WEBVTT - Judging Sam: Going Infinite – Jacob Weisberg interviews Michael Lewis 0:00:15.316 --> 0:00:20.716 Pushkin. Hey there, it's Michael Lewis. Before we get to 0:00:20.756 --> 0:00:22.636 this episode, I want to let you know that you 0:00:22.636 --> 0:00:25.916 can listen to each episode of Judging Sam The Trial 0:00:25.956 --> 0:00:29.476 of Sam Bankman Freed ad free by becoming a Pushkin 0:00:29.556 --> 0:00:33.516 Plus subscriber, and with your subscription you'll also get exclusive 0:00:33.516 --> 0:00:37.356 access to ad free and early bingeable podcasts like Paul 0:00:37.436 --> 0:00:42.236 McCartney's new podcast, McCartney A Life and Lyrics, Malcolm Gladwell's 0:00:42.236 --> 0:00:46.156 Revision Is History, The Happiness Lab from Doctor Lorie Santos, 0:00:46.636 --> 0:00:49.876 and tons of other top shows from Pushkin. Sign up 0:00:49.876 --> 0:00:53.516 an Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin, dot fm, Slash Plus. 0:00:55.916 --> 0:00:59.236 Welcome to the first episode of Judging Sam, The Trial 0:00:59.316 --> 0:01:04.236 of Sam Bankman Freed. I'm Michael Lewis. Sam was worth 0:01:04.276 --> 0:01:08.636 tens of billions of dollars before FTX his cryptocurrency exchange 0:01:08.796 --> 0:01:11.676 came a part at the seams, and now he's being 0:01:11.716 --> 0:01:14.236 tried for financial crimes. They could send him to prison 0:01:14.316 --> 0:01:17.556 for the rest of his life. In this special series, 0:01:17.796 --> 0:01:21.516 we're following the trial that will decide Sam's fate. We'll 0:01:21.516 --> 0:01:24.196 have a reporter in the courtroom each day. We'll have 0:01:24.316 --> 0:01:27.796 expert interviews and I'll be analyzing it all as someone 0:01:27.836 --> 0:01:30.476 who knows this story as well as anyone knows the story. 0:01:31.516 --> 0:01:33.556 I spent a year and a half following Sam while 0:01:33.596 --> 0:01:36.076 I was reporting and writing a book about him. I 0:01:36.156 --> 0:01:39.516 was there for the good days, which were astronomically good, 0:01:40.316 --> 0:01:44.116 and I was there for the catastrophic collapse. While Sam 0:01:44.196 --> 0:01:47.356 was on house arrest, I visited him often. That's all 0:01:47.396 --> 0:01:50.476 in my new book about Sam, going Infinite, The Rise 0:01:50.516 --> 0:01:54.516 and Fall of a New Tycoon. On today's episode, while 0:01:54.556 --> 0:01:56.916 we wait for the trial to begin, I'm talking with 0:01:56.996 --> 0:02:00.316 Pushkins Jacob Weisberg about the book and trying to approach 0:02:00.316 --> 0:02:03.996 some of the questions you might be asking, like who 0:02:04.116 --> 0:02:06.956 was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white 0:02:06.996 --> 0:02:10.836 socks whose eyes twitch to cross zoom meetings as he 0:02:10.876 --> 0:02:14.116 played video games on the side. When did I start 0:02:14.156 --> 0:02:17.996 sensing that there might be trouble in the penthouse? And 0:02:18.076 --> 0:02:19.996 how and why did he end up where he is 0:02:20.076 --> 0:02:23.236 now as the defendant and what could well be the 0:02:23.236 --> 0:02:26.276 crypto trial of the century. Thanks for joining us. 0:02:27.396 --> 0:02:29.076 Hey, Michael, Welcome to your new show. 0:02:29.356 --> 0:02:30.436 Pleasure to be here, Jacob. 0:02:30.436 --> 0:02:31.956 I've got a lot that I want to ask you 0:02:32.036 --> 0:02:35.356 about this book. It was so fun to read Michael. 0:02:35.356 --> 0:02:37.076 For people who haven't read the book yet, this trial 0:02:37.196 --> 0:02:40.916 is about to start. Tell them who is Sam Bankman Freed. 0:02:41.756 --> 0:02:46.516 Born to Stanford professors, law professors, grew up completely isolated, 0:02:46.996 --> 0:02:49.676 essentially no one could serve as a character reference. Before 0:02:49.676 --> 0:02:54.356 the age of eighteen, finds his calling on Wall Street 0:02:54.396 --> 0:02:56.876 as a high frequency trader, discovers he has these gifts 0:02:56.876 --> 0:02:59.076 that he didn't know he had. At the same time, 0:02:59.356 --> 0:03:06.276 discovers this movement effective altruism, devoted to like earning as 0:03:06.356 --> 0:03:08.236 much money as possible to save as many lives on 0:03:08.276 --> 0:03:10.836 the planet as you can say, and then goes off 0:03:10.836 --> 0:03:13.356 on a jag into crypto to make as much money 0:03:13.356 --> 0:03:16.716 as he can to fulfill this ambition. After he goes 0:03:16.716 --> 0:03:19.836 into crypto, starts first a hedge fund called Alimeter Research, 0:03:20.236 --> 0:03:22.636 and then so he has a place to trade that's 0:03:22.676 --> 0:03:26.316 worthy of his hedge fund, a crypto exchange called FTX. 0:03:26.756 --> 0:03:29.836 In very short order, it goes from being nothing to 0:03:30.356 --> 0:03:33.796 worth forty billion dollars in the eyes of America's venture capitalist, 0:03:35.116 --> 0:03:36.076 and then it explodes. 0:03:36.836 --> 0:03:39.436 I want to ask you a little bit about how 0:03:39.476 --> 0:03:42.556 you found this story. How did you end up writing 0:03:42.556 --> 0:03:43.956 a book about Sam Bang and Free. 0:03:43.876 --> 0:03:47.476 So it was purely accidental. Two years ago, a friend 0:03:47.516 --> 0:03:50.116 of mine calls me and says, I have a problem. 0:03:50.356 --> 0:03:53.756 I'm about to swap three hundred million dollars in shares 0:03:53.796 --> 0:03:56.996 in my company for shares in this company called FTX. 0:03:57.556 --> 0:03:59.316 And he says, I've kind of looked into the company. 0:03:59.356 --> 0:04:02.076 It's fastest growing financial firm I've ever seen. And my 0:04:02.156 --> 0:04:04.956 problem is, I don't know who this guy is who 0:04:04.996 --> 0:04:08.076 created FTX. I don't I don't have a read on him, 0:04:08.396 --> 0:04:10.276 and I've called all Wall Street and no one else 0:04:10.316 --> 0:04:12.396 has a read on him. Forbes has listed his net 0:04:12.396 --> 0:04:14.556 worth of twenty two and a half billion dollars, but 0:04:14.636 --> 0:04:16.396 he didn't exist a year ago. He kind of came 0:04:16.436 --> 0:04:19.276 out of nowhere. He said, could you sit down with 0:04:19.356 --> 0:04:21.716 him and just tell me who he is? You know, 0:04:21.796 --> 0:04:24.116 you do this for a living. And so a couple 0:04:24.156 --> 0:04:26.596 of weeks later, Sam Beckmanfried showed up at my office 0:04:26.596 --> 0:04:29.236 in Berkeley and we went for a long walk. And 0:04:29.316 --> 0:04:32.076 at the end of the long walk I did two things. 0:04:32.356 --> 0:04:34.796 I called my friend and I said, sure, swap the shares. 0:04:34.796 --> 0:04:37.756 What could go wrong? Weo, yeah, pullips. But I turned 0:04:37.796 --> 0:04:40.036 to Sam and I said, I've never heard a story 0:04:40.116 --> 0:04:42.116 like this. I mean, what has happened to you is 0:04:42.156 --> 0:04:46.196 just extraordinary. I want to watch. Can I be a 0:04:46.196 --> 0:04:48.636 fly on the wall? And he said yes, And I 0:04:48.716 --> 0:04:53.116 just moved into his life starting September October of twenty 0:04:53.196 --> 0:04:55.596 twenty one and watched the ride up and watched the 0:04:55.676 --> 0:04:59.236 ride down. But the first year of it really was 0:04:58.676 --> 0:05:02.116 it was Although the material was fantastic, there was no 0:05:02.276 --> 0:05:04.396 question there was like the kind of material one would 0:05:04.516 --> 0:05:08.596 use for a narrative work of narrative nonfiction. I felt 0:05:08.636 --> 0:05:12.076 very uncomfor starting it unless I knew where it ended, 0:05:12.276 --> 0:05:15.036 and it was so volatile, I had no idea like 0:05:15.156 --> 0:05:17.276 where it was going, and so it wasn't until it 0:05:17.396 --> 0:05:19.836 actually collapsed that I realized that I had the shape 0:05:19.876 --> 0:05:22.236 of a book, and didn't start writing it until January 0:05:22.316 --> 0:05:22.716 this year. 0:05:23.036 --> 0:05:25.396 The Michael Lewis I know doesn't like to write about 0:05:25.436 --> 0:05:28.036 people who were that famous, and doesn't like to write 0:05:28.036 --> 0:05:31.036 about the stories that everyone else is writing about. When 0:05:31.076 --> 0:05:33.276 you started on n FTX, it was a lot less 0:05:33.276 --> 0:05:35.196 of a story than it became, but it was still 0:05:35.236 --> 0:05:37.476 he was on the radar screen of everybody in the 0:05:37.476 --> 0:05:41.716 financial world. He was quickly becoming mister crypto. Did you 0:05:41.796 --> 0:05:44.436 just decide what the hell this is too good to miss? 0:05:44.596 --> 0:05:48.516 Yeah? And I also I instantly had such privileged access, 0:05:48.836 --> 0:05:51.196 and I was seeing so much stuff that wasn't out 0:05:51.196 --> 0:05:54.236 there that that didn't worry me that much. And the 0:05:54.316 --> 0:05:57.076 nature of the coverage he was getting was so superficial 0:05:57.516 --> 0:06:00.876 that whatever book I would write was suffering only flesh wounds. 0:06:01.156 --> 0:06:04.036 And I was animated by like the original question my 0:06:04.076 --> 0:06:06.076 friend had asked, like who is this guy? And I 0:06:06.116 --> 0:06:07.996 didn't feel like anybody was kind of getting him on 0:06:08.036 --> 0:06:11.636 the page or on the screen, or that there was 0:06:11.676 --> 0:06:14.116 a thing to do that nobody was doing. But I 0:06:14.156 --> 0:06:16.796 was frustrated because because I did have this sense that 0:06:17.396 --> 0:06:20.036 this is going somewhere, and I don't know where it's going. 0:06:20.396 --> 0:06:23.116 I mean as late as like in early November of 0:06:23.196 --> 0:06:27.356 last year, moments before it all implodes, I sat down 0:06:27.356 --> 0:06:28.676 with a friend who I used as sort of a 0:06:29.196 --> 0:06:32.196 sounding board for story problems, and I laid it out. 0:06:32.636 --> 0:06:35.236 I said, Look, this is the character, this is the 0:06:35.316 --> 0:06:38.396 kind of material that's been incoming. It's an incredible story. 0:06:38.876 --> 0:06:41.116 But I'm frustrated. He said, I can see why you're frustrated. 0:06:41.116 --> 0:06:43.076 You don't have a third act. He said, in a book, 0:06:43.316 --> 0:06:45.476 you can dance your way out of this, that you 0:06:45.516 --> 0:06:47.676 can kind of fool the reader into thinking you have 0:06:47.716 --> 0:06:49.836 an ending. But it's no movie, you know, like you 0:06:49.876 --> 0:06:51.636 would never be a movie. And he said, you ought 0:06:51.676 --> 0:06:54.756 to think about that. And two days later FTX collapsed 0:06:54.756 --> 0:06:57.676 and I said, this is the best movie ever. 0:06:58.876 --> 0:07:00.796 But you didn't know what the story was going to be. 0:07:01.036 --> 0:07:03.796 I mean, with hindsight, I'm sure there's a lot of 0:07:03.836 --> 0:07:06.876 temptation to think I saw the signs. I saw this coming. 0:07:07.116 --> 0:07:10.476 You knew something would happen. But at one point, if 0:07:10.556 --> 0:07:13.796 at any point before the collapse, did you think there's 0:07:13.836 --> 0:07:15.916 a problem here, something bad's going to happen. 0:07:16.996 --> 0:07:20.076 I didn't, you know. Before the collapse, what I could 0:07:20.116 --> 0:07:23.316 see was chaos, like all the order to the organization 0:07:23.436 --> 0:07:26.156 was inside Sam's head. There was no organization chart, there 0:07:26.156 --> 0:07:28.236 was no list of employees. It was just like there 0:07:28.236 --> 0:07:32.716 had been a history in the place of minor crises, 0:07:33.276 --> 0:07:36.436 and they'd been in particular an episode that had occurred 0:07:36.716 --> 0:07:38.836 that I had sort of reported out, and I knew 0:07:38.836 --> 0:07:40.636 it was an important part of the story. When he 0:07:40.716 --> 0:07:43.756 started his hedge fund, it was called Alometer research in 0:07:43.796 --> 0:07:46.676 Berkeley in twenty eighteen, there was nothing but a group 0:07:46.716 --> 0:07:49.116 of effective altruists, you know, its people he had recruited 0:07:49.116 --> 0:07:53.036 who were not money people. Three months in, they've they've 0:07:53.156 --> 0:07:56.436 raised one hundred and seventy five million dollars from effective 0:07:56.436 --> 0:08:00.156 altruists and are wheeling and dealing in the crypto markets. 0:08:00.476 --> 0:08:03.476 And half the people in the firm realize that they've 0:08:03.556 --> 0:08:06.796 lost track of all the money, that it's like missing 0:08:07.356 --> 0:08:10.116 and they don't know where it is is and like 0:08:10.236 --> 0:08:12.956 literally just gone and and so and so and Sam 0:08:12.996 --> 0:08:14.476 all he wants to do is trade all day, and 0:08:14.516 --> 0:08:17.196 he says, and he's saying, let's not let's not waste 0:08:17.236 --> 0:08:18.956 our time trying to track down the money. It's out 0:08:18.956 --> 0:08:23.196 there somewhere. Uh, let's let's keep trading. And this results 0:08:23.236 --> 0:08:26.116 in a collapse basically that they call it the schism. 0:08:26.316 --> 0:08:28.316 Half the firm gets up and leaves because they're afraid 0:08:28.356 --> 0:08:31.796 he's essentially stealing the money and that it's all it's 0:08:31.316 --> 0:08:34.636 And well, it emerges in the back end of it 0:08:34.676 --> 0:08:36.196 that he hadn't stolen money, that was in fact just 0:08:36.196 --> 0:08:37.636 missing and they were able to go find it on 0:08:37.636 --> 0:08:40.556 a kind of easter egg hunt. Uh, but uh so 0:08:40.636 --> 0:08:43.636 there were these sort of things that had happened before 0:08:44.396 --> 0:08:47.276 that you could see that the seeds were there for 0:08:47.396 --> 0:08:51.436 some problem. But did I know that there was like 0:08:51.716 --> 0:08:53.596 this was going to blow up the way it blew up. No, 0:08:53.956 --> 0:08:54.916 and no one else did either. 0:08:55.196 --> 0:08:57.276 And pause for a second, just because it's so important 0:08:57.316 --> 0:09:00.636 to the story, explain what effective at altruism is. 0:09:00.636 --> 0:09:01.836 Because this is a this is a. 0:09:01.836 --> 0:09:04.156 Strange it's a motive for making money. You gonna make 0:09:04.196 --> 0:09:05.116 money to give it away. 0:09:05.196 --> 0:09:07.236 It was a movement. It's a movement that grew out 0:09:07.236 --> 0:09:09.636 of the work of the philosopher Peter Singer, and it 0:09:09.756 --> 0:09:13.516 was started by several young Oxford philosophers and right after 0:09:13.556 --> 0:09:16.716 the financial crisis. Oddly. The premise is that you look 0:09:16.716 --> 0:09:19.356 at philanthropy rather than just willy nilly do good in 0:09:19.396 --> 0:09:21.916 the world. You analyze it. You try to measure the 0:09:21.956 --> 0:09:25.436 effects of what you're doing and quantify it and look 0:09:25.436 --> 0:09:28.756 at it as a mathematical problem. And the mathematical problem 0:09:28.796 --> 0:09:31.116 you're trying to solve is, in the end, how do 0:09:31.156 --> 0:09:35.036 you maximize with your altruism the number of quality life 0:09:35.116 --> 0:09:38.476 years of human beings? Is that's where they end up. 0:09:38.796 --> 0:09:40.396 And so that once it becomes a math problem. It 0:09:40.396 --> 0:09:43.756 attracts lots of Mathew people, but it pretty quickly collides 0:09:43.836 --> 0:09:48.636 with the observation that humanity faces various existential risks and 0:09:49.236 --> 0:09:53.956 artificial intelligence running amock pandemics or climate change or nuclear war, 0:09:54.476 --> 0:09:59.036 and that these risks risk actually wiping out all future 0:09:59.116 --> 0:10:02.596 human beings, and that the trillions of people and if 0:10:04.676 --> 0:10:09.836 there's even a slight probability of that happening, anything you 0:10:09.916 --> 0:10:13.316 do to reduce that risk ends up saving far more 0:10:13.396 --> 0:10:15.796 lives than you could ever save by addressing the problems 0:10:15.836 --> 0:10:19.436 of people living on the planet today. And so by 0:10:19.436 --> 0:10:21.596 the time Sam gets to it, it's already moving in 0:10:21.596 --> 0:10:24.996 that direction, and the effective altruists who gather in Berkeley 0:10:25.076 --> 0:10:28.116 to create a crypto hedge fund are all in their 0:10:28.156 --> 0:10:33.596 minds generating money in order to mitigate existential risk to humanity. Sam, 0:10:33.596 --> 0:10:35.636 who himself has a two or three year background on 0:10:35.676 --> 0:10:37.836 Wall Street and trading, has proposed this to a whole 0:10:37.836 --> 0:10:39.636 bunch of people who have no background in trading, that 0:10:39.716 --> 0:10:41.636 we're going to gather together, we're going to exploit the 0:10:41.636 --> 0:10:44.396 inefficiencies in crypto to make billions of dollars to give 0:10:44.436 --> 0:10:46.756 it away to prevent I don't know the next pandemic 0:10:47.556 --> 0:10:49.836 or a pandemic that would wipe out all people, and 0:10:50.156 --> 0:10:50.996 they're all in on this. 0:10:51.476 --> 0:10:55.596 Yeah, So your character Sam Bankman Freed tells you I 0:10:55.676 --> 0:11:00.396 have a motivation. My motivation is effective altruism. It's to 0:11:00.476 --> 0:11:03.076 make as much money as possible and use it as 0:11:03.156 --> 0:11:06.676 efficiently as possible to better humanity. 0:11:06.476 --> 0:11:08.476 Not to save humanity, to save. 0:11:08.356 --> 0:11:12.556 Humanity even more. Did you buy that? Did you think, Okay, 0:11:12.676 --> 0:11:15.276 that's that's pretty interesting, it's pretty unusual and that's what 0:11:15.316 --> 0:11:17.116 he's trying to do, or did you think there might 0:11:17.156 --> 0:11:19.636 be a different or more complicated motivation. 0:11:22.036 --> 0:11:25.556 Well, in the first place, when he collides with the 0:11:25.556 --> 0:11:27.756 effect of altrue as a movement, when he is a 0:11:27.836 --> 0:11:30.516 junior in college and is swept up in it, it's 0:11:30.556 --> 0:11:33.356 all sincere and he becomes he becomes a proselytizer for 0:11:33.436 --> 0:11:36.436 this movement. His identity is all wrapped up in being 0:11:36.476 --> 0:11:39.036 the most important person in this movement, and he had 0:11:39.036 --> 0:11:41.676 a sense of himself being special because of this movement. 0:11:42.116 --> 0:11:44.396 So when he says I'm doing it for this reason, 0:11:44.716 --> 0:11:47.516 he thinks that's true. He's not. He's not just saying that, 0:11:47.556 --> 0:11:50.676 but to try to trick you. So I bought it 0:11:50.716 --> 0:11:54.236 to that extent, and it was really interesting. I mean, 0:11:54.556 --> 0:11:58.716 I had had in the past collided with some of 0:11:58.756 --> 0:12:02.236 the early people who had who had heard the siren song, 0:12:02.676 --> 0:12:04.196 people who might have ended up being I don't know, 0:12:04.236 --> 0:12:08.396 math teachers in high school are doctors. Had instead thought, well, 0:12:08.636 --> 0:12:11.556 I need to earn to give because I buy this argument, 0:12:11.796 --> 0:12:13.356 and I'm going to go to Wall Street to give 0:12:13.396 --> 0:12:15.436 the money away. So I had met the kind of 0:12:15.436 --> 0:12:18.076 people before, and it was kind of refreshing. Right, There 0:12:18.116 --> 0:12:20.156 is a certain sense to it. If someone's going to 0:12:20.196 --> 0:12:22.436 be earning this money, might as well be someone who's 0:12:22.436 --> 0:12:24.036 going to do something good with it, rather than someone 0:12:24.036 --> 0:12:26.276 who's going to build themselves a bigger swimming pool. And 0:12:26.516 --> 0:12:29.636 I was charmed by his single mindedness. I thought that 0:12:29.716 --> 0:12:32.876 was interesting. But mixed up in it all, of course, 0:12:32.956 --> 0:12:35.596 is a sense of ambition that he wanted to think 0:12:35.636 --> 0:12:37.396 of himself as an important person, and this was a 0:12:37.396 --> 0:12:41.436 mechanism for thinking of himself as an important person. He 0:12:41.716 --> 0:12:44.516 liked sort of like living his life by argument. You 0:12:44.516 --> 0:12:47.356 could change Sam bankman Fried's mind. It didn't happen very often, 0:12:47.516 --> 0:12:49.076 but when it happened to happen by argument, and he 0:12:49.116 --> 0:12:50.636 would just buy. He would do things that were very 0:12:50.716 --> 0:12:54.236 uncomfortable for him simply because he heard an argument that 0:12:54.276 --> 0:12:55.956 persuaded him when he was in college a year the 0:12:56.036 --> 0:13:00.236 argument about animal suffering and veganism. And this guy really 0:13:00.276 --> 0:13:03.276 liked his chicken, you know, and he stopped eating meat 0:13:03.796 --> 0:13:06.876 on a dime because he bought the argument. And it 0:13:07.116 --> 0:13:10.836 was miserable, but he did it, so he was capable 0:13:10.876 --> 0:13:12.076 of that kind of action. 0:13:12.596 --> 0:13:14.876 He still world's most unhealthy looking vegan. 0:13:14.996 --> 0:13:18.276 Right, Oh my god, you think vegan means healthy vegans 0:13:18.316 --> 0:13:21.356 means a truckload of crappy snacks. If you leave him 0:13:21.356 --> 0:13:23.796 in a prison with only a vending machine d from 0:13:23.836 --> 0:13:26.436 he's fine because that's kind of what he eats anyway. 0:13:26.916 --> 0:13:31.396 So how did your view of him evolve during the 0:13:31.436 --> 0:13:33.076 period you were working on the book? And you spent 0:13:33.236 --> 0:13:34.916 all this time with him, You spend all the time 0:13:34.916 --> 0:13:37.836 with his family, You spend time with all these people 0:13:37.876 --> 0:13:39.436 of the company. I mean, this is the cast of 0:13:39.516 --> 0:13:42.556 characters we're going to meet at the trial, and a 0:13:42.636 --> 0:13:44.836 number of these people are now testifying against him on 0:13:44.956 --> 0:13:48.436 behalf of the government. Did your understanding of him change 0:13:48.556 --> 0:13:49.916 while you were working on it? 0:13:50.756 --> 0:13:54.316 What accreed it. Over time was just a sense of 0:13:54.356 --> 0:13:57.476 how peculiar he was. The longer I was there, the 0:13:57.516 --> 0:14:01.756 depth of his oddness just increased. I give you an example. 0:14:02.156 --> 0:14:05.036 In the first trip we took together, I went to 0:14:05.036 --> 0:14:06.476 the Super Bowl with him. I went to Los Angeles 0:14:06.516 --> 0:14:08.196 for a bunch of parties and meetings in the super Bowl, 0:14:08.596 --> 0:14:12.396 and we were in a hotel together, and he went 0:14:12.396 --> 0:14:13.796 into his room and I went in my room, and 0:14:13.796 --> 0:14:16.196 I thought, well, he's just like normal people living in 0:14:16.196 --> 0:14:18.196 his hotel room. It was two trips later when I 0:14:18.236 --> 0:14:19.716 realized that what he would do is check into the 0:14:19.716 --> 0:14:22.676 hotel room and never stay there because he was uncomfortable 0:14:22.676 --> 0:14:25.516 sleeping alone. And he would find someone's sofa that he 0:14:25.596 --> 0:14:29.156 knew to sleep on, or sometimes crawl into some some 0:14:29.196 --> 0:14:31.956 colleagues hotel room to sleep on their sofa rather than 0:14:32.196 --> 0:14:34.796 in his own room. That kind of thing happened over 0:14:34.836 --> 0:14:38.196 and over where like he just Oh my god, I thought, 0:14:38.236 --> 0:14:41.396 I knew how unusual, odd peculiar he was, and he 0:14:41.636 --> 0:14:45.156 just gets there's just there's something. There's another door I 0:14:45.196 --> 0:14:49.996 need to open here. I tell you another thing. This 0:14:50.036 --> 0:14:53.436 is going to sound very peculiar. I became kind of 0:14:53.476 --> 0:14:59.236 awed by how almost incapable he was of lying to me, 0:15:00.036 --> 0:15:04.476 of just that that everything he said would check out. Now, 0:15:04.516 --> 0:15:07.836 what he would do is not answer things I asked 0:15:08.156 --> 0:15:10.236 in very crafty way. Sometimes I would ask something and 0:15:10.236 --> 0:15:13.196 he'd give me answer to a slightly different question. But 0:15:13.836 --> 0:15:17.516 I over time I came to be able to rely 0:15:17.836 --> 0:15:20.556 on him more than I did in the beginning. First, 0:15:20.716 --> 0:15:22.636 with the things he were telling me, I thought were preposterous, 0:15:22.676 --> 0:15:25.036 that this can't be true, that can't be true, And 0:15:25.036 --> 0:15:28.036 it all checked out, and it kept checking out. You know, 0:15:28.396 --> 0:15:32.756 there were things that weren't immediately apparent. That the more 0:15:32.796 --> 0:15:35.436 I was there struck me as just kind of I mean, 0:15:35.556 --> 0:15:38.476 just peculiar and shocking the fact that the way he 0:15:38.516 --> 0:15:41.916 had almost systematically removed anybody over about the age of 0:15:41.956 --> 0:15:45.836 thirty two from his life, that the way he had 0:15:45.956 --> 0:15:48.796 come to kind of disdain any kind of grown up 0:15:48.836 --> 0:15:53.836 supervision and grown up methods that he disdains the wrong word. 0:15:54.036 --> 0:15:56.556 He would start, So, you think you start a company, 0:15:56.636 --> 0:15:59.196 and you've never run a company, you never run anything. Basically, 0:15:59.676 --> 0:16:02.276 you would think you, I don't know, take a management class, 0:16:02.356 --> 0:16:05.236 read a book. And he kind of flipped through a 0:16:05.236 --> 0:16:08.436 few things and decided this is all bullshit, and you're 0:16:08.436 --> 0:16:10.356 just gonna have to make it up as I go along. 0:16:10.676 --> 0:16:12.196 And to get yourself in a position where you have 0:16:12.236 --> 0:16:15.196 an almost five hundred person company and nobody knows where 0:16:15.196 --> 0:16:17.116 they are in the company because there's no org chart 0:16:17.196 --> 0:16:18.956 and he doesn't like titles and there's not even a 0:16:18.996 --> 0:16:22.836 list of employees. That kind of stuff just that you 0:16:23.076 --> 0:16:27.156 stumble upon. That the lack of order, because he didn't 0:16:27.196 --> 0:16:30.276 have much respect for the way people had conventionally ordered 0:16:30.316 --> 0:16:35.196 things that you know, I would run into versions of that. 0:16:36.596 --> 0:16:42.036 One last thing that his attitude towards risk. He had 0:16:42.076 --> 0:16:45.836 an appetite for risk that at first I thought was 0:16:45.916 --> 0:16:48.196 kind of funny. And then you know, he's like you're 0:16:48.196 --> 0:16:49.636 in a game of chicken, and then you realize you 0:16:49.636 --> 0:16:51.636 don't want to be playing chicken against this person because 0:16:51.676 --> 0:16:54.636 he actually will do the things that most people won't do. 0:16:55.116 --> 0:16:57.876 Watch out, because he will actually do it. Like, you know, 0:16:57.916 --> 0:16:59.676 he says he's going to go spend a billion dollars 0:16:59.716 --> 0:17:01.876 to buy that, and you think, no, he's just saying that, No, 0:17:02.036 --> 0:17:03.956 we actually will go do it. But it was just 0:17:03.996 --> 0:17:05.676 this took a while for me to appreciate who he was. 0:17:05.996 --> 0:17:08.996 Yeah, I mean, reading the book Weird doesn't begin to 0:17:08.996 --> 0:17:11.516 do justice to it. This is someone who is a 0:17:11.636 --> 0:17:14.556 very hard time relating to people, said very few friends, 0:17:14.716 --> 0:17:17.676 is much more at home in the world of numbers 0:17:17.756 --> 0:17:22.996 and data. I mean, nothing about him is like anyone 0:17:23.036 --> 0:17:26.796 else we would see in a position running a company 0:17:26.796 --> 0:17:29.196 and dealing with other human beings. Right, So, if he's 0:17:29.196 --> 0:17:31.396 a kind of genius but he's not good at running 0:17:31.436 --> 0:17:34.116 a company because he can't deal with people, why doesn't 0:17:34.116 --> 0:17:35.716 he get someone else to run the company and he 0:17:35.716 --> 0:17:36.716 can do what he's good at. 0:17:37.276 --> 0:17:39.396 So I don't think he knew he wasn't good at 0:17:39.476 --> 0:17:42.676 running a company. I think he thought basically, people shouldn't 0:17:42.716 --> 0:17:46.076 need to be managed, and so it was their problem 0:17:47.116 --> 0:17:50.116 as a practical matter. What ends up happening is the 0:17:50.196 --> 0:17:54.156 messy business of managing people gets subcontracted to people who've 0:17:54.156 --> 0:17:57.236 got a little bit of emotional intelligence, including his own 0:17:57.276 --> 0:18:00.396 psychiatrist who he brings in to be the corporate psychiatrist, 0:18:00.476 --> 0:18:02.756 who ends up dealing with a lot of the messy problems. 0:18:02.956 --> 0:18:07.276 So what happens is his organization. After Sam's insistence that 0:18:07.316 --> 0:18:09.996 he really should be the one in charge, the organization 0:18:10.076 --> 0:18:13.236 adaptsed to it in various bizarre ways. 0:18:13.956 --> 0:18:16.076 They had like a chief mental health officer. 0:18:17.156 --> 0:18:20.556 No titles in the company, but yes, effectively they did. 0:18:20.996 --> 0:18:24.076 You know, I think that in almost any other era 0:18:24.716 --> 0:18:26.796 it would have occurred to no one to put Sam 0:18:26.796 --> 0:18:29.836 bankmanfreed in the financial markets, but would happened in the 0:18:29.836 --> 0:18:32.276 financial markets over the last fifteen years where they become 0:18:32.316 --> 0:18:34.836 automated and run by people who were really good with 0:18:34.916 --> 0:18:38.476 math and computers and who were not being filtered for 0:18:38.516 --> 0:18:42.236 their social skills or lack thereof. And his aptitude with 0:18:43.316 --> 0:18:46.676 a certain aspect of markets led him to be in 0:18:46.716 --> 0:18:51.156 this very odd position of running a company when he's 0:18:51.196 --> 0:18:55.236 almost singularly incapable of running a company, and he could 0:18:55.236 --> 0:18:59.316 at some things, but the whole human thing and quite 0:18:59.356 --> 0:19:02.436 light in my relationship, I dug into his childhood and 0:19:02.476 --> 0:19:05.596 I could not believe how isolated it was, like just know, 0:19:05.716 --> 0:19:09.076 it was beyond I mean, it isn't just he didn't 0:19:09.236 --> 0:19:13.276 have close friends, like he had nobody, and that he 0:19:13.316 --> 0:19:16.036 really just kind of lived on his own and was 0:19:16.396 --> 0:19:18.956 sorting out the world all by himself. How many people 0:19:18.996 --> 0:19:20.676 do you know when you say to them, could you 0:19:20.716 --> 0:19:22.476 give me the names of two or three people who 0:19:22.516 --> 0:19:25.116 could describe for me how you were up to the 0:19:25.156 --> 0:19:27.996 age of eighteen, looks at you and says, there's nobody 0:19:28.356 --> 0:19:31.196 you know. You know, this is had to be somebody, right, 0:19:31.236 --> 0:19:33.516 there are people who had written in college recommendations. He'd 0:19:33.516 --> 0:19:35.556 gone to school with a bunch of people. He'd you know, 0:19:35.636 --> 0:19:37.916 had parents and a brother. There had to be somebody 0:19:37.916 --> 0:19:42.196 who would actually be able to it's some character reference, right, 0:19:42.556 --> 0:19:44.996 There was none. He said that he had all kinds 0:19:45.036 --> 0:19:47.036 of problems and relating to other people and in particularly 0:19:47.036 --> 0:19:50.356 communicating his inner state to other people, like any kind 0:19:50.356 --> 0:19:52.956 of interaction he had had with other people was a 0:19:52.996 --> 0:19:55.796 calculated exercise. It was something he had to had to 0:19:55.916 --> 0:19:59.236 calibrate in order for it to work. The idea that 0:19:59.276 --> 0:20:01.476 such a person was running a four hundred and fifty 0:20:01.476 --> 0:20:03.916 person company, I mean, that was odd. 0:20:04.516 --> 0:20:06.556 After I finished reading, you asked me how I felt 0:20:06.596 --> 0:20:08.956 about him, and I think my reaction was, I feel 0:20:08.956 --> 0:20:12.436 really sorry for this guy because he had such an 0:20:12.476 --> 0:20:16.156 isolated and seemed like fundamentally unhappy childhood, had so much 0:20:16.156 --> 0:20:20.876 trouble dealing with people. And then he constructed this world, 0:20:21.396 --> 0:20:23.636 which is sort of an abstract world that worked for him, 0:20:23.956 --> 0:20:27.316 but it catastrophically and quickly fell apart. 0:20:28.196 --> 0:20:31.956