WEBVTT - 'Who is Government' with Michael Lewis 0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:11.879 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is Masters in 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:16.920 Business with Barry Ritholts on Bloomberg Radio. 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:20.720 This week on the podcast what can I say? Every 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:25.360 time I am afforded an opportunity to sit down with 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:30.560 Michael Lewis, it's just delightful. He's such a fascinating character. 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:35.920 The people and ideas he writes about are absolutely fascinating. 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:41.800 His new book, he has this just absolutely insane way 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:45.040 of seeing around a corner. I asked him, how come 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:49.160 every time you find yourself covering the subject, six months 0:00:49.240 --> 0:00:52.120 later it blows up and it's in the headlines. He's 0:00:52.200 --> 0:00:55.240 done it with The Big Shorty, a big short that 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:59.640 was mostly after the fact, But he did it with Flashboys, 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:03.960 and he did it with Moneyball, and he certainly did 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:07.360 it with Going Infinite, and now he's doing it again 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:10.680 with Who Is Government. We talk a little bit about 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:14.800 the Elon Musk and Doge, but we mostly talk about 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:21.120 these nameless, faithless civil servants who dedicate their career to 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:25.720 providing a service to the American taxpayer, and whether it's 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:30.240 saving lives in coal mines, or stopping cybercrime or keeping 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:33.720 the food supply safe. The book is just filled with 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:38.520 all these stories and it's absolutely a nonpartisan. It's not 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:41.520 a left right thing. It's Hey, there are certain things 0:01:41.560 --> 0:01:45.040 that only government can do. The private sector is in 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:49.480 building the Interstate Highway System on NASA. In fact, when 0:01:49.520 --> 0:01:53.400 you see private sector services in these spaces, it's because 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:57.920 they've built on top of the seminal work the government 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:00.640 has done that. No one would undertake these projects that 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:04.600 are billions of dollars and take decades. The ROI just 0:02:04.760 --> 0:02:10.280 is too far, too long, too expensive. The book is fascinating. 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:13.160 Michael's fascinating. If you're listening this far into the intro, 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:16.400 it's because you know this is going to be delightful, 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:20.800 with no further ado. My discussion with Michael Lewis about 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:24.440 his new book, Who Is Government. Michael Lewis, I don't 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:26.919 have to welcome you. Let's just jump right into this 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:31.040 and we'll start with your prior book, The Fifth Risk, 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:35.679 which is really the predecessor to Who Is Government. Tell 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:39.639 us about that earlier book on presidential transitions. 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.280 Trump had just been elected for the first time and 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:47.680 he had fired his transition team, and I didn't I 0:02:47.840 --> 0:02:51.040 learned all this after the fact, but outgoing presidents are 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:54.000 required by law to prepare a transition, and so the 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:59.040 Obama administration had deputed one thousand people inside the government 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.639 to prepare where the best course ever given on how 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:04.600 the government works, and not just the White House, right 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.160 the Department Energy and all those other places. And Trump 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:11.040 had fired the mechanism for getting the briefings. He fired 0:03:11.080 --> 0:03:13.919 all five hundred and fifty people and told Chris Christy 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:16.200 that he didn't need to know because he could figure 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:18.079 out everything he needed to know in an hour about 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:21.640 how the federal government worked. When I saw this, I thought, 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:24.880 it's like a great comic premise. I'm going to get 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:28.160 to roll around the government and get the briefings, and 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:30.000 the reader will be on the joke that we know 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:33.240 more about the government than the president does because they 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:36.320 haven't bothered to learn. And so I and it was 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:38.720 just sort of like where you start and I and 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:41.360 they're two things. Where I started, and what kind of 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:45.080 the spirit in which I did it. The spirit was 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:46.800 go to places that no one has any idea what 0:03:46.840 --> 0:03:51.360 they do. Like most I mean, I'm surround I'm in Berkeley, 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:53.240 I'm surrounded by people who talk about politics all the 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:56.320 time and just want to inflict their political opinions on 0:03:56.440 --> 0:04:00.160 me constantly. But if I ask them, what is the 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:02.440 Department of Commerce? Do they have no. 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:07.320 Idea to do commerce? Right? Yeah, some business something. 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:09.440 What they do is weather, you know, but it would 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.560 never mind. Uh. And but I didn't know that. So 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:14.600 I just thought, I'm going to go to the places 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:18.800 that that are most opaque to the American people, and 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:21.400 so I picked. I picked the Department of Agriculture, Commerce, 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:23.720 and Energy, and thinking like, if I can make these 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:25.880 swing on the page, I can make anything swing on 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:28.560 the page. And Energy, but I started with Energy because 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:32.640 it was so great. He had appointed Rick Perry, former 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:36.040 Governor of Texas, to be the Secretary of Energy. And 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.120 Rick Perry had called for the elimination of the Department 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:40.960 of Energy when he was round for president, like all 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:42.920 this waste and fraud and the government, we're gonna get 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:44.840 rid of whole departments. In one of them's department Energy, 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:47.160 and now he's supposed to run it. He found out 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:49.359 quickly what I found out when I walked in and 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:53.800 got the briefings that oh, they run the nuclear stockpile. Oh, oh, 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.440 they gave the loan that created Tesla. You know, Oh, oh, 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:00.480 this like this one thing after another in it, and 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.000 he had to backtrack in his hearing and saying, oh, 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:04.680 I didn't mean that, you know, really we need the 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:08.040 department energy and so so anyway, I don't want to 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:10.839 go too long about this, but to say that I 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:14.839 wrote these things in vanity fair long form narrative journalism. 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:17.760 I stapled them together into the book The Fifth Risk. 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:19.640 It sold half a million copies. 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.080 That's a lot for a finance book, right, and people 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:23.320 don't understand. 0:05:23.080 --> 0:05:26.080 It's a lot for a book. This was an indication, 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:29.279 this was market testing. This was an indication to me that, 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:32.839 oh my god, people really do actually want to know 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:36.440 that there is these stories interest me. But it's not 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:38.320 just me. So I had in the back of that 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:40.679 in the back of my mind over the last few years, 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:44.720 because I had this other takeaway from The Fifth Risk, 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:47.800 and it was although I'd written a lot about what 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:49.840 these place has done, it was like a travel They 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:52.800 were like travel pieces. It wasn't till the very end 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:55.039 in the paperback where I did a deep dive on 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:58.719 a single character, on a single bureaucrat, and he was 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:01.120 and I had picked him his name kind of out 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:04.000 of a jar it was. The material was literary, the 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:07.280 material was just epic. It was so good. I thought, Man, 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:10.320 I want to come back and just do more of that, 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:13.040 like grab people out of the government and just receive 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:15.360 right about a person I'm going to get. At some point, 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:17.719 it's gonna the accusation is going to arise. And it 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:20.080 always does, like, oh, this is just Michael Lewis making 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:22.080 it up, or this is Michael Lewis with his own 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:26.120 view or whatever. And uh so I thought, grab a 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:29.200 bunch of other writers and and I do it with them, 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:32.000 drop them in, parachute them in wherever they want to go, 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:35.119 and have them write stories so that you can see 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:38.160 just how rich and interesting a place this is. And 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:40.280 that's what that's that idea is what led to who 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:40.799 is Government? 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:44.919 So I have to point out what an incredible knack 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:49.040 you have for finding yourself in the right place at 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:53.280 the right moment in history. You did it with FTX 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:58.560 and Sam Bankman Freed in the Pure Luck. Okay, So 0:06:58.560 --> 0:07:03.279 so now you write a book about the transition in 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:07.400 the first Trump administration, and lots of things you write 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:09.600 about in the fifth risk turn out to be very 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:14.880 prescient for how the administration in many different ways. I 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:17.400 don't want to make a blanket statement about them, but 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:20.920 in specific area, specific policies kind of drop the ball 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:26.240 and bad things happen. But the thing that's so fascinating 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:29.960 is this book about all these different government agencies and 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:35.480 the really amazing work these people do comes out right 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:39.720 into the doze elimination of we're going to close the 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:42.000 Department of Education. We're going to fire all these people, 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:45.440 whether we have the authority or not. Your timing is 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:49.640 really exquisite. Twice so you can tell me this is 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:51.600 dumb luck four times in a row. 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:55.640 All right, let me try so kinda, but let me. 0:07:56.040 --> 0:08:00.200 Let me at a certain point. I know you're fairly humble, 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:03.119 and it's not a false humility, but at a certain 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.960 point us readers of your work have to say, hey, 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:09.880 this guy really sees around a corner, finds an area 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:13.480 before anyone else has any inkling. Big things are going 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:16.320 on there, and by the time we realize it, he 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:18.960 already has the full story out in paperback. 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:22.720 I love how much more credit you give me than 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:23.320 I deserve. 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:25.680 How are you saying it's luck? I don't believe it. 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:31.360 So if I were trying to explain me how if 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:35.200 I was trying to give myself some credit for the 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:39.520 serendipity of my book publication dates, I guess what I'd 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:43.360 say is that the best way to predict the future 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:47.320 is just observed very closely the present. So it's close 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:50.600 observation of what's going on at a moment. And it's 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:53.480 also the other thing is being interested in the thing 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:56.200 you're interested in rather than the thing everybody's talking about. 0:08:56.880 --> 0:09:00.280 And so nobody is talking about this, but it's interesting thing. 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:04.640 That's that's good because it means that it's going to 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:07.320 be fresh and different. And I guess it maybe it's 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:11.160 true that when I'm closely observing something I'm really interested in, 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:13.640 that the world is not all that interested in that 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:16.120 some of those things end up being the future, and 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:18.840 that that's true, and so that's but it isn't like, 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:21.600 you know, you know, all kinds of people who make 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.160 a decent living on the lecture servant circuit being able 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:27.120 to pretending to be able to tell the future, pretending. 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:27.280 You were written. 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:31.120 I've just gotten how not to invest. And I assume 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:36.599 I will find in this book a chapter about false prognostication. 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:39.840 We know that you know the future. It's too complicated. 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:42.959 So all you could tell is the present really well. 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:46.600 And if you tell the present really well and you're 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:49.560 not just defaulting to what everybody's talking about in the moment, 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:51.720 you will get the future sometimes. 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:53.080 Huh. I love that now. 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:57.040 It's similar to It's similar to investing. I bet right. 0:09:57.280 --> 0:09:59.840 It's like, Oh, this company really interests me. Why isn't 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:03.360 any Boddy here? Why isn't anybody investing in it? But 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.160 I'm really interested in it. That's like a great sign 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:08.680 that you're interested in nobody else has figured it out yet. 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.280 And that's the that's a great sign with writing too. 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:15.760 So something interests you. What I find fascinating is you 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:20.680 end up kind of embedding yourself in unfamiliar places and 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:24.400 fields that you haven't necessarily studied before. 0:10:24.520 --> 0:10:25.959 I don't know anything about it. 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:29.280 Right like you like? So, by the way, that is 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:32.760 a sign of a of a curious intellect. Hey, I 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:35.840 don't know anything about this. I'm going deep down the 0:10:35.920 --> 0:10:39.280 rabbit hole learn. But a lot of these things are 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:44.560 kind of big institutions that don't trust outsiders, that don't 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:48.880 trust the media or authors. How do you win these 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:53.920 people over? I mean, you know twenty twenty is Michael 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:58.280 Lewis's well known guy. And maybe you have an ability 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:02.199 to gain the trust of people now, but you've been 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:04.880 doing this your whole career. How do you win the 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:08.800 trust and how do you get close to people who 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:13.160 are skeptical and reserved and holding the public in arms distance. 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:16.800 So we've seen you've seen how Elon Musk has approached 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:20.320 government employees over the last sixty days with hostility and 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:24.839 malice and condescension, and that it's the opposite of the 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:26.840 way to approach someone if you actually want to learn. 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:28.640 So I don't have a perfect answer to this, but 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:31.040 I'll say a couple of things that I think help me. 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:35.320 One is I'm usually just genuinely curious, Like I really 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:37.680 have some questions I want to answer. Why are you 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:41.000 winning baseball games? You know, like, explain it to me. 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:44.280 How did you figure out to short the market in 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:47.640 two thousand and seven? How did you figure out how 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:49.840 to stop coal mine rules from falling in on the 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:52.000 heads of coal miners? Like I just like, it's like 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:55.160 something has happened here and you know the answer, and 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:58.240 I genuinely want to know the answer. People respond to 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:02.600 genuine curiosity, which is different from I have a theory 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:06.120 and I want you to sort of dance inside my theory, 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:08.360 which is like I've sat in a room and I 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:10.719 decided there's a story here. This is the story. I'm 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:14.240 just going to gather some quotes to fill in the story. 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:17.680 Nothing I've done this any good. Is that it's always 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:20.800 like just a glimmer of an interest and I just 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:24.440 want to know. And so it creates a natural learning environment. 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:28.680 That's one. Two. Don't be boring, like if if it's 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:32.200 if it's tedious for me to show up, like that's bad, 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:35.640 and which you want almost the opposite. It's like I 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:37.560 hope he comes because I learned something last time just 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:40.760 from the questions he asked, and he adds value in 0:12:40.800 --> 0:12:43.320 some other way, like he brings good sandwiches or whatever. 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:46.000 So no, it's so it's like you want to create 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:49.640 an incentive system, right, people respond to incentives you want 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:52.280 to create. You want to make them want you there. 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:54.200 It's not not just not want you there, it's like 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:59.400 want you there. So that's that's a second sort of prerequisite. 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:02.840 And thed is I try to make it clear what 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:06.280 I'm thinking when I'm thinking it and so I'm not 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:11.880 hiding like myself from the person I'm writing about. I'm 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:14.640 letting them get to know me a little bit. If 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:17.200 I'm letting them bouncing theories off them and listening to 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:22.280 respond and object or whatever, and so that they don't 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.160 they aren't shocked. They're often shocked when they read the 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:28.480 book because they're surprised what I've decided is important and 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:32.440 what isn't. They're sometimes shocked by the way I see 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:37.160 them or describe them, a little shocked, but they aren't 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:40.360 shocked by like what I'm interested in. They don't have 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:45.360 a feeling I'm being sneaky, so that all those help 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.720 I think, and I say this that people I write 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:52.480 about they often are really interesting people with really interesting stories. 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:55.440 And while they may not think of themselves and usually 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.720 don't think of themselves as characters, they're very aware they're 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:01.040 in the middle of something interesting. That's why they're doing it. 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:04.920 So they can understand why I'm so interested, Like, yeah, 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:08.439 I get it. I get why you have all of 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:11.800 a sudden gotten interested in local public health, says Charity Dean, 0:14:11.880 --> 0:14:15.320 because it's broken and that's why we're not responding well 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:18.640 with this. You know, it's like, or I get why 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:23.040 Sam bgmanfreed. He understood I thought of him as weird, 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:25.720 Like you are a weirdo moving through the world with 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.720 a very weird view of the world, and you're seeking 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:32.400 to impose this sort of abstract idea about how to 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:36.160 live on the world around you, and I just want 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:38.800 to watch it. And he's like, yeah, I get that. 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.080 I know I'm weird. I know what's happening is weird, 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:45.480 and I understand why you're amused by it. Go ahead, 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:48.440 watch you know that? So that it has to be 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:50.760 an honest relationship, right, it just has to be an 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:51.720 honest relationship. 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:56.720 So I'm curious. You've delved into baseball, into football, into 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:01.920 high frequency trading, psychology, now government. What what's been the 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:05.720 biggest surprise that you found in all these areas, Like 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:09.720 you're delving into things that interest you, But what what 0:15:09.840 --> 0:15:13.760 really sticks out in any of your books where you say, huh, 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:18.160 didn't see that coming? Not counting SBF getting buss. 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:19.760 Are you took away the easy one? 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:21.920 Right? That's how I know I did that on purpose? 0:15:22.880 --> 0:15:26.760 That's the obvious one. Although as as I was reading 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:31.880 that book, your book going infinite, like like there are 0:15:31.920 --> 0:15:35.240 all sorts of little signposts along the way. I'm sure 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:37.480 a lot of that's just hindsight biased. But as you 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:41.080 were writing those chapters that hadn't yet happened, but as 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:42.520 you're reading it, it's like, oh, this. 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:43.040 Can't be good. 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:46.520 You know, all these little little it's like a fault 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:50.560 line with an earthquake. All these little pressures are building 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:52.640 up along the book. I don't know if that's intentional. 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:54.720 Oh, totally intentional. I didn't start writing it until it 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:55.320 all blew up. 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.240 Oh you didn't, all right, So yeah, it's intention But 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:00.960 that was an obvious one. What what like? I didn't 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:02.040 see that coming. 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:04.840 All right. So here's one from this book. This is 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:08.320 illustrating a general point. And the general point is the 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:12.160 difference between what you imagine a story is and what's 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:14.840 going on in the world. What you're what's going on 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:17.600 here when you're just doing through abstract kind of speculation, 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.240 compared to when you go out and report and learn 0:16:21.720 --> 0:16:24.320 and collide with the world, And how much more interesting 0:16:24.360 --> 0:16:26.440 the world ends up being than you imagine, even when 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:28.840 you imagine it being interesting. So the first story in 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:31.720 this book, Christopher Mark, how do I find it? I 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:35.240 find it because I get a list of nominees for 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:38.120 Civil Service Awards. It's like six hundred people on this list. 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:41.160 How do you pick one of them? It's all these 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:44.680 names and descriptions of things they've done. Joe Blow with 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:49.560 the FBI has broken up a child porn ring, but 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:51.960 doesn't say aything about Joe Blow. I get to a 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:54.600 name on the list. It says, Chris Mark solve the 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:56.800 problem of coal mine ruse falling in on the heads 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:00.080 of coal miners, which killed fifty thousand coal miners in 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:04.320 the last century. A former coal miner, it says, all right. 0:17:04.359 --> 0:17:07.160 Sitting at my desk, I'm thinking, man, there's a story, 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:10.040 and IDY think I know what the story is. I 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:12.439 think the story is all right. This guy probably grew 0:17:12.480 --> 0:17:15.480 up in West Virginia, former coal miner. He's there's gotta 0:17:15.520 --> 0:17:17.960 been some personal if it's killing all these coal miners, 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:19.600 and he got out of the coal mine to fix it. 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:22.760 A friend, a relative, someone got killed by a coal mine. 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:24.840 He that it was like there's a movie in this 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:27.159 kind of I already had it into my head, but 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:29.640 then I call him up. I find him. He lives 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:32.800 in Pittsburgh. He knows who I am, because he's read Moneyball. 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:35.520 He's like, why the hell you calling me? Like it 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:37.800 was just bizarre, Like he took me a while to 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:41.040 believe it was me. And I said, I just like 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:43.080 I saw this line on a list. He didn't even 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:44.639 know he'd been nominated for a prize, so it was 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:48.800 especially weird. And I said, I said, like, I just 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:50.840 just give me the five minute summer of your story. 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:52.840 And he says the first thing A's mouth is, I 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:54.720 grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and my dad was 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:58.760 a professor at the university. I thought, oh, there goes 0:17:58.800 --> 0:17:59.800 my story. 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:03.880 Right, so much of presumptionswhe for the movie, right, well, 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:04.560 but hold on. 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:08.159 In the next ten minutes, he tells me this he 0:18:08.280 --> 0:18:11.040 had been a radical in the sixties as a little kid, 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:14.320 radically I started calling throwing around words like bourgeois at 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:16.639 his father said that he was like, didn't want to 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:19.480 join the ruling class, didn't want to go to Harvard, 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:23.840 which he could have, and leaves high school early to 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:27.280 go join the working class, much to his father's chagrin. 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:30.800 Like his father really upset. His father is a famous guy, 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.159 I mean in his world. Robert Mark, Robert Mark, was 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:37.320 a civil engineer who took technology he used to like 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:40.360 stress test fighter planes for the Air Force and nuclear 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:43.760 reactors for Princeton. He took it and used it to 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:48.120 figure out to stress test Gothic cathedrals. He built little 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:51.040 models of like sharks and rim and he could show 0:18:51.400 --> 0:18:54.040 what was holding the roof up basically, and he could 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:56.240 also show why it might collapse and where it was weak. 0:18:56.600 --> 0:19:00.920 And so he actually taught all architectural historians how the 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:05.560 medieval builders had built the Gothic cathedrals. And there's actually 0:19:05.600 --> 0:19:08.280 documentaries about him in this so anyway, that's his dad. 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:10.919 Chris rebels against his dad, not gonna have anything to 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:12.399 do with your way of life, not having to do 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:16.120 anything with you, ends up working in an auto factory, 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.320 in a ups plant, and finally in a coal mine 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:21.960 in West Virginia. He ends up with like his fellow 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:24.679 Young Radicals, nineteen years old, working in a coal mine. 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:27.679 The Young Radicals last like a day because it's so awful. 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:31.040 Chris actually likes the working in the coal mine, He's 0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:34.960 interested in it, but it's incredibly dangerous. He almost is 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:38.760 killed twice by falling roofs. Eventually figures I could get 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:41.360 out of this and figure out how to stop this. 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:44.280 He goes back to Penn State, gets his degree. Then 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:46.640 he's got his own intellectual journey, right. This is which 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:48.760 I don't get into. While I'm talking to him in 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:51.960 this first phone call, he says, it took, you know, 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:54.760 took thirty years, but I figured out how to keep 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:56.960 the roofs of coal mines from falling on the heads 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:00.119 of coal miners. And I say, oh, so you tell 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:02.399 me get your dad who was figuring out how the 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:05.040 rooms of goth The cathedrals didn't fall down, and you 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:07.399 just do the same thing underground. You figure out like 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:08.919 how to keep the roof of a coal mine up. 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:11.879 And he in the first twenty minutes, he's pissed at me. 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:14.440 He says, I have nothing to do with my dad. 0:20:14.480 --> 0:20:17.360 It has nothing whatsoever to do with what my father did. 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:22.200 And I thought, oh my god, this is even better 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:25.639 than I thought. It's a father son's story, and the 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:29.480 son thinks he's rebelling against his father, and in fact 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:31.560 he goes and sort of lives out a different version 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:35.280 of his father's life. And what's wild about the story. 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:37.919 So I have that thought, and when I start to 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:39.919 get to know him. It takes a while before he 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:42.880 says to me, like days of spending time with him, Oh, 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.320 and my dad and I finally kind of collaborated. I 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.639 said what, and he says, yeah, yeah. The government called 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:52.720 my father because they thought the National Cathedral in Washington 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:55.840 was falling down. And I don't know that National Cathedral 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:58.639 in Washington was built over a centuries tilted. They what 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:03.400 happen was they built insufficient foundation for what they redesigned 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:07.359 on top of it. And the father is brought into like, oh, Jesus, 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:09.679 can you tell us how to keep this thing from falling? 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:12.840 And the father gets there and realizes the problems underground, 0:21:13.440 --> 0:21:16.680 and so he has to call his son, and together 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:19.520 they write a paper explaining why it's not going to 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:21.760 you know, how it's all working and why it's probably 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:26.440 not going to fall down. But it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful, 0:21:26.480 --> 0:21:31.560 like an amazing story, and it was so different from 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:35.800 what my feeble imagination had dreamed of. And this happens 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:38.320