Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric, and this is next question.
Speaker 1: I love talking with Michael Lewis. He has this incredible
Speaker 1: ability to zoom in on one person's story and from
Speaker 1: there reveals something much bigger about our culture. His books
Speaker 1: leave you seeing the world differently, and his books about
Speaker 1: federal workers are no exception. So why has the federal
Speaker 1: government gotten such a bad rap? Why are the workers
Speaker 1: often maligned even demonized? After all, they're described with words
Speaker 1: like the deep state and the swamp. Michael Lewis feels
Speaker 1: very differently after writing about a group of these civil servants,
Speaker 1: first in The Fifth Risks and now in a new
Speaker 1: book of essays called Who Is Government? This time Lewis
Speaker 1: and a powerhouse lineup of writers turn their attention to
Speaker 1: people who are some of the unsung heroes of our
Speaker 1: society actually making government work, even though Elon Musk and
Speaker 1: his posse of doge dudes made beg to differ. Here's
Speaker 1: my conversation with Michael Lewis. Michael Lewis, you must have
Speaker 1: a crystal ball, because Who Is Government? The untold story
Speaker 1: of public service could not be more timely. Now I
Speaker 1: know this is a continuation of sorts of your twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen book called The Fifth Risk. You examined the transition
Speaker 1: and political appointments of the first Trump administration, But what
Speaker 1: made you decide to do another deep dive into the
Speaker 1: federal government?
Speaker 2: So there are two reasons. The good literary argument was
Speaker 2: at the end of The Fifth Risk, I had to
Speaker 2: go back and write it afterward for the paperback, and
Speaker 2: I thought to myself that I'd done a lot to
Speaker 2: describe the functions of government in that book, but I
Speaker 2: had not really dwell gone deep on a person really,
Speaker 2: and I thought might be fun to just go deep
Speaker 2: on one of our old bureaucrats. And I basically picked
Speaker 2: a name out of a jar. I mean, it's a
Speaker 2: long story how I picked the guy, but it was
Speaker 2: just it was kind of random, and the story. He
Speaker 2: ended up being an oceanographer in the Coast Guard Search
Speaker 2: and Rescue Department who had had this quite dramatic encounter
Speaker 2: with the death of a young woman and her and
Speaker 2: her daughter that it caught, I mean, it was avoidable.
Speaker 2: Had they under the Coastguard understood how objects drifted at sea,
Speaker 2: they kind of knew where they had capsized in the
Speaker 2: Testapeake Bay. They knew like how the currents were and stuff,
Speaker 2: but they were upside down on a sailboat and nobody
Speaker 2: had ever measured how a sailboat drifted at sea. This guy,
Speaker 2: my subject guard Allen, was so disturbed by the fact
Speaker 2: that they these two people died because they didn't know
Speaker 2: how the object had drifted since they discovered they were gone,
Speaker 2: that he went and created basically a whole science of
Speaker 2: how objects drifted sea. And it was it was such
Speaker 2: a he was such an amazing story. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: a movie his story that I thought, like, if I
Speaker 2: ever come back to this, I want to come back
Speaker 2: to the people, because because the stereotype of the of
Speaker 2: the bureaucrat or whatever you are, the deep state or
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call him, he was such a
Speaker 2: He was a mission driven, selfless giver of a person
Speaker 2: who was also ingenious in how he'd solved a critical
Speaker 2: problem that has saved thousands of lives. So I thought,
Speaker 2: if I ever come back to this, I'm gonna see
Speaker 2: what more of this there is in our government. So
Speaker 2: that was the first the literary reason. It is like
Speaker 2: this material here because the people, the way people think
Speaker 2: of these people, they don't they're faceless. They don't put
Speaker 2: a face to them, so they're easy to knock around
Speaker 2: in when you're by politicians, by media, by whoever. Uh.
Speaker 2: The second reason was I was just astonished after especially
Speaker 2: after Trump won and then neglect of the federal government
Speaker 2: during that administration, that the Democrats never offered a full
Speaker 2: throated like defense or even an explanation of like where
Speaker 2: are taxpayer dollars? Go, like what is it actually doing?
Speaker 2: And who are these people? That they never kind of
Speaker 2: came out and said, like, there's a reason we have
Speaker 2: this government. So no one ever sold the government. So
Speaker 2: I thought like there was so there are all these
Speaker 2: stories that just didn't get told. So the idea, So
Speaker 2: I thought, like the world needs to understand some of
Speaker 2: these stories, and so they don't think it's just like
Speaker 2: Michael Lewis bloviating with his views of government, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: I'm going to pick six other writers and it's not
Speaker 2: going to just be me. It's going to be seven
Speaker 2: really distinctive personalities on the page, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: just like drop them into the government, say find a story,
Speaker 2: could you know, find a story and write up and
Speaker 2: so much of the book ran in the weeks. About
Speaker 2: seven eighths of the book ran in the weeks running
Speaker 2: up to the election in the Washington Post. Weird long pieces.
Speaker 2: I mean, my longest piece is thirteen thousand words, and
Speaker 2: it was so powerful the effect, but for a very
Speaker 2: small audience, because it was like the Washington Post and
Speaker 2: behind a paywall, and it was pretty obvious these things
Speaker 2: should They were a coherent hole and they should be collected.
Speaker 2: But of course, having said that, no one had any
Speaker 2: I did. Donald Trump was going to be the president
Speaker 2: of the United States and be doing what he's doing
Speaker 2: to the federal government where we wrote these things.
Speaker 1: In fact, in the Washington Post opinion series where the
Speaker 1: essays in this new book originated, they received four times
Speaker 1: the session's average readership. And you've said it was like,
Speaker 1: the country is hungering for an explanation of how government works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where do you.
Speaker 1: Think that hunger is coming from? And why do you
Speaker 1: think the quote unquote bureaucracy, which is often said in
Speaker 1: a very pejoradaed way, it's so misunderstood.
Speaker 2: Well, so remind me to answer the second part of
Speaker 2: that question, because that's the longer and interesting answer. But
Speaker 2: the hunger in the first place, we just don't get
Speaker 2: stories very many stories about the government, or when we
Speaker 2: get them, they're in the form of some poor civil
Speaker 2: servants hall in front of Congress to be ritually humiliated
Speaker 2: for some mistake they made. And I do think I
Speaker 2: don't know this is true, but I've been told it's
Speaker 2: true that there has been just to kind of decline
Speaker 2: in civics education in the country. Like the Civics course
Speaker 2: you got in the eighth of the ninth grade is
Speaker 2: not as widely taught anymore, are not taught in the
Speaker 2: same way. So you know, just like how a bill
Speaker 2: becomes a law, that kind of stuff just doesn't get
Speaker 2: into kids' brains.
Speaker 1: We need Schullhouse rock part too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something like that. No, it's kind of true.
Speaker 2: But the second part of this is like these people
Speaker 2: who work in these jobs are one forbidden from promoting
Speaker 2: themselves and they don't have time to do it anyway. Two,
Speaker 2: they're really not the kind of people who tell their
Speaker 2: own story. They're not self promoters. They're almost the opposite
Speaker 2: of self promoters. They give you a lit'll tell you
Speaker 2: a little anc though it's funny. When I went to
Speaker 2: write that piece about the first the first deep dive
Speaker 2: I did in a single person. Arthur Allen was his name,
Speaker 2: the oceanographer of the Coast Guard. I called him up,
Speaker 2: said I want to come talk to you about what
Speaker 2: you've done. Without knowing really much about what he'd done,
Speaker 2: spent three days with him, with his wife, his kids,
Speaker 2: you know, interviewing people around him, three full days with him.
Speaker 2: At the end of three days, I was driving back
Speaker 2: to the airport and he calls my cell phone. He says, says, hey,
Speaker 2: you're a writer. And I said, yeah, yeah, I'm a writer.
Speaker 2: Well you think you know? I sit there with a
Speaker 2: notepad for three days taking notes, and I know. I
Speaker 2: said I was a writer when I called you. He says,
Speaker 2: but my son says that like you've written books that
Speaker 2: have become movies, like you're like big time. And I said, well,
Speaker 2: don't know if I'm big time, but I am a writer.
Speaker 2: And he says, you're going to write about this, and
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, I'm I going to write about this.
Speaker 2: What do you think I was doing there for three days?
Speaker 2: And he said, I just thought you were really interested
Speaker 2: in how objects drift, And I thought, this is the
Speaker 2: mind of someone He's so different from like the investment
Speaker 2: banker you go to interview. He's so oblivious, he's interested
Speaker 2: in his expertise. He's very narrow, he's not thinking like
Speaker 2: how he appears to the world. He's open to help
Speaker 2: people who come to him for help, but not thinking
Speaker 2: at all, like I was going to turn him into
Speaker 2: some celebrity and didn't know what to do with it
Speaker 2: or care that they're that way. So they don't project.
Speaker 2: So someone has to go project them for us because
Speaker 2: they won't do it themselves. And there's a built in
Speaker 2: problem in the government. The politicians and I hate to say,
Speaker 2: I hate to use that word as a pejorative, but
Speaker 2: it is just true that people who are campaigning and
Speaker 2: running for elective office find it very useful to be
Speaker 2: negative about the civil service and to blame them for
Speaker 2: their or when problems occur. But there's not really any
Speaker 2: upside for giving them credit. It's like the politicians want
Speaker 2: the credit. So the people who are junior class senior
Speaker 2: class president types who are out there waiving at the crowds,
Speaker 2: have no real interest in selling the mechanism of the government.
Speaker 2: And I think we all kind of know, you know,
Speaker 2: the government we sent in the back of our minds.
Speaker 2: This government is doing something. You know, it's it's kind
Speaker 2: of magical. You get you turn on the tap and
Speaker 2: you get cold water you can drink. You know, that's
Speaker 2: that doesn't just happen and it comes from like a
Speaker 2: reservoir from three hundred miles away or that you know, Uh,
Speaker 2: the weather is predictable seven days out. Used to be
Speaker 2: not predictable at all. Ah, that happened. It just becomes
Speaker 2: like the the infrastructure of our lives. And I think
Speaker 2: until it's threatened, you just it's like your parents. Until
Speaker 2: they're threatened, you just think, well, they're there, Thank God,
Speaker 2: they're there. Maybe, but I'm not going to pay much
Speaker 2: attention to them. But the minute it becomes like, oh crap,
Speaker 2: they're going to take it away, even if it's just
Speaker 2: a hint of that, people kind of wake up and go, oh, oh, oh,
Speaker 2: I need maybe I need to know about this.
Speaker 1: You illuminated, Michael, why people don't appreciate the federal government,
Speaker 1: why they often take it for granted. But it's even
Speaker 1: worse than that. There's an enduring, an entrenched negative stereotype
Speaker 1: in our culture about civil servants that they're stupid, and lazy,
Speaker 1: as you describe it. How did that happen? I know
Speaker 1: that they're not good at telling their stories or blowing
Speaker 1: their own rams horns like politicians are. But where do
Speaker 1: you think this negative perception comes from?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's a it's a it's like
Speaker 2: a it's a complicated question to answer, but I mean,
Speaker 2: most most obviously, they don't do the thing that we
Speaker 2: value in this culture, which is make money. They don't.
Speaker 2: They don't have they're not successful people. They're not famous people.
Speaker 2: They're not you know, they're not there. So they don't
Speaker 2: have that going for them. They're also they're vulnerable because
Speaker 2: the enterprise they work for is most complicated enterprise ever
Speaker 2: created on in the history of the university, the United
Speaker 2: States government, and they're spending now seven trillion dollars a
Speaker 2: year there, and they're bound to be problems. You know.
Speaker 2: It's just sort of like they're bound to be mistakes made,
Speaker 2: and when they're made, it's sort of it's sort of
Speaker 2: like it's assumed no mistakes will be made, and when
Speaker 2: they're made, they get exposed and ridiculed and all the rest.
Speaker 2: You know, Why else is it this one? I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, I haven't really thought too much about how
Speaker 2: this why Ronald Reagan could roll in, you know, forty
Speaker 2: five years ago or whatever it was fifty years ago
Speaker 2: and say the most you know, dangerous words in the
Speaker 2: English languages, I'm from the government and I'm here to
Speaker 2: help you.
Speaker 1: Didn't he also say that the government is the problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the government, you know, there's this fantasy you
Speaker 2: take it away and everything's going to be better, And
Speaker 2: the truth is, you don't have markets without the government,
Speaker 2: you don't have an awful lot of our economic growth
Speaker 2: is driven by government private partnerships. But what you all,
Speaker 2: you know, this is part of the reason they're so
Speaker 2: easy to beat up on is a lot of what
Speaker 2: they're doing is prevention. Like a lot of what they're
Speaker 2: doing is stopping things from happening. And when you stop
Speaker 2: something from happening, you don't get credit. You get credit
Speaker 2: when you come after the bad thing has happened. So
Speaker 2: there's an awful lot of work that's out there, I
Speaker 2: don't know, stopping someone from getting a bomb on a plane.
Speaker 2: Who do you think is doing that? I can tell
Speaker 2: you who's doing that. There's a lab called a Livermore
Speaker 2: lab that's like forty miles from my house, where they
Speaker 2: are constantly experimenting with different sort of chemicals and ingredients
Speaker 2: to see what you might be able to make a
Speaker 2: bottom of. And as they whenever they find something new,
Speaker 2: they program those machines that you put your bag through
Speaker 2: to detect those things. And you don't see any of it.
Speaker 2: But if they weren't there, you would notice. You know,
Speaker 2: the FAA right, your plane doesn't crash if it doesn't,
Speaker 2: you know, air safety is a you know, a miracle
Speaker 2: of modern life. It's the government. But you're not getting
Speaker 2: credit for the plane not crashing, so a lot I
Speaker 2: think that's also part of it. It's sort of easy
Speaker 2: to beat up on them because there's a lot of
Speaker 2: their work is preventive, a lot of it is just
Speaker 2: keeping us safe. And as I say, they're just not
Speaker 2: doing the thing that's celebrated in the culture, which is
Speaker 2: make money.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the administration, as you know, I've thought about you
Speaker 1: often with these DOGE government cuts, but even before DOGE
Speaker 1: was created, they have not only encouraged this stereotype as
Speaker 1: bureaucrats or government workers being stupid and lazy and extraneous,
Speaker 1: if you will, but they've turned it into something more sinister.
Speaker 1: Let me give you a quote that jd Vance said
Speaker 1: on a podcast in twenty twenty one. If I was
Speaker 1: giving Trump one piece of advice, it's fire every single
Speaker 1: mid level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state,
Speaker 1: and replace them with our people.
Speaker 2: So it's just such a misconception of who these people
Speaker 2: are in the first place, because it's probably true that
Speaker 2: the government workers generally probably tilt more left than right,
Speaker 2: but their politics are very hard to predict. You'd be
Speaker 2: surprised who they voted for, I think. But the bigger
Speaker 2: point is most of what they're doing is so nonpartisan.
Speaker 2: It's like it's it's stuff that the Congress has allocated
Speaker 2: money for because it's problems that needed to be dealt with,
Speaker 2: and they're dealing with them. And the list is like
Speaker 2: endless of what these problems are. But you know, you
Speaker 2: know about air safety, but like there's all this stuff
Speaker 2: you don't see. Rural America, for example, is propped up
Speaker 2: by the Agriculture Department. Like there wouldn't be firehouses and
Speaker 2: schools and all they would It would be a wasteland
Speaker 2: without the spending from the Agriculture Department. And that's something
Speaker 2: you can argue that we shouldn't have, but that argument's
Speaker 2: been had by Congress, and it's authorized. The money and
Speaker 2: the people who are the people who are in there
Speaker 2: working are they're just trying to execute tasks and and like,
Speaker 2: how is it, how is it partisan to like make
Speaker 2: sure nuclear weapons don't explode when they they they shouldn't explode.
Speaker 2: It's just it's such a misapprehendsion of what that enterprise
Speaker 2: is and what they're doing. It's interesting because what they're
Speaker 2: doing is accusing the existing workforce of being essentially political,
Speaker 2: like their deep state. They're out to get us, when
Speaker 2: in fact that it's not who they are. But what
Speaker 2: they're trying to do is turn it into something. It's
Speaker 2: very political. It's out to get the other side. And
Speaker 2: it's taking fifty thousand jobs and turning them from career
Speaker 2: civil service jobs to essentially patronage jobs that the Trump
Speaker 2: administration can appoint not based on expertise, but based on loyalty.
Speaker 1: How dangerous is that replacement in your view.
Speaker 2: It's dangerous on a couple of levels. It's very dangerous,
Speaker 2: and it is one it's going to make the government
Speaker 2: a lot less effective because you're replacing people who actually
Speaker 2: know things with people who don't and their main qualification
Speaker 2: is they're just loyal with Donald Trump. That's not a
Speaker 2: good place to start when you're solving complicated problems. But
Speaker 2: it's dangerous in another way that if you actually succeed
Speaker 2: in turning the federal government into what Trump advance say,
Speaker 2: it is, turning it into this political weapon, it's hard
Speaker 2: to know. You know, it's from there to like no
Speaker 2: democracy is a half step, and so it's dangerous on
Speaker 2: that level too, and it'll have this knock on effect.
Speaker 2: And this is the knock on effect of a lot
Speaker 2: of Republican rhetoric is you know, you disable, you villainize
Speaker 2: this enterprise that's there to serve us all, you make
Speaker 2: it less effective at what it's supposed to do. And
Speaker 2: then you could point to it and say, look how
Speaker 2: ineffective it is, Like the problem is government. Well, no,
Speaker 2: the problem is how you run the government. The problem
Speaker 2: is in government.
Speaker 1: If you want to get smarter every morning with a
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Speaker 1: Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot Com. I'm
Speaker 1: curious how you feel this kind of rhetoric, things like
Speaker 1: weaponizing or demonizing the deep state, how that erodes the
Speaker 1: public trust in our government and institutions in general.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm trying to think of some equivalent. Where
Speaker 2: can you think of a product or a service or
Speaker 2: that is just all it gets is negative publicity, and
Speaker 2: it's like there's like a publicity machine designed to undermine it,
Speaker 2: and that's all people here. I mean, it's just there's
Speaker 2: no question that public there is this reflexive public opinion,
Speaker 2: especially on the right, but not just on the right,
Speaker 2: that like, oh, it's just government's waste, government's fraud. So
Speaker 2: this would attracted me to somebody in the first place,
Speaker 2: is I don't have any big stake in government. I
Speaker 2: just saw that wasn't true because I wanted around the
Speaker 2: government and saw what was there. And what's what's what's
Speaker 2: shocking about it is whatever people believe because of what
Speaker 2: they've heard from casual this kind of casual loose talk.
Speaker 2: The opposite is kind of true that if you're looking
Speaker 2: for waste or fraud, you were so much more likely
Speaker 2: to find it in a private sector company than you
Speaker 2: are in a in a government agency, especially fraud like that,
Speaker 2: that the places are on a hair trigger or alert
Speaker 2: for like people stealing money. You can't you know, you
Speaker 2: can't you when you're on Wall Street and you wanted
Speaker 2: to get business, you could, you know, take people to
Speaker 2: strip clubs and get them front row seats to watch
Speaker 2: the Mets and all that stuff. You can't buy a
Speaker 2: sandwich for someone who works in the federal government. That
Speaker 2: it is. So it is like and there and all
Speaker 2: around these places are watchdogs whose job is to prevent
Speaker 2: money from being stolen. And in fact, the first people
Speaker 2: the Trumpe administation fired were those watchdogs. So that tells
Speaker 2: you something about how much they care, actually care about
Speaker 2: the fraud. The waste is more complicated because it's true that,
Speaker 2: like there are some ways government does things that if
Speaker 2: you were starting from scratch, that's not how you do them.
Speaker 2: And there is, for sure ways to go in and
Speaker 2: make it work work somewhat better. But the way but
Speaker 2: the way to when that in that case, the way
Speaker 2: to go in is with an appreciation of why it
Speaker 2: works the way it is, because you're just gonna end
Speaker 2: up recreating with what was created. If you don't understand
Speaker 2: why it got the way it was. It's like, there
Speaker 2: are reasons, there are reasons. It's like there's analyst bureaucracy
Speaker 2: around contracting. You know, it's to revent the fraud kind
Speaker 2: of thing. And it's maddening how it's done because basically
Speaker 2: there's no trust. You know, it's a low trust environment.
Speaker 2: And in a low trust environment, it's a very inefficient environment.
Speaker 2: When you got to sign pieces of paper to get
Speaker 2: an extra box to take the paper clips, you're going
Speaker 2: to be less efficient. And if you can just go
Speaker 2: to the storeroom and take one. So there are problems there,
Speaker 2: but a lot of the wasteful problems will rise from
Speaker 2: the mistrust about the institution. It's been sown into the
Speaker 2: public mind by this rhetoric. I mean, let me ask
Speaker 2: you a question. You're asking me questions, but I want
Speaker 2: to ask you a question. Is it not if you
Speaker 2: just back away from it? Kind of weird that we're
Speaker 2: in a democracy where we elected people to do stuff,
Speaker 2: and these things that got done by the government. It's
Speaker 2: not like some autocrat did it. We the people did it,
Speaker 2: and that we view the these civil servants, the instruments
Speaker 2: of our will, as somehow our enemies, somehow like insiders
Speaker 2: trying to bring us down. It's a really odd thing
Speaker 2: for in a democracy for people to feel that way
Speaker 2: about their government. And anyway, I didn't have it, As
Speaker 2: I said, I came into this, I didn't have any
Speaker 2: particular view. I'm not like some screaming liberal. I like
Speaker 2: people who make money and none of that. It was
Speaker 2: just I could not believe like the heroism basically in
Speaker 2: the civil service, could not believe the quality of the
Speaker 2: people that were engaged in such critical stuff, like the
Speaker 2: society falls apart if they're not there. And I started
Speaker 2: pulling my hair out when I realized, like, oh, they've
Speaker 2: been doing this for thirty years and all they've heard is,
Speaker 2: you know, abuse from the outside. It just like there's
Speaker 2: something untrue about this. So my question for you is,
Speaker 2: how do you explain this, Like it just seems really odd.
Speaker 1: I think that government workers for as long as I
Speaker 1: can remember, growing up in Arlington, Virginia, outside DC, where
Speaker 1: a lot of people did work for the government, I
Speaker 1: think there was an attitude that there was excess and
Speaker 1: redundancy and inefficiency in the federal government. And I think
Speaker 1: it's just been a stereotype that for whatever reason, has
Speaker 1: been baked in yes to our national consciousness, and that's
Speaker 1: but of course there are critical jobs. But I think
Speaker 1: that there has always been the impression, Michael, that there
Speaker 1: were extraneous jobs or jobs that weren't really necessary. And
Speaker 1: I think the very word bureaucracy has gotten, you know,
Speaker 1: has become a dirty word in the public's mind. And
Speaker 1: with bureaucracy it means unnecessary levels of maloney that you
Speaker 1: have to kind of get through. So I think all
Speaker 1: those things have kind of come together to make people
Speaker 1: feel fairly anti government. And I think to your point,
Speaker 1: we haven't heard enough stories about civil servants. And I
Speaker 1: also think there's something about having a job for life.
Speaker 1: You know, this is all just kind of things that
Speaker 1: when I was a kid growing up right outside DC,
Speaker 1: like that some jobs are protected like tenure, when other
Speaker 1: people are subjected to performance reviews, and there was a
Speaker 1: feeling of a meritocracy. When you've got in the civil service,
Speaker 1: you basically had a job for life. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that probably explained some of the negative things that I've
Speaker 1: heard about government workers.
Speaker 2: Right, some of that's valid, and I can understand hostility
Speaker 2: towards tenure. Basically they don't exactly have tenure. You can
Speaker 2: fire a civil servant, you just have to have cause.
Speaker 2: But I think at the I do think at the
Speaker 2: bottom of this is some false kind of like false
Speaker 2: ideas that people have in their heads about what goes
Speaker 2: on inside the places and its relationship to the society.
Speaker 2: So if you ask people that most I bet most
Speaker 2: people say government just has been growing out of control.
Speaker 2: For example, like it has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 2: Now it's true, our deficits have gotten bigger and bigger
Speaker 2: and bigger. That's not the big generals, it's trunk. It's
Speaker 2: like the civil service, not the military. Fifty years ago
Speaker 2: was two point three million workers. It's still two point
Speaker 2: three million workers. The society is you know, forty percent
Speaker 2: bigger or whatever. So in relationship to the society, it
Speaker 2: is shrunk. So people can flate like government spending, which
Speaker 2: is a different thing on the government workforce. That the
Speaker 2: fact that Elon Musk, when he goes in to say
Speaker 2: to eliminate, to reduce, to cut two trillion dollars out
Speaker 2: of the budget deficit, he said, and eliminate all this inefficiency,
Speaker 2: finds himself cutting so he finds the cutting in such
Speaker 2: a this he cutting just the civil service. But it's
Speaker 2: such a small sliver of the actual spending that has
Speaker 2: almost no effect. I mean, eighty six percent of government
Speaker 2: spending is either interest payments on the debt, defense, or entitlements,
Speaker 2: So it's only fourteen percent of the budget that's these
Speaker 2: people anyway. So but that nobody says, oh, wait, he's
Speaker 2: doing he's trying to cut a big chunk out of
Speaker 2: the pie, but he's confined himself to a little slipper
Speaker 2: of the pie. This is impossible, it will never happen. Instead,
Speaker 2: people cheer and say, yeah, he's getting rid of all
Speaker 2: of that, and we're going to get rid of our deficits.
Speaker 2: It's just it's, I mean, we're ignorant. So here's another
Speaker 2: answer to your question, like, how did we come to
Speaker 2: this past? Why are these people so easily distorted by
Speaker 2: the political process so that people think of them differently
Speaker 2: than they actually are. The answer is, we've been afforded
Speaker 2: that luxury that we've lived through a very long period
Speaker 2: without great existential risk to ourselves. It hasn't been all
Speaker 2: peace and prosperity, but by world historic standards, a lot
Speaker 2: of peace and prosperity. We don't wake up thinking our
Speaker 2: society is about to be invaded by barbarians or we're
Speaker 2: all going to die because of a pandemic or whatever.
Speaker 2: So we can afford to take the parents for granted.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like we've been safe for so long
Speaker 2: and we don't it's not till something really bad happens
Speaker 2: that people don't realize why we needed this thing. And
Speaker 2: what I worry is that's what has to happen, Like
Speaker 2: something really bad is going to happen, and people are, oh,
Speaker 2: that's why we had the government'll bring it back, And
Speaker 2: it's a shame it has to come to that. And
Speaker 2: the point of the book is, like, you know, just
Speaker 2: read this seven random profiles from inside the government and
Speaker 2: see if you can you can you can preserve that
Speaker 2: bigotry you have about the civil servant, See if you can't, like,
Speaker 2: see if you can avoid opening up your mind to
Speaker 2: the possibility that this is actually a useful enterprise.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about some of those essays,
Speaker 1: and particularly the person you profile. But since you mentioned
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, I have wondered, Michael, how you have felt
Speaker 1: given the fifth risk, and given your interests in profiling
Speaker 1: the federal workforce, how you have felt watching Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and his so called doge Bros go in and just
Speaker 1: wholesale fire tens of thousands of people.
Speaker 2: Right in the very beginning, there was a little part
Speaker 2: of me that was hopeful. And the little part of
Speaker 2: me that was hopeful was it is true that the
Speaker 2: government has been kind of starved young talent for a
Speaker 2: long time. People, young bright, young people have not been
Speaker 2: encouraged to go into government service, and particularly in the
Speaker 2: tech world, because you could get paid so much better
Speaker 2: just going and work for a Silicon Valley startup. And
Speaker 2: the idea that he might channel some of this talent
Speaker 2: into the government and actually fix some old and broken systems,
Speaker 2: that was a I thought, maybe there's hope there, like,
Speaker 2: but then when then they started doing what they were doing,
Speaker 2: which is like cutting agencies, you know, like without explanation exactly,
Speaker 2: and going in and randomly cutting seemingly big chunks of
Speaker 2: the federal workforce without a whole lot of explanation about why,
Speaker 2: except to say that they were cutting fat out of
Speaker 2: the out of the budget. But so then I became
Speaker 2: puzzled because what they said they were doing was clearly
Speaker 2: not what they were doing. The first thing they said
Speaker 2: they were doing was going after fraud. And when they
Speaker 2: got rid of all the inspector generals at the agencies,
Speaker 2: those people, they're not deep state bureaucrats who are there
Speaker 2: to help fraud happen. They're there to point out fraud
Speaker 2: to Congress. They are the refs, the cops on the beat.
Speaker 2: So they got rid all the cops. So that's not
Speaker 2: what you do. If you're trying to catch the crooks,
Speaker 2: you don't get rid of all the cocks and then
Speaker 2: the cops who know the most. So it was an
Speaker 2: odd thing to do. So I thought, they're not going
Speaker 2: after fraud, that's not what this is about. And when
Speaker 2: with a waist, it was like, are you know the fat?
Speaker 2: They were dealing with such a small part of the government.
Speaker 2: They were never going to make that much of a dent.
Speaker 2: So it was not about that they're not going to
Speaker 2: like get the bud get rid of the budget deaf
Speaker 2: as they're doing what they're doing. They're not going to
Speaker 2: cut two trillion dollars like they claim they might. They
Speaker 2: probably got to cut a hundred billion dollars it's like
Speaker 2: they're dealing with rounding errors and so like, if they're
Speaker 2: not doing what they say they're doing, or they're doing
Speaker 2: it so badly, they might as well not be But
Speaker 2: I don't think they're that dumb. Like, what is the motive?
Speaker 2: And so far as I can tell, the motive is
Speaker 2: to turn this enterprise that's supposed to be serving the
Speaker 2: entire society and it's filled with these exquisite human beings
Speaker 2: doing extremely complicated and important things. Is to turn this
Speaker 2: into an instrument of personal political power for Elon Musk
Speaker 2: and Donald Trump and so turn it into something that
Speaker 2: just doesn't get in their way whenever they do whatever
Speaker 2: they want to do, whatever that might be. And it's
Speaker 2: hard to know how the size is going to react
Speaker 2: to this, because it's been told for so long that
Speaker 2: this government is so awful they mighty might just let
Speaker 2: him get away with it. I'm not sure of that.
Speaker 2: But so now I'm just sitting watching, like how are
Speaker 2: we going to react? How upset are people going to be?
Speaker 2: How much of a stand are they going to take?
Speaker 2: Will Republicans in Congress have the nerve to stand up
Speaker 2: and actually argue against this when they know it's wrong
Speaker 2: or bad, and I just don't no. But I've become,
Speaker 2: you know, in the course of the first six weeks
Speaker 2: of the Trump administration, pretty cynical about them because I
Speaker 2: don't see a whole lot of reason to it. Like
Speaker 2: I don't see them doing things that I think, oh,
Speaker 2: that's going to make us stronger. I see them doing
Speaker 2: things that they're going to make them more powerful, but
Speaker 2: at our expense. And I have this feeling. It's a
Speaker 2: visceral feeling. I have a feelings. It's a feeling you
Speaker 2: have when the risk in your life has just gone up.
Speaker 2: It's a feeling that like, oh, we're all always kind
Speaker 2: of playing Russian Roulette. They're always risks, but they're just
Speaker 2: sticking Willy Nelly more bullets in the chamber of the gun.
Speaker 2: That and we're now playing Russian Roulette with greater risk
Speaker 2: of fatality. And I feel that So that's agitating because
Speaker 2: it seems like wholly unnecessary to be inflicting this risk
Speaker 2: on the population. You know, you go in and you
Speaker 2: start firing air traffic controllers, or you start firing people
Speaker 2: whose job it is to monitor the the cleanliness of
Speaker 2: the wader, or you fire people whose job it is
Speaker 2: overseas to monitor and control disease that might find its
Speaker 2: way to our shores, or you fire the nuclear the
Speaker 2: people in charge of the nuclear weapons. I mean, sometimes
Speaker 2: they've done this and then they've said, oh, we made
Speaker 2: a mistake and we're going to bring them back. But
Speaker 2: there's been an awful lot of mucking around with the
Speaker 2: mechanisms for controlling existential risk, and that makes just makes
Speaker 2: me really uneasy. Like so I don't don't I don't
Speaker 2: really feel good about it. I wrote a note. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know where you got it. I wrote elon muskin.
Speaker 2: Note said, like, if you're so sure this is right,
Speaker 2: I'd love to come to sit and watch and you
Speaker 2: can explain to me why this is. This is smart.
Speaker 2: I've spent a lot of time inside this institution, a
Speaker 2: lot more than you. Happy to come and like talk
Speaker 2: to you about it. And I didn't get a response.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask if he wrote you back,
Speaker 1: but you just told me it seems like the whole
Speaker 1: tech adage of moving fast and breaking things right, being
Speaker 1: complete disruptors is what is at play here. Well, what
Speaker 1: strikes me is it doesn't seem that this is being
Speaker 1: done reducing government in any kind of thoughtful way, and
Speaker 1: if anything, it is so insulting and demoralizing and demeaning
Speaker 1: to some of these public servants who have dedicated their
Speaker 1: lives to their area of expertise. And not surprisingly I
Speaker 1: just read that many of them are dealing with some
Speaker 1: serious mental health issues. They're also getting abused online, and
Speaker 1: these are people who were not seeking out attention. I
Speaker 1: don't understand why this is being done with a sledgehammer
Speaker 1: and not a scalpel, but maybe this is just not
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's m O.
Speaker 2: Why it's being done with such malice is that it's malicious, right,
Speaker 2: and there is there's a there's a point to there's
Speaker 2: a point to be made here about like his MO,
Speaker 2: how he how he operates. I'm sure most people think
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is like an incredibly smart guy, and in
Speaker 2: some ways, I'm sure he is incredibly smart, but that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean he's like universally smart, doesn't mean he's like
Speaker 2: good at everything. And he's actually not demonstrated that he's
Speaker 2: all that good at managing a large institution. He's really
Speaker 2: good at products like peddling products. He's but he looked
Speaker 2: he took Twitter, which was, you know, whatever it was,
Speaker 2: it was a successful issue business. He bought it, and
Speaker 2: he's reduced its value by more than half. I mean,
Speaker 2: anybody who invested alongside of him has lost sixty percent
Speaker 2: of their money. And he did it much the same
Speaker 2: way he ran, and he came into this existing institution.
Speaker 2: I'm so smart. All you all are fired unless you
Speaker 2: can prove that you belong here. Humiliated everybody, and that
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to have worked out very well. And I'd
Speaker 2: like to hear You're not hearing any of these voices
Speaker 2: because everybody's scared of Donald Trump. But I'd love to
Speaker 2: hear with people who are genuinely gifted running big, complicated institutions,
Speaker 2: like people who run big corporations. Think of this as
Speaker 2: a management style. It's not something you see in successful
Speaker 2: it's successful big companies. The CEO doesn't run insulting the employees,
Speaker 2: telling them how valueless they are and all the rest.
Speaker 2: It's that's that's not historically been like a recipe for success.
Speaker 2: Why would it work here? And on top of it,
Speaker 2: maybe that maybe in some weird corporation might work, but
Speaker 2: it's definitely not going to work in a workforce where
Speaker 2: you can't actually pay people very much like that. They're
Speaker 2: working there. They're not there for the money, they're not
Speaker 2: there for the fame. They're there if they're the best
Speaker 2: people for the mission. And so if you're going to
Speaker 2: come in and like undermine their sense of selves and
Speaker 2: undermine the mission, I mean, that's just got to be
Speaker 2: just especially toxic in a in the government environment. So
Speaker 2: I think, you know, I suspect that it's going to
Speaker 2: all end so badly that we'll look back and say,
Speaker 2: how do we let that happen? And we'll go to
Speaker 2: fix the things he broke. But you never know, because
Speaker 2: we have a world where people believe all kinds of
Speaker 2: stuff that isn't true, and people will be being told
Speaker 2: that this was a big success even if it's a
Speaker 2: big failure. My biggest fear in a funny way in
Speaker 2: the back of my head right now, and I'm thinking about,
Speaker 2: like what if I write something else, what purpose would
Speaker 2: it serve. My theory is the bad thing happens because
Speaker 2: of something they've disabled in government. The mechanism for preventing
Speaker 2: the bad thing, whatever the bad thing is, was disabled,
Speaker 2: and the bad thing happened, and it can be traced
Speaker 2: by a rational person directly back to what Elon Musk
Speaker 2: and Donald Trump have just done, but that after the
Speaker 2: bad thing happens, a narrative of war follows and their
Speaker 2: side gets to make up all kinds of facts and
Speaker 2: say that, no, we didn't have anything to do with
Speaker 2: the bad thing. The bad thing was the response with
Speaker 2: the responsibility of the deep state, which we haven't rooted out,
Speaker 2: or however they frame it. I'm trying to think, how
Speaker 2: do you vent them from being able to do that?
Speaker 2: How do you make sure that when the bad thing happens,
Speaker 2: everybody understands it was their fault. I am groping towards
Speaker 2: like what the next literary response is to this this book.
Speaker 2: It's funny. The timing of this book is so funny,
Speaker 2: just because like if everybody read it, you put it
Speaker 2: in the hands of just red state people and made
Speaker 2: them read it, and so you can think whatever you
Speaker 2: think about it, but you got to read it. I
Speaker 2: do think a lot of people would say, yeah, I know,
Speaker 2: good people work in government. Yeah it's not as simple
Speaker 2: as like it, but it's just like that's not what
Speaker 2: they hear every day. And so I do think there's
Speaker 2: some hope of changing shifting the narrative a bit.
Speaker 1: Michael, I'm wondering if you have found it hypocritical that
Speaker 1: Elon must praises private sector led in a but a
Speaker 1: lot of these breakthroughs come from NASA and the Department
Speaker 1: of Energy, and he couldn't do what he does without them.
Speaker 2: It's sinister because it's not just typic critical. He's claiming
Speaker 2: credit for stuff he doesn't deserve credit for. Not that
Speaker 2: he doesn't deserve credit for some stuff, but like he says,
Speaker 2: he was the founder of Tesla and the founder of PayPal,
Speaker 2: and he wasn't someone else founded the company. He came in. Tesla.
Speaker 2: Isn't just the triumph of the private sector that Tesla
Speaker 2: does not get off the ground without a four hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty million dollar loan, our loan guarantee from the
Speaker 2: Department of Energy. At the time, he said this saved us,
Speaker 2: and other people at Tesla said we just wouldn't exist
Speaker 2: without this. It was like a little bit of a
Speaker 2: moonshot technology, and the Department of Energy has a little
Speaker 2: has two a couple of programs that back moonshot technologies,
Speaker 2: and they've had astonishing success with it, and it's true
Speaker 2: of a lot of our economy. It's that it especially
Speaker 2: a lot of innovation, it starts with some public private partnership.
Speaker 2: So to try to pitch people on the idea this
Speaker 2: is all a bunch of smart guys in Silicon Valley
Speaker 2: who'd be even who'd be doing even greater things if
Speaker 2: the government wasn't in their way, is a complete misreading
Speaker 2: of what has happened. But also it's very self serving.
Speaker 2: It's like, now I'm on top, I'm gonna I'm going
Speaker 2: to disable this mechanism for like people coming up from
Speaker 2: beneath me to challenge me, and and I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 2: a swarm around telling the story that I'm basically responsible
Speaker 2: for all this.
Speaker 1: Not a big fan of Blon, must are you?
Speaker 2: I mean less and less? So I didn't have a view.
Speaker 2: I didn't I wasn't born with the animist towards him.
Speaker 2: But I think he's been very, very bad for the
Speaker 2: country and any It's just to tell when someone is
Speaker 2: lying all the time, it's just like when they're putting
Speaker 2: lies out constantly, it's just that this this underlying rot
Speaker 2: and they'll they're all these lies about what they've achieved
Speaker 2: in the government when they haven't achieved them. There are
Speaker 2: lies about other people and the other thing's offensive about him.
Speaker 2: He's a bully. You know, He's got this platform and
Speaker 2: he'll and he can turn his fans against anybody at
Speaker 2: any time, and does it routinely, you know, outing civil
Speaker 2: servants by name disgusting. I mean, it's just disgusting. And
Speaker 2: so I think, you know, I think he's a bully,
Speaker 2: and I don't react. I just don't react very well
Speaker 2: to bullies.
Speaker 1: Getting back to your book, Who Is Government, The Untold
Speaker 1: Story of Public Service? You, as you mentioned, got a
Speaker 1: number of great writers to profile different government workers, and
Speaker 1: you picked someone named Christopher Mark. You met him, I guess,
Speaker 1: via something called the Sammy's when you described as the
Speaker 1: Oscars for Public Service. Out of the five hundred fifty
Speaker 1: names on that list, what made you stop in your
Speaker 1: tracks when came across Chris Mark?
Speaker 2: So, Chrismak cannot want any award. When I met him,
Speaker 2: it was just a list of nominees, right, And what
Speaker 2: made me stop was he was the one nominee where
Speaker 2: there was some trace of personal information, some trace of
Speaker 2: a human being that the way the nominations were laid out.
Speaker 2: It was a couple of sentences, and it was like
Speaker 2: Joe Schmoe from the FBI discovered and disrupted a child
Speaker 2: sex trafficking ring. And then they moved on not telling
Speaker 2: you anything about Joe Schmoe. And it got the Christopher
Speaker 2: Mark and it said, Christopher Mark inside the Department of
Speaker 2: Labor has solved the problem of coal miner whos collapsing
Speaker 2: on the heads of coal miners, a problem which killed
Speaker 2: fifty thousand coal miners in the last century. And then
Speaker 2: it said Christopher Mark is a former coal miner. And
Speaker 2: I thought there's a story here. I mean, there's probably
Speaker 2: a story everywhere, but like, how does a former coal
Speaker 2: miner get himself in the position of solving was probably
Speaker 2: a really tech and a complicated problem. And I had
Speaker 2: assumed that, like he had a personal mode, he did
Speaker 2: have personal motivation, but I assumed the wrong one. I
Speaker 2: assuming he like grew up in West Virginia and his
Speaker 2: dad had been killed by a falling roof for something
Speaker 2: like that. So that's what got me to him. But
Speaker 2: then the story ended up being wildly different and even
Speaker 2: more interesting than I expected.
Speaker 1: He grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. He wasn't from
Speaker 1: West Virginia at all, No, he was.
Speaker 2: He grew up in an upper middle class family, child
Speaker 2: of a Princeton professor, and had rebelled against his father
Speaker 2: kind of it was a kind of lefty rebellion against
Speaker 2: his bourgeois father in the late sixties early seventies and
Speaker 2: set out to become be a working man rather than
Speaker 2: go to Harvard or Princeton, which he could have done.
Speaker 2: And what then I find all this out like the
Speaker 2: first thirty minutes, and this just blew me away. His
Speaker 2: dad had become famous as a civil engineer for building
Speaker 2: technology that analyzed kept the roofs of Gothic cathedrals from falling.
Speaker 2: And he was so good at it, I mean Robert
Speaker 2: Marcus's name, you can go. There were like TV shows
Speaker 2: made about it. But he's so good that he could
Speaker 2: like predict where in the Sharps Cathedral the stones would
Speaker 2: be crumbling because the designers made a mistake. And so
Speaker 2: it was like he was answering question everybody has who
Speaker 2: goes to those gorgeous buildings, like what keeps the roof off?
Speaker 2: And the son said, put a middle finger in the
Speaker 2: air of the father when he was seventeen years old,
Speaker 2: left home, went away and started working in factories and
Speaker 2: warehouses and ends up working in a coal mine, thinking
Speaker 2: I'm not going to have anything to do with what
Speaker 2: my father did, and then realizes the roof step fall
Speaker 2: and killed me and goes and he's very clever, and
Speaker 2: the intellectual journey's wild. But how he figures out how
Speaker 2: to keep roofs from collapsing on cole Myers is his
Speaker 2: own story. But what's even wilder is when I get
Speaker 2: him and I hear this story, I say, wow, you
Speaker 2: rebelled against your dad and then you kind of like
Speaker 2: went in your dad's line of work. You all about
Speaker 2: it keeps the roof up, and he goes, that is
Speaker 2: not true. What I did had nothing to do with
Speaker 2: my father. She was like, nope, no, no, And I said,
Speaker 2: this is a character. He's got a little bit of himself.
Speaker 2: He doesn't fully understand. And I know he's great. I mean,
Speaker 2: he was really great fun to write about.
Speaker 1: And theirs similar stories are very inspiring stories by all
Speaker 1: these other writers in the book. Can you just tell
Speaker 1: us some of your favorites.
Speaker 2: It would take a long time to go there all
Speaker 2: of them, but I'll tell you who the writers are,
Speaker 2: because it's an illustrious class. It's John Lanchester, Dave Eggers,
Speaker 2: Sarah val Casey Spp, Geraldine Brooks, and camal Bell and
Speaker 2: Casey Sepp in the New Yorker young writer. She's going
Speaker 2: to be very famous one day. She's a little famous already.
Speaker 2: She I'll tell you her story. She found a guy
Speaker 2: inside the Department of Veterans Affairs. I don't know if
Speaker 2: he's still there. They've goutted it, but his name is
Speaker 2: Ron Walters, and Alters had walked into a job that
Speaker 2: is a kind of sacred duty. It's caring for the
Speaker 2: national cemeteries. It's it's providing the experience for the families
Speaker 2: of veterans when they bury their dead. And when he
Speaker 2: comes into it, and this is like twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: the customer approval rating is not great. It's kind of eh.
Speaker 2: And he sets about attacking the problem with such panache
Speaker 2: that kind of a decade. In the surveys that the
Speaker 2: Universe in Michigan does of customer satisfaction across the economy,
Speaker 2: and they measure satisfaction of government agencies as well as
Speaker 2: with like private companies, so Amazon and the Department of
Speaker 2: Agriculture is in these surveys. By the time Round Walters
Speaker 2: is done, this National Cemetery's burial program has the highest
Speaker 2: customer satisfaction of empty institution in our country. And nobody
Speaker 2: knows who he is. He doesn't he's not out there
Speaker 2: telling people how to manage businesses because he's a genius manager,
Speaker 2: though he obviously is. All he cares about is this
Speaker 2: sacred duty we have to our veterans. It's a moving story.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like who this guy is and why
Speaker 2: he did what he did, and then he did what
Speaker 2: he did and all I mean, I think she just
Speaker 2: kind of scratched the surface in some places, because I
Speaker 2: do think that the Harvard Business School should go figure
Speaker 2: out what he did, because it's an amazing transformation like
Speaker 2: the private, public, whatever sector to do that with a
Speaker 2: very delicate problem. But you never hear about it that happened,
Speaker 2: and you never hear about it, Like if that had
Speaker 2: happened in one of Elon Musk's company or got amazing
Speaker 2: Donald Trump's companies, Donald Trump would be telling you how
Speaker 2: he took the company from here to there, and you'd
Speaker 2: be celebrating Donald Trump as a manager, and you know,
Speaker 2: but that's different personality.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you're hoping that this book will inspire
Speaker 1: more people at this terrible time for government workers to
Speaker 1: become public servants, because even now, people younger than thirty
Speaker 1: represent only seven percent of a full time civil service,
Speaker 1: despite being twenty percent of the overall US labor force,
Speaker 1: and sixty eight percent say they'd never consider pursuing a
Speaker 1: non military federal job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now you wonder why, right, because all they hear
Speaker 2: is what they hear. So this is what I hope for.
Speaker 2: I hope that young people read the book or read
Speaker 2: these stories somehow, some way, and they don't rule out
Speaker 2: the possibility that they'll be called to serve. That they
Speaker 2: will develop their skills and whatever feel they choose. But
Speaker 2: if there comes a time when those skills clearly are
Speaker 2: needed by the country, they don't just turn up their
Speaker 2: nose at the federal government because they think the federal
Speaker 2: government is all a waste. That they realize it's just
Speaker 2: the opposite, that this is the place where you can
Speaker 2: have the greatest impact with those You won't make a
Speaker 2: lot of money, and then you won't just make money,
Speaker 2: but you will change lives save lives, and if that
Speaker 2: idea is still kind of alive, there's hope. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like and it is alive. It's very clearly alive.
Speaker 2: These are role models we're writing about. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: rigged that way. It wasn't like I didn't tell the writers,
Speaker 2: go find a role model. I said, go find a story.
Speaker 2: And this same kind of story just kept presenting itself
Speaker 2: because it's there, you know, It's just it's right there
Speaker 2: on the surface, waiting to be described.
Speaker 1: You wrote a book called Going Infinite, the story of
Speaker 1: billionaire Sam Bankman Free who's now serving time, and I'm
Speaker 1: curious how you feel about his latest interview with Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson and reports that their efforts from his family and
Speaker 1: allies to receive a pardon from Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you had to ask me the moment
Speaker 2: Trump was elected what the Bankman Freeds were going to do,
Speaker 2: I'd have told you they're going to seek a pardon
Speaker 2: from Donald Trump. That doesn't that part doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 2: And there's even a kind of a weird sort of
Speaker 2: narrative path to it because the judge that's sentence Sam
Speaker 2: Bangman freed to twenty five years in jail. It was
Speaker 2: also the judge in the Egen Carroll case, so there
Speaker 2: will be some natural hostility Trump would feel towards that judge.
Speaker 2: It's sort of the rule in life that wherever Sam
Speaker 2: Bangman freed is, even when it's jail, gets way more
Speaker 2: interesting because he's there than it ever was before. So
Speaker 2: I was wondering when he went to jail, like, what's
Speaker 2: going to happen here? It's going to generate story because
Speaker 2: everywhere he goes he generates story, and we're kind of
Speaker 2: spoiled for choice. Now he's given secret interviews to Tucker
Speaker 2: Carlson from his prison cell without the Bureau of Prisons knowing.
Speaker 2: He's got p Diddy in the next bunk. Luigi passed
Speaker 2: through for a nano second. It's like, I mean, his
Speaker 2: life is like a sitcom wherever he goes, and I
Speaker 2: just think it's like, that's just who he is. It's
Speaker 2: what attracted to me, me to him as a subject.
Speaker 2: In the first it's like where we win. It was funny,
Speaker 2: but there is some if this happens. There is some
Speaker 2: irony in the fact that the idea of Trump pardoning
Speaker 2: a guy who is trying to pay him five billion
Speaker 2: dollars a year not to run for president. Sam Bangfree
Speaker 2: was trying to pay Donald Trump not to run for
Speaker 2: president four years ago, and that Donald Trump getting him
Speaker 2: out of jail. I mean, somehow that feels like the
Speaker 2: end of.
Speaker 1: A story, right, at least a Michael Lewis story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: The other question I wanted to ask you quickly and
Speaker 1: then I'll let you go. What do you think of
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos's new attitude toward the opinion pages of the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Your essays originally appeared in those pages, and
Speaker 1: now he has said that alternative points of view that
Speaker 1: aren't focused on I guess liberties right, personal liberties and
Speaker 1: free Marcus will not be welcome at the paper. There
Speaker 1: are other places to read those kinds of things. What
Speaker 1: do you think of Jeff Bezos's attitude now, a new
Speaker 1: edict towards opinion writers at the Washington Post.
Speaker 2: It's gonna kill interest in the Washington Post. I mean,
Speaker 2: it already has. And the editor of this series, David Shipley,
Speaker 2: left because of this decision of Bezos'. So I think it.
Speaker 2: I could see why he did it. I can see
Speaker 2: why people feel they need to suck up to Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think this was it's it's it's
Speaker 2: a particular shame in this case because I think I
Speaker 2: kind of like Jeff Bezos. I think he's a good guy.
Speaker 2: I mean, just as a guy. I don't feel the
Speaker 2: way I feel towards Elon Musk towards Jeff Bezos. But
Speaker 2: the thing that's so disturbing is that there are not
Speaker 2: many places in the country where if you write something,
Speaker 2: all the Democratic legislators and all the Republican legislators read it.
Speaker 2: They don't all read the New York Times. They the
Speaker 2: media has gotten so polarized. But the Washington Post still
Speaker 2: had this kind of like it was the industry towns newspaper,
Speaker 2: and you could get to everybody through it. And if
Speaker 2: you had a party that the Washington at the Washington Post,
Speaker 2: Republican senators would turn up. You know, it wasn't it
Speaker 2: Obviously it leaned left, but it was it was a
Speaker 2: way to speak to the the industry, to the politicians.
Speaker 2: And he's now abandoned. It's not. Now it isn't and
Speaker 2: now it's it's lost, it's lost. Its appeal to me
Speaker 2: is a place to write. I won't write. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to. I have a piece that the last piece
Speaker 2: of this book appears on Thursday in the Post. It's
Speaker 2: another long piece about a civil servant. But I wrote
Speaker 2: it a couple of months ago, and I won't write
Speaker 2: for it in its current incarnation.
Speaker 1: Again, I'm sure a lot of government workers, whether they're
Speaker 1: still employed or have gotten the acts, will be so
Speaker 1: grateful for this book and for someone actually celebrating the
Speaker 1: work that they do if they get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, that wasn't the real purpose in
Speaker 2: my mind. The purpose in my mind was to sort
Speaker 2: of attack the stereotype, like I just to make it,
Speaker 2: make people's minds more interesting, Like get off this kind
Speaker 2: of weird, this weird picture you have of the federal
Speaker 2: bureaucrat and get to something a little more real. That
Speaker 2: was the goal. But one side effect maybe makes people
Speaker 2: feel better, that would be all right.
Speaker 1: Well. The book is called Who Is Government? The untol
Speaker 1: Story of Public Service, and Michael, it really is kind
Speaker 1: of an addendum to your previous book, The Fifth Risk,
Speaker 1: which paints a very different picture of the men and
Speaker 1: women in our federal workforce. I always love talking to
Speaker 1: you Michael, Thank you, Thank you, Katie, thanks for listening. Everyone.
Speaker 1: If you have a question for me, a subject you
Speaker 1: want us to cover, or you want to share your
Speaker 1: thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out
Speaker 1: send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to
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