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The biggest way in which Obama is responsible for Trump is he's black and he got elected president and it drove,
you know, 20% of the country insane. Insane. And so the the status threat
that presented to the white male, not every white male, but enough of them and the white female that that generated a
kind of radicalization all by itself. Now, well, not the majority of the country, but it there's a kernel of
Trump's I mean, there's a racial dimension to Trump's rise. And so, that's the worst thing Obama did. He is
he was black. Uh, you know, couldn't couldn't help it.
But usually when I introduce these downstream interviews, I talk about some big historical shift, some momentous
political episode and why the guest who I'm speaking to over the next hour, hour
and a half is entirely relevant. Why you simply have to watch and listen. Of course, that is basically the gist of
today's show as well, but I can be a little bit more brief in terms of who I'm speaking to and why. Michael Lewis
is for my money the single best essayist and non-fiction writer in the English-speaking world today. He's
written on data in baseball. He's talked about high frequency trading uh in the
leadup as well to the global financial crisis. He took a light shining it on those who benefited who bet against the
big banks when it came to the US mortgage market that became of course a film the big short. It even won an
Oscar. More recently, he has focused on government in America and the risks
posed by the Trump White House. His most recent book, or rather series of essays,
Who is Government? Seeks to tell the untold story of public service and the
seemingly boring stories of those in federal government, actually are rather
fascinating. I can't think of many people I'd rather speak to more when it comes to Trump 2.0, O the future of the
United States and the big questions we're all asking about what happens over
the rest of the 2020s. Michael Lewis, welcome to Downstream.
Thank you, Aaron. The wind, the the synthetic wind from the fan is wavering through your fit
care just so people know that you're not being deceived cuz it's very hot in here today. So, we've made a we've made an
exception for you, Michael. I appreciate you making me feel comfortable and I hope you'll continue to make me feel comfortable as we talk.
Yeah. Yeah. It is an incredibly hot day today here in London. I think it's about 25 26 27. I'm just going to sweat
buckets. That's fine. Um and we've made the exception because and I hope you don't mind me saying this. I'm sure you have people being obesequous to you 24
hours a day, 7 days a week. You're one of the finest non-fiction writers in English speaking language right now. Oh, thank you.
So, we thought you might as well stay cool. Yeah, I appreciate it. So, we're talking
about this book, your newish book, not new, newish, who is government, the
untold story of public service. We're going to talk about a lot of other stuff as well, but this is the this is the
hook. Briefly tell me what this is about and what drew you to writing the stories
inside it. So, there's a backstory to the book. Backstory of the book is uh when Trump was elected the first time,
the day after he was elected, he was meant to send in his transition team to learn what was going on inside the
federal government. There was 550 people. Instead, he fired them.
So, they had Obama the Obama administration had prepared these briefings for the Trump administration,
the incoming administration, just so they'd understand, you know, what was going on in the Department of Agriculture or wherever.
um that knowledge never got transferred. So I got interested in the federal
government. Then I thought it's kind of a great premise. I can wander around the federal government and get the briefings that the president should have gotten
and and I'll know and the reader will know more about the government than he does and he's supposed to be running it.
While I So that became a book. It's called the fifth risk. While I was doing that,
e, even though the material of just what the government was doing was great, it became clear that like the characters in
the federal government were surprisingly great. Like I just couldn't believe the caliber of the person. It was so
different from what I expected. I didn't know what I expected exactly, but there is this lazy stereotype of the kind of
nineto-five passionless person. They were exquisite experts on all kinds of
wild subjects having massive consequences for the world and didn't
expect any attention or money. So, I thought if it there's ever a whisper of
this government being under threat again, it might be worth profiling some
of these people so that the American public can't walk around with this dumb
stereotype in their head. Like, you're not allowed to think this about government workers
without reading something about them. And so so what I did was in about a year ago um I recruited six people writers
very different writers uh and and told them I just we're just going to parachute you into the government find a
story whatever it is and most of them were novelists they were not normal journalists couple one was a stand-up
comedian one was a historian um your your own John Lchester was one of them
um and they all came away with just a it took took him a nancond to find I was
right that there are the stories were amazing. They all said I can't believe this material is as good as it is. Why
don't I know this? Um and so they so the six other writers did stories. I did
about a third of the book. I did I did and I did two two of the long pieces. Uh and I went back in um and the audio the
audios will run these things. We ran them in the Washington Post once a week and there are some of them very long
like mine first one is like 13,000 words. Um and it was just my thought was like
that to inoculate kind of inoculate the federal workforce against really stupid
attacks. it didn't do it. But the book has had this
this this tailwind uh because it is so clear that what's going on in the Trump
administration is uh so destructive that it isn't just you know you can't you the
kind of people we're writing about are are not responsible for waste, fraud, and abuse. They're sort of responsible for the society functioning and they're
all under attack. Yeah, they are extraordinary stories. Um, you know, I get pitched, just so
people know, with regards to these kinds of books and authors, you get pitched books and you think some are really interesting, some don't look very
interesting. With this, I didn't know what to think. Right. Okay. I I love Michael Lewis's work.
He's always done these big stories which are prominent in the media, you know, finance, tech, like risk. I know this is
a kind of a this is kind of an appendage to your your previous book, The Fifth Risk, but with this, I'm thinking essays
on government. Okay. And I have to say again, people might think I'm being obsequious, some of the best non-fiction
I've read in a really, really long time. So high value, I think precisely because I wasn't expecting these kinds of
stories and like this kind of caliber of person working in public service and um
yeah, I really I've recommended it to a ton of people and I think the good thing with books is, you know, you can probably get that into the hand of a
hands of a Trump staffer or uh you know, a lobbyist who's very much opposed to your politics. At least it's going to
get them to think, right, which they rarely do with a sadly a YouTube video or a Facebook post. Yeah.
So, it has that use as well. What What draws you to to stories generally? You know, you've written about baseball,
you've written about finance, now you're writing about the government. What makes you think I have to write
about this? It usually doesn't start as I have to write about it. It usually starts with
just some idle curiosity. I mean, it's like some question. I'll give you a couple of examples. So, the the big
short uh I was just when right in the run-up to the financial crisis, you had
all these supposedly really smart Wall Street banks collapsing because they made stupid bets. Um how did Wall and so
that starts out how did the Wall Street firms get to be the dumb money at the table? And it leads me to the smart
money and the smart money ends up being the subject of the book. But I didn't
know that existed. I didn't know the smart money existed when I went to go look into the dumb money. It starts with a question. Um, moneyball. How does a
team with no money, a baseball team with no money, compete against teams that have five and six times the sums? If if
if you're just thinking about baseball players as a market, the market's anything like efficient. Uh, the rich
teams should just buy all the good players and beat the poor teams. That wasn't happening. Why? Um, and then it
starts that way with a kind of curiosity. And if the answer gets really interesting, I keep hanging around and
then I start thinking how do I this is you know it at some point uh with all
the books there it's a combination of the quality of the characters I can draw the quality
of the scenic material the quality of the the or the importance of the themes
um all get all reach a certain point where I feel like Christ I I got to write it it's too Good. Um, in this
case, you know, it was this was kind of a dare almost. It was like daring myself. I I have this theory that these
people are will make really good subjects if I just do the people and I
think I can recruit six writers, toss them in and I can jump in and we will find six really great sub seven really great subjects or eight really great
subjects. And um it was beyond easy. I mean it was true.
Uh the so um it's always a little something different that gets me in but
it's you know if you came to my office you'd find huge piles of Mandela folders with loose ideas for for stories. Um and
most of them will never be executed. Most of them I'll never I'll just never pay much attention to. But um but some
but every now and then something will happen to make one of them live and I'll start to uh you know it's whether it's
access to the subject whether it's meeting someone new who might enlighten me on the subject um
and it they just take on a life of their own you know but they come in a lot of different ways the stories and there's
no you know it's funny I think I think people people think of writing as a career I
it's not like a normal career. It's more like gold prospecting. You're looking for mines. So, you're wandering around
the landscape looking for veins of gold. And maybe you're going to find them and maybe you're not. And I've been lucky
enough to find some. Uh but I don't have there's no there's no like system to it. It's just kind of pursuing natural
curiosities. So, people are going to be familiar with you mentioned Moneyball a moment ago,
The Big Short. They they know those stories because they've been turned into these extraordinary Hollywood films.
With regards to this book, we're at the level of speculation. They might be thinking, "What on earth are you talking about?" So, briefly, one of the stories,
who is Christopher Mark? So, I'm going back up a little bit from that. So, I got these six writers
involved and I thought, "Oh, Christ, I have to go write something. I got to find someone." I hadn't even thought about that.
There is an operation in Washington called the Partnership for Public Service that every year bestows awards
on civil servants who've done something good. Six awards. Um, and every year
they take nominations. So, I just asked for the list of the nominees that year.
I got 600 names. All of them, all the descriptions were very impersonal. It was like John Smith
works at the FBI and broke up a child sex trafficking ring. Period.
But one said Christopher Mark solve the problem of coal mine roofs falling in on
the heads of coal miners which has killed 50,000 American workers
over the last century. And then it said a former coal miner. So this is
Christopher Mark. That's what I this is how I find him. I see him his name on a list. I Google him. I get his phone
number. I call him up to ask him that question like, "Who are you?" This I'm intrigued. And I was
intrigued because if you just think about that two-line description, a story pops into your head. Like a
former coal miner solves this lethal problem. How did he get out of the coal mine?
What motivated him? I assume he grew up in West Virginia and like his brother died in a roofall. whatever it was. I
thought there was some personal thing that had motivated him. So, I get him on the phone. Who are you?
He says, "Uh, I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and my father was a professor at the university." And I
went, "Ah, This isn't going to be nearly as good as I thought." Turned out to be better. Christopher Mark was um a
a child of the 60s and early 70s who grew up in a upper middle class
household in Princeton, New Jersey, who rebelled against his class. He rebelled against his dad and set out after high
school, even though he'd been admitted to Harvard and Princeton to go join the working class.
He goes he goes works in an auto factory. He works in a UPS uh factory. He goes he goes he's moving around the
country working in bluecollar jobs with a couple of friends till he finally ends up in a coal mine in West Virginia. The
friends instantly flee because it's so frightening. He sort of takes to it. It's interesting.
Um he then watches miners die when the roof falls. He
himself almost dies twice. So when I'm on the phone with him trying to
figure out like is this a story? He says I said like well well you rebelled against your dad. Who is your dad?
His dad was actually a little bit of a famous guy. His name was Robert Marx.
And Robert Marx had been brought to Princeton because he developed new techniques for stress test for testing
objects under stress. So the Air Force used it. He used him to test designs for
planes before they built the planes to make sure the wing wasn't going to fall off. And Princeton had brought him in to test nuclear reactors they were going to
build to make sure that they wouldn't crack. Robert Mark figured out when someone
actually asked him he he used his techniques he became famous when he used
his techniques to analyze how Gothic cathedrals were built. The question has
always been no one no one knew no one knows about how the galaxy you look at them they're amazing there's no records of how they were built you walk into
them you naturally ask like what's holding this thing up no one's been able to answer that question he uses
engineering techniques to figure out like basically how charter was built and what was what was decorative and what
was structural becomes very famous doing this
son rebels against the father ends up in the middle of a coal in a coal mine realizes is the falling roof is the is
the number one problem. It's the most I mean it's the most dangerous occupation in American and it's the cause of most
of the deaths leaves and gets and goes and pursues an education to figure out how to stop the
problem. And the story of how he stops the problem is an amazing intellectual journey. But he's on the phone telling
me all about this and I say to him, "Wait, you're telling me you rebelled
against your dad and you've just relived your dad's career underground? He figured out what kept the co the roofs
of Gothic cathedrals up. You figured out how to keep the roofs of coal mines up. And on the phone he gets irritated with
me. This is 20 minutes into our meeting on the phone. It's like, "No, what I do have nothing has nothing to do with what
my dad did." You know, I've separated myself from that world. At that point, I thought, "Here's a character. He doesn't
he's he didn't until I said this to them, he hadn't made the connection." And there was this wonderful uh this
this wonderful revelation that comes I don't know two weeks into our relationship. I fly out to Pittsburgh
where he lives. We drive around cold country. He's teaching me all about what he's done. And he says, "Oh, and by the
way, I did do I did kind of reconcile with my dad. Uh we wrote a paper together."
And what had happened was in the early 2000s, the National Cathedral in
Washington, a big cathedral, it all looms over the city, was showing signs
of instability. One of the towers was subsiding faster than the other. And they thought, the federal government owns the thing, thought that it was
going to collapse. So who do they call? They call Robert Marcus. They call Christopher's dad because he's the authority on keeping
the roofs of cathedrals from falling. He gets there and he realizes the
problem isn't above ground. The problem is that when they designed the thing, they put it there was an inadequate
foundation put in. So he needs his son and the work he's done underground to
figure out what's going on there. And together the two figure out how to keep the National Cathedral from falling
down. So I So you're this is by way of of answering your question like how I get interested to write about something.
I was really interested in some an expert who had solved a problem that
killed 50,000 people and solved it in a way that was going to save many future lives. I was really interested that he
was in the government. No one knew who he was. No one advertised that he ever they had done it and that he wasn't expecting to be paid. But I was really
interested that there was this father-son story to run through it and that there was this emotional dimension
to it and they kind of cut at they got at like why do these people do what they
do? uh what's the motivation? And um
and it's not fair that this material walked into my life, you know, it was just a random phone call, but it's
happened a lot where I had that feeling like, oh my god, I made this call to this random person who I who's who's it
was a line on a sheet of paper that got piqued my curiosity and once I started
picking at it, it just got more and more and more interesting. Um as the funny
coded to this is after I'd written the piece I went for a hike with Christopher
Mark and his wife who is a psychiatrist
and she she and I got separated from him and she said I want to just tell you this said she said that I've always
thought that Chris was driven by this thing with his dad. I never had the nerve to say anything to him about it.
He said she she said he's never wanted to acknowledge it. He's now thinking about his relationship with his dad in a
whole another way. So when I'm doing my job well, that happens. Like I can sort
of start to tell the characters about themselves. That's when I know I've sort of like
I'm in a good place, a good literary place. So amazing. It's an amazing story. I mean, I just like once you get
that kind of material, you can only screw it up. I can only screw it up. Uh but it is also kind of complicated,
right? I mean, you got to learn about how coal mines are built and how you design the pillars and all that. It's uh
there's a technical side to it that that's I always find that kind of interesting too. So you make the technical side really
accessible but that's that's that's a a perennial feature of your work with data and analytics etc. What you've done
in this book I think it it should be impossible which is effectively you've romanticized bureaucrats. That's right.
You've talked about a bureaucrat there right? Yep. and in a really compelling way. Um, and I care about their interior
life, their relationship with their father, but you're talking about somebody who I'm meant to hate. The culture tells me I'm meant to hate this
person or the very least be bored by them. Yeah. Or indiff. Exactly. Right. Certainly not worth my tax. Right.
So, in so much as you're advancing an ideology in the book, and I know you're not trying to do that, it is that of
effective competent technocracy. These people are technocrats, but they're also
human beings. They're really, really talented. If you go to the median American or the median Brit and you use those words
rather than tell these kinds of stories, they don't like that ideology. Nope. Why do you why do you think that is?
I mean, it's partly because the stories haven't been told. So, it's partly they're getting they're getting those
words techn technocrat expert cold words. So they aren't they aren't given
access to the motives and the interior lives of the people who are doing the work. That's partly it. Um because I do
believe actually that if if you put the average American in the room with Christopher Mark, they come out saying,
"Thank God we have him." that that and and not only that that sense and it just
this jumps from between the lines of of of this book all the pieces that this
person is not he's sort of found the secret to a
meaningful life that that he's living not just for himself he's found some cause greater than himself that he
really really cares about and it just and on his deathbed Christopher Mark's not going to wonder if he should have
done something else with his life that's not like most by Goldman Sachs bankers on their deathbeds. A lot of them
they're going to wonder what they should have done with their lives. Chris, the these people know. So, so to answer your question, part of
it is that a big part of it is that the average taxpayer
uh never hears the story. The story is complicated. So, it's hard to hear the story. It's hard to tell the story. Um
and uh and people are busy. You know, they don't have time for it. what they see instead are the bad stories. It's so
easy to tell the bad story. It's so easy to if there's a case of corruption or
it's more more commonly waste, incompetence, something goes wrong,
that's an easy story to tell and the news is sort of set up to tell those stories. So, people are bombarded with those stories. The vast majority of
what's going on is working. They don't that's very hard to tell a story about that. That's why I needed good writers.
I mean, good writers can do it. Uh but the the the good stories are quite moving and true, you know, and they're
more I I think more a reflection of the actual enterprise than the bad stories. Not to say that the enterprise doesn't
have problems with it. I mean, one of the unfortunate byproducts of the
hostility, at least in my country, that the p general public feels towards the
government is that a rel is a reluctance to invest in the government. Is a
reluctance to think that, oh, we need to make help these people do their job, give them the technology they need, give
them the resources they need. uh structure the places so that they make
sense. So there they are large oified outdated maddening institutions. Chris
Mark is working he would tell you that he's working in a place that he could tell you how to fix it but he you know
he's got they make it harder than it should be for him to do his job. Um and
he does it in spite of it. There are reform there are reforms that would really be helpful. Make it easier to
fire people. making it easy to hire people, paying people, you know, essentially market wages for expertise.
Um, promoting people based on performance rather than tenure, lots of that kind of stuff. Um,
but the so we got this kind of vicious cycle and the vicious cycle is people don't like the government, underinvest
in the government, look for bad things in the government, not good things. Find the bad things they're looking for
because they've underinvested. It reinforces their hostility and their cynicism and this and it just on and on
it goes. Question I had is like like why are we in this situation at all? And I think
the one simple answer is we can afford to be that um that people turn to the
government when there's a real crisis when there's in times of crisis. And you know if you look at the United States as
as screwed up as it is in many ways we've endured a very long time period of
kind of basic peace and prosperity. I mean there are always little wars. It doesn't touch the whole country. It's
been a pandemic only kill the whole people. you know, is is that there isn't I think that it's gonna it would take
like a massive feeling of existential risk to kick this
vicious cycle into something else. So rather than than this kind of antipathy to government being an
outgrowth of of America's political DNA, you think it's kind of an expression of
Yeah. 80 years plus Yeah. of prosperity and a history of kind of unruliness and
dislike of central authority and all the rest. There's a lot of other things going on, but yes, I think that
we're it's a our attitude towards our government is a luxury we've been able to afford. It's a luxury belief as the as the
conservatives like to say. There you go. It's a luxury belief. Low tax is a luxury belief.
Huh. Hating bureaucracy. Yes. you talk you talk about the fifth risk um and you talk about how sort of
indifference antipathy is is our major is our major problem in terms of the the
crisis and and the risks around us today. What one risk and you sort of
hinted at that in the previous answer because that may be the thing that generates a return to the political consent of of of the kind of for the
kind of political state we saw under say FDR or Clemently in this country or
Lynen Johnson in the US as well. What kind of risk are we neglecting which
could be a gamecher politically? I mean people say climate change other people say you know geopolitics AI.
What what's the one for you as a as somebody who's drawn to stories and you know
you mean I had to put my money on on on what the crisis is like what the
Yeah. You used to be a trader right you know. Yeah. Uh money actually I think is the answer or mistrust. Uh the the
I I think I mean not that at any moment a pandemic could sweep over us again. I
I don't I don't I mean these are things are unpredictable. What seems inexurable and kind of predictable is that the
United States is on a collision course with a kind of insolvency and um and it's so think about the
financial crisis. The banks got themselves in all kinds of trouble. There's a run on there's a
there's a run on the banks, a run on the financial system. If nobody intervenes, there's a depression. It's not just a
little recession. It's a depression. Um, but there was a there was a character
who could intervene plausibly, the government. Governments governments had the sufficient trust that they could
take on the risks that they could diffuse the crisis. Now, you know, you can argue about whether they did it the
right way or the wrong way, but they calmed everything down. We're our government's now being handled
in a way that soon it won't be able to calm anything down. It inflames situations financially. Uh, and Trump
has made a lot of noise about, you know, saying things like, "We don't have to repay all the bonds because some of them
are owned by Chinese people." That kind of thing that he's just flirting with, oh, we
don't trust the dollar and we don't trust the Treasury anymore. Creating that sentiment. And if there is a
financial crisis that kind of starts with the government, there's no grown-up. there's no one to come into
the room to calm it down. It becomes a completely different kind of thing. And I don't know quite how it looks. It's it's weird. But it' be flights from the
dollar, flights from Treasury, probably flights, probably flights from the US stock market, flights to gold, houses,
crypto, I don't know. But if I had to bet on one, I might bet on that one. Uh
may take a while. But we we just seem unccapable of of of running our
finances. I mean, we just that nobody the last presidential election, nobody
talked about the deficits. Uh it's and Trump has just introduced a bill, his
big beautiful bill that will increase deficits by$2.5 trillion dollars. It's just like it's the democracy seems to be
um incontinent, financially incontinent, and that that's just going to lead somewhere bad. But that's just one
that's one thing that could happen. A lot of you never know what the thing is going to be. The government's the mechanism for managing all of them. And
if you degrade all of the risk management when the one comes, it's going to be worse. I mean, COVID is not
a bad example this way, right? We degraded the Centers for Disease Control. I mean, there's a long history
to this. I wrote a book about it called The Premonition. Uh, but we politicized
it. Reagan politicized it. Took the people, the career people who ran it and turned them into political appointees.
So, we had kind of stooges on top of the place when the pandemic occurs. who can't stand up to the White House.
They're on this very tight polit political leash. And you know, I don't
know what the stats are now. This the way in the way the stats are now don't matter. But like 6 months into the
pandemic, the United States with 4% of the world's population at 25% of the deaths. I mean, that's appalling. We we
were we were in theory best equipped to defend ourselves and instead we was just
like poster child for ineptitude and you say well I mean in the end co wasn't that big a deal it was just a million
deaths whatever but but something worse could happen and uh and you saw in that
event uh the degradation of our risk management and I would have thought the
response would have been to beef it up, but it hasn't been. I mean, I think we're in worse shape now to deal with
that particular risk than we were before CO happened. Now we're now we're all set to fight each other about what you do
when the disease starts. Now half the country will say, "I'm not wearing a mask. No, I'm not going to distance. I'm not going to do any of that stuff. I'm
not going to vaccinate." Uh, and the other half will be infuriated because they'll be trying to do the right thing.
Um, so I I'm not in the prediction business. I don't know what the what is
gonna what's the thing that's going to happen. I just know that like the whole mechanism for dealing that with the with the portfolio of problems is less is is
less u a droid than it was you know in earlier times
but you did say and I'm not going to hold you to it because you said it's a range of this portfolio of risks but you
did start by saying that the big risk could be the US economy treasuries the dollar so the whole world the global
financial Elon Musk would agree with that right yeah probably would the the the um the
financial The global financial system is built on the risklessness of the US Treasury fund.
It is treated as a riskless asset. It's not it's clearly not a riskless asset. And the ratings agencies have been
downgrading the United States government. Um and we're behaving in
ways it's going to make it even riskier. And I just don't know when the United States become Greece. It becomes Greece.
I don't know what then happens. I mean, I haven't really thought it through. like it's not good. But it what where I
mean it makes another way of thinking about this is
what we're doing is pretty dramatically increasing financial uncertainty. And
when you increase financial uncertainty, you raise the cost of capital. And you raise the cost of capital, we're all
poor. So you create you slow an economy. And that has huge political consequences. Uh, so,
um, I don't know. It's just one thought. It's I mean, I'm about to go back in and start writing about the Trump
administration again. I'm almost certainly going to start with the Treasury, like what they think, how they think they're going to manage this
situation, how they going to actually finance it, how they're thinking about financing the deficit. Um, you can see
it's top of mind with Trump. He's trying to talk the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates so the interest on the debt is lower. That's not going
to work. Uh but but he's thinking about it, worried about it. So that seems to
me like the best way to predict the future is just look what's going on right now. That's what's going on right now.
I hope you're enjoying this interview as much as I'm enjoying making it. I hope
you're enjoying this interview as much as I enjoyed. I'm not Is it past or present tense? I hope I'll just say I
hope you're enjoying it. Right. I hope you're enjoying this interview. Michael Lewis is a sensational writer, great
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I mean what I find really extraordinary is you have lots of people not lots of people you have some people in the US actually saying we shouldn't be the
global reserve currency that has a load of downsides in terms of interest rates domestically it's only accounts for
about 0.25 25 0.5% maybe and the downsides are quite large.
Alongside that you have what seems to me like a really poor quality of debate around things like immigration. You
know, I see and look, I don't like to be one of those people that says, "Oh, I saw on X, right?" Because obviously, you know, social
media, least of all, X is not reality, but I repeatedly see and encounter also
in the sort of American podcast space, people saying things like, uh, workers in Silicon Valley should just be US
nationals or as they like to say, heritage Americans. They shouldn't be migrants. And I'm thinking, you know,
you wouldn't have deep learning, which is the basis of AI
in terms of where it's going now, without Jeffrey Henson, British, Yan Lun, French, Demis, British. You can go
further and further back. You wouldn't have the Apollo. No, it's all dumb. Yeah. No, this without Veron Brown. No, I know. Why is
the quality of the American conversation on stuff like that so dumb? Like there's there's just so little nuance. You could
have a really radical position which you and I would disagree with, but at least it's like internally coherent. Why is it
so dumb? Cuz we're so dumb. Why are we so dumb? Has that changed?
It's been democratized is the problem, right? The debate. The debate. Everybody has an opinion and everybody's opinion
is the same. So that it's the country's harder to lead people. We aren't
delegating to our representatives lots of respons. the same kind of
responsibility as before. So I think that's partly it, but it's dumber because it, you know, more means worse.
More people participating in the debate means it means the debate's worse. Everybody gets to have a say. That may
be one thing. Um, so
the other, so when I think about the immigration debate, such as it is, it's
a bit like the discussion around trans people or fact for that matter, the discussion around the federal workforce,
it's filled with anger. Like it's just it's that these people who we're talking
about, immigrants, trans people, federal workers, for whatever reason, the society has agreed it's okay to
ostracize them and they they've become legitimate targets of anger. So um so
it's not it's right from the start the conversations around them are not rational. Now why is it with this so
with immigrants there? I mean isn't it probably it's that's probably true everywhere, right? They're outsiders.
Sometimes they look different. Americans feel less secure. Average
Americans. They're looking for they're an ang question where the anger comes from. But anger is definitely the
emotion of the age. Anger is what Trump minds Stokes. Um so you're you have an
angry conversation rather than a rather than a a sane and sort of efficient one.
But you're absolutely right. Like the country the country is a country of immigrants. That's that's the weird
thing, right? We are the country that's built entirely on immigration. I'm an immigrant. They came in the 18th
century, but still, you know, there's a hypocrisy to the whole thing. The idea that you just kind of lift up the
drawbridge and we'll just we'll keep this for ourselves is sort of anothetical to the country. So why
you're asking me a question I don't know the answer to. I I don't I don't get the anger. I don't completely get it.
Is that because you you've won out of the last you're one of the people that's won proverbial out of the last 40 years? Like you said anger is the is the
disposition of the age. When did that start? When did that shift happen do you think?
So when I think the financial crisis had a really big effect on the politics of the
country, the tone of the country and it was this event where
it became clear to everybody the story we were telling ourselves about ourselves wasn't true that the elites
played by different rules than everybody else. It was capitalism for everybody, which is pretty brutal. You know, if you
work at McDonald's, you're on the receiving end of capitalist forces. But if you work at a fancy financial firm,
you're not you get you get bailed out if things if you if you screw up, you get bailed out. That those feelings of um
unfairness that that gave rise to were very powerful and it took the form of
the Tea Party on the right and Occupy Wall Street on the left and it polarized the politics. Um
the so when I think about when I think about the state of our country like the
emotional state of politics I can't get out of my head two social science
experiments that I've run across in the last decade and they're both about they're both
illustrating the effects on fairness. Do you know who Fr Fran Dewal is? No. He did work with chimpanzees, with capichin
monkeys, and he did this. You can go on YouTube. It's hysterical. He has he puts
two monkeys in a in side by side in two cages, but they can see each other. And
he gives them a simple task and like the task is I he hands the monkey a little
rock and the monkey puts the rock in a little jar. And when the monkey does that, he's given a treat. And the treat
is a piece of cucumber, which is like an inferior treat, but it's enough of a treat. And he'll do it all day
just just for the cucumber. He'll do the task all day. He then the experimentter then takes one
of the monkeys and instead of giving him cucumber, gives him a grape, which is like much tastier. It takes two cycles
of this before the first monkey who's getting just the cucumber flips out. the the second the second time that the the
the first monkey gets a cucumber and he's seen the other monkey get a grape for the same job. He takes a cucumber
and throws it back at the experimentter and he starts beating the cage and it really is just like even monkeys
perceive unfairness and they get outraged. This is what happened in the financial crisis. It was like the
bankers get a grape and I get a cucumber and and e so even if you were you know
you tell the American people that we bailed them out because we needed to bail you out too. You know that if we didn't bail them out it would be even
worse for you and even it was on the whole better for the average American.
They see the they see the unfairness and they they care more about the unfairness than the absolute levels the inequality
than the absolute levels. And we live in a society that's increasingly unfair. The second experiment and just you just
stop me if you don't want me to go on. This is great and I go on please. The second experiment is the other side of the unfairness. What happens to
people where when they're on the pleasant side of unfairness when they're getting the grape um and it was a
actually a friend of mine conducted this experiment. Uh he brought in undergraduates. He taught college and he
divided them in groups of three and and appointed it totally arbitrarily. one of the three people, the leader of the
group, and then gave them a problem to solve. And they thought this was what they they thought that they were here to
solve like the pro cheating on how to prevent cheating and academic cheating on campus or what to do about sexual
abuse on campus. And they're having this two-hour conversation about it. An hour into it, the researcher brings a plate
of cookies into the room. There are three people. He brings four cookies.
Everybody gets a cookie. And then invariably the person who's arbitrarily been appointed the head of the group
gets just takes the fourth cookie because the privilege that this is what's happening. Elon Musk takes the
fourth cookie. Jeff Bezos takes the fourth cookie. Donald Trump takes the fourth cookie. They kind of there's a
kind of randomness to outcomes. But once the outcomes unequal outcomes are established, people on either side of
the unequal outcomes go kind of crazy. The people who are screwed are furious.
The people who who are blessed uh are oppressive, overbearing, and takey
grabby. Uh and that starting there, this just gets
worse and worse and worse. You know, the the the the
selfishness of the people who are on the right end of inequality just inflames the outrage of the people who are on the
wrong end. Um, and I think that kind we're kind of there. The great mystery, if I were you asking me interviewing me,
I'd say like, how the hell did such a country elect, you know, a billionaire real estate developer to solve the problems of the the people who are being
treated unfairly? And that's the mystery of Donald Trump, his ability to genuinely be angry and and and be a kind
of u a kind of conduit of grievances and to stoke the grievances and to satisfy
the anger in cheap ways really speaks to that the person who's been feels like
they've been treated unfairly. And the people been feel they've been treated unfairly often are right to be feel
they've been treated unfairly. What's weird is they look to Donald Trump as a cure or a solution. Um but that's his
talent. It's like dealing with the monkey who's pissed. Uh like all the monkeys in America are hurling the
cucumber back at the researcher and Donald Trump comes in and organizes them to go attack the monkey with a grape or
the researcher. I'm sympathetic to that. But somebody
watching this who's more amable to Trump or or to the right, who might not still like the guy, but they're more amunable
than you are. They might say, "You know what? That's all true. I actually agree with the conclusion there. But at the
same time, Trump and America first have isolated really three three things which resonate with American workers which
gets them over the line in the states that matter in particularly in 2016 less so this time. Trade policy and its failures. Not to
say what he's then, you know, proceeded to do is correct, but trade policy and its failures, immigration policy and its failures.
Again, that doesn't mean you agree with everything he's subsequently done. And an end to failed foreign policy
wars post USSR. right since since the end of the Cold War and he managed to say the right things
at the right times to the right people on those three issues and that gets him
over the line. Do do you think that matters and do you think that is an
indictment of American progressives or or do you just think that actually no that's Trump is an expression
of a broken political culture and we shouldn't be trying to look at it through this kind of quite complex
analytical lens. I think if I don't I I think if Trump had um plausible
solutions to the problems he get everybody's angry about, I'd buy the line that oh this is that's how why he's
elected. He doesn't have plausible solutions to the problems. He just shouts about the problems. In fact, he
often undermines the plausible solutions to the problems. So I'm much more inclined to think that the second he's
an expression of broken political system and a weird media environment, too. Um or new media environment.
So uh so I you know it's true you pointed to
things that inflame people those subjects inflame people but he has not actually done much to fix the problem.
And so I don't I think it's I think it's I think his
success is much more due to this kind of dog whistle about anger, outrage, grievances just and that he he he speaks
to those feelings in people. He touches those people that way and they're not it's also interesting how
his relationship to people's attention. He's not.
People listen to Obama give an hour hourong speech. People read my books for hours.
It's one kind of attention, right? People will really attend. Trump is like coming into a room and
farting, you know? It's that that's how he gets attention. Comes in a room and sets off a fog horn. Uh that and it's
just it's crude. Got the attention, not keep the attention. Uh and he's he's
right now in our country. This the strategy of just repeatedly just getting
people's attention rather than keeping people's attention is a really smart political strategy. I
don't know why, but it work. It's sort of like you dominate the news cycle. People can't look away. You know, that
kind of thing. Um he's just the he's always been the best at that. He was best at that in the
1980s. It was just that was less powerful ability. this ability to be
kind of a a spectacle all the time um without any ability to actually hold
an audience. You know, his rallies were famous for like people would come and he'd be all worked up and he'd say some outrageous things and then he'd start to
drone on and people would start to leave because they he wasn't that interesting. And that's the weird that's another one of the weird things about not just Trump
but Musk, how kind of uninteresting they are. Like I don't know how much time you spend reading Elon Musk tweets, but I
feel like I'm I I keep waiting for him to say something that makes me think, "Oh, this is a very smart man."
And instead, I feel like I'm watching the guy at the party with a lampshade on his head. You know, it's like, "Oh, look at me." You know, um life of the party.
It's it's a there's an ananity to it. And um it's uh for whatever reason, it
works now. That that that approach to the population works now. I don't believe
it's gonna always work. I think it's like there's something about now the way the media is now. Getting attention is is definitely what
he's good at. But I also sometimes think he has an ability to capture
dysfunction and and offer an analysis through quite memorable means like anecdotes and so on. I remember one for
instance when he was on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast which is kind of you know emblematic. You talking about Musk now? Uh no Trump.
Trump. Okay. Yeah. I'm not Elon Musk is I completely agree. He's like the dumbest smart guy in history. Um but yeah, Trump was on
the Joe Rogan experience and he says he was flying into I think Kandahar airport
and the pilot and the people on the military, you know, plane say we have to turn off all the lights. And he says,
"Hold on. We've spent trillions of dollars to pacify this country and you're telling me that the president of the United States can fly into
Afghanistan and I can't even have the light on." And I thought, look, I don't think he's the brightest guy in the
world, but that's a really powerful really powerful line. And you even step back and you go, Christ, he's right. Y
and I feel like progressives have and I'm not like going to attack progressives and Democrats and the left
because of Trump because I agree with most of what you're saying, but I do also feel that apart from maybe Bernie Sanders, there just hasn't and of course
Obama, there hasn't been a Democratic politician just capable of speaking in just a normal register
in ways that people can understand. You know, could could Kamala Harris say something that sort of sensible and
common sense? And I I don't like to use the word common sense with Trump, but it's kind of true, right? There's Yes, there's a street
smarts. Yeah. Yeah, there's a street smarts. So, I suppose what I'm asking is, do you think that the Democrats are implicated
in this? Because I was speaking to Joseph Stiglets a couple of weeks ago, lovely man, Nobel Prize winner, and he
he says, "I partly blame Obama for Trump and the two Obama presidencies."
All right. The people That's become a very fashionable thing to say. Well, quite. And you know there's loads of comments on our YouTube channel
saying that. But he said look I was on the call in08 when you had Tim Gner had the people from the banks and I said look we have to look after American
laborers otherwise we are in big trouble. Yeah. And he said to me we didn't well they
rescued the auto companies that I mean their argument for rescuing the banks was if you didn't rescue the banks it
the ordinary person was a person who's gonna be totally screwed. Wasn't that they were the they weren't actually
sympathetic towards the bankers. They felt that the bankers kind of had them in a bad place. I disagreed at the time.
I I so I thought they should the shareholders should be wiped out. The banks I always thought maybe nationalize
the banking system for a stretch. Uh that there had to be Obama's phrase was
we don't need Old Testament justice, but in fact we did need Old Testament justice that it felt so unfair. But they
were actually doing things. They did a lot of things for the ordinary worker. They just didn't explain it very well. I think that's that's true. But do I think
Obama, if you ask me to make the case, Obama's responsible for Trump?
Partly responsible. Partly respal obviously. So I would say the biggest way in which Obama is responsible for Trump is he's
black and he got elected president and it drove you know 20% of the country insane. Insane. And so the the threat
the the status threat that presented to the white male, not every white male, but enough of them and the white female
that that generated a kind of radicalization all by itself. Now, well,
not the majority of the country, but it there's a kernel of Trump's I mean, there's a racial dimension to Trump's rise. And so that's the worst thing
Obama did. He is he was black. Uh you know, couldn't couldn't help it. Uh, so
that that's the biggest contribution Trump made. I think also there might be some truth to the roasting he gave Trump
at the White House Correspondents Association dinner being a kind of motive for Trump to get out there. I
don't think Trump I think the funny thing about Trump, people forget this. There's no way he he thought he was
going to win. They he didn't plan to win. He he ran his first campaign, not the second one, the first one as a
marketing enterprise. It was not about becoming president. It was like watching the dog catch the car. Like the dog
chases the car and never catches the car. This time the dog ran in the back of the car and he the dog caught the
car. Um and but this and so it's possible that if Obama Obama could have
personally managed if he thought that Trump was a serious threat, he could have personally massaged him into a
different place where he never would have felt the need to go do such a thing. But uh but the idea that like
Obama's policies were obviously inflaming. I mean
I don't think I don't think Joe Stiglets would say the policies. I I would say it's more about the opportunity cost.
What didn't you do after rather than what he did do? I don't think he's going to say Obama cares why Trump happens. Right. You know, in retrospect, if
you're going to rerun the Obama administration, one of the things at the top of the list you would do is throw
huge sums of money and lots of advertising along with the money saying you're doing it at rural America.
Yeah. Rural America is the is the source of Trump's power. And they
there were they they don't they shouldn't feel stiff. They're heavily subsidized, but
they feel stiffed. And uh you know if you wanted to def to to sort of turn
down the heat in rural America, you could have maybe you could have done that. But again, it's very easy to say
all this in hindsight. At the time, you're sort of like making battlefield decisions. And I I I could I I always
felt I never felt that anything Obama did uh was unreasonable. I could disagree with it, but I see why he did
it. Uh and it was I thought he played his hand pretty well for the most part.
Um, but I'm I'm also aware that this is what people are saying about him. And I I I don't completely buy it. I I think
that I think that um aside from the the kind of racial stuff that naturally got
inflamed when a black man was elected president that there's there's not much
that was obvious to do that would have prevented the rise of a Donald Trump-like character.
And what do you make of JD Vance? You know, you're saying that Trump is very much an expression of the of the moment. you know, what he's good at is is
probably time limited. JD Vance, you know, is something else or no? It's something else. Uh, more cynical.
I mean, Trump is deeply cynical, too. But, you know, there some the way in
which Donald Trump lies so much that when he tells the truth, it's like the mistake that that he just everything is
a lie. You if you sit listen to it, like it's all so much of it is just a lie. But I think he believes it. I I you know
it's like the con man the best con man believes his own con. I don't think JD Vance completely believes his own con.
JD Vance is very capable of getting on television just lying making stuff up and uh he's smarter than that. So I
think he's more cynical. I think he thinks he's playing a hand cleverly and Trump is just you know he's the bull in
the China shop. He's just being Trump. And I think people pick up that difference. I I don't think if if Trump
vanished tomorrow, I don't think Trumpism survives. That's interesting.
I think that nobody speaks to his audience the way he does. There's I
don't think anybody can just pick it up and run with it. And and I don't think JD Vance can. So, I could be wrong, but
he's I mean, he's obviously very clever guy. Uh pretty good writer. Okay. For a
politician. I've got his book. I've never I haven't read the hillbilly. I read the first few pages to see if it was even readable,
but his his uh um but I just think no, he the people will smell rat. Um
so anyway, what do I make of him? I you know uh he's played his hand very well
so far. You don't think he he could be the president? That Trump is kind of like a John the Baptist figure for
anything could happen. Anything could happen. But if you're asking me to handicap it, I'd probably if I I'd probably bet against it given
the odds the market would currently put on it. The market would probably say there's a
40% chance that JD Vance will be a president of the United States. What do you think about that? 35%.
Well, I mean, the fact that Trump's only doing one term kind of well, as as far as we know. Yeah, as far as we know. But so if there
was the betting markets, there's an answer to this question. There'll be betting markets on this. I suspect my view is dimmer of his future is dimmer
than the betting markets. Uh just because I don't think he'll play once he has to be the leader. It'll be it will
come across completely differently. Um he's not rich, you know. He didn't make
his fortune. He didn't he's not a he's not a star kind of thing. Yeah. History is littered with these
politicians who are really puffed up, you know, in in the in that jun more junior role in this country. You know,
you think of um Anthony Eden. Yep. He was the foreign foreign secretary of this country during the Second World War and you know
probably the best looking prime minister this country had very well-dressed and he was a complete disaster as PM. So I
think there's there's some wisdom to that. I was speaking to Karen how a week ago she's written this great new book
about AI empire of AI. Yep. Um Sam Molman Elon Musk and I asked her
a question. Um we've had 20 years of big tech and it's obviously had these hugely destructive consequences for civil
society politics etc. as well as some good things. And I said, "If the next 20 years are as bad with AI as the last 20
years have been with big tech, do you think American democracy survives?" And
she said, "No." So I want to put that same question to you. Oh, I have no idea. But I would have
thought the question would be if the next 20 years with AI are as bad as the last 20 years with big big tech have
been, are are there human beings on the planet? Right? Isn't that the question? Like there's not democracy that's at
stake. It's like the existence of humanity. I don't I don't know if I believe any of that, but that's with AI. People are saying that, right? One in
five chance of an extinction event. I don't quite understand how it all works. I I got to say I I I'm not My my only
literary encounter or flirtation with AI was a dinner I had with Sam Alman a year
and a half ago. Oh, great. Go on. At his house. and um he was interested in talking about I I wanted to talk to
him about Sam Bankman Freed and I quite liked him. It was fun to talk to and he he was interested in knowing who should
write his biography because he was being assaulted by 74 different journalists at once and he just wanted to get it out of
the way like which of these people and I said to him why are you having a person write your biography if your if your
machine is so smart it should write your biography and he said it's not that smart. He said it would be a really bad
book. I said, 'Well, that tells me something about your machine. Uh, when will it be smarter? And he said, '18
months, maybe. And uh and I said actually said to him, I would write that
book. I mean, edit it. Write it write a parallel book like let's get let me come in do what I do with you. We'll toss all
your, you know, Slack channel stuff and emails and whatever and your biography into the machine and it can do its thing
and I can write a biography of both you and it it like we can see how it can think and how it can't think because my
view of it is that this is this isn't one thing called intelligence. The intelligence is very complicated. This
machine is able to do some things well and I think other things it will never do well. Uh and I'm skeptical.
Uh and he said maybe. So maybe I'll do that and maybe I'll have something to say about AI that's interesting. I
plugged into chat GPT whatever the the prompt write me the first chapter of a
book by Michael Lewis on Sam Bankman Freed. It was so bad. I mean when was this?
A year and a half ago. It could be a lot better now, right? I guess version four. Yeah, I guess I guess it could be better, but it was it was weird. Weirdly
bad. Uh so I I
There there's a part of me that's bloody minded. it's not informed that wants to take the position that this is all way
overblown and that no it's not going to we're not going to be wiped out by AI and no in fact it's not going to like
dramatically change our lives for the worst that what it's going to do is a lot of boring jobs and so a lot of
boring jobs won't exist and then it creates certain social problems but also
social opportunities really nice not to have a lot of boring jobs I assume it's a tool that will be used and that a lot
of the noise around it is hyperbole for the sake of raising money.
Uh, and in fact, it's kind of great. The the only moment that's really there have
been a couple of obviously dramatic moments in the in the recent history of AI, but the one that really caught my my
attention was Deepseek. It was like, oh, whoa, whoa. They did it with like a million bucks and three Chinese
engineers. Why do we need $74 billion to do this? I thought that was great. Uh, I
mean, nobody's been dwelling on this like why you need the massive
investments that are being made by these American tech companies when like this fly by night operation in China was able
to generate superior results with very little. I mean, that's a very Michael Lewis coded story. The idea of a hedge fund
guy, you know, his part-time putting together an AI for completely different reasons, right? To just predict the market or whatever
he was doing. Yeah. Okay. Okay, my final question because you didn't give me the the blockbuster answer. No, American democracy can't
survive the next. That's okay. I would not I would never I think the one bet I would be very reluctant ever
to make is the the end of American democracy. Can I just say because in the book you talk about America as an enlight or the essays I think actually
it's John Lchester talks about America as as an enlightenment project project and the kind of accumulation of data
around this index of inflation CPI is one of the essays great essay is you know maybe the apotheiois of
enlightenment thinking and America is moving away potentially from enlightenment thinking and we're
moving towards a post-enlightenment world and you know erggo in a post-enlightenment world that that kind
of polity which has been around since 1770s with all of its imperfections
is kind of listless and it's and it's and it's it's out of time. It's out of it's out of time. It's out of touch with
the zeitgeist. You you you don't buy that then? I mean, I think I live in a in a a very
strange country that has remarkable capacity for reinvention and pretty deep narratives about its own dem democracy
and is is really not an obvious candidate for an autocracy. It's it's a
350 million unruly people, many of them heavily armed that they are and they
don't like being told what to do. I just I I and I also think I mean this is just
anecdotal. I travel around the country a lot. I meet with lots of different kinds of people. Our politics is so different
from our culture that the way our politic our political life right now does not rhyme with like what it's like
to be in an American town, what it's like to be at an American conference, what's like to be an American sporting event. You know, it's like the rest of
the society seems disconnected from the politics. And I just assume the politics is going to have to come around and
serve the that that we'll hit a point where the people demand sort of more intelligent politics. Uh I I don't
I I have a hard time betting against the country. It's got I mean, it's just among other things, it's just so
successful. I mean, it fails in many ways, but it's like this just been this
engine for wealth creation that the world like no other the world has ever seen. And it's not like, I don't know,
Nazi Germany or Wymer Germany. It's not like they're the problem. They are their
problems, but they're small problems kind compared to the problems they could have. And I so I just don't no I my my
gut says bet on it, not against it. Michael Lewis, great place to end. Thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
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