Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Last Sam Bankman-Fried Episodes (secretly about Michael Lewis)

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Robert Evans is a Living God and can never lie.....Also we talk with Jamie Loftus about Sam Bankman fried and beloved biographer to con men Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short.   (2 Part Series!)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest murder mystery in American history. That's Rob Breiner. Rob called me, so would Edo Brein, and asked me what I knew about this crime. We'll ask who had the motive to assassinate a sitting president. Then we'll pull the curtain back on the cover-up. The American people need to know the truth. Listen to Who Kill JFK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Daniel Tosh, host of new podcast called Tosh Show. I'll be interviewing people that I find interesting, so not celebrities, and certainly not comedians.

We'll be covering topics like religion, travel, sports, gambling, but mostly it will be about being a working mother. If you're looking for a podcast that will educate and inspire, or one that will really make you think, this isn't the one for you. Lusititas show in the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. On March 16, 2000, two sheriff's deputies were shot in Atlanta. A Muslim leader and former Black Power activist was convicted. But the evidence was shaky, and the whole truth didn't come out during the trial. My name is Mosey Secret, and when I started investigating this case in my hometown, I uncovered

a dark truth about America. From Tinder for TV, Camside Media, and I Heart Podcasts, Radical is available now. Listen to the new podcast Radical, for free on the I Heart Radio app, Heart Podcasts, Radical is available now. Listen to the new podcast Radical for free on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here with Behind the Vasters and we've got some kind of sad news today. You know, this is going to hit members of the community pretty hard. But 48 years ago on November 10th, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald went down and Lake Superior killing all 29 crew members on board. This is a hard time

of the year for everybody here at behind the bastards for all of you at home. And the only thing that makes it easier is the knowledge that both the Russian Federation and the Chinese government have recently substantially increased the sizes of their nuclear stockpile while the United States is in the process of renovating its own nuclear weapons. And my hope, I think all of our hope, is that the leaders of our world can kind of band together in this time of conflict and sadness to finally expend the entirety of their nuclear stockpiles detonating them over Lake Superior. Um, you know, that's my hope. I know it's all of your hope back at home. And I, I, I, I really think what can carry us through this is some classic,

Mao era propaganda posters. So in Joe Biden, Zezion Ping, and Vladimir Putin walking hand in hand, surrounded by a crowd of little kids and red guard uniforms, heading towards the light of a new atomic sun while a series of mushroom clouds detonate over Lake Superior's deaths. Anyway, welcome to the show, Jamie. That's so, I mean, first of all, thank you. Thank you for that.

I needed to hear it. I think we all, the image you described, and I hate that my mind went here, conjured the image of Paul Walker in the convertible next to Brian Griffin. That's right. That's right. Sort of what I was picturing. That the image you described has that exact same. And it just add just throw someone in the back seat. Same exact shit. Yes. That's the dream, Jamie. That's

the dream. God, what a beautiful, beautiful dream. I really think about being a member of Paul Walker's family at the time that image was certainly. We mean from your jacuzzi filled with $100 bills. Yes. Even so, my loved one, my dearly departed being thrown in a convertible next to a cartoon dog who to add insult to injury would be resurrected within months. And like Brian, the dog, not to, okay, Brian, the dog was resurrected. I think on the same timeline as Jesus Christ.

Like it was like, yeah, it was very similar characters. Yes. And we can all agree that. Both have been on Bill Mars show. They're both Mar ahead and they also, uh, and they both are, uh, you know, like middling authors, you could say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's fair to say. So Jamie, yeah, speaking of mediocre men, how do you feel? Have you been keeping up with the story of Bastard's pot alumni, Sam Bankman freed? keeping up with the story of Bastard's Pot alumni, Sam Bankman Fried. Okay, so I have, I know the broad strokes, but as soon as the joyous news became, started coming in, I knew that we were going to be doing this and I don't know any of the particulars,

except for tweets of yours that have been algorithm to the top of my feed. I'm just, there's no one I would rather be with to let it just wash up. Robert, can I ask you to please share your working title for this episode? Because it's funny. Yeah, it's Sam Bankman not freed and in parentheses because he is in jail. I think it's funny. And I think that is far superior to Sam Bankman jailed.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's not creative at all. You got to spend a lot of extra words to make it creative. I'm not interested in other perspectives on that title. I think that you got it exactly right. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. Brevity is some bullshit as a great author once said. So Jamie, speaking of great authors, 80% of this episode is shitting on Michael Lewis, the author of the big shirt. Yeah. Oh yeah.

No, this is gonna be a great one for the Lewis heads and the audience. Wow. I'd, okay, okay. This is gonna be buckle up. Yeah, now, this is probably the Lewis head. The man just said buckle up. Oh yeah, strap, buckle up. Yeah. Now, this is a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a a three year old niece going to a Wiggles concert. And I just caught myself smiling in the same way. This is great. Yeah, no, this is great. So on January 5th, 2022, Sam Bankman freed sent a message to one of his many signal loops for what it's worth February 8th through 16th.

Michael Lewis is going to be in the Bahamas profiling us. Now, if you haven't been following this story and if Michael Lewis is not familiar to you, then you probably do remember like the most famous result of one of his novels, which is the movie The Big Short. This was based on a book Lewis wrote about a group of traders who had the foresight

to predict and profit off of the 2008 financial crash. They realized that like the subprime loan business was like a bunch of hooy and they shorted it, right? Made a bunch of money while everybody else lost their jobs. You love to see it. You love to see it. His other best known work is probably Moneyball, which is about a baseball team manager.

He uses what's called Saber Metrics, which without getting into it is basically being Nate Silver, but also actually running a sports team, right? That is also, that in 2020, I started doing this bit on Curst Zoom comedy shows called the Boyfriend Criterion Collection. And it's just like Blu-rays that are in your house against your living world.

My mom is very much a part of the Boyfriend Criterion Collection. It's right up there with Whiplash. It's like a disaster. I must say, if you did not date the worst man you've ever dated in your entire life in 2017, that was obsessed with all things Michael Lewis, then were you really in Los Angeles? Yeah, no, that's true.

The only non-problematic by the way. What if your worst boyfriend couldn't read, really? There. There. It's so big. You're the median American and not obviously. I honestly don't even know who I'm talking about. Like it's impossible to say.

But I know. The only non-problematic piece of physical media that you can have in your house as a boyfriend is an original VHS tape of trimmers. That's just the way it works. I would, I, and I would fight with you if I didn't, if I didn't feel the same way. I think that that is very much. That's a good sign. Uh-huh. That's an excellent. Thank you. Thank you. The more prominently displayed the better. To say that Michael Lewis is a famous writer or famous journalist puts it pretty lightly. He's probably the best known journalist in the country and almost certainly the wealthiest.

There's not a lot of competition for that, but like he's definitely in the running. He's what you'd call an access journalist. He is somebody whose stories come from his ability to get close to his subjects and just kind of exist with them during a crucial period of time as a fly on the wall. There's a number of ways to do this.

There are a couple of like big Trump administration books written by journalists who basically just got to sit around Trump and his White House while things went insane. The root that Lewis takes is to befriend the people that he's writing about, right? He is this guy and it people who know him will say he just kind of makes people comfortable around him. He is a guy that you want to have at a party. He's a he's pleasant company. Enough people have said this that I assume it's true based on just like how he does his stories. People, he is good at putting folks at ease and they don't mind him being around. And that's how he gets a lot of his stories. Now, as general rule, if you are in the position that Sam Bankman freed and his friends were in circa 2022, running a massive financial shell game.

You would be hesitant to welcome me. And very well. I think we can all agree. Talk about a game of 4D chess. Yeah. The last guy you might want hanging around your office is a dude who could literally like Michael Lewis could literally in like the space of a phone call get articles greenlit in every newspaper in the country, right? He just is he has that kind of pull. He is that reliable a seller for his stories like nobody would not want to take a story that he had. So you would want to be cautious.

You would think you'd want to be cautious about letting this guy into your house. But there's a reason why they said yes when he reached out to SPF and it's that Michael Lewis's reputation among people in the finance industry was not, oh, he wrote this book that's critical of us. Oh, he's this guy who exposes the dirt of the finance industry. It's, this is a guy who can make you into a celebrity. And in early 2022, that was the entire vision of everyone like connected business wise to San Bakeman Fried was we need to turn this guy into a celebrity

who's constantly everywhere to raise the profile of this exchange, right? They spent something like a billion dollars on a variety of different corporate and celebrity endorsements of the 9 billion that was missing about a billion went towards shit to boost FTX and to boost Sam's profile, right? There you go. Sorry, where's the, you gotta spend money to make money

actually, I think I guess so. You gotta spend 10 billion to make nothing, to go to jail. You have to think this has been 10 billion dollars to go to jail, that's what I'm saying. To go to forever prison, Jamie, let's be honest about this. He's going to, I, for every time I've seen forever present, very often for you, I hear it in the cadence of the Forever Purge trailer.

You're like, it's the Forever prison. Yeah, that is where he's going. And that's, again, everyone has kind of cut ties. Everyone legitimate has cut ties with Dr. Sam, but like crypto in general, in the wake of Sam's collapse. But there was about a year and a half period where like every bank was looking into it, every tech company was putting shit on the blockchain. The last kind of holdout and the reason why Sam put so much money into this was politicians.

There were a few who would, but like most people who were in politics would not even take donations directly from crypto, right? There were a few who would, but like most people who were in politics would not even take donations directly from crypto, right? You had to launder that shit. And Sam was looking to buy himself a sizable chunk of Congress so that he could make sure that regulations on crypto favored his company specifically, which is why he did stuff like you know, he spent tens of millions of dollars getting Tom Brady and Jazelle Bunchin to like pretend to be his friends. He sat down next to Bill Clinton on fucking stage in a very cringey interview. He paid Larry David to make a super bowl ad.

But all of that, the potential, all of that had to legitimize him, paled in comparison to having the big short dude treat you like a financial genius, right? If Michael Lewis treats you like Michael Burry, who's one of the characters from the big short who became a big name after Lewis wrote this book, if he's like, this guy is that kind of financial genius, then everybody's gonna start taking your calls, even people who like have been hiding from crypto

because they don't, they're worried that what happened would happen, right? That you'd get 10 million in donations and they have to pay them back because it turned out that it was a con man, you know? There's, there's a note of it that it almost reminds me it when like, Arial Morris, like, profiled and worked for Elizabeth Holmes.

You're just like, it's that level of profile versus L. Yes, this turns you into somebody who's like, who can be taken seriously, because that's what, who Lewis is, right? He's that, he is that big a deal. I'm not like puffing him up. He doesn't need it, right? He's, he's, he's, he's, he's the, he's maybe the main character of this episode. I wouldn't call him quite a bastard. But one of the things you have to give him is he is legitimately a very good writer. There's no other way you get people to give a shit about money ball. He's like, I read his whole Sam Bankman-free book. I think it's bullshit, but I didn't, I didn't get bored at any point.

He knows that a piece of writing, you know? So he decides to come knocking Sam is immediately on board. All of their PR people are on board. Not everyone at FTX is on board. Carolyn Edison, who is his on again, off again girlfriend, who testified against him repeatedly. She is running Alameda, which is the company that bankrupts everything that he is illegally funneling consumer deposits into. She is basically like the, and she does not like the idea of having Michael Lewis around. Now she can't really confront Sam Bankman-Fried

when she has a bad idea, nobody can. So she just kind of hedges it and says, in the signal chat, make sense. I feel like my instincts are more towards under the radar, but I might just be irrationally biased towards that in general. And then like an emoji of a face sticking its tongue out. And Sam replies, same except exactly the opposite.

That great. Like you know you're down bad if you're asking Sam banquet free to make sense. Yeah. It's challenging. Oh God, that's such. I mean, I don't know. I know we've talked about her in the past, but that like what a what a mess.

What a nightmare. She's in a rough situation and he will talk a lot we've talked about her in the past, but that's like, what a mess. What a nightmare. She's in a rough situation and he will talk a lot about how he treats her in this, but Will McCaskill is also in that signal chat and Will is basically the founder. He's not like literally the founder, but he is the founder of what is most commonly talked about as the effect of ultra-wiz and movement and definitely its figurehead, right? He is the big guy. He's this Oxford professor who he pills Sam Bankman freed on the idea.

And his response is kind of, I think part of why this winds up going down. He says, I think either a poach is reasonable should just be a deliberate coordinated plan. But if a whole bunch of attention is going to be on FTX, Sam and EA, whatever happens then getting ahead of the game and controlling the narrative is necessary.

Yup, responded Sam. And they did it. Michael Lewis spends like a year with this guy. Like he spends a lot of time around them. Everyone's very excited because what happened last year is Sam's world collapses and he gets charged with like seven felonies. And then right afterwards, Michael Lewis is like,

by the way, I've been basically living with him for a year. And everyone's like, Oh, shit, this could be pretty good because like this guy can write. He's been front set. He's written about a financial collapse before. He's got front seat tickets to this whole thing. And then the book comes out. And unfortunately for for Lewis, the book comes out, he times the release right for when the court case starts. So we get all of this right alongside his book, we get all of these signal texts and stuff that were not in his book. And kind of the overwhelming thing that you see when you compare what comes out in the court case, what comes out in the testimony of his friends to the text of Lewis's book

is that like, Oh, Michael got kind of fucking conned by this dude, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like he fell for it. Yeah. And I mean, it speaks to the level of confidence one would have to have in their own reporting to time it with the trial because if you had even a remote feeling that you have got, you had gotten it wrong, I would be like, release it a year after the trial, if you had even a remote feeling that you have, you had gotten it wrong, I would be like, release it a year after the trial, like bury it.

And there I can see if you're, if you're just some journalist and this is your, your first book or you just don't have, you're not like a huge hit. So like you are very, your, your publisher has a lot of power. And they're like, we want this to drop when the case does because that's when it'll sell best. I get that you might not have the suction necessary to move it. Michael Lewis can say, we are putting this out this day and like suck my dick. I'm Michael Lewis.

It'll make you money, right? And he doesn't, which suggests he has the same kind of hubris that Sam Bankman freed in a lot of ways. So to give you an example of how emotionally involved Louis is in this case, there's a good write up on the court case by a journalist who was there during the trial, which was not filmed, writing for Jacobin.

And this is how they describe the devastating cross-examination of Bankman freed, who again, chose to take the stand in his own defense despite every expert saying, absolutely never do this. Quote, across the aisle for me and the section reserve for friends and family, I can see Sam's parents growing and increasingly agitated. His mom visibly shaking.

Two rows behind them, I couldn't help but notice author Michael Lewis leaning forward, arms draped over the bench in front of him with his head down between his arms. Nobody expects Michael Lewis in the court. Yeah. There is. And I, you know, I do actually have,

I don't think they're very good people, but I have sympathy for Sam's parents. This is like a nightmare if like to know that your kid is going to forever prison for even if it's totally their fault. Um, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's just got caught. My, my empathy only goes so far, but also like, what a scene, what a fucking scene. Absolutely phenomenal. Yeah. Terrific. Can't wait for Jonah Hill to start a Sam Bankman freed in the movie based on this. No, I really don't want.

No, no, there's no one I want to see play him in a movie. Just doing like Maris in Frazier. Have him always be. That would be. Oh, that makes me so. Yeah, like the parents in Charlie Brown, Heather's in Claire of Degrassi. I go on and fucking you know what? Cast David Hyde Pierce as Michael Lewis. we got a movie then we got a fucking film I mean if if this whole ordeal results in David Hyde Pierce winning an Oscar for a bad movie absolutely Good

Yeah, you know and and it's possible that Adam McKay in an effort to Course, yeah, I have a good shirt Adam. Okay, he's like he absolutely could and he's and he would need to course correct on the Michael Lewis in the first place For how we directed the big short it's a great move for everyone. We could make some everyone's agent in the situation You're gonna be rich, Jamie. I'm gonna be fucking rich. Yeah. In interviews he gave after the book came out

and the trial started, Louis framed his book going infinite about Sam Beckman-Freed as a letter to the jury, which is like kind of nonsense because obviously the jury is never allowed to read a book about the guy that they're going on a trial about. And the judge specifically instructed them not to. There's an interview with 60 minutes, which is really something.

We will hear some clips from it later, but in that interview, Lewis explained, I mean, there's gonna be this trial, and the lawyers are gonna tell two stories. And so there's a story war going on in the courtroom. And I think neither one of those stories is as good as the one I have. And like, on one hand, yes, of course you're right because you're a better writer than any lawyer is going to be. But on the other hand, this isn't a story. It's just a question of what happened, Michael Lewis, and what happened is massive fraud.

And you don't put that in your book. That's so, I mean, I guess I can be of many minds about characterizing it as a story work because that is like just how history is written and it's kind of almost refreshing to hear someone refer it to as like, well, whoever could write the better story that's will end up having the historical precedent, but interesting that it would be

set out loud in that way. Yeah. And again, I want to reiterate, while Michael is the main character, he's not like, he's not a bastard. He's not someone who's like impact on the world has been monstrous. As far as I've ever heard, he's a reasonably nice person. We'll definitely get him being mean in a couple of points here, but it's nothing that I would like call someone that, like one of history's greatest monster over. But this is, Bankman Fried is a bastard.

And so I think talking about the way in which he kind of has Lewis wrapped around his finger and the degree to which Lewis tortures his own logic and prose in order to ignore that is just fascinating. So with that in mind, let's start with a little bit more of Michael's backstory, because that is important to understand why he falls for this. Michael Monroe Lewis was born on October 15th, 1960 in New Orleans. Now, from the beginning, his life was about his far from working class as you get. And to his credit, Lewis does not deny this whenever he's asked. I'm gonna see all I think you can't do. I guess. Yeah, you've got to be open about it. Here's him talking to the guardian.

Lewis's family sat at the very top of the wasp aristocracy in New Orleans. I was so inside, he told me. I was literally trained how to sit on a throne when I was 15 years old, because it was crowned the King of the Carnival Ball, an organization that didn't allow black people, didn't allow Jews.

I would go from baseball practice to sector waving lessons. I was born into that world. Being an insider in New Orleans made him feel like an outsider everywhere else and not always to his disadvantage. And first off, wow. That's quite a backstory. Thank you, King. Thank you, King.

I do think I want to point out something here, which is where I don't think he's obviu skating, but I think he's missing something about his own, what his background has done for him, because I don't, I'm not going to question him when he says it made him feel like an outsider, but I think it's very clear that this, this is a guy who's worked his defined by his ability to make himself into an insider. And I think that's a big part of why he's able to do that is he grows up in the middle of wealth and power, right? Where it's the air that he breathes.

And you don't notice this if like you grow up working class and don't know any super rich people, but when you meet some people who were born crazy rich, you note that like a lot of them have this, this way of making, of making themselves feel like they belong anywhere, right? It's why they can get her away with so much like even if they're totally out of their depth, there's this kind of expectation you get when you grow up hyper rich, that the world is going to show you a degree of deference. When you know people who have family fortunes behind them, you know what I'm talking about, right? Like it's the reason they are never going to get

like, carted to see if they're a member of a place that's members only, right? Because they have that way about them. And I think that's part of how Louis, yeah. It is like an imperceptible thing. And I do think that there is, I mean, it sounds like what you're getting at, is like, there is,

if you can get someone who grew up in those circumstances on the side of fucking decency, there is a huge can get someone who grew up in those circumstances on the side of fucking decency, there is a huge value to having someone like that. Those how to navigate those spaces on your side. But if they're, but, but also, you know, to an extent and a liability because you never know, you know, I'm curious what in, what endears him to us, Sam. Yeah, we'll get to that. So he goes to Princeton University and he graduates cum laude,

which means pretty good grades in 1982. His senior thesis is on Donatello, a prominent Ninja Turtle. And when he's in college, he's a member of Princeton's Ivy Club, which is the oldest eating club in the school. Now, if you're not a blue blood, you probably are like, what the fuck is an eating club?

These are private dining halls that are also kind of social clubs where upper-classmen go to get nicer food. There's like nine of them, I think, on campus. And the Ivy Club is cold. We're at Princeton or like everywhere. At Princeton. There's other colleges. There's other fancy boy schools have these, right?

I remember this is full-cut. The other big club. Yeah. Fancy boy schools have these right? I remember this is full-cut. The art is big club. Yeah. I was like, oh, eating club, the, like, eating club to me is like, drive through Taco Bell 130 AM, starving. Yeah.

Wow, eating club. What are they eating? What do they eat? Sophie, you said this is full-cut, but it did not admit women until 1991. They are dassy to not let a woman go for what? Something that can't be, it just doesn't make sense. And it's also very funny that like, or not funny, but it's not worthy in this interview.

It talks about how he was at the Ivy Club, right? When he talks about, you know, his upbringing, he's like, yeah, this, like this contest I was in, you couldn't, you couldn't be in this club if you were like black or, or Jewish. He hasn't mentioned that the Ivy Club doesn't admit women. I think that is maybe interesting. It's also worth noting that the Ivy Club F Scott Fitzgerald writes about the Ivy Club and calls it F Scott Fitzgerald calls it detached and breathlessly aristocratic. And F Scott Fitzgerald says that about your blue blood club like my God.

I love that. Wow. What a treat. What a treat. So, if F Scott Fitzgerald is the one experiencing like moral clarity, about you, about you, we are sandwiched through. That's challenging. Now, while Lewis had a passion for art history, he had a bigger passion in life and it's stacking motherfucking paper.

So he goes to the London School of Economics next and eventually joins the bond desk at Salomon Brothers. He's in like the London branch of the Salomon Brothers. Uh, no, no, no, no. He's just making dollar dollar bills, y'all. Robert dollar dollar bills time is happening now for us as well. Oh, yes. Speaking of dollar dollar bills, buy some of these products and we will get dollar dollar

bills. I am Daniel Tosh, host of new podcast called Tosh Show. Brought to you by I Heart Podcasts. Why am I getting into the podcast game now? Well, it seemed like the best way to let my family know what I'm up to instead of visiting or being part of their incessant group text. I'll be interviewing people that I find interesting, so not celebrities, and certainly not comedians. I'll be interviewing my plumber, my stylist, my wife's gynecologist.

We'll be covering topics like religion, travel, sports, gambling, but mostly it will be about being a working mother. If you're looking for a podcast that will educate and inspire, or one that will really make you think, this isn't the one for you. But it will be entertaining to a very select few because you don't make it to your mid-40s with IBS without having a story or two to tell. Join me as I take my place among podcast royalty like Joel Olstein and Lance Bass. Those are words I hope I'd never have to say. Listen to Toss Show in the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is the greatest murder mystery in American history. That's Rob Breiner, Rob called me, so would Ado Bryan and asked me what I knew about this crime.

I know 60 years later, new leads are still emerging. To me, an award-winning journalist, that's the making of an incredible story. And on this podcast, you're going to hear it told by one of America's greatest storytellers. Well, ask who had the motive to assassinate a sitting president. My dad, a 5JFK, screwed us at the Bay of Pigs, and then he screwed us after the Cuban missile crisis. Will reveal why Lee Harvey Oswald isn't who they said he was. I was under the impression that Lee

was being trained for a specific operation and will pull the curtain back on the cover-up. The American people need to know the truth. Listen to Who Killed JFK on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On March 16, 2000, two sheriff's deputies were shot in Atlanta. Jamil Alamin, a Muslim leader and former Black Power activist, was convicted. But the evidence was shaky and the whole truth didn't come out during the trial.

My name is Mosey Secret and when I started investigating this case in my hometown I uncovered a dark truth about America. He said to me, you want me to take care of them for not doing something or paying you something like that. I said no, what you talking about? But I had no idea. Who you know, who you have become? That's how he approached you. You know, he meant when he said that. Yeah, I'm thinking, murder, enemy, you know. become? That's how he approached you. You know, he meant what he said that. Yeah, I'm thinking, murdered, in a minute, you know. I think that's what he was thinking to me. From Tinderfoot TV, Campside Media, and I Heart Podcasts,

Radical is available now. Listen to the new podcast Radical for free on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I have a request for the listeners, which is not something that I often, I don't ask, I don't ask anything of our listeners just that, just that they're happy. But if somebody could probably make a dating profile for Michael Lewis as an art graphic, I just, it just police for me. Oh, man. Okay. That's, that's good.

You've got, you've got two different requests this week, listeners. One is that propaganda poster. And the other is Michael Lewis dating profile. So, Lewis is, you know, an investment banker for just a few years. Actually, you know who he reminds me of? Oh, okay. Just sweeping your toes in it, then that kind of does it. It's like the just the tip of financial crime.

He's in there, he le- At 87 the market crashes and he makes a pivot away from like doing that as a job. And he writes a book called Liars Poker about the investment, you know, being the stock broker that like that kind of life that makes a shitload of money, right? This is, we'll talk about it a second,

but like, I want to, he reminds me in this trajectory. Do you know anything about Michael Criton? Oh, I mean, I, yeah, peaks and valleys. I had no attachment to him, but I know many people do. And like, yeah, the back half of Michael Crite and pretty fucking brutal. Yeah, pretty brutal. I'm not talking about like his actual career

as a writer as much as Crite and goes to Harvard Medical School and becomes a doctor. Most people are, I don't think I actually know this, but like he was an actual MD, but he doesn't really do the job. Like he gets his MD and then he quits to write books, like some of which have a meta, like he's the creator of ER.

And he gets criticized some by doctors who are like, oh, you just. The creator of ER? Yeah, Michael Crite and created an ER, yes. Oh, okay, sorry, I thought I'm gonna talk about Michael Lewis. Yes, my tea, I knew Michael Crite. But they have a similar kind of trajectory where they, they go to school for this thing. They do like a teeny amount of it just dip their toes in.

And then they get famous writing these books that are inspired by it, right? I just find that interesting. So to give you a further idea of Lewis's family background, Liars Poker, which is semi-autobiographical, revolves around a scene where Michael Lewis is invited to a banquet hosted by the Queen mother while he's working in London. He gets a seat there because of his cousin, Baroness Lindy Vaughn, Stoffenberg. And she seats next to the manager of Salomon brothers, which is how he gets his job. Word salad. There is there is no crabs don't have bluer blood than this man. Like that is that is the bluest you fucking get. If your cousins are baroness and you're in your like late 20s. Yeah. What?

If you know a baroness you are like that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. So Lewis's depiction of Wall Street guys from Liars Poker on because he writes a few books about Wall Street types because he knows them, right? It's generally noted as not being flattering, but I think that's by people who like have a very naive view of what's unflattering because his Wall Street guys, they curse a lot, they use phrases like big swing and dick. They're like, they're like kind of gross, but in a way that's glamorous, right? Like, I mean, I feel like it's like the Glen Gary Glen Ross. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Talking shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It, it, like, it is a kind of thing where you can say he's not glamorizing it, but he's absolutely making it look a way that makes more young, greeting men, one of a come stock traders. And to extend the Michael Crite in comparison,

it is, Liars poker is generally agreed to have had a similar impact on its industry to how Jurassic Park influenced paleontology by like bringing a shitload of people in. Wow. That's really interesting to me. Because I, I, I, I, I don't know, I have not read Liars poker, to be honest, I have not read any of his books.

I have seen some of the not read any of his books. I have seen some of the adaptations in movies of his books. But yeah, in terms of like anytime someone writes something about Wall Street, like you have to be so fucking careful. And also, even if you are extremely fucking careful, it will still bring in the wrong people who refuse to see the point. Like Wolf of Wall Street is one of my favorite movies, hands down. Oh, it's great.

It's a wonderful film. Yeah. But it's still like brought people in on the wrong. Yes. Fuck it because brain dead people are going to be brain dead people. This is we're going in a more serious direction. But if you've read Slotterhouse 5 in the opening of it, Vonnegut talks about how when he said I'm going to write my my war book, his wife was like in the opening of it. Vonnegut talks about how when he said I'm going to write my war book.

His wife was like, don't do it. There's no way to do it without making it look cool. Like no one has ever managed to not do it in a way that makes young men think it's cool. And she was right, like for the record. Yeah. That's one of the problems with even anti-war war fiction. Is it always makes it look cool?

Because it's cool, right? That doesn't mean it's good. It's like Joe Camel is cool. He's still killed a hundred million people. Joe Camel gave my father lung cancer. And I stand by that. And to conjure a similar image, Joe Camel, there's an image that I saw

when I worked in the Playboy Archives of Joe Camel and illustrated gorgeous like painting essentially of Joe Camel in Convertible with smoking hot human women hell yeah big old titties and you're like no wonder This advertisement killed people because like you could be this ugly as camel with women with huge naturals. Like it just like you can add up all the German generals on the Eastern front and they didn't kill as many people as that. That's my truly like and it's a beautiful piece of artwork. But like let's be

fucking honest. Yeah. So today Lewis merely acknowledges that the psychos he wrote about in Layers' poker were more fun on the page than they were in person. This can be, if this is your first book and you write it in 1982 and you realize later, oh, this actually might have made the problem worse. That's not a thing you have any moral culpability for. That's just like writing a thing with good intentions and it turns out badly. But this does become a problem and one that we can critique is partly a moral problem when it becomes part of a pattern and it is a pattern with Michael Lewis.

The big short is obviously not a Wall Street puff piece, but it became beloved by exactly the same people. You might assume it was trying to criticize. And that guardian article I've quoted from, there's a story about Michael Lewis attends this big New York It came beloved by exactly the same people. You might assume it was trying to criticize. In that guardian article I've quoted from, there's a story about Michael Lewis attends this big New York party and he's like warned ahead of time that it's going to be full of bankers and other finance guys and he's like, oh, I don't know if they're going to like me because he had just not only was the big short app, but he just published an article at a major publication attacking Wall Street bigwigs is being greedy idiots like saying

in very unsparing terms. And one of Lewis's friends later said, quote, but all these former heads of investment banks, all these current bankers, they ran, not walked to the office just to meet him. One hedge fund manager walked in with 15 copies of Lewis's books, Michael signed them all. And again, if you are a journalist, that's a bad sign. Yeah. What does your take on that? And again, if you are a journalist, that's a bad side. Yeah, what is your take on that? I mean, like, what is the game of chess that I'm not seeing here? I mean, I think it's just that he makes, he makes this look sexy. And it's, if he writes about you, part of a big part of this is that while he's maybe negative about greed within the overall finance industry,

he cannot write about a person without making them look cool because he has to like them to write about them, right? All these guys in the big short, you could say profit it off of a lot of misery. Now they didn't cause it. He didn't start this subprime loan thing, but they profit it off of a lot of misery. And that's at least kind of grimy, but Lewis likes these guys. And he turns them into celebrities because of how good he is at writing about them

and making you see what's likable in them, right? And so at this point, he, because of how often this has happened, he is aware that his books are PR for their subjects. He has a habit now of connecting people he writes about in his books to his PR manager so that they can set up speaking tours for them, right? Because he knows, if I put you in a book, that's going to be a big business for you. You're going to be in demand.

Yeah, and this is as a result of him, he can't really be critical about the individuals, right? And this is another quote from that Guardian article. The opposite of Lewis's approach is that he doesn't write about people he can't befriend or about stories that might cost him relationships. Among the few projects he has abandoned is a biography of George Soros,

who was so unhappy with Lewis's portrayal of him as a fan-ant seeer rather than an intellectual and a magazine profile that he refused to cooperate. Another is a book about New Orleans, which would have demanded a level of honesty about the city's society and about his family's place in it that might have hurt his parents. He said, I adore my parents.

I couldn't write that part while they're alive. And, you know, again, none of this is like unforgivable, but if you're admitting that as a journalist, what aren't you able to admit? And I think in this case, it's that he is not able to look at Sam Bankman freed honestly because he, he, he found himself taken in by the kid stick. Well, that's what I feel like is, is one of the complicating factors of, and, and I don't

say this in a way to seem like it's like an unsolvable puzzle, but it's like Michael Lewis writes, it seems like, you know,, it seems like largely accurate pieces of journalism. We'll talk about that. Well, okay, so far, as those who's never in his work, but they're also inherently commercial, because I feel like there's a journalistic value to explaining why someone is appealing, but there's also an even more commercial value to explaining why someone is appealing, but there's also an even more commercial value to explaining why someone is appealing, because that makes it, you know, that sells books,

that sells movie deals, that sells all this shit. Yeah, and I think it's also part of why his stuff is successful in a commercial sense, is that is this other fact that like, it's always kind of uplifting, right? Again, the big short, the whole collapse of the financial industry is dark, but stuff goes well for these characters that you've come to like, right? And Lewis himself is kind of admitted, he can't really end on a not upbeat note.

He has a lot of trouble with it. He said, quote, once you identify yourself as happy, you're always looking for happiness. And when things come along to great on that happiness, you find ways to deflect them. You can force the narrative. And I think what he doesn't say there, but what is, explains his Sandbackman Fried book is that once you get in the habit of writing about like, these geniuses who are hidden in the middle of systems, right?

And see more than everybody else. Once you start doing that, you see anybody, you start focusing on as that kind of genius, even when they're not. And that's what's happened with Michael here. So, yeah. Yes. Yes. And it's like, ultimately, we 9 times out of 10, the person wearing like, fucking X-ray glasses is wearing a pair of fucking iMacs glasses to go see Oppenheimer. Exactly.

Exactly. It's just embarrassing. Yeah. So I think the best example of this before we get into Sam Bankman freed prior in Lewis's history is a book called The Blind Side, which was published in 2006. Now, the blind side, like a lot of Lewis stories, there's a macro and a micro narrative. The macro narrative is he's talking about the growth, the explosive growth and the importance of the left tackle in football. This is an offensive lineman whose job is basically to make sure the quarterback doesn't get maimed. The micro story, which contains the emotional heart of the book, and is the core of the narrative, is the tale of a guy named Michael Oher,

who was, um, he was placed in foster care at age seven, because his mother suffered from addiction. His dad was generally in prison. His dad dies, well, he's, I think, in high school or was, was Delta pretty tough hand in life, but he's also six foot six and very fast, right? So he is, he is someone who will like shows an aptitude for football. As a result of this, he's kind of coaxed through getting into a private school and he gets, he gets literally adopted by this rich white family. Oh, oh, there's a black man, black child at this time. And they make it their business to coach him and coax him in through getting through the academics so that he can be in the NCAA and college so that he can get an NFL contract,

right? So I'll be, I'll be perfectly honest. I before we started, before you told me that Michael Lewis was a main character. I did not know that he wrote the blind side. Oh, yes, he did. Because this comes becomes a movie that's huge, right? Also, and I'm very well acquainted with the ensuing nasty fucking cultural narrative associated with the movie. But I didn't realize that it was a book. I knew Liner Poker, Money Ball, and the Big Short, holy fuck.

Also Robert, Robert, I just wanna fact check, Robert, he wasn't adopted by them. Not, we're getting to that. Okay. That was the narrative in the blind side, right? Right. That they have basically adopted this guy. Yes, you are correct, Sophie, but I'm building to that.

Okay, so, okay, okay. So, I just like, I don't know why I didn't know that. And also like who didn't want me to know that Michael Lewis, the blind side, I've booked that as famously bullshit. Yeah, so this family adopts or, and they effectively adopt him, is I think generally how it's framed,

and they help him get through high school, get into a college, and kind of like help usher him into, I think, generally how it's framed. And they help him get through high school, get into a college and kind of like help usher him into this NFL career where he makes a significant amount of money, obviously. And I'm going to quote from the LA Times here, the administration at his high school accepts him, although he can barely read. He secures a full time tutor when his grade point average still proves too low for the NCAA, his adoptive father, a canny former college basketball standout named Sean Tuy, manages to find a crucial loophole.

He has over-tested to prove that he's learning disabled, then has him take numerous easy online courses. Lewis treats these measures as ingenious. We are meant to cheer the fact that O'R has gained the educational process. And this is from the book. Leanne, who's the wife of Sean, was now making it her personal responsibility to introduce him to the most basic facts of life, the sort of thing any normal person would have learned by osmosis.

Oh! Every day I try to make sure he knows something he doesn't know, she said. If you ask him, where should I shop for a girl to impress her? He'll tell you, Tiffany's, if I go, I'll go through the whole golf game. He can tell you what six under is and what's a birdie and what's par. I love that those are her two examples of basic knowledge. This is Sandra Bullock's Oscar talking. Uh huh.

This is Sandra Bullock's Oscar flat. It's nasty little mouth. Okay. Two things every boy needs to know where to buy jewelry and how to golf works. Really says a lot about her socioeconomic status, right? Not like, here's how you pay your taxes. really says a lot about her socioeconomic status, right? Not like, here's how you pay your taxes. Not like, literally anything else.

Like, here is how you cook eggs, but no. Fucking, fucking golf and Tiffany's. Well, yeah, and also, like, I mean, to state the obvious, like conflating that with like, this is what normal people do. This is normal basic life of advice. This is normal basic life of advice. Okay, great. with like, this is what normal people do. This is normal basic life of advice. The doctoral thesis in the ways that that is like bullshit.

Yeah. So we can all see the potential abusive issue with a wealthy white family adopting a teenage black boy to coach him into launching a pro football career, right? Just if you think about all of the head injuries and shit involved, there's a lot this problematic here. Louis does quote Leanne at one point is saying, with me and Sean, I can see him

thinking if they found me lying in a gutter and I was going to be flipping burgers at McDonald's, would they really have had an interest at me? But the book is ultimately positive and uplifting. We're left thinking how nice it is that these people help this kid out. The LA Times note that Lewis seems to be like amused at these rich people cheating the system to usher this kid into a dangerous job without like educating him. So the nice parts of the story ended earlier this year when a now retired or filed a lawsuit in a Tennessee court alleging that the Twohies never adopted him and instead created a conservative ship. Twoies, I don't care.

Fuck them. And instead created a conservatorship and used it to take his money, right? The twohies or whatever the fuck deny doing this, they call this place. It's also Leanne. I'm sorry, I think it's fuck her. It's actually for us the PPs. I don't care.

I don't care. It's the dickbags deny this. And again, I'm not being a nonbiased journalist here, but fuck it. No, no, no. Robert is actually dickmans. Dickmans, the dickmans. They call his claims hateful and absurd.

Michael Lewis has defended the twohes by saying that they only earned a few hundred thousand dollars off of the blind side, the book and the movie that was made off of it. He's like, they didn't make millions. They only made a few hundred grand. Now, Lewis also does and I'll give him this. He also admits right after saying that, that the twow he's biological daughter is married to the son of the main investor in the film, which might suggest that the family made a lot more money off of it, right?

Oh, that might suggest that. But about back ends, because the blind, blind side makes half a billion dollars and a $35 million budget. In his own way. What happened to Michael Lewis in this kind of Michael Lewis is super rich and always really there's been buried some leads there's so many articles about it. Yeah, it is there's a shady shit.

That's the first time I'm hearing about the daughter's marriage because I read a fair amount about that. Uh huh. Fun stuff. So in his own 2011 book, Oh, we're like expresses issues with the movie based off of Lewis's book. Primarily, there's this part where like the Twais

are teaching and how to play football. And he's like, I knew football before I met them. I'm a teenager in America. Like, like what are you fucking talking about? There are other problematic moments in the book. And this is from the Guardian again. Louis calls O'er big mic throughout it, despite the fact that O'er is open about hating that nickname. He also tells this guy's story almost exclusively through the words

of other people talking about him, even though he had access to O'er. Louis justifies this by saying that O'er was not a strong voice on his life. Yeah, this guy is not good at talking about himself. I'm just going to listen to everyone else about him. I'm out. I'm thinking of that. I think what's really going on here is that O'R is a black kid from a desperate poverty background, right? And Lewis cannot identify or get inside of his head

because that is nothing even that even resembles the Michael Lewis story. It feels like a very privileged dark take unlike who do I consider to be a credible voice? Can I get 20 white people who barely know this guy? Who just met this kid to profit off him? To speak to him better than he can speak to his own life because that's who I trust is white people. That's, oh, that's so fucking gross. He doesn't try to get inside Ours Head and he just focuses most of the narrative on the Twais,

who Lewis understands, this is the final shoe, he understands them for a very good reason. And I'm gonna quote from the LA Times here. As I tore through the book, I kept wondering how Lewis got such remarkable access to the Twoys. And I also wondered, why does he take such an uncritical view of their role? The authors note at the end provides the obvious explanation, stating that Lewis is a friend

of Sean Twoys and that they had been longtime classmates at the same New Orleans school. No. How is it even ethical to take this fucking story on if you have There's only one kind of ethics that I care about Jamie and it's dollar dollar fucking bills Well, Jamie as you know things could be on ethical, but still be legal That's how he lives his life Truly what a gift that we have now as that like I am he a force of evil in the world certainly.

Yeah. But I am grateful that he gave us that one thing just the way of describing juvenile lawless capitalists. Yeah, it's so funny. Yeah. One thing I have started to notice watching some of the more recent and critical interviews with Lewis after the SBF book is that well, he's generally a pretty friendly seeming guy. He starts to get really angry, the instant you question him on anything regarding one of

his stories. And you see this in this story, in the Ours story, because Ours former coach comes out and like defends the toe he's or whatever, once the lawsuit goes out, he's like, you know, I don't think they took advantage of him basically. And Ouer calls it brave. In my professional bias, opinion, not a few. Yeah. Lewis calls the coach brave for doing this and basically says he's taking a stand

against cancel culture. And then here's the guardian again. Lewis recalled Ouer as a shy young boy and found it hard to square that memory with the Ouer behind the lawsuit. What we're watching is a change of behavior he told me. This is what happens to football players who get hit in the head. They run into problems with violence and aggression. It wouldn't surprise him, Lewis said. If we were seeing some confluence of Oer's history in football, with other campaigns that stoke claims in lawsuits like his, perhaps some lawyer of Oer's figured the time was ripe to sue the twelies Lewis speculated, or perhaps over realize that people

would get behind him if he makes these accusations. He's just a poor head injured boy. I they're like, no, the perceived exploitation and racism you experienced was the result of CTE. Yeah. Oh my, that's fucking wild. Right. That's gross as hell.

Oh my God. Jamie. Wow. I just thought he was the guy who wrote Moneyball. I thought that that was the hard, but that is what I was thinking too. Now yeah, so here I want you to keep in mind how he wrote about his former subject, Oh, or now here is him talking in a 60 minutes interview about Sam Bankman-free, the now convicted

former billionaire. And I just wanna emphasize the contrast between how he writes about these two different people who are subjects of his books. Mm-hmm. The story of Sam's life is people not understanding him, misreading him. He's so different, he's so unusual.

I mean, I think in a funny way that the reason I have such a compelling story is I have a character that I do come to know and the reader comes to know that the world still doesn't know. Now, that is not the case. Sam Bakeman-Fried is exactly the person he appears to be on the surface, right? He is a guy who committed a bunch of financial crimes

and didn't get away with it because he was too lazy and undisciplined to do it the smart way, right? And that's all that's going on. And I mean, this is like a, oh, this is a bummer. This is like a case study and a journalist biases coming out on their words. Oh, it's so, it's so obvious. Yeah. Yeah. No story better illustrates this part of the story than how Lewis wound up writing going infinite in the first place. In 2014, Lewis published a book called Flash Boys,

which is a book about Brad Katzuyama and a small group of rebel Wall Street investors who form IEX, which is like a stock exchange that's supposed to, the idea is we want to protect investors from the unfair advantages that these high frequency trading firms have on traditional exchanges due to a whole bunch of shit, but largely access to a special fiber optic cable. With most Lewis books, there's a lot of insiders that will criticize and bring some details

wrong here and glossing over some issues that don't conform to his narrative. There's a market crash that's largely mitigated by some of these firms that he's criticizing, but I don't know enough about that to want to get into it. What's important is that Katsuyama and his book of rogue traders are depicted semi-heroically, is that they're kind of fighting against this rigged financial system, which, you know, the financial system's rigged. I don't know about his characterization of them, but the book is a hit, and it makes Katsuyama and his crew celebrities within the finance world.

So Katsuyama and his crew celebrities within the finance world. So Katsuyama reaches out to Lewis when he is considering an institutional investment in FTX. He's like, we're considering getting into crypto through these guys, putting a lot of money on their exchange. Would you look into this guy for me, right? And this is what Lewis says. Lewis, like, basically goes in there and like talks to Sam Bergman freed and he's, he's so impressed that he quotes himself as telling Katzuyama, do whatever he wants to do. What could possibly go wrong, right? That's, which bad, bad, uh, Katzuyama does wind up putting money in. He could choose a worse person to ask what could go wrong with. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, and I'm going to continue from the Guardian here. He did find himself intrigued in particular by effective altruism, the movement to which Bankman Freed subscribed. Effective altruists believe in giving away most of what they make to do the most good in the world. Some of them commit to earning as much as possible, so as to donate more to their chosen beneficiaries. Having spent so long on Wall Street, Lewis wasn't used to meeting a wealthy young man who claimed to have no interest in wealth.

And usually for Lewis, he couldn't figure Bankman freed out. Michael just said, this kid is the richest and most interesting young person I've ever met. Oh my God. He didn't claim to understand all the deep recesses of Bankman freed's mind. But he knew it was a great story. And this was before the shit at the fan. So this is like talking.

Yeah. And also it takes someone who grew up in that environment to not have alarm bells going off in their mind when they hear oh Eyes as someone who has never not had money. Don't really care about money. Yeah, well, yeah, no shit You've never not had it. You would really care if you know that reminds me of this is like I think about this Easily once a week happened over 10 years ago My freshman year of college. It was my first time really encountering people who grew up with money.

There was this guy on my floor, and one night everyone was hanging out, and he put, this is the era, this is the early 20 times, he put a skinny scarf around my neck because it was cold. He was like, you can have that. And it smelled and I didn't want it. But he was like, you can have that. And I was like, oh, don't you want it back? And he's like, no, I don't care about my material possessions.

And I think about that all the time because he could just get 9,000 scarves. He just get 9,000 scarves. But that was like, but I feel like that is so much of what effect of altruism is. It's just a fundamental, like, not understanding how the world works. Yeah, it's a bunch of rich kids who are talking through

like fucking philosophy 101 level shit and think and so impressed by everyone else's answers to like dumb logic puzzles, because they've never studied enough humanities to know that like, now man, people have been talking about this shit for thousands of years and all of their takes are better than yours.

Like, anyway, we're not getting into that as much right now. We are about to get into the ads and if you really wanna do some effective altruism, purchase from the sponsors of this podcast. Tsk, tsk, tsk, t I find interesting, so not celebrities, and certainly not comedians. I'll be interviewing my plumber, my stylist, my wife's gynecologist. We'll be covering topics like religion, travel, sports, gambling, but mostly it will be about being a working mother. If you're looking for a podcast that will educate and inspire, or one that will really

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Radical is available now. Listen to the new podcast Radical for free on the I Heart radio appRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, so we've been talking around the book going infinite, which is Michael's terrible book on Sam. So I think now is probably a good time to dig into exactly how it fails. I wanted to start by introducing that contrast between Lewis's treatment of O'Hour and SBA

first because it puts things into perspective. Now I think a good anecdote to start on here is one of the stories Lewis uses to introduce Sam to the reader. This is right at the start of Going Infinite, And it's about a phone call that Sam has during his billionaire era with fashion industry icon Anna Wintour before the Met Gala. Now what? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Jamie, this is good. So for reference, because Anna Wintour is Bill Nye, he's girlfriend right now. And I don't want to think poorly of Bill Nye. That's for me. No, it is tragic. I my heart goes out to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that.

I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that.

I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that.

I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know how to say that. I don't know try to explain what the Devilwares Prada is about. Yes, for other men listening, pause and go watch the Devilwares Prada is just like one of the greatest films of, I think, greatest comedy films and books of, yeah. It's very good. Very good movie. Half the essays I wrote in Collins were based off of said book. Really?

Yeah. The Met Gala is an annual event. I think Vogue puts it on technically, but like it's where rich, famous, and occasionally even beautiful people wear insane outfits that cost the GDP of a small island nation, right? Yes. And then a bunch of YouTubers I watch say that they looked ugly. Yes.

Yes. A treat. Yeah. It's great. it's great. It's great. Everybody makes a feast off of it, but somebody has to pay for the son of a bitch, right? And that year, when tour wanted SPF to pay for the gala, right? No.

And he was spending way more money on stupider shit than that. So not unreasonable that he might actually agree to do this. He had instructed at this point his publicity woman to do whatever she could do increase FTX's reputation and keep his name in the news. So not a bad way to do that, right? The Met Gala often does make the news. And when it came to his side of the job though,

Sam was, he put as much work into like this call with Anna Wentour, where tens of millions of dollars are on the line, that he did to like everything else that he had a meeting about, which is no work at all, right? Lewis goes into detail about the fact that he's playing this dumb video game like while he's on a Zoom call with her. It's the same game he's always playing.

It's this video game that he winds up buying because it's made by a friend of his called Storybook Brawl. What is it about? Tell me. It's about like fable characters fighting, right? of his called Storybook Brawl. What is it about television? It's about like fable characters fighting, right? Like it's a little strategy game. It's like an app game.

It's not a real game. You know how you watch those videos? And I say this with love and appreciation of like college students now playing a video game while explaining like Marxism to you. Yes, yes. I want that, but Sam Bank from Infried playing that game while Anna Winters is like, what is he up to?

What is he up to? The J.B. and I in Unison, when you said playing video game while talking to Anna Winters, mouth wide open like. Well, it's like she could, I mean, and not even to like endorse her. I'm just like, I would be very afraid to do anything. She's scary.

And it's just famously scary. She's famously scary. And he's talking about a lot of money, right? Like it's, it's not that he's blowing her off because I don't feel precious about Anna Winters time, but it's that this is a big money deal and he can't focus on it. And I would take that it's just like, this is a due to SMADHD, right?

Like that's what that is. And this is a due to SMADHD who's part of a generation that has ADHD. Well, no, this is a very dumb observation, but it's also clear to me that San Bank of Bank of free has never seen the Devil Wars product, which I've never been less surprised at, but it's like if you have no one in your life who could tip you off, you're talking to me for tagging of the Devil Wars product, then you lack a support structure in a fundamental way, I think. Yeah.

It's, it's, okay, that's good to know. That's why I got so many. I'm not here. What's funny about the way Lewis talks about this is that he marvels at this, right? Like it's the most amazing thing and it's evidence of how unique Sam is. When you just noted one of the biggest pieces of entertainment from millennials and Gen Z is people playing video games and explaining politics, right?

That is, it is not at all unique that Sam Bankman freed will not stop gaming to have a business meeting. But Michael Lewis treats it as like, this is evidence that he is too much of a genius. He can't bear to pay attention to her for a second. He also, there's a little bit of anti woman stuff in here because Lewis notes that Sam would minimize the window with her face on it whenever she spoke

and bring it back up whenever he talked, right? Curiously, only when he was talking, did he want to see her? Which I do think there's a lot in that sentence. So yeah, it is again like the way Lewis describes this. This isn't just yeah He's not very disciplined and he has the same thing that like a lot of millennial and Gen Z people have Which is you know an inability to stop distracting yourself no matter what important shit you're doing He describes this as Sbf.F's brain being so big that like games are, he's like a Sherlock Holmes character

and games are his heroine, right? Well, that makes me, that indicates to me that Michael Lewis, because that's the way that you're like, like you're doting parent, we'll talk about you. Yes. And like that, that that is clear to me. The way he sees him is like, wow, look at this amazing kid.

And also what S.B.F is doing here is like the inverse of what most easily distracted millennial and Gen Z people are doing, with their playing games and explaining radical politics to you, they're not playing games and talking to someone like half listening to someone before they part with millions of dollars to throw the world's stupidest annual party.

Yeah. And I love stupidest annual party. Yeah. And I love that stupid ass party. It's, I mean, I think both of those things are on a similar level, potentially, but it depends on how you do them. And he's not actually good at it. But the way Lewis describes this is he, he, he just is in awe of this kid's ability to have attention deficit disorder. Quote, yeah, absolutely said Sam,

but his mind was elsewhere. The Horde dragon was dead, and a wind tour had killed it. What to do? He made a half-hearted bid to begin another game and pick another hero, but then changed his mind and shut the game down. He could often occupy two worlds at once

and win in both. In this case, he clearly stood no chance of winning in one world unless he paid less attention in the other, and this woman somehow had acquired a spell that interfered with his ability to multitask. What an amazing way to write that paragraph, Michael Lewis. Oh, good.

It's something else. Like, I have played video games through some important work meetings. Sophie has often had to pick my ass up off that. It's not because I'm a genius, it's because I'm hungover and have trouble focusing because I use Twitter too much. Like, there's so many, there's like so many, I mean, whatever.

And also you have to imagine that this band you script made it through a lot. It speaks to how old people in general who work in the publishing industry are, that no one was like Michael. I can tell you that this is just how kids are these days. He's a real venture game genius. Yeah.

I mean, it's like we've both written books. I was surprised that I got the title of my book through, but it was because people over 60 don't know what raw dog needs. And so you're, and that's most of the people in publishing. Like it's ridiculous. That's so nuts that that made it to the final book. No, it's like that's, yeah. So if you're not reading critically and inclined to give Lewis the benefit of the doubt,

I can see how you might assume that like he's trying to make Sam look kind of silly in that paragraph. I can see how you would assume that based on the text, but that is not what's going on, listener. Here is Lewis talking about that exact same moment in an interview with Intelligent Squared from about a month ago. Yay. So on the screen, Zoom, Anna Winthorne, and he does not know who she is, he doesn't know

what the purpose of the meeting is, he doesn't know, well, the purpose of the meeting is can Sam Beckman free pay for the whole Met Gala. If that's the purpose of the meeting. Because he'll pay for everything else, why not that? And she comes on the screen and she is dressed to the nun. She's got those size of hair coming down around her chin. She's like ready to kill. And gorgeous.

She looks great. She's well-prepared. He's playing Storybook Brawl, which is his video game. Pause, I hate the way he talks about Anna Windor. Thank you very much. Well, okay. Okay, and we can deal with that in private, so. Before we can, no, no, no.

Before we can talk about a woman on a Zoom call, does she look gorgeous or does she? Yeah, that's the point. This has nothing to do with Anna Windor. Also, she looks like that all the time. Thank you so much. It's her thing. And whenever she comes on the screen, he blocks her out and the video game pops up. So like she's talking and months and miniatures are killing dwarfs and trees with axes are coming in and like,

weapons are appearing on the screen and and people are dying and exploding, and you're hearing her talk about the Met Gala. And there's seven minutes in when he hits a button and the Wikipedia entry for the Met Gala comes up. So he can figure out what the hell she's talking about. And he's doing, I watched him do this. He's doing this with her. This is what he was doing on live television

when he would be interviewed by Bloomberg TV. It was like, and he had tricks. It took him about one-tenth of his brain to have a conversation with Anna Wentworth. And what he would do, other partners' brain was either reading about who she was or playing his game. And what he'd do is he'd say, you ask me a question, he'd say, oh, it's a really good question. It's a really good question. Let me think about that for a minute.

Meanwhile, the minute tour is killing the tree and then he comes off and he thinks for a minute and he says some boilerplate thing. So that does not show genius. He's obviously the smile on his face. That is not him being critical. That's him thinking about like, that's him falling over this kid for, for not being prepared for a multi million dollar meeting, right? Which is like fine, but that's not an example of him being smart. Well, and I think that that is a clear pattern in the way that we cover the like

young white kid genius who comes from a rich background. There's a lot of similarities in how early Mark Zuckerberg's like casual misogyny and not giving a shit about people was like part and parcel to why he was cool and why he was seen as a visionary like that. The same is true. It's like just I feel like every generation has at least one of these guys. And they're all covered in the same way. No one ever learns their lesson because the guy covering them is often the I feel like every generation has at least one of these guys, and they're all covered in the same way. No one ever learns their lesson

because the guy covering them is often the same guy. Or the guy's dead. It's literally Michael Lewis. Yeah, and often you're literally Michael Lewis. How did, okay, I'm sorry. How did this resolve with Anna Winthorne? Did she, like the fact that she just, basically, he says, yeah, I'll pay for it.

And then he just ghosts her. Yeah. So the fact that Anna went toward didn't like, like smoke out that he was like fully a fraud at the girl. The girl is the girl is a disappointed. I think I'm not capping for Anna went to her here. No, famously named to the dragon lady, well, no. SPF is lucky that he'll never encounter Bill Nyey because Bill for Bill Nyey would be on site. Bill Nyey would fuck him up.

It would be on set here. So he was an eye Frankenstein for crying. He was in Detective Pikachu. He was in a live break, though. He was in a live break, though. Like that brain. So these are amusing anecdotes, right? What he's telling potentially, if you are someone

who is critical about him, that same anecdote could form part of your thesis about why this kid got away with it and for so long and why he ultimately flamed out. But Lewis has convinced that these show you evidence of Sam's genius. And he sets this up early in the book, talking about Sam's childhood. Quote, he had a fault line inside him.

Pressure was building on it. And one day, in the seventh grade, he slipped. His mother returned from work to find Sam alone in despair. I came home and he was crying, recalled Barbara. He said, I'm so bored, I'm going to die. And like, yeah, I have had a similar conversation with my mom and it's a sign, you know, certainly Sam has been diagnosed with ADHD that's certainly one way in which that can manifest. I'm sorry, hold on one for the girl, again, that is a direct quote from Sex and Viscity.

Oh, okay. That is a direct quote from a Sex and Viscity. Sure. I'm sure Sam's a big Samantha. Hey, who says it? The woman that she goes, I'm so bored I could die and she jumps out and she falls out of the window. Oh my god. I caught on really one of the most famous moments in the back half of the city. Wow.

Yeah. I don't remember that. Anyway. So because like Lewis again, again, if you're just kind of being honest about Sam reading a book, he might be like, well Sam gets diagnosed with ADHD. This moment makes total sense as like, yeah, this is a kid who's got ADHD. And he's also good at math and stuff. He's bored in the classes that he's in. But Lewis does not acknowledge that Sam has ADHD in his book. He doesn't say anything about it.

Because that's not a bad thing, obviously, but it's also that you did like, you're not a genius just because you have ADHD, right? Plenty of people who are not super geniuses have ADHD. It's just the thing. And it's like, if you're talking about that behavior and I want to be like delicate, but it's like, it's contextually important. If you proceed from the principle, like, yeah, this is a kid with ADHD, then there's another explanation for his addiction to games, his inability to focus on stuff, right? And it, and then it means those things aren't a sign of his brilliance, right? Now part of why I'm critical of Michael for this is that he does make a note about one

character's ADHD in the book. And it's Carolyn Allison, who comes across as one character's ADHD in the book, and it's Carolyn Ellison, who comes across as one of the villains in the book. And I should note that the following paragraph comes from a part of the book where Lewis is talking to George, who is a therapist who worked for FTX as the company Shrink. So among other things, this is a therapist talking about his patient, right?

Okay. When she'd first come to him back in 2018, she'd had two issues she wanted to talk about. Her attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and her new and emotionally complicated polyamorous lifestyle. Every subsequent session after the first, Carolyn came back with just one issue she wanted to discuss. Sam, she'd fallen in love with Sam.

Sam didn't love her back. And that fact alone left her deeply unhappy. I thought of her as an exception, said George. I thought she might be willing to trade effective altruism for reciprocation of love any day, right? Sorry, how is it like, I mean, I truly, like how is it even legal or ethical for this information to be out of?

I don't actually know. I don't actually know. I know, really, because it seems sketchy to me. That does seem sketchy to me. That does seem sketchy to me. That does seem sketchy to me. They're supposed to be able to do, like they're famously not supposed to be able to do that. And also not to like overly come to her defense,

but also it's like that if anyone's therapy logs were leaked, it would be like, oh, they had this fixation on this issue. Yeah, that's why you fucking go, dude. And it's, you know, go there to be a reason to person. No, and especially since like what's messy to me is that he brings that he makes sure to bring this up with Carolyn because he's kind of writing that like she was unreliable. She wasn't focusing enough. She was in love with him.

She doesn't think hysterical, perhaps. Whereas he's just this misunderstood genius, but he notes her ADHD and he doesn't know it. Sam's even though Sam's ADHD is a matter of public fucking record now. Like his family went to court to get him his medicine. Like this is not a good thing. It's like not even the thing that he particularly tries to obscure right? No, no.

Yeah. And again, it's critical to understand him because it provides an alternative explanation for all this behavior that Lewis chocks up to him just like only needing 10% of his brain to talk to people. Yeah. Yeah. Now, there's another like, there's another very fun bit in this, which kind of relates to that, which is that, and this is like the weirdest through line and going infinite, which is Michael Lewis does not understand games, right? Like he is so, he writes about like video games and board games and other popular nerd pastimes that are now like the dominant form

of entertainment by money in our country. He talks about them like he's an alien who's just arrived on the planet. And as a result, he talks about Sam's embrace of this stuff at the expense of everything else to be evidence of brilliance. Quote, he felt nothing in the presence of art. He found religion absurd.

He thought both right wing and left wing political opinions kind of dumb, less a consequence of thought than of their holders' tribal identity. He and his family ignored the rituals that punctuated most people's existence. He didn't even celebrate his own birthday. What gave pleasure and solace and a sense of belonging to others left Sam cold. When the Bankman Freed's travel to Europe, Sam realized that he was just staring at a lot of old buildings for no particular reason. We did a few trips, he said. I basically hated it. To his unrelenting alienation, there was only one exception.

Games. In sixth grade, Sam learned about a game called Magic the Gathering. For the next four years, it was the only activity that consumed him faster than he could consume it. And this is so funny because like, Lewis has to describe Magic the Gathering after this point. And he like, he describes it basically. It's the first game ever made where like, you, like the way that you play it, like it's different, like every character can come into this

Strategy game with a different set of equipment. No one had ever done this before It was all like chess where everyone's the same and it's like no wasn't there were decades decades of war games and strategy games That's that magic was influenced by like that's just wrong Michael Lewis now hold on nerd hold on Lewis. Now hold on nerd. Hold on nerd. Yeah. Hold on nerd. Any, put a, put a, put a fan of that. I, I do think that like this is of the,

because I, because I don't play magic the gathering and I know that how he's describing it as well. It's like, it's so wrong. Yeah. I think that speaks more to a generation gap. Yeah. Because I think that there's someone who could be on the opposite side of SPF and equally with it.

Like, it's just like, do your research. Just talk to it. Just talk to someone who plays Magic the Gathering. They famously love to talk about it. It's funny because he's like, he has to make this. He goes on a limb about like, Sandbackman Fried couldn't, didn't like Chess, it was too boring. There were two few possibilities,

like you could calculate every, like his computer brain wasn't amused by Chess. Oh, leave that fucking thing. He wasn't enough. Yeah, it's so funny. It's like, man, my friends and I all played Magic the Gathering. And like as a spoiler, some people looked into Sam's like performance and league of legends

and the other only. He was never good at anything. He was not very good. He wasn't particularly bad, but he was not very good. And I'm going to guess he was indifferent at Magic the Gathering because you know, like it's, it is not a great, it's a wonderful game, not a great like yardstick for your intelligence. You know, it's just a card game. No one should be, I mean, not, but like no one should be judged by their intelligence by how they interact with like a beloved hobby. That's weird.

Yeah, it's so weird. And it's like, it's interesting because like Sam's parents, a big part of this section is like, he comes home and he's like, I'm so bored, I can't, I want to die. And his, you know, his parents do what I think is the right thing. They lead the charge to get their school to add like an advanced math class. And it seems to have a good impact on him. He's excited to go to school now. And that's a good thing. But what we find hints of in parts of this story, and I don't think Lewis is able, either knows it or is able to admit it to himself, is the troubling fact that once Sam's parents decide he's a math genius, they don't bother to make him into a well-rounded

person. Sam grows up hating art. He thinks books are useless. He has this big rant he goes about like, well, there's no way that Shakespeare is the best author ever because there have been this many billion people born since he was alive. And if you want to calculate the odds that none of them were better at writing than him, then there's really no reason to read Shakespeare. And it's like, well, Sam, the fact that you think that means that like no one even

casually tried to teach you the humanities because like the reason you should study Shakespeare is not that he's the quote unquote best author ever. That doesn't exist. It's that there is not a day in your life or the life of anyone that you love that they don't use words and phrases Shakespeare introduced to the English language. That's why he's important. Don't get me wrong, Sam. I also don't want to read a book. But I, there are sometimes where sometimes that's just what you need to do to understand the world and not go to prison for forever because you're a gambler. Or just be willing to fucking Google your way around it.

You're not better than Shakespeare, you fucking weirdo. There is an element of, there is certain, the lower side of S.B.F.L.S. that he takes in the statements he makes. He sounds like a one-episode, Frazier character. Yes. He sounds like Freddie made a friend

and he fucking sucks. And he's a piece of shit. Yeah. And then he even polarizes Frazier and Niles. And that's how you know you're in fucking trouble. Yeah, yeah. When Niles, Niles is like this kid's kind of got a fucking problem.

This kid's incomprehensible. I wouldn't share a glass of brandy with him. Yeah. And man, if you know Niles, you know what that takes. Hey, everyone, Robert here. Just wanted a quick note that the next like the last like five or six minutes of this episode is all Frazier. It's all all Frazier talk. Jamie and I got off on a tangent. There was a lot more sandbankment for Eden Part Two. It's another like hour and 20 minutes. So plenty more on Thursday, but as a heads up in case it's kind of confusing,

we just we just wound up in a Frazier hole after this point. So if you want to hear us talk about Frazier, this is your chance. Speaking of David Hyde Pears, Jamie Loftus, you are starring in a floor show with David Hyde Pears based on the life of Kelsey Grammer, actually. You are playing Kelsey. You spent, like Michael Lewis, a full year living with him to really get his character down. What was that like? Look, it was pretty hostile. It was pretty hostile.

And in the subsequent publishing that I've made, a lot of people have said that I couldn't explain the video games that Kelsey Grammer was playing for the year that I was following him around. And I resent that. I was in the room with Kelsey while he was berating women on the phone. And I think that that makes him a genius.

I think that that makes him a genius. And do I believe he's the greatest sitcom actor of all time? Well, I'll keep that to myself, but wink, wink. I think that he's kind of a beautiful genius and is above criticism. And if you don't think that he's kind of the perfect person, or if you even like just read his Wikipedia page, inform an opinion, I'd beg to disagree. And I do love, I love Kelsey grammar stories from the head of Frasier,

because they're all like members of the cast being like, well, yeah, he was very, like he came on set and he had clearly just woken up after vomiting up his seven martini lunch. He looked like he was dying. We were all worried that he was going to drop dead that day and then the director called action and he was immediately in care. He was brave. He was perfect.

He was beautiful. His chest hair hurt. Like, we'll never know. I was, I mean, I was fixated on Frazier reruns when I was a kid. I would stay up late to watch the- Yeah, it's one of my comfort shows for sure. Yeah.

The best. And like when I remember getting Kelsey Grammer's like memoir from the library and read that he broke up with his wife on the phone. And it may have been one of the first times that I was like, wow, men are scary. You could you you can just do that. You could just be Kelsey grammar and be evil. And I know I will still like base my sexuality on you forever.

Sure. Absolutely. Who's among us, right? Oh, man, but I will say having watched the new Frazier show, it becomes very clear how much of that show's charm was John Mahoney and David Hype Pierce. Oh, well, I think tell Kelsey's to, I mean, and he is an evil person. He's doing his damn best. He is, he is perfect. He is like literally his voice has not changed in 20 years, which is remarkable. No, and he's been you know Physically preserved well enough. Yes. Yeah, one of the big problems that show has is they've cast that kid as Niles and Daphne's

Sun and they're relying on him to hold up a lot of the physical comedy and the Dave and I had pierced used to and if if you are going up next to David Hyde Pierce and like a physical comedy competition, you're going to look like shit. Fuck. He's David. I'd be. He's the guy. Robert, I thought you would love the Frazier reboot because it's some of the most abysmal Boston accents I've ever heard in my thoughts and life.

Don't get me wrong. I've watched every episode. Some of the nastiest little, I have to like cause sometimes, I like get a glass of water. Yeah, it's not nearly that good. Yeah, I mean, you have, and I have conceded long ago that you've got it down. Thank you, thank you.

Well, anything to plug, Jamie, after our five-minute Frasier Degression? Well, I'd like to, I guess I'd like to plug the Frasier reboot because I would like a second season. Yeah. Check it out, everybody. It's not shit. It's on Paramount Plus.

And I also just read, read raw dog and follow me online if you're so inclined. And that's, that's all I have to say. Listen to the Bexville cast while you're at it. Why not? Yeah. All right. Where are all you?

That's it. I'm done. Go find, figure out where David Hyde Pierce lives. You know? Don't do that. Don't do that. I'm gonna send him a nice letter. I wanna create a letter.

Bye. Yeah, my team. Let's play J-me-to. Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the I Heart Radio Apps Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Business notifications getting out of hand, buried under an avalanche of customer emails, texts, and social media messages, keep your edge with Thrive Small Business software and

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