker 3: And and it's possible that Adam McKay in an effort
Speaker 3: to course directing, endorse on sure Adam McKay is, like,
Speaker 3: he absolutely could, and he's and he would need to
Speaker 3: course correct on the Michael Lewis in the first place
Speaker 3: for having directed The Big Short. It's a great move
Speaker 3: for everyone. We could make everyone's agent in the situation.
Speaker 2: You're gonna be rich, Jamie, I'm gonna be fucking rich. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In in interviews he gave after the book came out
Speaker 2: and the trial started, Lewis framed his book Going Infinite
Speaker 2: about Sam Bankmanfried as a letter to the jury, which
Speaker 2: is like kind of nonsense, because obviously the jury is
Speaker 2: never allowed to read a book about the guy that
Speaker 2: they're going on a trial about, and the judge specifically
Speaker 2: instructed them not to. There's an interview with sixty minutes,
Speaker 2: which is really something we will hear some clips from
Speaker 2: it later. But in that interview, Lewis explained, I mean,
Speaker 2: there's going to be this trial, and the lawyers are
Speaker 2: going to tell two stories, and so there's a story
Speaker 2: war going on in the courtroom, and I think every
Speaker 2: war and I think neither one of those stories is
Speaker 2: as good as the one I have. And like I
Speaker 2: on one hand, yes, of course you're right, because you're
Speaker 2: a better writer than any lawyer is going to be.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, this isn't a story. It's
Speaker 2: just a question of what happened, Michael Lewis, and what
Speaker 2: happened is massive fraud, and you don't put that in
Speaker 2: your book.
Speaker 3: That's so I mean to hear. I mean, I guess
Speaker 3: I can be of many minds about characterizing it as
Speaker 3: a story war, because that is like just how history
Speaker 3: is written, and it's kind of almost refreshing to hear
Speaker 3: someone refer it to as like, well, whoever could write
Speaker 3: the better story? That's will We'll end up having the
Speaker 3: historical precedent, but interesting that it would be said out
Speaker 3: loud in that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again I want to reiterate, while Michael is
Speaker 2: the main character here, he's not like he's he's not
Speaker 2: a bastard. He's not someone who's like impact on the
Speaker 2: world has been monstrous as far as I've ever heard,
Speaker 2: He's a reasonably nice person. We'll definitely get him being
Speaker 2: mean in a couple of points here, but it's nothing
Speaker 2: that I would like call someone that, like one of
Speaker 2: history's greatest monster over But this is Bankman free. It
Speaker 2: is a bastard. And so I think talking about the
Speaker 2: way in which he kind of has Lewis wrapped around
Speaker 2: his finger, in the degree to which Lewis tortures his
Speaker 2: own logic and prose in order to ignore that is
Speaker 2: just fascinating. So with that in mind, let's start with
Speaker 2: a little bit more of Michael's backstory, because that is
Speaker 2: important to understand why he falls for this. Michael Monroe
Speaker 2: Lewis was born on October fifteenth, nineteen sixty in New Orleans. Now,
Speaker 2: from the beginning, his life was about as far from
Speaker 2: working class as you get, and to his credit, Lewis
Speaker 2: does not deny this whenever he's.
Speaker 3: Asked to the only thing you can't do, I guess, yeah, you've.
Speaker 2: Got to be open about it. Here's him talking to
Speaker 2: the Guardian Lewis's family stat at the very top of
Speaker 2: the Wasp Aristocra in New Orleans. I was so inside,
Speaker 2: he told me. I was literally trained how to sit
Speaker 2: on a throne when I was fifteen years old, because
Speaker 2: it was crowned the king of the Carnival Ball, an
Speaker 2: organization that didn't allow black people, didn't allow Jews. I
Speaker 2: would go from baseball practice to sceptor waving lessons. I
Speaker 2: was born into that world. Being an insider in New
Speaker 2: Orleans made him feel like an outsider everywhere else, and
Speaker 2: not always to his disadvantage. And first off, wow, that's
Speaker 2: quite a backstory.
Speaker 3: Thank you, King, I do you, King?
Speaker 2: I do think I want to point out something here,
Speaker 2: which is where I don't think he's obvious skating, but
Speaker 2: I think he's missing something about his own what his
Speaker 2: background has done for him. Because I don't I'm not
Speaker 2: going to question him when he says it made him
Speaker 2: feel like an outsider. But I think it's very clear
Speaker 2: that this is a guy whose work is defined by
Speaker 2: his ability to make himself into an insider. And I
Speaker 2: think that's a big part of why he's able to
Speaker 2: do that, is he grows up in the middle of
Speaker 2: wealth and power, right where it's the air that he breathed.
Speaker 2: And you don't notice this if like you grow up
Speaker 2: working class and don't know any super rich people. But
Speaker 2: when you meet some people who were born crazy rich,
Speaker 2: you note that, like a lot of them have this
Speaker 2: this way of making of making themselves feel like they
Speaker 2: belong anywhere, right, It's why they can get away with
Speaker 2: so much, Like even if they're totally out of their depth.
Speaker 2: There's this kind of expectation you get when you grow
Speaker 2: up hyper rich that the world is going to show
Speaker 2: you a degree of deference when you know people who
Speaker 2: have family fortunes behind them, you know what I'm talking about, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's the reason they are never going to get
Speaker 2: like carded to see if they're a member of a
Speaker 2: place that's members only, right, because they they have that
Speaker 2: way about them. And I think that's part of how as.
Speaker 3: Receptible thing well, And I do think that there is
Speaker 3: I mean, and it sounds like what you're getting at
Speaker 3: is like there is if you can get someone who
Speaker 3: grew up in those circumstances on the side of fucking decency.
Speaker 2: There is a huge.
Speaker 3: Value to having someone like that who knows how to
Speaker 3: navigate those places on your side. But if they're but
Speaker 3: but also, you know, to an extent and a liability
Speaker 3: because you never know, you know. I'm curious what endears
Speaker 3: him to Sam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get to that. So he goes to Princeton
Speaker 2: University and he graduates kum laude, which which means pretty
Speaker 2: good grades in nineteen eighty two. His senior thesis is
Speaker 2: on Donatello, a prominent ninja turtle. And when he's in college,
Speaker 2: he's a member of Princeton's Ivy Club, which is the
Speaker 2: oldest eating club in the school. Now, if you're not
Speaker 2: a blue blood, you probably are like, what the fuck
Speaker 2: is an eating club? These are private dining halls that
Speaker 2: are also kind of social clubs where upper classmen go
Speaker 2: to get nicer food. There's like nine of them, I
Speaker 2: think on campus, the Ivy Club at Princeton, or like
Speaker 2: everywhere at Princeton. There's other fancy boys schools have these.
Speaker 1: Robert, this is full count the clue.
Speaker 3: I was like eating club, the like eating club to
Speaker 3: me is like drive through Taco bell one am starving. Yeah, wow,
Speaker 3: eating club eating.
Speaker 2: What they Sophie, you said, this is full cunt. But
Speaker 2: it did not admit women until nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: The adacy to not let a woman go into hut.
Speaker 3: Something that cunty. It just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: And it's it's also very funny that like or not funny,
Speaker 2: but it's noteworthy. In this interview, it talks about how
Speaker 2: he was at the Ivy Club. Right when he talks about,
Speaker 2: you know, his upbringing. He's like, yeah, this like this
Speaker 2: contest I was in. You couldn't You couldn't be in
Speaker 2: this club if you were like black or Jewish. He
Speaker 2: doesn't mentioned that the Ivy Club doesn't admit women. I
Speaker 2: think that is maybe interesting. It's also worth noting that
Speaker 2: the Ivy Club. F Scott Fitzgerald writes about the Ivy
Speaker 2: Club and calls it f Scott Fitzgerald calls it detached
Speaker 2: and breathlessly aristocratic, and Scott Fitzgerald says that about your
Speaker 2: blue Blood Club, like, my god.
Speaker 3: I love that. Wow. What a treat, what a treat?
Speaker 3: If yeah, if f Scott Fitzgerald is the one experiencing
Speaker 3: like moral clarity about about your weird group. That's challenging. Now.
Speaker 2: While Lewis had a passion for art history, he had
Speaker 2: a bigger passion in life and it's stacking motherfucking paper.
Speaker 2: So he goes to the London School of Economics next
Speaker 2: and eventually joins the bond desk at Salomon Brothers. He's
Speaker 2: in like the London branch of the Salomon Brothers. Uh no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: he's just making Dalla dollar bills, y'all.
Speaker 1: Robert Dalla dollar Bill's time is happening now for us
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, speaking of Dalla dollar bills, buy some of
Speaker 2: these products and we think about things.
Speaker 1: I have a request for the listeners, which is not
Speaker 1: something that I often. I don't I don't ask, I
Speaker 1: don't ask anything of our listeners, just that just that
Speaker 1: they're happy. But if somebody could please make a dating
Speaker 1: profile for Michael Lewis as an art graphic, I just it,
Speaker 1: just please for me?
Speaker 2: Oh man, Okay, that's that's good. You've got You've got
Speaker 2: two different requests this week, listeners. One is that propaganda
Speaker 2: poster and the other is Michael Lewis dating profile. So Lewis.
Speaker 2: Lewis is, you know, an investment banker for just a
Speaker 2: few years. Actually you know who? He reminds me of,
Speaker 2: Oh okay, just.
Speaker 3: You know, hoping your toes in it. Then that kind
Speaker 3: of doesn't It's like the just the tip of financial crime.
Speaker 2: He's in there at eighty seven, the market crashes and
Speaker 2: he makes a pivot away from like doing that as
Speaker 2: a job, and he writes a book called Liar's Poker
Speaker 2: about the investment you know, Bang the stockbroker. That like
Speaker 2: that kind of life that makes a shitload of money, right,
Speaker 2: this is we'll talk about it in a second, but
Speaker 2: like I want to he minds me in this trajectory.
Speaker 2: Do you know anything about Michael Crichton?
Speaker 3: Uh? Oh, I mean I yeah, Peaks and Valleys. I
Speaker 3: had no attachment to him, but I know many do.
Speaker 3: And like, yeah, the back half of Michael Crichton pretty
Speaker 3: fucking brutal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pretty pretty brutal. I'm not talking about like
Speaker 2: his actual career as a writer as much as Crichton
Speaker 2: goes to Harvard Medical School and becomes a doctor. Most
Speaker 2: people are I don't think I actually know this, but
Speaker 2: like he was an actual MD. But he doesn't really
Speaker 2: do the job, Like he gets his MD and then
Speaker 2: he quits to write books like some of which have
Speaker 2: a medical like he's the creator of ER and he
Speaker 2: gets criticized by doctors who are like, oh you just
Speaker 2: creator of ER. Yeah, Michael Crichton created a r Yes.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, sorry, I thought we were talking about Michael Lewis. Yes,
Speaker 3: I knew Michael.
Speaker 2: They have a similar They have a similar kind of
Speaker 2: trajectory where they go to school for this thing they
Speaker 2: do like a teeny amount of it, just dip their
Speaker 2: toes in and then they get famous writing these books
Speaker 2: that are inspired by it. Right. I just find that interesting.
Speaker 2: So to give you a further idea of Lewis's family background,
Speaker 2: Liar's Poker, which is semi autobiographical, revolves around a scene
Speaker 2: where Michael Lewis is invited to a banquet hosted by
Speaker 2: the Queen Mother while he's working in London. He gets
Speaker 2: a seat there because of his cousin, Baroness Linda von Stauffenberg,
Speaker 2: and she seats next to the manager of Salomon Brothers,
Speaker 2: which is how he gets his job. Word salad crabs
Speaker 2: don't have bluer blood than this man like that is
Speaker 2: that is the bluest you fucking get.
Speaker 3: If your cousin's a baroness and you're in your like
Speaker 3: late twenties, y, what if you know.
Speaker 2: A baroness, you are like, that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: Lewis's depiction of Wall Street guys from Liar's Poker on
Speaker 2: because he writes a few books about Wall Street types
Speaker 2: because he knows them, right, It's generally noted as not
Speaker 2: being flattering, but I think that's by people who like
Speaker 2: a very naive view of what's unflattering because his Wall
Speaker 2: Street guys they curse a lot. They use phrases like
Speaker 2: big swing and dick. They're like they're like kind of gross,
Speaker 2: but in a way that's glamorous, right, Like I.
Speaker 3: Mean I feel like it's like the Glengarry Glenn Ross,
Speaker 3: Yes exactly, yeah, talking shit, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: It like it is a kind of thing where you
Speaker 2: could say he's not glamorizing it, but he's absolutely making
Speaker 2: it look a way that makes more young men greeting
Speaker 2: men when to become stock traders. And to extend the
Speaker 2: Michael Crichton comparison, it is Liar's Poker is generally agreed
Speaker 2: to have had a similar impact on its industry to
Speaker 2: how Jurassic Park influenced paleontology by like bringing a shitload
Speaker 2: of people in.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's really interesting to me because I like, I
Speaker 3: don't know. I have not read Liar's Poker. To be honest,
Speaker 3: I have not read any of his books. I have
Speaker 3: seen some of the adaptations in movies of his books.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, in terms of like, anytime someone writes
Speaker 3: something about Wall Street, like you have to be so
Speaker 3: fucking careful, and also even if you are extremely fucking careful,
Speaker 3: it will still bring in the wrong people who refuse
Speaker 3: to see the point, like they're like Wolf of Wall
Speaker 3: Street is one of my favorite movies, hands down. At
Speaker 3: it's great and it is exact time. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 3: still like brought people in on the wrong ye, Like
Speaker 3: fuck it, because brain dead people are going to be
Speaker 3: brain dead people.
Speaker 2: This is we're going in a more serious direction. But
Speaker 2: if you've read Slaughterhouse five, in the opening of it,
Speaker 2: Vonnegut talks about how when he said I'm going to
Speaker 2: write my my war book, his wife was like, don't
Speaker 2: do it. There's no way to do it without making
Speaker 2: it look cool, Like no one has ever managed to
Speaker 2: not do it in a way that makes young men
Speaker 2: think it's cool. And she was right, like, for the record, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean one of the problems with even anti war
Speaker 2: war fiction is it always makes it look cool because
Speaker 2: it's it's cool, right, That doesn't mean it's good. It's like,
Speaker 2: Joe Cammel is cool, he still killed one hundred million people.
Speaker 3: Joe Cammell gave my father lung cancer, and I stand
Speaker 3: by that. And to conjure a similar image Joe Cammell,
Speaker 3: there's an image that I saw when I worked in
Speaker 3: the Playboy archives of Joe Cammel and illustrated gorgeous like
Speaker 3: painting essentially of Joe Camil in convertible with smoking hot
Speaker 3: human women. Hell yeah, yeah, big old titties, And you're like, no,
Speaker 3: wonder this advertisement killed people. This advertisement kill people being
Speaker 3: like this, you could be this ugly ass camel with
Speaker 3: women with huge naturals, like just like.
Speaker 2: You can add up all the German generals on the
Speaker 2: Eastern Front and they didn't kill as many people as
Speaker 2: that act.
Speaker 3: Truly like, and it's a beautiful piece of artwork, but like,
Speaker 3: let's be fucking honest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so today Lewis merely acknowledges that the psychos he
Speaker 2: wrote about in Liar's Poker were more fun on the
Speaker 2: page than they were in person. This can be if
Speaker 2: this is your first book and you write it in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two and you really later, oh, this actually
Speaker 2: might have made the problem worse. That's not a thing
Speaker 2: you have any moral culpability for. That's just like writing
Speaker 2: a thing with good intentions and it turns out badly.
Speaker 2: But this does become a problem, and one that we
Speaker 2: can critique is partly a moral problem when it becomes
Speaker 2: part of a pattern, and it is a pattern with
Speaker 2: Michael Lewis. The Big Short is obviously not a Wall
Speaker 2: Street puff piece, but it became beloved by exactly the
Speaker 2: same people you might assume it was trying to criticize.
Speaker 2: And that Guardian article I've quoted from, there's a story
Speaker 2: about Michael Lewis attends this big New York party and
Speaker 2: he's like warned ahead of time that it's going to
Speaker 2: be full of bankers and other finance guys, and he's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know if they're going to like me, because
Speaker 2: he had just not only was The Big Short out,
Speaker 2: but he just published an article at a major publication
Speaker 2: attacking Wall Street big wigs as being greedy idiots, like
Speaker 2: saying it in very unsparing terms. And one of Lewis's
Speaker 2: friends later said, quote, but all these former heads of
Speaker 2: investment banks, all these current bankers, they ran not walked
Speaker 2: to the office just to meet him. One hedge fun
Speaker 2: manager walked in with fifteen copies of Lewis's books, Michael
Speaker 2: signed them all. And again, if you are a journalist,
Speaker 2: that's a bad side, Like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is your take on that? I mean, like,
Speaker 3: what is the game of chess that I'm not seeing here?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's just that he makes he
Speaker 2: makes this look sexy, and it's if he writes about you.
Speaker 2: Part of a big part of this is that while
Speaker 2: he's maybe negative about greed within the overall finance industry,
Speaker 2: he cannot write about a person without making them look
Speaker 2: cool because he has to like them to write about them. Right,
Speaker 2: All these guys in the big short you could say,
Speaker 2: profited off of a lot of misery. Now they didn't
Speaker 2: cause it. He didn't start this subprime loan thing. But
Speaker 2: they profited off of a lot of misery. And that's
Speaker 2: at least kind of grimy. But Lewis likes these guys
Speaker 2: and he turns them into celebrities because of how good
Speaker 2: he is at writing about them and making you see
Speaker 2: what's likable in them. Right. And so at this point
Speaker 2: he because of how often this has happened, is he
Speaker 2: is aware that his books are pr for their subjects.
Speaker 2: He has a habit now of connecting people he writes
Speaker 2: about in his books to his PR manager so that
Speaker 2: they can set up speaking tours for them, right, Because
Speaker 2: he knows if I put you in a book, that's
Speaker 2: going to be a big business for you, you're going
Speaker 2: to be in demand. Yeah, And this is part as
Speaker 2: a result of him he doesn't he can't really be
Speaker 2: critical about the individuals, right, And this is this is
Speaker 2: another quote from that Guardian article. The obverse of Lewis's
Speaker 2: approach is that he doesn't write about people he can't befriend,
Speaker 2: or about stories that might cost him relationships. Among the
Speaker 2: few projects he has abandoned is a biography of George Soros,
Speaker 2: who was so unhappy with Lewis's portrayal of him as
Speaker 2: a financier rather than an intellectual in a magazine profile
Speaker 2: that he refused to cooperate. Another is a book about
Speaker 2: New Orleans, which would have demanded a level of honesty
Speaker 2: about the city's society and about his family's place in
Speaker 2: it that might have hurt his parents. He said, I
Speaker 2: adore my parents. I couldn't write that part while they're alive.
Speaker 2: And and you know, again, none of this is like unforgivable.
Speaker 2: But if you're admitting that as a journalist, what aren't
Speaker 2: you able to admit? And I think in this case,
Speaker 2: it's that he is not able to look at Sam
Speaker 2: Bankman freed honestly because he found himself taken in by
Speaker 2: the kid stick.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what I feel like is one of the
Speaker 3: complicating factors of And I don't say this in a
Speaker 3: way to seem like it's like an unsolvable puzzle, but it's,
Speaker 3: like Michael Lewis writes, it seems like, you know, largely accurate,
Speaker 3: you know, pieces of journalism. We'll talk about that, well, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: so far right as someone who's never read his work.
Speaker 3: But they're also inherently commercial, because I feel like there's
Speaker 3: a journalistic value to explaining why someone is appealing, but
Speaker 3: there's also an even more commercial value to explaining why
Speaker 3: someone is appealing because that makes it, you know, that
Speaker 3: sells books, that sells movie tales, that sells all this shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I think it's also part of why
Speaker 2: his stuff is successful in a commercial sense. Is that
Speaker 2: is this other fact that like it's always kind of uplifting.
Speaker 2: Right again, the big short the whole collapse of the
Speaker 2: financial industry is dark, but stuff goes well for these
Speaker 2: characters that you've come to light, right. And Lewis himself
Speaker 2: is kind of admitted he can't really end on a
Speaker 2: not upbeat note. He has a lot of trouble with it.
Speaker 2: He said, quote, once you identify yourself as happy, you're
Speaker 2: always looking for happiness, and when things come along to
Speaker 2: great on that happiness, you find ways to deflect them.
Speaker 2: You can force the narrative. And I think what he
Speaker 2: doesn't say there, but what is explains his Sam Bankman
Speaker 2: Freed book, is that once you get in the habit
Speaker 2: of writing about like these geniuses who are hidden in
Speaker 2: the middle of systems, right and see more than everybody else.
Speaker 2: Once you start doing that, you see anybody you start
Speaker 2: focusing on as that kind of genius, even when they're not.
Speaker 2: And that's what's happened with Michael here?
Speaker 3: So yeah, mess, mess, And it's like, you know, ultimately,
Speaker 3: nine times out of ten the person wearing like fucking
Speaker 3: X ray glasses is wearing a pair of fucking Imax
Speaker 3: glasses to go see Oppenheimer.
Speaker 2: Like, it's just embarrassing, exactly, It's just embarrassing. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So I think the best example of this before we
Speaker 2: get into Sam Bankman freed prior in Lewis's history, is
Speaker 2: a book called The blind Side, which was published in
Speaker 2: two thousand and six. Now, The blind Side, like a
Speaker 2: lot of Swiss stories, there's a macro in a micro narrative.
Speaker 2: The macro narrative is he's talking about the grow, the
Speaker 2: explosive growth in the importance of the left tackle in football.
Speaker 2: This is an offensive lineman whose job is basically to
Speaker 2: make sure the quarterback doesn't get a maimed. The micro story,
Speaker 2: which contains the emotional heart of the book and is
Speaker 2: the core of the narrative, is the tale of a
Speaker 2: guy named Michael Oher who was He was placed in
Speaker 2: foster care at age seven because his mother suffered from addiction.
Speaker 2: His dad was generally in prison. His dad dies while
Speaker 2: he's I think in high school or was dealt a
Speaker 2: pretty tough hand in life. But he's also six foot
Speaker 2: six and very fast, right, so he is someone who
Speaker 2: will like shows an aptitude for football. As a result
Speaker 2: of this, he's kind of coaxed through getting into a
Speaker 2: private school and he gets he gets literally adopted by
Speaker 2: this rich white family, oh as a black man, black
Speaker 2: child at this time, and they make it their business
Speaker 2: to coach him and coax him in through getting through
Speaker 2: the academics so that he can be in the NCAA
Speaker 2: and college so that he can get an NFL contract.
Speaker 3: Right, So I'll be perfectly honest. I before we started,
Speaker 3: before you told me that Michael Lewis was a main character,
Speaker 3: I did not know that he wrote The blind Side.
Speaker 2: Oh yes he did, because this comes becomes a movie
Speaker 2: that's huge, right also, and.
Speaker 3: I am very well acquainted with the the ensuing nasty,
Speaker 3: fucking cultural narrative associated with the movie. But I didn't
Speaker 3: realize that it was a book. I knew Liar's poker
Speaker 3: moneyball in the Big Short.
Speaker 1: Holy Robert, Robert, I just want a fact teck real quick.
Speaker 1: He wasn't adopted by them.
Speaker 2: Not We're getting to that Okay, that was the narrow,
Speaker 2: that was the nar in the blind Side, right right,
Speaker 2: that they have basically adopted this guy. Yes, you are correct, Sophie,
Speaker 2: but I'm building to that. Okay.
Speaker 3: So okayah, okay, that's just like I don't I don't
Speaker 3: know why I didn't know that, and also like who
Speaker 3: didn't want me to know that? Michael Lewis Yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean Blindside a book that is famously bullsh Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this family adopts or and they effectively adopt him,
Speaker 2: is I think generally how it's framed. And they help
Speaker 2: him get through high school, get into a college, and
Speaker 2: kind of like help usher him into this NFL career
Speaker 2: where he makes a significant amount of money obviously, And
Speaker 2: I'm a quote from the La Times here. The administration
Speaker 2: at his high school accepts him although he can barely read.
Speaker 2: He secures a full time tutor. When his grade point
Speaker 2: average still proves too low for the NCAA. His adoptive father,
Speaker 2: a canny former college basketball standout named Sean Touhey, manages
Speaker 2: to find a crucial loophole he has over tested to
Speaker 2: prove that he's learning disabled, then has him take numerous
Speaker 2: easy online courses Lewis treats these measures genius. We are
Speaker 2: meant to cheer the fact that Ore has gained the
Speaker 2: educational process. And this is a tech. This is from
Speaker 2: the book. Leanne, who's the wife of Sean, was now
Speaker 2: making it her personal responsibility to introduce him to the
Speaker 2: most basic facts of life, the sort of thing any
Speaker 2: normal person would have learned by osmosis. Every day, I
Speaker 2: try to make sure he knows something he doesn't know,
Speaker 2: she said. If you ask him, where should I shop
Speaker 2: for a girl to a pressure, He'll tell you Tiffany's
Speaker 2: if I go, I'll go through the whole golf game.
Speaker 2: He can tell you what six under is, and what's
Speaker 2: a birding and what's par I love that those are
Speaker 2: her two examples of basic knowledge.
Speaker 3: This is Sandra Bullocks Oscar talking. Yes, is Sandra Bullocks
Speaker 3: Oscar flat? This nasty little mound.
Speaker 2: Two things every boy needs to know? Where to buy
Speaker 2: jewelry and how to golf works. Really says a lot
Speaker 2: about her socioeconomic status, right, not like here's how you
Speaker 2: pay your taxes, not like you know literally anything else,
Speaker 2: like here's how you cook eggs, But no fucking fucking
Speaker 2: golf and Tiffany's well yeah, and.
Speaker 3: Also, like I mean to state the obvious, like conflating
Speaker 3: that with like this is what normal people, This is
Speaker 3: normal the doctoral thesis in the ways that that is.
Speaker 2: Okay, great shit. Yeah, So we can all see the
Speaker 2: potential abusive issue with a wealthy white family adopting a
Speaker 2: teenaged black boy to coach him into launching a pro
Speaker 2: football career. Right, just if you think about all of
Speaker 2: the head injuries and shit involved, there's a lot this
Speaker 2: problematic here. Lewis does quote Lane at one point as saying,
Speaker 2: with me and Sean, I can see him thinking if
Speaker 2: they found me lying in a gutter and I was
Speaker 2: going to be flipping burgers at McDonald's, would they really
Speaker 2: have had an interest at me? But the book is
Speaker 2: ultimately positive and uplifting. We're left thinking how nice it
Speaker 2: is that these people help this kid out. The la
Speaker 2: Times note that Lewis seems to be like amused at
Speaker 2: these rich people cheating the system to usher this kid
Speaker 2: into a dangerous job without like educating him. So the
Speaker 2: nice parts of the story ended earlier this year when
Speaker 2: a now retired or filed a lawsuit in a Tennessee
Speaker 2: court alleging that the two He's never adopted him and
Speaker 2: instead created a conservaship two He's, I don't care, fuck him,
Speaker 2: and instead created a conservatorship and used it to take
Speaker 2: his money. Right, the Twohees or whatever the fuck deny
Speaker 2: doing this.
Speaker 3: They again, Yeah, I think it's it's actually for the pepes,
Speaker 3: I don't care.
Speaker 2: Dick bags deny this, And again I'm not being a
Speaker 2: non biased journalist here, but.
Speaker 3: Fuck you know, referend it's actually dickman's, dick Mans.
Speaker 2: The Dickmans. They call his claims hateful and absurd. Michael
Speaker 2: Lewis has defended the Twohees by saying that they only
Speaker 2: earned a few hundred thousand dollars off of The blind Side,
Speaker 2: the book and the movie that was made off of it.
Speaker 2: He's like, they didn't make millions, then they made a
Speaker 2: few hundred grand. Now Lewis also does and I'll give
Speaker 2: him this. He also admits, right after saying that that
Speaker 2: the two hees biological daughter is married to the son
Speaker 2: of the main investor in the film, which might suggest
Speaker 2: that the family made a lot more money off of it. Right, Oh,
Speaker 2: that might because The Blindside makes half a billion dollars
Speaker 2: and a thirty five million dollar budget.
Speaker 3: In his own way, Michael Lewis in this.
Speaker 2: Kind of Michael Lewis is super rich and always really
Speaker 2: there's been buried.
Speaker 1: There's there's so many articles about like it is the
Speaker 1: Shady Ship.
Speaker 3: That's the first time I'm hearing about the daughter marriage
Speaker 3: because I read a fair amount.
Speaker 2: About that fun stuff. So in his own twenty eleven book,
Speaker 2: oh Like expresses issues with the movie based off of
Speaker 2: Lewis's book. Primarily, there's this part where like the twees
Speaker 2: are teaching him how to play football and he's like,
Speaker 2: I knew football before I met them. I'm a teenager
Speaker 2: in America, Like, like, what are you fucking talking about?
Speaker 2: There are other problematic moments in the book, uh, and
Speaker 2: this is from The Guardian Again. Lewis calls Oer big
Speaker 2: mic throughout it, despite the fact that Oher is open
Speaker 2: about hating that nickname. He also tells this guy's story
Speaker 2: almost exclusively through the words of other people talking about him,
Speaker 2: even though he had access to Oor. Lewis justifies this
Speaker 2: by saying that or was not a strong voice on
Speaker 2: his life. Yeah, this guy's not good at talking about himself.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna listen to everyone else about him. I'm out.
Speaker 2: I think what's really going on here is that poor
Speaker 2: is a black kid from a desperate poverty background, right,
Speaker 2: and Lewis cannot identify or get inside of his head
Speaker 2: because that is nothing even that even resembles the Michael
Speaker 2: Lewis story.
Speaker 3: It feels like a very privileged dark take. Yes, Like, well,
Speaker 3: who do I consider to be a credible voice? Can
Speaker 3: I get twenty white people who barely know this guy.
Speaker 2: Who just met this kid to profit off him.
Speaker 3: To speak to him better than he can speak to
Speaker 3: his own life, Because that's who I trust is white people.
Speaker 3: That yeah, Oh, that's so fucking gross.
Speaker 2: He doesn't try to get inside o'er his head, and
Speaker 2: he just focuses most of the narrative on the twoees,
Speaker 2: who who Lewis understands this is the final shoe. He
Speaker 2: understands them for a very good reason. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to quote from the La Times here. As I tore
Speaker 2: through the book, I kept wondering how Lewis got such
Speaker 2: remarkable access to the ties, and I also wondered why
Speaker 2: does he take such an uncritical view of their role.
Speaker 2: The author's note at the end provides the obvious explanation,
Speaker 2: stating that Lewis is a friend of Sean Tooey's and
Speaker 2: that they had been longtime classmates at the same New
Speaker 2: Orleans school.
Speaker 3: No, how is it even ethical to take this fucking
Speaker 3: story on if you have.
Speaker 2: There's only one kind of ethics that I care about, Jamie,
Speaker 2: and it's dolla dolla fucking bills.
Speaker 1: Well, well, Jamie, as you know, things could be unethical
Speaker 1: but still be legal legal.
Speaker 2: That's how.
Speaker 3: I mean, truly, what a gift that we have as that,
Speaker 3: Like I am he a force of evil in the world, certainly,
Speaker 3: but I am grateful that he gave us that one thing,
Speaker 3: just the way of uh describing juvenile lawless capitalists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One thing I have started to notice watching some of
Speaker 2: the more recent and critical interviews with Lewis after the
Speaker 2: SBF book is that, well, he's generally a pretty friendly
Speaker 2: seeming guy. He starts to get really angry the instant
Speaker 2: you question him on anything regarding one of his stories.
Speaker 2: And you see this in this story in the Oer story,
Speaker 2: because Ower's former coach comes out and like defends the
Speaker 2: twohees or whatever. Once the lawsuit goes out, He's like,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think they took advantage of him, basically,
Speaker 2: and Ower calls it brave.
Speaker 3: And my professional, unbiased opinion, thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Lewis calls the coach brave for doing this and
Speaker 2: basically says he's taking a stand against cancel culture. And
Speaker 2: then here's the Guardian again. Lewis recalled Oer as a
Speaker 2: shy young boy and found it hard to square that
Speaker 2: memory with the Oer behind the lawsuit. What we're watching
Speaker 2: is a change of behavior. He told me. This is
Speaker 2: what happens to football players who get hit in the head.
Speaker 2: They run into problems with violence and aggression. It wouldn't
Speaker 2: surprise him. Lewis said, if we were seeing some confluence
Speaker 2: of Ora's history in football with other campaigns that stoke
Speaker 2: claims in lawsuits like his, perhaps some lawyer of Ores
Speaker 2: figured the time was ripe to sue the tweilies, Lewis speculated,
Speaker 2: or perhaps Oer realized that people would get behind him
Speaker 2: if he makes these accusations. He's just a poor head,
Speaker 2: injured boy.
Speaker 3: I They're like, no, the perceived exploitation and racism you
Speaker 3: experienced was the result of CTE that's Oh my.
Speaker 2: God, that's fucking wild. Right, that's gross as hell.
Speaker 3: Oh, Jamie, Wow, I just thought he was the guy
Speaker 3: who wrote Moneyball. I thought that that was the hard
Speaker 3: I was thinking too.
Speaker 2: Now. Yeah, so here, I want you to keep in
Speaker 2: mind how he wrote about his former subject. Oor Now
Speaker 2: hear his him talking in a sixty minutes interview about
Speaker 2: Sam Bankman Free, the now convicted former billionaire, and I
Speaker 2: just want to I really want to emphasize the contrast
Speaker 2: between how he writes about these two different people who
Speaker 2: are subjects of his books.
Speaker 4: The story of Sam's life is people not understanding him,
Speaker 4: misreading him. He's so different, he's so unusual. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think in a funny way that the reason I
Speaker 4: have such a compelling story is I have a character
Speaker 4: that I do come to know, and then the reader
Speaker 4: comes to know that the world still doesn't know.
Speaker 2: Now, that is not the case. Sam Bakman Freed is
Speaker 2: exactly the person he appears to be on the surface. Right,
Speaker 2: He is a guy who committed a bunch of financial
Speaker 2: crimes and didn't get away with it because he was
Speaker 2: too lazy and undisciplined to do with the smart way, right,
Speaker 2: and that's all that going.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is like, oh, this is a bummer.
Speaker 3: This is like a case study and a journalist biases
Speaker 3: coming out on there.
Speaker 2: Oh it's so it's so obvious. Yeah, No, story better
Speaker 2: illustrates this part of the story than how Lewis wound
Speaker 2: up writing Going Infinite in the first place. In twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: Lewis published a book called Flash Boys, which is a
Speaker 2: book about Brad Katsuyama and a small group of rebel
Speaker 2: Walst investors who form I ex which is like a
Speaker 2: stock exchange that's supposed to. The idea is we want
Speaker 2: to protect investors from the unfair advantages that these high
Speaker 2: frequency trading firms have on traditional exchanges due to like
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of shit, but largely access to a
Speaker 2: special fiber optic cable. And with most Lewis books, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of insiders that will criticize them foring some
Speaker 2: details wrong here and glossing over some issues that don't
Speaker 2: conform to his narrative. There's like a market crash that's
Speaker 2: largely mitigated by some of these firms that he's criticizing.
Speaker 2: But I don't know enough about that to want to
Speaker 2: get into it. What's important is that Katsuyama and his
Speaker 2: book of Rogue Traders are depicted semi heroically, is that
Speaker 2: they're kind of fighting against this rigged financial system, which
Speaker 2: you know, the financial systems rigged. I don't know about
Speaker 2: his characteristication of them, but the book is a hit
Speaker 2: and it makes Katsuyama and his crew celebrities within the
Speaker 2: finance world. So Katsuyama reaches out to Lewis when he
Speaker 2: is considering an institutional investment in FTX. He's like, we're
Speaker 2: considering getting into crypto through these guys putting a lot
Speaker 2: of money on there exchange. Would you look into this
Speaker 2: guy for me? Right? And this is what Lewis says.
Speaker 2: Lewis like basically goes in there and like talks to
Speaker 2: Sam Bankman Freed, and he's he's so impressed that he
Speaker 2: quotes himself as telling Katsuyama do whatever he wants to do.
Speaker 2: What could possibly go wrong? Right? That's which bad bet
Speaker 2: Uh does wind up putting money.
Speaker 3: He is a worst person to ask what to go
Speaker 3: wrong with?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, yeah, And I'm going to continue from the
Speaker 2: Guardian here. Okay, he did find himself intrigued in particular
Speaker 2: by effective altruism, the movement to which Bankman Freed subscribed.
Speaker 2: Effective altruists believe in giving away most of what they
Speaker 2: make to do the most good in the world. Some
Speaker 2: of them commit to earning as much as possible so
Speaker 2: as to donate more to their chosen beneficiaries. Having spent
Speaker 2: so long on Wall Street, Lewis wasn't used to meeting
Speaker 2: a wealthy young man who claimed to have no interest
Speaker 2: in wealth. Unusually for Lewis, he couldn't figure Bankman Freed out.
Speaker 2: Michael just said, this kid is the richest and most
Speaker 2: interesting young person I've ever met. Understand them all the
Speaker 2: deep possesses of bank Reid's mind. But he knew it
Speaker 2: was a great story. And this was before the shit
Speaker 2: hit the fan. So this is real talking. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also it takes someone who grew up in that
Speaker 3: environment to not have alarm bells going off in their
Speaker 3: mind when they hear oh, I, as someone who has
Speaker 3: never not had money, don't really care about money, You're like, well, yeah, no, shit,
Speaker 3: you've never not had it.
Speaker 2: You would really.
Speaker 3: Care if you'd. That reminds me of this is like,
Speaker 3: I think about this easily once a week. It happened
Speaker 3: over ten years ago my freshman year of college. It
Speaker 3: was my first time really encountering people who grew up
Speaker 3: with like money, you know. And there was this guy
Speaker 3: on my floor and one night everyone was hanging out
Speaker 3: and he like, put a this is the era, this
Speaker 3: is the early twenty tens. He put a skinny scarf
Speaker 3: around my neck because it was cold, and he was like,
Speaker 3: you can have that, and it smelled and I didn't
Speaker 3: want it. But he's like, you could have that. And
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, don't you like want it back
Speaker 3: and he's like, no, I don't care about my material possessions.
Speaker 2: And great.
Speaker 3: I think about that all the time because he could
Speaker 3: just get nine thousand scarves. You just get nine thousand scarves.
Speaker 3: But that was like, but I feel like that is
Speaker 3: so much of what effect of altruism is. It's just
Speaker 3: a fundamental like, yeah, not understanding how the world works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a bunch of rich kids who are
Speaker 2: talking through like fucking philosophy one oh one level shit
Speaker 2: and think and so impressed by everyone else's answers to
Speaker 2: like dumb logic puzzles because they've they've never studied enough
Speaker 2: humanities to know that like no man, people have been
Speaker 2: talking about this shit for thousands of years and all
Speaker 2: of their takes are better than yours. Like anyway, we're
Speaker 2: not getting into that as much right now. We are
Speaker 2: about to get into the ads and if you really
Speaker 2: want to do some effective altruism, purchase from the sponsors
Speaker 2: of this podcast. Ah. So, we've been talking around the
Speaker 2: book Going Infinite, which is Michael's terrible book on Sam,
Speaker 2: so I think now is probably a good time to
Speaker 2: dig into exactly how it fails. I wanted to start
Speaker 2: by introducing that contrast between Lewis's treatment of o OR
Speaker 2: and SBF first, because it puts things into perspective. Now,
Speaker 2: I think a good anecdote to start on. Here is
Speaker 2: one of the stories Lewis uses to introduce Sam to
Speaker 2: the reader. This is right at the start of Going Infinite,
Speaker 2: and it's about a phone call that Sam has during
Speaker 2: his billionaire era with fashion industry icon Anna Wintour before
Speaker 2: the Metgala. No oh yeah, oh yeah, Jamie. This this
Speaker 2: is good.
Speaker 3: So exhausted because Anna Wintour is Bill Nye, He's girlfriend
Speaker 3: right now, and I don't want to think poorly of
Speaker 3: Bill Nye.
Speaker 2: He does no, No, it is tragic. My heart goes
Speaker 2: out to Bill Nye, who I'm incapable of feeling badly about.
Speaker 3: No, I'm here, I'm sitting my ass down and listening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Anna is who Meryl Streep's character in The
Speaker 2: Devilwar's product is based on, right, Like, that's who this
Speaker 2: person is. Oh.
Speaker 3: I love when men try to explain what The Devil
Speaker 3: Wears Prada is about. Yes, for all the men listening,
Speaker 3: pause and go watch The Devil Wears Prada. It is
Speaker 3: just like one of the greatest films of I think,
Speaker 3: one of the greatest comedy films and books of Yeah,
Speaker 3: very good.
Speaker 2: Very good, happy essays.
Speaker 1: Half the essays I wrote in college were based off
Speaker 1: of said book.
Speaker 2: Really, the met Gala is an annual event. I think
Speaker 2: Vogue puts it on technically, but like it's where rich, famous,
Speaker 2: and occasionally even beautiful people were insane outfits that cost
Speaker 2: the GDP of a small island nation.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, and then and then a bunch of YouTubers
Speaker 3: I watch say that they looked ugly.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's a true. Yeah, it's it's great. It's great.
Speaker 2: Everybody makes a feast off of it. But somebody has
Speaker 2: to pay for the Son of a Bitch, right, and
Speaker 2: that year went Tour wanted SBF to pay for the gala, right.
Speaker 2: He was spending way more money on stupider shit than that,
Speaker 2: so not unreasonable that he might actually agree to do this.
Speaker 2: He had instructed at this point his publicity woman to
Speaker 2: do whatever she could to increase ftx's reputation and keep
Speaker 2: his name in the news. So not a bad way
Speaker 2: to do that, right. The met gala often does make
Speaker 2: the news, And when it came to his side of
Speaker 2: the job, though, Sam was he put as much work
Speaker 2: into like this call with Anna win Tour where tens
Speaker 2: of millions of dollars are on the line, that he
Speaker 2: did to like everything else that he had a meeting about,
Speaker 2: which is no work at all. Right. Lewis goes into
Speaker 2: detail about the fact that he's playing this dumb video game,
Speaker 2: like while he's on a zoom call with her. It's
Speaker 2: the same game he's always playing. It's this this video
Speaker 2: game that he winds up buying because it's made by
Speaker 2: a friend of his called Storybook Brawl, and it's it's
Speaker 2: about like Fable characters fighting, right, Like it's it's that
Speaker 2: it's a little strategy game. It's like an it's like
Speaker 2: an app game. It's not a real game.
Speaker 3: You know, you know how you watch those videos And
Speaker 3: I say this with love and appreciation of like college
Speaker 3: students now playing a video game while explaining like Marxism
Speaker 3: to you and I want that. But Sam Bankmin Freed
Speaker 3: playing that game. Well, well, Anna Wintour is like what
Speaker 3: is he up to?
Speaker 2: What is he up to?
Speaker 1: The Jamie and I in Unison when you said playing
Speaker 1: video game while talking to Anna Wintour, mouth wide open, like.
Speaker 3: Well, it's like she could, I mean and and and
Speaker 3: not even to like endorse her. I'm just like I
Speaker 3: would be very afraid to do anything in front of
Speaker 3: scary and she's famously scary.
Speaker 2: She's famously scary. And he's talking about a lot of money, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's it's not that he's blowing her off, because
Speaker 2: like I don't feel precious about Anna Wintour's time, but
Speaker 2: like it's that this is a big money deal and
Speaker 2: he just he can't focus on it. And I would
Speaker 2: take that. It's just like this is a this is
Speaker 2: a dude too, smadhd right, Like that's what that is.
Speaker 2: And this is a dude who has ADHD, who's part
Speaker 2: of a generation that has ADHD.
Speaker 3: Well, No, this is a very dumb observation. But it's
Speaker 3: also clear to me that Sam bank Bankment Freed has
Speaker 3: never seen the Devilwaar's product, which I've never been less
Speaker 3: surprised at. But it's like, if you have no one
Speaker 3: in your life who could tip you off you're talking
Speaker 3: to me, protagonist of the Devilwaars product, then you lack
Speaker 3: a support structure in a fundamental way. I think it's
Speaker 3: it's okay, that's good to know that funny and I
Speaker 3: are here.
Speaker 2: What's funny about the way Lewis talks about this is
Speaker 2: that he marvels at this right like it's the most
Speaker 2: amazing thing, and it's evidence of how unique Sam is.
Speaker 2: When you just noted one of the biggest pieces of
Speaker 2: entertainment for millennials in gen z is people playing video
Speaker 2: games and explaining politics. Right that is, it is not
Speaker 2: at all unique that Sam Bankman Freed will not stop
Speaker 2: gaming to have a business meeting. But Michael Lewis treats
Speaker 2: it as like this is evidence that he is too
Speaker 2: much of a genius he can't bear to pay attention
Speaker 2: to her for a second. It also there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of anti woman stuff in here, because Lewis notes
Speaker 2: that I think Sam would minimize the window with her
Speaker 2: face on it whenever she spoke and bring it back
Speaker 2: up whenever he talked. Right, curiously, only when he was
Speaker 2: talking did he want to see her, which I do
Speaker 2: think there's a lot in that sentence. So yeahsting, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It is again like the way Lewis describes this, this
Speaker 2: isn't just yeah, he's not very disciplined, and he has
Speaker 2: the same thing that like a lot of millennial and
Speaker 2: gen Z people have, which is, you know, an inability
Speaker 2: to stop distracting yourself no matter what important shit you're doing.
Speaker 2: He describes this as SBF's brain being so big that
Speaker 2: like games are he's like a Sherlock Holmes character and
Speaker 2: games are his heroin. Right, Well, that makes me.
Speaker 3: That indicates to me that Michael Lewis, because that's the
Speaker 3: way that you're like, like you're doting parent would talk
Speaker 3: about it, and like that's that is clear to me.
Speaker 3: The way he sees him is like, wow, look at
Speaker 3: this amazing kid. And also what SBF is doing here
Speaker 3: is like the inverse of what most easily distracted millennial
Speaker 3: and gen Z people are doing, which they're playing games
Speaker 3: and explaining radical politics to you. They're not playing games
Speaker 3: and talking to some like like half listening to someone
Speaker 3: before they part with millions of dollars to throw the
Speaker 3: world's stupidest annual party. Yeah, and I love that stupid
Speaker 3: ass party.
Speaker 2: It's it's I mean, I think both of those things
Speaker 2: are on a similar level potentially, but it depends on
Speaker 2: how you do them. And he's not actually good at it.
Speaker 2: But the way Lewis describes this is he just is
Speaker 2: in awe of this kid's ability to have attention deficit disorder. Quote. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: said Sam. But his mind was elsewhere. The hoard dragon
Speaker 2: was dead and a win tour had killed it. What
Speaker 2: to do? He made a half hearted bid to begin
Speaker 2: another game and pick another hero, but then changed his
Speaker 2: mind and shut the game down. He could often occupy
Speaker 2: two worlds at once in w in both. In this case,
Speaker 2: he clearly stood no chance of winning in one world
Speaker 2: unless he paid less attention in the other. And this woman,
Speaker 2: somehow it acquired a spell that interfered with his abilities
Speaker 2: to multitask. What an amazing way to write that paragraph.
Speaker 2: Michael Lewis, dude, Oh god, it's it's something else. Like
Speaker 2: I have played video games through some important work meetings.
Speaker 2: Sophie has often had to pick my ass up off
Speaker 2: that it's not because I'm a genius. It's because I'm
Speaker 2: hungover and have trouble focusing because I use Twitter too much.
Speaker 3: There's so many there's like so many, I mean whatever.
Speaker 3: And also you have to imagine that this manuscript made
Speaker 3: it through a lot. It speaks to how old people
Speaker 3: in general who work in the public stitching industry are
Speaker 3: that no one was like Michael, I have to tell
Speaker 3: you that this is just how kids are these days.
Speaker 2: He's a real venture game ganius. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it's like we've both written books. Like I
Speaker 3: was surprised that I got the title of my book through,
Speaker 3: but it was because people over sixty don't know what
Speaker 3: raw Dog needs. And that's most people I'm publishing. Like,
Speaker 3: it's ridiculous, that's so nuts that that made it to
Speaker 3: the final book.
Speaker 2: No, it's like that's yeah. So if you're not reading
Speaker 2: critically and inclined to give Lewis the bit of the
Speaker 2: benefit of the doubt, I can see how you might
Speaker 2: assume that like he's trying to make Sam look kind
Speaker 2: of silly in that paragraph. I can see how you
Speaker 2: would assume that based on the text, but that is
Speaker 2: not what's going on. Listener. Here is Lewis talking about
Speaker 2: that exact same moment in an interview with Intelligence Squared
Speaker 2: from about a month ago.
Speaker 4: Yay, so on the screen zoom and a win tour,
Speaker 4: and he does not know who she is. He doesn't
Speaker 4: know what the purpose of the meeting is. He doesn't know, well,
Speaker 4: the purpose of the meeting is can Sam Bank mcfreed
Speaker 4: pay for the whole met gala? That's the purpose of
Speaker 4: the meeting, because he'll pay for everything else. Why not that?
Speaker 4: And she comes on the screen and she is dressed
Speaker 4: to the nine. She's got those size of hair coming
Speaker 4: down around her. She's like ready to kill and gorgeous.
Speaker 4: You know, she looks great, She's well prepared. He's playing
Speaker 4: Storybook Brawl.
Speaker 2: Which is his video game.
Speaker 3: Pause.
Speaker 2: I hate the way he talks.
Speaker 1: About Anna Wintour, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, okay, And first we can deal with that
Speaker 2: in private, ze fair.
Speaker 3: We can no, no, before we can talk about a
Speaker 3: woman on a zoom call. Does she look gorgeous or yeah.
Speaker 1: That's the point. It has nothing to do with Anna Winter. Also,
Speaker 1: she looks like that all the time, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: It's her thing.
Speaker 4: And wherever she comes on the screen, he blacks her
Speaker 4: out and the video game pops up, so like she's
Speaker 4: she's talking and and mons, minotaurs are killing, are killing dwarfs,
Speaker 4: and trees with axes are coming in and like you know,
Speaker 4: the weapons are appearing on the screen and people are
Speaker 4: dying and exploding, and and you're hearing her talk about
Speaker 4: the met Gala.
Speaker 2: And there's seven minutes in when he hits.
Speaker 4: A button in the Wikipedia entry for the met galap
Speaker 4: comes up, so he can figure out what the hell
Speaker 4: she's talking about.
Speaker 2: And he's doing watched him do this. He's doing this
Speaker 2: with her.
Speaker 4: This is what he was doing on live television when
Speaker 4: he would be interviewed by Bloomberg TV.
Speaker 2: It was like and he had tricks.
Speaker 4: He took him about one tenth of his brain to
Speaker 4: have a conversation with Anna Wintour, And what he would
Speaker 4: do other part of his brain was either reading about
Speaker 4: who she was or playing his game. And what he'd
Speaker 4: do is he'd say, you asked me a question. He'd say,
Speaker 4: that's a really good question. It's a really good question.
Speaker 4: Let me think about that for a minute. You know, meanwhile,
Speaker 4: the minutaur is killing the tree and he comes off
Speaker 4: and then he thinks for a minute, and he says
Speaker 4: some boilerplate thing.
Speaker 2: So that does not show genius. He's obviously the smile
Speaker 2: on his face, that is not him being critical. That's
Speaker 2: him thinking about like, that's him fawning over this kid
Speaker 2: for not being prepared for a multimillion dollar meeting, right,
Speaker 2: which is like, fine, but that's not an example of
Speaker 2: him being smart.
Speaker 3: Well, And I think that that is a clear pattered
Speaker 3: in the way that we cover the like young white
Speaker 3: kid genius who comes from a rich background. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of similarities in how early Mark Zuckerberg's like casual
Speaker 3: misogyny and not giving a ship about people was like
Speaker 3: part and parcel to why he was cool and why
Speaker 3: he was seen as a visionary. Like that the same
Speaker 3: is truth. Like just I mean, I feel like every
Speaker 3: generation has at least one of these guys, and they're
Speaker 3: all covered in the same way. No one ever learns
Speaker 3: their lesson because the guy covering them is often the
Speaker 3: same guy. Literally Michael Lewis and often literally Michael Lewis.
Speaker 1: How did how did okay, I'm sorry, how did this
Speaker 1: revolve with Anna Wintour?
Speaker 3: Did she like the fact that she.
Speaker 2: Didn't he said, He says, yeah, I'll pay for it,
Speaker 2: and then he just ghosts her.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the fact that Anna wind Tour didn't like
Speaker 1: like smoke out that he was like fully a fraud
Speaker 1: at the girlies.
Speaker 2: The girlies are disappointed.
Speaker 3: I'm not caping for Anna Wintor here, but the famously.
Speaker 1: Named the Dragon Lady.
Speaker 3: Well, no, SBF is lucky that he'll never encounter Bill
Speaker 3: Nai because Bill for Bill Nihey, it would be on
Speaker 3: the phone.
Speaker 2: Bill would fuck him.
Speaker 3: So he was an I Frankenstein for crying. He was
Speaker 3: in Detective pikat Chip break was broken like my brain.
Speaker 2: So Bra, these are these are amusing anecdotes right what
Speaker 2: he's what he's telling. Potentially, if you are someone who
Speaker 2: is critical about him, that same anecdote could could form
Speaker 2: part of your thesis about why this kid got away
Speaker 2: with it and for so long and why he ultimately
Speaker 2: flamed out. But Lewis is convinced that these show you
Speaker 2: evidence of Sam's genius, and he sets this up early
Speaker 2: in the book, talking about Sam's childhood quote. He had
Speaker 2: a fault line inside him. Pressure was building on it,
Speaker 2: and one day in the seventh grade, he slipped. His
Speaker 2: mother returned from work to find Sam alone in despair.
Speaker 2: I came home and he was crying. Recalled by b
Speaker 2: he said, I'm so bored, I'm going to die, and like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I have had a similar conversation with my mom. And
Speaker 2: it's a sign. You know, certainly Sam has been diagnosed
Speaker 2: with ADHD. That's certainly one way in which that can manifest.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Hold on one for the girlies again.
Speaker 1: That is a direct quote from Sex and the City.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, that is.
Speaker 1: A direct quote from a Sex in the City.
Speaker 2: Sure, I'm sure Sam's a big Samantha.
Speaker 3: Hey who says it?
Speaker 1: But she goes, I'm so bored I could die And
Speaker 1: she jumps out of and she falls out of the window.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Really one of the most famous in
Speaker 3: the city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember that anyway. So, because like Lewis again, again,
Speaker 2: if you're if you're just kind of being honest about
Speaker 2: Sam writing a book, he might be like, well, Sam
Speaker 2: gets diagnosed with ADHD. This moment makes total sense as like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is a kid who's got ADHD and he's also
Speaker 2: you know, good at math and stuff. He's bored in
Speaker 2: the classes that he's in. But Lewis does not acknowledge
Speaker 2: that Sam has ADHD in his book. He doesn't say
Speaker 2: anything about it because that would that's not a bad thing, obviously,
Speaker 2: but it's also that you like, you're not a genius
Speaker 2: just because you have ADHD. Right, plenty of people who
Speaker 2: are not super geniuses have ADHD. It's just a thing.
Speaker 3: Well, and it's like if you're if you're talking about
Speaker 3: that behavior and I want to be like delicate, and
Speaker 3: then they talk about it, but it's like it's contextually important.
Speaker 2: If you proceed from the principle like, yeah, this is
Speaker 2: a kid with ADHD, then there's another explanation for his
Speaker 2: addiction to games, his inability to focus on stuff, right
Speaker 2: and it it and then it means those things aren't
Speaker 2: a sign of his brilliance right now. Part of why
Speaker 2: I'm critical of Michael for this is that he does
Speaker 2: make a note about one character's ADHD in the book,
Speaker 2: and it's Carolyn Ellison, who comes across as one of
Speaker 2: the villains in the book. And I should note that
Speaker 2: the following paragraph comes to me part of the book
Speaker 2: where Lewis is talking to George, who is a therapist
Speaker 2: who worked for FTX as the company shrink. So, among
Speaker 2: other things, this is a therapist talking about his patient. Right, Okay.
Speaker 2: When she'd first come to him back in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: she'd had two issues. She wanted to talk about, her
Speaker 2: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and her new and emotionally complicated
Speaker 2: polyamorous lifestyle. Every subsequent session after the first, Carolyn came
Speaker 2: back with just one issue. She wanted to discuss Sam.
Speaker 2: She'd fallen in love with Sam. Sam didn't love her back,
Speaker 2: and that fact alone left her deeply unhappy. I thought
Speaker 2: of her as an exception, said George. I thought she
Speaker 2: might be willing to trade effective altruism for reciprocation of
Speaker 2: love any day. Right, Sorry, how is it?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: I mean, I truly like, how was it even legal
Speaker 3: or ethical for this information.
Speaker 2: To I don't actually know. I don't like that truly,
Speaker 2: because it seems.
Speaker 3: You're not supposed to be able to do like. They're
Speaker 3: famously not supposed to be able to do that. And
Speaker 3: also not to like overly come to her defense. But
Speaker 3: also it's like that if anyone's therapy logs were leaked,
Speaker 3: it would be like, oh, they had this fixation on
Speaker 3: this issue. Yeah, that's why you fucking go dude, you know,
Speaker 3: go there to be a reasoned person.
Speaker 2: No, and especially since like what's what's messy to me
Speaker 2: is that he brings that he makes sure to bring
Speaker 2: this up with Carolyn because he's kind of writing that
Speaker 2: like she was unreliable, she wasn't focusing enough, she was
Speaker 2: in love with him, hysterical, whereas he's just this misunderstood genius.
Speaker 2: But he notes her ADHD and he doesn't note Sam's,
Speaker 2: even though Sam's ADHD is a matter of public fucking record. Now,
Speaker 2: like his family went to court to get him his
Speaker 2: medicine a thing.
Speaker 3: It's like not even looking that he particularly tries to obscure, right, No,
Speaker 3: like no, yeah.
Speaker 2: And again it's critical to understand him because it provides
Speaker 2: an alternate explanation for all this behavior that Lewis chalks
Speaker 2: up to him just like only needing ten percent of
Speaker 2: his brain to talk to people. Yeah, now there's another
Speaker 2: like there's another very fun bit in this which kind
Speaker 2: of relates to that, which is that, and this is
Speaker 2: like the weirdest through line in Going Infinite, which is
Speaker 2: my Lewis does not understand games right like he is,
Speaker 2: so he writes about like video games and board games
Speaker 2: and other popular nerd pastimes that are now like the
Speaker 2: dominant form of entertainment by money in our country. He
Speaker 2: talks about them like he's an alien who's just arrived
Speaker 2: on the planet. And as a result, he talks about
Speaker 2: Sam's embrace of this stuff at the expense of everything
Speaker 2: else to be evidence of brilliance. Quote. He felt nothing
Speaker 2: in the presence of art. He found religion absurd. He
Speaker 2: thought both right wing and left wing political opinions kind
Speaker 2: of dumb, less a consequence of thought than of their
Speaker 2: holder's tribal identity. He and his family ignored the rituals
Speaker 2: that punctuated most people's existence. He didn't even celebrate his
Speaker 2: own birthday. What gave pleasure and solace and a sense
Speaker 2: of belonging to others left Sam cold. When the bankman
Speaker 2: Freeds traveled to Europe, Sam realized that he was just
Speaker 2: staring at a lot of old buildings for no particular reason.
Speaker 2: We did a few trips, he said, I basically hated
Speaker 2: it to his unrelenting alienation. There was only one exception. Games.
Speaker 2: In sixth grade, Sam learned of had a game called
Speaker 2: Magic the Gathering. For the next four years, it was
Speaker 2: the only activity that consumed him faster than he could
Speaker 2: consume it. And this is so funny because like Lewis
Speaker 2: has to describe Magic the Gathering after this point, and
Speaker 2: he like he describes it basically it's the first game
Speaker 2: ever made where like you like the way that you
Speaker 2: play it, like it's it's different, Like every character can
Speaker 2: come into this strategy game with a different set of equipment.
Speaker 2: No one had ever done this before. It was all
Speaker 2: like chess where everyone's the same. And it's like, no,
Speaker 2: it wasn't. There were decades, decades of war games and
Speaker 2: strategy games that Magic was influenced by. Like, that's just wrong, Michael, Now, hold.
Speaker 3: On, hold on magic, Yeah, hold on nerd any any
Speaker 3: put up. I I do think that like this is
Speaker 3: of the because because I don't play Magic the Gathering
Speaker 3: and I know that how he's describing it is, I was.
Speaker 2: Like, it's so wrong. Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 3: Speaks word to like a generation gap, because I think
Speaker 3: that you're someone who could be on the opposite side
Speaker 3: of SBF and equally with it. Like it's just like
Speaker 3: do your research.
Speaker 2: Just talk to it.
Speaker 3: Just talk to someone who plays Magic the Gathering. They
Speaker 3: famously love to talk about it.
Speaker 2: And it's it's funny because he's like he has to
Speaker 2: make this, Like he goes on a limb about like
Speaker 2: Sam Bankman Freed couldn't didn't like chess. It was too boring.
Speaker 2: There were too few possibilities, like you could calculate everything,
Speaker 2: like his computer brain wasn't amused by chess. Only Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's so funny. It's like, man, my friends and I
Speaker 2: all played Magic the Gathering and like as a spoiler,
Speaker 2: some people looked into Sam's like performance in League of
Speaker 2: Legends and the Other only he was never good at anything.
Speaker 2: He was not very good. He wasn't particularly bad, but
Speaker 2: he was not very good. And I'm gonna guess he
Speaker 2: was indifferent at Magic the Gathering because you know, like
Speaker 2: it's it is not a great it's a wonderful game,
Speaker 2: not a great like yardstick for your intelligence, you know, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's just a guard game.
Speaker 3: No one should be uh, I mean not, but like
Speaker 3: no one should be judged by their intelligence, by how
Speaker 3: they interact with like a beloved hobby.
Speaker 2: That's weird. Yeah, it's so weird, and it's like it's
Speaker 2: interesting because like Sam's parents, A big part of this
Speaker 2: section is like he comes home and he's like, I'm
Speaker 2: so bored, I can't I want to die, and his
Speaker 2: you know, his parents do what I think is the
Speaker 2: right thing. They lead the charge to get their school
Speaker 2: to add like an advanced math class, and it seems
Speaker 2: to have a good impact on him. He's excited to
Speaker 2: go to school now, and that's a good thing. But
Speaker 2: what we find hints of in parts of this story,
Speaker 2: and I don't think Lewis is able either knows it
Speaker 2: or is able to admit it to himself, is the
Speaker 2: troubling fact that once Sam's parents decide he's a math genius,
Speaker 2: they they don't bother to make him into a well
Speaker 2: rounded person. Sam grows up hating art. He thinks books
Speaker 2: are useless. He has this big rant he goes about like, well,
Speaker 2: there's no way that shape is the best author ever,
Speaker 2: because there have been this many billion people born since
Speaker 2: he was alive, and if you want to calculate the
Speaker 2: odds that none of them were better at writing than him,
Speaker 2: then there's really no reason to read Shakespeare. And it's like, well, Sam,
Speaker 2: the fact that you think that means that like no
Speaker 2: one even casually tried to teach you the humanities, because like,
Speaker 2: the reason you should study Shakespeare is not that he's
Speaker 2: the quote unquote best author ever. That doesn't exist. It's
Speaker 2: that there is not a day in your life or
Speaker 2: the life of anyone that you love that they don't
Speaker 2: use words and phrases Shakespeare introduced to the English language.
Speaker 2: That's why he's important.
Speaker 3: Don't get me wrong, Sam, I also don't want.
Speaker 5: To read a book, but I there sometimes were Sometimes
Speaker 5: that's just what you need to do to understand the
Speaker 5: world and not go to prison for forever because you're
Speaker 5: a gambler or just.
Speaker 3: Be willing to fucking google your way around it. Like
Speaker 3: that you're not better than Shakespeare.
Speaker 2: Weird.
Speaker 3: There is like an element of like there are certain
Speaker 3: the lower side of sbf L's that he takes in
Speaker 3: the statements he makes. He sounds like like a one
Speaker 3: episode Fraser character.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know, he sounds like.
Speaker 3: Freddy made a friend and he fucking sucks and.
Speaker 2: He's a piece as shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then he even polarizes Fraser and Niles. And
Speaker 3: that's how you know you're in fucking trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, when Niles Niles is like, this kid's kind
Speaker 2: of got a fucking problem.
Speaker 3: This kid's incomprehensible. I wouldn't I wouldn't share a glass
Speaker 3: of brandy with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And man, if you know Niles, you know what
Speaker 2: that takes. Hey, everyone, Robert here just wanted a quick
Speaker 2: note that the next like the last like five or
Speaker 2: six minutes of this episode is all Fraser. It's all
Speaker 2: all all Fraser talk. Jamie and I got off on
Speaker 2: a tangent. There is a lot more Sam Bankman Freed
Speaker 2: than Part two. It's another like hour and twenty minutes,
Speaker 2: so plenty more on Thursday. But as heads up in
Speaker 2: case it's kind of confusing, we just we just wound
Speaker 2: up in a Fraser hole after this point. So if
Speaker 2: you want to hear us talk about Frasier, this is
Speaker 2: your chance. Speaking of David Hyde Peers, Jamie Loftus, you
Speaker 2: are starring in a floor show with David Hyde Peers
Speaker 2: based on the life of Kelsey Grammar. Actually you are
Speaker 2: playing Kelsey. You spent like Michael Lewis a full year
Speaker 2: living with him to really get his character down. What
Speaker 2: was that like?
Speaker 3: Look, it was pretty hostile. It was pretty hostile. And
Speaker 3: in the subsequent publishings that I've made, a lot of
Speaker 3: people have said that I couldn't explain the video games
Speaker 3: that Kelsey Grammer was playing for the year that I
Speaker 3: was following him around, and I resent that I was
Speaker 3: in the room with Kelsey while he was berating women
Speaker 3: on the phone. And I think that that makes him
Speaker 3: a genius. I think that that makes him a genius.
Speaker 3: And you know, do I believe he's the greatest sitcom
Speaker 3: actor of all time? Well, I'll keep that to myself,
Speaker 3: but wink wink. I think that he's kind of a
Speaker 3: beautiful genius and is above criticism. And if you don't
Speaker 3: think that he's kind of the perfect person, or if
Speaker 3: you even like just we read his Wikipedia page in
Speaker 3: four am an opinion, I beg to disagree.
Speaker 2: And I do love I love Kelsey Grammar stories from
Speaker 2: the head of Fraser because they're all like members of
Speaker 2: the cast being like, well, yeah, he was very like
Speaker 2: he came on set and he had clearly just woken
Speaker 2: up after vomiting up his seven martini lunch. He looked
Speaker 2: like he was dying. We were all worried that he
Speaker 2: was going to drop dead that day, and then the
Speaker 2: director called action and he was immediately care He was perfect,
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 3: Beautiful, his chest hair hurt like We'll never know I was.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was fixated on Fraser reruns when I
Speaker 3: was a kid. I would stand late to watch them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of my conference shows for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the best. And like when I remember remember getting
Speaker 3: Kelsey Grammer's like memoir from the library and read that
Speaker 3: he broke up with his wife on the phone, and
Speaker 3: it may have been one of the first times that
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, Wow, men are scary.
Speaker 2: You can just do that.
Speaker 3: You could just be Kelsey Grammar and be evil and
Speaker 3: then and I will still like base my sexuality on
Speaker 3: you forever.
Speaker 2: Absolutely seem fair. Who's among us, right, ah man? But
Speaker 2: I will say, having watched the new Fraser show, it
Speaker 2: becomes very clear how much of that show's charm was
Speaker 2: John Mahoney and David Hyde Pierce.
Speaker 3: Oh well, I think tell Kelsey's doing I mean, and
Speaker 3: he's an evil person. He's doing his damn best.
Speaker 2: He is, he is perfect. He is like literally his
Speaker 2: voice is not changed in twenty years, which is remarkable.
Speaker 3: No, and he's been, you know, physically preserved well enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the big problems that show has is
Speaker 2: they've cast that kid as Niles and Daphne's son, and
Speaker 2: they're relying on him to hold up a lot of
Speaker 2: the physical con many ends that David and Hyde Pierce
Speaker 2: used to. And if if you are going up next
Speaker 2: to David Hyde Peers in like a physical comedy competition,
Speaker 2: you're gonna look like shit fu. David Peers like he's
Speaker 2: the guy. Robert.
Speaker 3: I thought you would love the Fraser reboot because it's
Speaker 3: some of the most abysmal Boston accents I've ever heard
Speaker 3: of my fucking Lutch.
Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong, I've watched every episode, some.
Speaker 3: Of the nastiest little I have to like pause sometimes
Speaker 3: and like get a water. Yeah, I like walk nearly
Speaker 3: that acsence. Yeah, I mean you have and I have
Speaker 3: conceded long ago that you've got it down.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you well. Anything to plug Jamie after
Speaker 2: our five minute Fraser digression, Well, i'd like to.
Speaker 3: I guess I'd like to plug the Fraser reboot because
Speaker 3: I would like a second season.
Speaker 2: Check it out, everybody. It's not ship.
Speaker 3: It's on Paramount Plus. And I also just read read
Speaker 3: Raw Dog and follow me online. You're so inclined. And
Speaker 3: that's that's all I have to say. Listen to the
Speaker 3: Bexel Cast while you're at it. Why not?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, what about you? Uh, that's it. I'm done.
Speaker 2: You're gonna find find figure out where David Hyde Pierce lives.
Speaker 2: You know, have a nice letter. A letter.
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