WEBVTT - Michael Lewis on Cryptocurrency and the FTX Empire 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:06.000 This is Master's in Business with Barry rid Holts on 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:08.240 Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:13.040 This week. On the podcast, Michael Lewis out with a 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:16.919 brand new book on Sam Bankman, Freed and FTX doing 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:19.520 the circuit. We managed to get him right after his 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:24.560 Sixty Minutes podcast and he was completely open and unguarded 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:28.280 and talked about everything. Talked about the process of writing 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:32.360 the book, what it's like to go on sixty minutes 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:35.640 and know that social media is going to come at you. 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:39.159 People would much rather go to the outrage machine than 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:43.200 actually learn the details and argue from a factual perspective. 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.400 He doesn't have an opinion on whether or not Sam 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:49.120 Bankman Freed is going to be found guilty or not, 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:52.560 and the book is similar. He just lays it out 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:54.840 as he saw it as a fly on the wall 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:58.880 and lets you the reader figure it out. So all 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:02.840 of you haters out there, he's just shaking it off 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:05.280 and moving on with whatever is going to be his 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:09.320 next book project. I found the book to be absolutely fascinating, 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:12.600 really enjoyed it, although I read it, you know, quickly 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:15.760 in a weekend. Normally I luxuriate in Michael Lewis, and 0:01:15.800 --> 0:01:20.080 I found our conversation to be completely delightful, and I 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:23.120 think you will also, So with no further ado, my 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:27.120 discussion on going Infinite with Michael. 0:01:26.880 --> 0:01:29.200 Lewis it's good to see you Berry, good to. 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:32.319 See you again. So let's start out talking about how 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:35.520 this landed in your lap. A friend is thinking about 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:38.240 doing a deal with FTX, and he contacts you, says, 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:41.000 I can't get a read on this guy, Sam bankmin 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:44.680 Freed tell us about that first meeting with SBF. What 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:45.240 was that like. 0:01:45.400 --> 0:01:48.400 So this friend reaches out in September of twenty twenty one, 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:52.440 and I never heard of Sam bankmcfreed or FTX. I 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:56.680 hadn't been paying much attention to crypto and Sam BEKMCFREEDA 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.080 a few weeks later ends up on my front porch 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:02.000 and I take him for a hike in the hills 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:05.160 of Berkeley. I think it's the first hike he ever 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:08.120 went on. He was always dressed for the hike, but never. 0:02:08.080 --> 0:02:09.680 Actually goes speakers cargo short. 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:11.920 I had no idea it was gonna turn up, and 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:14.119 what turned up was this kind of kid. He's twenty 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:17.680 nine years old, so I wasn't thinking this is literary material. 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:19.400 I was thinking my friend wants to know what I 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:23.600 think of this guy. But an hour into the walk, 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:27.280 after I've discovered that Forbes has decided he's worth twenty 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:29.960 two and a half billion dollars, he's kind of amused 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:33.360 by his whole situation. It's gone from zero. This has 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:35.480 happened in eighteen months. He's gone from zero to twenty 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:37.880 two and a half billion in eighteen months. And he's 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:41.000 describing what is going on in crypto where he intends 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:44.720 to use this money. Kind of his background, where he 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:47.360 came from. There is his child of these two Stanford academics. 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:50.360 His parents were just completely bewildered by what had happened 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:52.760 to their child because they weren't like they weren't money people, 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:56.440 they weren't materialistic people, people who just kind of lived 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:58.760 in their heads. And he said, they don't quite understand 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:00.640 what to make of all this, And I thought it 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:03.400 was kind of funny. So I called my friend at 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.000 the end of it. I said, go ahead, to do 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:08.040 the deal. What could go wrong? And he did the deal. 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:10.560 But I turned to Sam Bangunfred at the end of 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:14.080 it and I said, I don't know where this is 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:16.600 going to end, but I just want to watch can 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:18.119 I just tag along. 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:20.200 Like that first meeting you actually set this up? 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:22.440 And if he was that fascinating, he was that fascinating. 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:24.640 And I know this because I said. I gave some 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:26.400 interview right after this and someone said, do you know 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:28.760 what your next book project might be? And I said, 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:30.200 you know, I just had a two hour walk with 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:32.680 a guy, and I think I might have found it. 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:35.880 But I didn't know what the book was. I didn't 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:38.720 know much more about him than you can learn in 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:40.920 two hours. I just knew I had this. I had 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:42.760 a theory of I had a theory about how I 0:03:42.800 --> 0:03:45.680 wanted my next book to work before COVID. I don't 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.000 want to bore you with this, but before COVID, I 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.080 had made a decision that I wanted to walk into 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:53.640 books with characters that I was gonna I wasn't gonna 0:03:53.840 --> 0:03:55.840 know what the story was. I wasn't gonna have a 0:03:55.880 --> 0:03:57.640 theory of the case. I was gonna have an argument. 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:00.000 I was going to attach myself to characters the interest 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:01.240 who interested. 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:04.600 Me, as opposed to as a well, there's a narrative 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:07.040 and the characters flesh out, flesh. 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:11.280 It out well in the kind of I'd always kind 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:13.440 of done this. I was just making a bigger point 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:17.039 of it. And my prior books that I felt they 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.360 were less fun to write were books where I had 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:23.360 to strain to make the characters characters, like, to make 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:24.279 them live on the page. 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:28.320 But really, because I find all your characters leap off 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:28.719 the page. 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:32.720 Maybe that's just it's there. I think I think that 0:04:33.160 --> 0:04:36.200 there is a weakness, for example, the Flashboys in the 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:38.200 character of Brad Katsiyama, because. 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:40.880 He's he's a chill exactly precisely. 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:44.960 He's a simply nice, decent guy that he's very I 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:48.919 love him, but he's doing something really so it works 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:52.160 only because when you drop that character into the middle 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:54.159 of modern Wall Street, it gets very interesting. 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:57.160 He's very Canadian. He's very Canadian, right, and that doesn't come. 0:04:57.320 --> 0:04:59.400 Nice Canadian guy is not where I wanted to ever 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.480 start again, and I wanted to start with complicated, interesting people. 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:07.680 And I had an idea. Uh my idea was Mike Leach, 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:10.840 coach of the Mississippi State Bulldogs at the time, was 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:12.400 going to let me move into his life for a 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:15.520 season in the in SEC football could have been fun 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:21.119 and so's character and situation. College football isn't turmoil because 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:23.920 of the name, image and likeness stuff. But the transfer 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:29.320 portals and it's becoming ever more professionalized. The schools are afterthought, 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:32.000 you know, you know, they're sort of like, you have 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:34.320 the school to have a football team. And Mike Leach, 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:36.880 who is a one who had written about once, uh, 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:40.440 is a delightful character who would provide a view on 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.400 it that would be so good. He died, Uh, That's 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:45.320 what I would have done if he had lived. 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:47.560 You could have found some other coach to track though, 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:49.200 if you really wanted to go that route. 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:50.960 But you need to find a coach who you really 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:53.560 could light up on the page and who would let 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:55.479 you in. So who would let who would let me 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:57.760 see everything? And Mike Leach, I knew, would let me 0:05:57.839 --> 0:05:58.360 see everything. 0:05:58.800 --> 0:05:59.920 And he's quite a character. 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:03.880 Oh my god, I'm yes. So anyway, so I had 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:05.320 that in mind when I met Sam, and I thought 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:09.120 the character in the situation, he's like walking social satire. 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:11.720 He acquired twenty two and a half billion dollars in 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.760 a flash, and the world was reorganizing itself around him. 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:17.719 Everybody wanted to everybody want by the way, the twenty 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:19.480 two point five and I don't know if this is 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:23.400 from the book or my research. Forbes settled on that number. 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:27.240 They suspected it could have been high as one hundred billion, 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.320 but they just couldn't come up with ways. 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:33.039 Of showing how do you value piles of serum and 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:36.599 Solana and FTT and who knows what the hell's the 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:38.240 inside of Alameter research. 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:41.839 Which raises an interesting question. Once you decide to write this, 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.760 you have to know you're going to be going to 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:49.600 be discussing crypto. But before you began work on Going Infinite, 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:54.640 did you have any thoughts on bitcoin, blockchain, NFTs, ether, Like, 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:56.520 what were you thinking about prior? 0:06:56.720 --> 0:06:59.840 So going back to about I don't know, maybe two 0:06:59.839 --> 0:07:04.640 thy twelve. I had made several runs at writing about crypto, 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:08.799 mainly at the behest of crypto people because they wanted attention. 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:11.400 And I mean the first one was funny. 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:12.960 I hadn't noticed that. 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:14.880 I never wrote it. Oh okay, I mean I went 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.000 and spent time in interview people, and I just thought. 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:19.600 So, you never put anything out, so you had some well, 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:21.040 I said. 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:25.280 The first time, I make it, make some bid to 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:27.720 get to know the people and to write the story 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:30.440 about it. A guy called me up from Palo Alto. 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:34.440 He had a legitimate crypto business. He said, if you 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:36.560 come down, there's some people. Just come down in the 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:39.200 next few days to this house. There's some people I 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:41.640 want you to meet. One of them is Satoshi. And 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:46.680 I fell for it. You know, I thought, well, but 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:49.640 but you know, it was twenty twelve, so maybe maybe 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:52.280 Stoshi's going to reveal himself to me. And so I 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:54.400 went down and I got out of the car about 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:56.600 a block from the house, and you could smell the 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:58.680 weed from a block of the house. And I got 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:01.440 in thousand and they were like twelve entrepreneurs with sleeping 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:04.520 bags and this crashing in this multimillion dollar house in Paloratto. 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:07.160 And some of them turned out to be quite prominent 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:10.080 in crypto. But the problem was this is this is 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:12.840 would turn me off. They said at that moment. They 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:15.480 were selling crypto as it's going to replace Viat currency, 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:16.960 it's going to be the means of exchange. 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:20.320 And you've talked about how the narrative has changed consistently. 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:23.600 They keep changing and just never never finds the narrative 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:24.000 that sticks. 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:26.320 It's not that there's nothing there, it's just that whatever 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:29.360 is there has not clicked with with like a serious 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.000 problem in a serious way. But at that moment it 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:34.760 was I spend the day with him, and they're selling 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:36.000 me as hard as they can sell me that this 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:37.640 is going to be We're not going to need dollars 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.120 very soon. And I said, what can you use it? 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:42.600 And they said, here, we'll show you, and they put 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:45.360 some bitcoin on my phone and we walked into Palo 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:48.920 Alto to the one coffee shop that accepted bitcoin as currency, 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:51.200 and I bought a latte. 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.280 Which probably costs you a million dollars. 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:56.640 A no, no, this gets better. The coffee shop, though 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.200 in theory, accepted bitcoin. It took ten minutes and they 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:01.880 gave up. They couldn't do it. And I said, I 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:03.600 got an idea. I have this thing called a dollar. 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:06.559 I'll just use this. It's a miracle. And I had 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.600 this thought, I thought, like, they're selling this thing, but 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:13.440 if it's some wacky world. Bitcoin was the first currency, 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:17.640 and then someone came along and invented dollars everywhere to go, 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:20.800 Thank God, right, right, So so I just thought it's 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:23.720 not right. It's like there's something to lampoon, but it's 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:24.640 I don't want to do that. 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:26.080 It was it wasn't ready for you. 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:27.840 To write whatever me to write about it. 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:33.760 So, Sam bankmin Freed, is this fascinating, quirky character you 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:37.560 decide to embed with him, like a military journalist embedding 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:42.320 with the troops, So while they're covering a war. What 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:45.640 was that like? Was it difficult to maintain arm's length 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:49.720 objectivity because you're a journalist essentially so and you're you're 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:51.000 like trailing this. 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:52.920 Guy, right? So the first thing, I mean, if I 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:55.400 go back, a hard time remembering it, but if I 0:09:55.440 --> 0:09:57.360 go back and I think, what was it that made 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:01.840 me think not just this character, but this situation, that 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:05.640 what part of it was he wasn't trying to sell 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:09.640 me crypto, that he himself didn't completely swallow crypto. He 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:12.280 wasn't a religionist, he said, basically, I am using it 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:14.760 to make money because there are all these inefficiencies. I 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:16.440 don't know what's going to happen with it. He wasn't. 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:19.080 It was the first crypto person not to pitch crypto 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:21.400 to me interesting and it was interesting. It made him 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:23.720 more interesting to me, and it was the first time 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:26.520 I thought, ah, this may be the way into crypto 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:29.840 because to me, what was interesting about crypto at that 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:34.080 point was I mean, the technology is interesting. Fact, the 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:38.040 whole financial structure that's arisen in crypto, it's interesting. It's 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:40.160 not a book by me. What's interesting and is a 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:42.920 book by me? Are the social consequences of all of 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:45.160 a sudden there being three trillion dollars of new wealth. 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:49.600 That's just it's randomly distributed and not so random? 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:51.880 Are it's mostly dudes? 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:53.560 It's cryptoz that's right. 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:56.800 And there's a reason why Lamborghini sold out for two years. 0:10:56.880 --> 0:10:57.600 That's right. That's right. 0:10:57.679 --> 0:10:58.880 So it's fun being poor. 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:00.520 So I didn't answer your question, but so this is 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:03.720 the why of it. So embedding I always in bed, right, 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:06.120 that's what I do. And then the goal is to 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:09.080 get to a point with the subject where you're sitting 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:11.199 in their office with a desk and they don't even 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:11.640 know you're there. 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:14.920 So does that compromise your objectivity as a journalist? 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:16.000 Never? As before? 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:17.600 Okay, that's a fair answer. 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:20.600 I mean I've never nobody's cause people. 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:24.040 Are saying, oh, Michael got so close to SBF and 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:26.760 he's defending him. I didn't read the book that way. 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.640 I read it as an explanatory, not a defense. No, 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:31.120 it was, that's the accusation. 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:33.839 The radical act was just to tell the story as 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:38.880 I saw the story. What possible purpose, what possible good 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:42.760 would it do me to set myself up as Sam's bankman, 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.440 Freed's defense counsel. And that's not what it was. And 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:46.280 in fact, it's all kind. 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:48.240 Of people ask me find out what he got paid. 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:49.200 I'm like, are you kidding? 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:52.200 People said this about Flashboys? Oh really? A Wall Street 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:54.880 firm published a note that I had been given shares 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:57.520 in IEX to write Flashboys. 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:00.960 Not true, right, of course, not true. And disclosure, Not 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:03.680 only did you get a butt on selling the book, 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:06.160 you sold the movie rights before this even came out. 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:08.920 Why would anyone else have to pay you for this? 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:11.520 It's such a silly question. 0:12:11.559 --> 0:12:14.920 So it's people, Well, let me say, let's just actually 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:19.120 establish the relationship. So of course I don't get paid anything. 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:23.160 Of course I didn't have any financial interest in ft excerpt. 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:25.680 In fact, I'm a creditor. I have two thousand dollars 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:27.520 on the US Exchange that I'm waiting to get out 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:29.520 of the bank round because I wanted to see how 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:35.280 it worked, you know, and the the Sam bankman free 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:38.960 Neither Sam bankman freed, nor anyone in his operation ever 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:41.640 asked me what I was doing, asked me why I 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:47.280 was doing it, question the questions I was asking forbid 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:49.880 me from seeing. There's only one moment, one part of 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:52.880 his empire that I had to fight to see, like 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:54.560 he had to say he at first he said, I 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:56.200 can't let you into that meaning because the people are 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:59.200 going to be too uncomfortable. But other than that, it 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:02.319 was just like, it's here. You just watch you, ask you, 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:04.520 and ask anybody any question you want to ask. And 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:06.120 it took me a while to get to that point. 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.440 But so they had no finger they as far as 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.160 I know, they haven't read it. So nobody nobody reads 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:14.160 the book until it comes out right. And that's the 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:16.439 deal I've had with everybody I read about. And it's 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:18.360 sort of like, at some point, you just have to 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:21.560 leave me alone and trust that I'm not some sinister person. 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:23.200 Let me ask you a question that's going to make 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:27.120 you feel old. Given how famous you are in Wall 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:31.160 Street finance circles from Liar's Poker forward, any of these 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:33.480 twenty somethings know who the hell you were. They all 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:36.319 love flashboards, they do okay, So they had a sense. 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:38.280 Oh no, no, no, they all had books to sign and all. Yeah. 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:42.120 So the so the answer is yes, it was odd 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:43.199 what they knew. 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:46.080 Sam Liar's Poker, not the Big Short, not Moneyball, those 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:48.520 are the really big Sam. 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:50.520 Sam never said this, but I found out from his 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:52.679 parents that he adored Moneyball when he was a little kid. 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:55.040 And of course he did because he was he was 0:13:55.080 --> 0:13:57.720 a totally isolated math. He sitting alone in his room 0:13:57.920 --> 0:13:59.840 who felt powerless, and all of a sudden this book 0:13:59.840 --> 0:14:02.280 say as the things you can do actually could change baseball. 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:07.280 But that apart from that, No, that was just the 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:09.439 weird old guy, right. I mean, that's good, and that 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:12.600 was kind of what it was. They were so odd 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:16.280 themselves as a collection of characters. It's the best look FTX. 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:19.960 Never mind Sam. FTX was the best collection of characters 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:22.880 I've seen in a financial operation since Solomon Brothers. Wow, 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:25.960 because they were just like they were all these random 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.800 people like it wasn't They weren't filtered in the way 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:32.120 that financial form usually filters people. It was like the 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.720 odd collisions that happened between the world and FTX, and 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.160 from the world, odd people had entered FTX huh amazing. 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:44.080 You spend a lot of time talking about what an odd, quirky, 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:49.240 sort of socially misfit kid he was. What was the 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:52.320 source of that was that Sam has himself, was that 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:54.880 his parents, was that other people? How did you get 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:57.680 pink that picture of a young SBF? 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:00.280 So I think it's partly because of how I grew 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:03.360 up and the importance of like who my parents were, 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:05.440 and who my friends were, and who my coach was. 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:08.200 When I'm trying to get to know somebody, I go 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:11.880 right to the childhood and sometimes that's stuff that's a 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:16.960 mislead that doesn't lead you anywhere. So Sam I asked him, 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:20.160 I'd like it just a list of people who knew 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:22.240 you before the age of eighteen, who could give me 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.240 some picture of you, just to start out right, And 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:27.920 he said, there's nobody. I said, what do you mean, 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:28.400 there's nobody? 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:30.120 It was a guy who played the game. 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:33.320 I've pushed and pushed and finally it's his. The list 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:36.640 is his parents, who you know, they did observe him, 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:39.720 and his little brother who says I didn't know him, 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:42.520 and his h he was a tenant in the house, 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:45.480 his little brother said, And there was one guy named 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:49.080 Matt Nass who Sam met in middle school and he 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:51.280 became partners in playing in this game they played called 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:56.360 Magic the Gathering, and Matt Nass's chief attribute was he 0:15:56.400 --> 0:15:58.760 made no emotional demands on Sam and they seemed to 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:01.960 hardly talk. They just sat there and played together. And 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:03.920 you see them together now and they still will sit 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:06.600 together and not hardly talk. So there was it was 0:16:06.840 --> 0:16:11.680 that Matt would say, you know, they were Sam, they 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:13.680 weren't that close in some ways, they were close. They 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:16.440 were close playing games together. So you had this kid 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:21.320 who was he was totally isolated. You know, you can 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:24.200 imagine if other circumstances a child might end up being 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:26.800 very isolated. But he is the child of two very 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:29.480 social professors living on the Stanford campus who have a 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:33.880 world around of really smart and interesting people, and Sam gets. 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:38.360 Sam is known by nobody and the the So the 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:44.760 question is why he he had He still has horrible 0:16:44.840 --> 0:16:48.800 problems with social interactions, but when he's a kid, I 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:51.800 mean he did. He realized, for example, that he didn't 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:53.480 know how to make facial expressions right. 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:56.360 He teaches himself to smile and finds out that that 0:16:56.680 --> 0:17:00.920 solves a problem within the game that is the simulation 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:01.360 of life. 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:03.520 That's exactly right. He sits in front of a mirror. 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:06.080 It's not till college and learns to make the facial 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:09.960 expressions that are appropriate to what someone says. He's irritated. 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:12.359 He has to do it, he doesn't. He realizes he 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.879 doesn't have a full compliment of human feeling, that he 0:17:15.920 --> 0:17:20.280 doesn't feel happiness, he doesn't feel pleasure. Really, he doesn't 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:24.840 feel empathy, and that this is you know, it's just 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:29.840 like and he realizes the people around him see him 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:30.879 as not completely human. 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:32.439 So I have a question that I was going to 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:34.560 ask you later on, but I might as well bring 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:37.720 it up here, so it's already come out. He's being 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:41.760 treated with the m SAM patch for adderall and adderall 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:45.199 for ADHD and depression. The persona in the book that 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:48.480 you just described kind of reminded me a little bit 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:51.040 of the reference you make in The Big Shorts of 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:54.280 Michael Burry, who, when he finds out his son has Asperger's, 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:57.640 has himself tested and he's on Asperger's. So the obvious 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:00.520 question is I have seen no mention of this anywhere 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.639 Sam on the autism slash Asperger's spectrum. 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:09.000 Whatever it is that he's diagnosable with is so much 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:13.160 more extreme than Michael Berry. Really, oh yeah, and it's 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:16.400 I don't know, so I don't use any of those 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:17.200 words in the book. 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:20.760 I noticed that, which was what made me ask the question. 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.119 By the way, nobody has brought that up anywhere in 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:26.440 any interview. I found something buried in a reddit where 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:28.760 someone brought it up, but other than that, because I 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:33.320 was hunting to see, hey, this guy. I'm not a diagnotician, 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.160 but I've read enough about this. I've worked with enough 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:38.679 of those folks. I've had enough people with Asperger's on 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:39.160 the show. 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:41.320 You know, the word that it's funny, whatever word you 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:44.280 would use, would put him in a box that probably 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:47.560 he doesn't belong in, because it feels different from what 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:52.600 I've seen before Thosetario. It seems different. He's very very 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:54.160 good at reading you. 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:57.680 With which people on the spectrum generally are not. 0:18:57.680 --> 0:19:00.240 So there's this odd one way thing. He read you 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:03.520 very well, but he's hard to read as a kid. 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:06.760 So the other thing about it, the important beats in 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:10.439 his childhood, I think are one. His parents don't think 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:12.680 of him as gifted. They worry about him, they think 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:16.359 of him, and his parents' friends said to me they 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:19.800