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

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Robert And Jamie conclude the thrilling tale of Sam Bankman-Fried and his biographer, Michael Lewis.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to The Greatest-crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Coolza Media. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, our special edition episodes on Sam Bankman, who is not freed because he is still in jail. That's the intro I've got. It's the same as the last episode. It's still really fun. It's still very fun. No, you're hilarious. It's still very fun. It's Sophie's favorite. This is the only time I've made Sophie laugh in years. That's not true.

Well, okay. You're hilarious. Your husband's on this issue. Your swiss on this issue. Swiss you. Jamie, speaking of Switzerland, you also were neutral in World War II. Is that correct? Yeah, I was sort of like, no kidding. Well, you making love again? Congrats. A hot 10. Two for two, baby. So we took a couple of days in between recording part one and part two to really let it sink in. How are you feeling on our technically not a behind the bastards on Michael Lewis, but basically

a behind the bastards on Michael Lewis, author of the big short. So in the in the interesting days, I've talked about the Michael Lewis of it all with a couple different people. Just to see if I was like, if I had just missed something, but every single person I talked to, I found had a similar experience to me where they did not know that he wrote the blind side.

Oh good, okay. Yeah. And then when they found out that he wrote the blindside. Oh, good. Yeah. And then when they found out that he wrote the blindside, they're like, oh, yeah, I could see that he is a, you know, he's an honorary bastard. Yeah. Well, maybe he is kind of a hack. Yeah. Right.

Well, because yeah, they were like, yeah, Michael Lewis, money ball, the big short. You're like, and another thing. How did that, how did, how do we collectively forget that he wrote that? It feels like he caught away with something. Yeah, and I guess I've been thinking about what he's doing with Sam Bankman Fried as I think about the upcoming Napoleon movie, which I will have watched by the time this comes out,

but it's not out yet. So excited about the whole. I'm ready. Everyone, especially like all of these history, Twitter podcasts, people are so livid that Ridley Scott's basically like, who can say what the truth of Napoleon's life was? Which is, it is a ridiculous thing to say.

He's very well documented. We actually know a lot about Napoleon, but also I don't give a shit. It's the guy who made Gladiator. I also appreciate because all biopics are nonsense. Yeah. Yeah. And so you're like, well, this is the one director

who's going to say, my biopic is kind of horses. It just lies, which also very appropriate for Napoleon. But what is the line with that? Why am I angry at Michael Lewis for what he's doing? And I don't really get. Yeah. He's a journalist. There he's a journalist for one. He's not the director of fucking gladiator. The least accurate movie about Rome ever made. It's been a great, it's been a great week for like weird old guys who we could argue had peaked creatively. Although I wouldn't say that for Scorsese,

but there was a great quote that was floating around in the last couple of days, where I guess Scorsese, he said on the killers of the Flower Moon Press tour that he was always worried about running out of time and he never knew it his last movie would be. And Ridley Scott was asked to react to that. And he said, since he started Killers of the flower moon, I've made four films.

No, I don't think about it. I get up in the morning and say, oh great, another day of stress. Honestly, those are both completely valid answers. I, I, yeah, I refused to be a part of some sort of like, pretending that what, what Scott is saying isn't as valid as what what Squarespace is saying. There are two ways to deal with mortality.

One of them is. The two genders of creative mortality. Yeah, yeah, one is, oh my God, I will die and I won't have said everything I need to say. And the other is, what the fuck, I got shit to do, I gotta move, I gotta have time to answer this fucking question. Yeah. Meanwhile, Robert, Paul Schrader is on Facebook

and Paul Schrader is supposed to give out Taylor Swift in a kind of horny way So it like yeah the old men are just they're on one this week and Michael Lewis walks among them There's only one old great creative who has taken the reasonable Respa like answer to mortality and it's John Carpenter who's like nah, I'm done directing movies I'm gonna get high play video games watch basketball the rest of my life. And God bless. God bless him. Yeah, God bless him.

There's a man who understands what's valuable in life. A thing that Sam Bankman freed never understood. And we're back. And we're back, yeah, we're back. So one of the things that comes up a lot in Michael Lewis' book is he's sort of going into the mind and psyche of Sam Bankman-Fried is that Sam had this belief that no one ever does anything useful after like age 40 to 45 somewhere around there is the last time you have a useful thought in your entire life, which I guess is relevant to our discussion

of aging, aging powerful men. I will say that that's true of many standup comedians, but I can't speak of that outside of that. Yeah, I mean, I think it's true, especially like once you get really rich, it's, you tend to like lose complete touch with the world and go insane. So I think that is somewhat accurate,

at least for some creative professions, but Sam is not in a creative profession. And it's actually kind of ridiculous to me the idea that people in business after age 40, like Steve Jobs did all of his best shit well after that point, like his most influential evil things. And most really successful businessmen

are just kind of getting started by their mid 40s, right? Because it takes that much time to get- You know that Zuckerberg, you've got a lot of evil left to do. You've got a horrible things left to do. Plenty of time. You're the worst is in front of you. I think he's got three to five ethnic cleansings and a minimum, minimum, Jamie.

Yeah, maybe eight, you know? I could see him having eight more ethnic cleansings. He does seem like someone who just will have a Kissinger affinity for life. Yeah. So, Bankman Freed's, I understand belief that after age 45, he's not going to be capable of having any useful ideas. This is what pushed him, you know, along with his effective, altruist idea. This is why he felt like he had to continually gamble, rather than like taking the slow, sustainable path,

making money off of his exchange at like a reasonable pace. No, no, no. I only have a few more years left before my brain shrivels up. And so if I'm going to do anything good for the world, I have to keep putting every dollar I've made on a 50, 50 bet endlessly, right? Which is like, I don't know, you should probably get help if you feel that about the world

because that's a deeply self-destructive way to think about yourself and about your assets. This is a big part of why FTX did not have a really crucial thing for any company, particularly a financial company to have, which is a risk officer, right? A risk officer's job is to analyze the deals the company's doing and go, well, that's an insane risk. So let's not do that one.

Or that's an insane risk. We need to offset it with this stuff. They also did not have a chief financial officer or a bunch of other critical executive positions. Really? Yeah, man, no CFO. That's one I've heard of. You should have that one.

It's a really basic job, and its job is basically to know how much money you have, right? Like there's other stuff to it, but it's pretty critical. FTX also did not have a board of directors, and they're lacking a bunch of other very basic executive positions. And a big part of why is that the only people Sam feels like he can trust are like his

friends. And he has this deep aversion to bringing in adults like people who were not in their 20s, like his, the friends he went to college with and shit. He said in one interview with Michael, we tried having some grownups, but they didn't do anything. This was true for everyone over the age of 45. All they did was worry, which like, again, given what happened, perhaps they auto have been. Maybe I'm just like sort of on one with the idea that very few stand-ups have a valuable

thought after 45. But I would say now, reflecting on it, like, Sam Bankman-Fried is using the improv troupe approach to a very high stakes business. Like he's like, no, I will only work with people I went to college with. We know best. I don't want no fucking crusties in the room. Like if he, I mean, and we could debate all day about whether San Bakemetree would have done more evil

in his life so far or in his life as an improv comedian because I think they should all be in forever jail. So it's kind of like, it's difficult. It's difficult. This is what Levin Worth should be, right? The military needs to take stand-up comedians into custody. I've always been...

I'm on a lot of lists. Yeah. You know how many bars have performed to know people? I'm on a lot of lists. So Sam's response when he was asked by Michael, like, why don't you guys even have a CFO that seems important?

He says, there's a functional religion around the CFO. I'll ask them, why do I need one? Some people cannot articulate a single thing the CFO was supposed to do. They'll say, keep track of the money or make projections. And I'm like, what the fuck do you think I do all day? You think I don't know how much money we have? Which is funny because his whole legal defense in? You think I don't know how much money we have, which is funny because his whole legal defense and court was, I had no idea how much money we had

or where it was. And that's why I didn't commit a crime, right? Because I just was incompetent. I just didn't know where the money was, but it's all somewhere, like very silly thing to say, given what he's about to say. Okay. So after Sam's life fell apart,

Michael Lewis continued to talk and visit multiple, sometimes we call like three or four times a day, three or eight months that Sam was on house arrest. And it's interesting to me because like, Michael, if I was a journalist, like Michael Lewis, and I had had a conversation with somebody when they were one of the biggest names in an industry being like a CFO is useless, I know where the money is.

And then their entire life explodes because they didn't know what the money is. I would at one, at some point, ask them the question, hey, was that maybe a bad idea? Michael does not bring this up to Sam after the collapse and any of the dozens of conversations that they've had. And in fact, and this is why that's weird, the actual villain of his book going infinite. The one person that Lewis is super critical of in like a really uncharitable way is the CEO brought in to take over the FTX after Sam like leaves and declares bankruptcy. A guy named John Ray III.

Now, I am not going to go to bat for John Ray III because he is he's John, his name is John Ray III. I was going to say, I got the difficult name to go to bat for. Yeah. But he is, you know, he's the guy who got brought in to liquidate in Ron. And he's he's kind of a corporate undertaker, right? When there's a huge scandal at a company when it collapses, goes into bankruptcy and you need someone to kind of do the post-mortem, you bring in John Ray. And he's like, as far as I know, not the first or second.

No, not the first or second. Those guys are useless. No, fucking clowns. Okay. You're going to bring in the third. You need a JR3. I'm with you. So, you're gonna bring in the third. You need a JR3. I'm with you. So, it's interesting.

Like the degree to which he, because this guy comes in later, and I think because he's boring, Michael Lewis finds him disgusting, like I haven't run into any info that he's like bad at what he does. It's certainly not his fault, but Michael is livid because he's this kind of like staggy old businessman and he doesn't understand Sam's special playground or like the wonderful thing that he built and he's just kind of exasperated at how badly it all works.

See, that's fascinating to me because to me that says like Michael Lewis is, I mean, either just hates boring people, which fair enough, but he should know as a journalist that boring people are often, and maybe most often, tremendously capable of doing bad shit, but it seems like he's looking more for like, well, Bradley Cooper can't play you in a movie. You're useless to me, you're garbage. You're boring.

There's nothing sexy about him. He's just trying to deal up, like clean up after a disaster. And there's some really funny lines in the book because like one of the things that Lewis has to do in order to kind of defend Sam as a genius is explain how he didn't steal $9 billion, right? And the answer that Lewis has come to is

that money is all there that he just didn't know where $9 billion was. Oh. Yeah, he didn't steal it or gamble it away. He just misplaced it due to rank and competence that he committed because he was too smart to keep track of things. And there's a, I'm going to read you a very, uh, uh, yeah, there's a, a, a, a, a really fun quote there. He describes like Lewis describes FTX as a real business,

but he says that John Ray, who attacked it as the worst run company he ever seen, was just too much of an idiot to understand it, right? He describes Ray trying to figure out what company assets actually existed and what didn't as quote, like an amateur archaeologist who had stumbled upon a previously unknown civilization, unable to learn anything about its customs or language, he just started digging, right?

Like he's too dumb to understand the brilliant thing that Sam built up. So he just starts like churning about in the wreckage without really appreciating everything that went into making this mon... into edifice. And I really wonder like what, I mean, this is like getting into the weeds a little bit, but I'm very curious like what, like who on Michael Lewis's editorial team is keeping him in check? It doesn't sound like he's hired a fast checker. He doesn't sound like he has a personal chimney cranking it.

So he's just saying shit. Like his personal biases couldn't be more out. They wanted to rush this thing out, so you don't have much time to edit it, right? That's just saying shit. Like his personal biases couldn't be more out. They wanted to rush this thing out, so you don't have much time to edit it, right? That's true, yeah. A year to write and release a book is not a long time. No, not enough time, one might, one might not. Not enough time one might argue.

And also Michael Lewis has the kind of clout to make that not happen. Right. And again, I also kind of think that his hatred of Ray here is based on the fact that Ray did not fall for Sam's bullshit the way Michael did, right? Here's what Ray said shortly after taking over and getting a look at FTX's finances. And this is from an article in Business Insider. At the hearing, Congresswoman Ann Wagner of Missouri asked Ray to elaborate on the specific

way FTX was worse than, quote, one of the largest corporate frauds in history. Ray explained that FTX was unusual and that it had no record keeping whatsoever. He said that employees would exchange invoices and expenses on Slack, the ubiquitous workplace chat room. They used QuickBooks, he added, referring to the accounting software. QuickBooks, Congresswoman Wagner asked for clarification. QuickBooks, very nice tool, not for a multi-billion dollar company, rake confirmed.

And that's like, basically they're using the kind of thing that you would use if you're like a person keeping track of you or maybe your small businesses accounting, right? Yeah. I've done that. And like that, that's nuts. Yeah.

That is like the closest thing I've come to. That's right, it's attitude. Yeah, I was like, that's the closest thing I've come to to be like, wow, if I was also tasked with multi-billion dollars, I'd be like, I don't know. Yeah. Well, we go to TurboTax, what do we do? I would, I would.

I would. I would hire a CFO, me. Yeah, I would hire someone who's done that before, right? Yeah. QuickBooks, holy shit. Yeah. So you can decide whose interpretation sounds more realistic. John Ray, you can basically the two possibilities are like either John

Ray just recognizes basic incompetence when he sees it and gets angry or he's just not brilliant and special enough to understand Sam's world, which is what that's what Michael Lewis, that's he in caps. That's what Michael Lewis refers to FTX as is Sam's world, right? This is, he basically treats the whole situation as like, yeah, Sam lived in this magical world and his business was actually secretly good, but it encountered this temporary issue

and he was forced out and then John Ray came in and he tore it all apart because he's just the Mean Old Grumpy Businessman, right? That's really like the thrust of Michael Lewis's book. And part of how he kind of emphasizes the magical inner world Sam lived in is this kind of obsession with gaming returning to like, Lewis is just sort of fascinated with like the fact that Sam was an addict, right? Sam is a gaming addict.

That's what when you can't like handle your basic functions because you're too busy playing Storybook Brawl, that's an addiction, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting. Both because Storybook Brawl was made by his childhood friend and he used consumer funds to purchase it. It seems to have been a pretty mid game. It shut down after he got arrested,

so I can't play it to tell you if it's actually good. But Lewis doesn't describe it as like a middle brow app game. He describes it as like better than chess, like more complex than chess, a greater intellectual expert or exercise than chess, and he writes this paragraph about it. Sam didn't care for games like chess, where the players controlled everything, and the best move was in theory perfectly calculable. Chess he'd have liked better if robot voices wired into the board, hollered rule changes

at random intervals. Knights are now rooks, all bishops must leave the board, bonds can now fly or almost anything so long as the new rule forced all Players to scrap whatever strategy they'd been pursuing and improvise another better one the set the game Sam loved allowed for only partial knowledge of any situation trading crypto was like that and I I think this is getting fucking ridiculous. I guess there and a chance that Sam Bankman freed paid Michael Lewis to say this shit. Like maybe I don't know that he was to let the money. One of the things is not that there's no proof that he isn't dense, but this is like above and beyond.

The reason why I get that a lot, like, well, Michael Lewis is obviously bribed, but like Michael Lewis is very rich. Like I don't know how you could bribe Michael Lewis, especially after you lose your money. Even if he wasn't from money, he'd be rich. Yeah, yeah, he's always been rich and always will be. So I don't know how much I think that's likely. I think he just, this is his first time ever hearing about games.

And so he thinks Sam is brilliant and special because he played them obsessively. I also think, you know, we just did our episodes on Lord John Aspenall who was like this, this British gambling maven who took away, who like basically got the upper class of the England and like the mid-century to just gamble away all of their fucking money. And a big part of why this kind of like old generation of the aristocracy lost so much is they were into these specifically games of chance like Shaman DeFair, which is a kind of baccara where basically there's no skill involved. It's pure, it's as close to pure chance as possible because there was this like change in the kind of gambling the upper class like to do that I've heard

fear I just basically just like, well, these people had nothing in their kind of gambling the upper class like to do, that I've heard theorized is basically just like, well, these people had nothing in their life but gambling, right? They've always been rich, they're born rich, they've always lived these super safe lives. The only thrill they had was throwing a bunch of money on like effectively a complete chance. And- I'm gonna understand that because it's like,

what's the worst that's gonna happen? You're gonna become marginally less rich, but still maintain the quality of life. That sounds boring. Yeah, you've just, they're just insulated from anything thrilling because they're insulated from any real danger, right? Yeah.

And so I think Sam being this kind of rich sheltered kid, that's, Lewis interprets is like, he's too smart to play a game like chess. He wants a game where he doesn't actually know what's going on and a lot of that's random. It's like, well, I to play a game like chess. He wants a game where he doesn't actually know what's going on. And a lot of that's random. It's like, well, I just see these old British gamblers in Sam Bankman Freed, where again, this kid has nothing but the throw-off of the dice inside him.

And that's what he liked, right? And he put a lot of other people's money on those bets. Yeah, anyway, this is a little beside the point, but I did want to read the actual part of the book where Lewis describes magic the gathering because it is very boomer. Magic had been created in the early 1990s by a young mathematician named Richard Garfield. It was the first kind of a new kind of game designed,

perhaps, for a new kind of person. Garfield had started with an odd question. Could a strategic game be designed that allowed the players to come to it with different equipment? And again, games workshop had started making Warhammer years before magic came out. Like, oh, games like this have existed forever. Like, I couldn't hear you over the sound of imagining Garfield the cat saying that. Yeah. Which Garfield, which Garfield, Bill Murray, are we talking Chris Pratt? There's also a secret third Garfield Garfield, whoever did the voice acting on Garfield

and Friends, which is my canonical Garfield voice. Certainly not Chris Pratt Garfield. I forget who tweeted this, but there is a vibe with the new Garfield that Chris Pratt has been locked in a room for a voice every major IP. It's like a, it's his infinity punishment. He'll be rich, but he can never leave the room. I'm okay with that, actually. Yeah.

Let's keep him in the room. You guys have any good ideas. No, no, keep him in the room. Every, every six years, he can come out to do another interminable Jurassic World movie. No, the villain was Locust. world movie. No, the villain was locust. So Lewis is so ignorant of kind of the basics of youth cultures to this day that he sort of transposes a lot of completely normal millennial and zoomer behaviors as evidence of Sam's unique brilliance. Here's another clip from

60 minutes where he describes how Sam treated effective altruism that Ty said to this, and this is remarkable. What it means in Sam's instance is you can go out and have a career where you do good. You can go be a doctor in Africa or you can go out and make as much money as possible and pay people to be doctors in Africa. If you're a doctor in Africa, you get, you end up saving a certain number of lives, but you're only one doctor. But if you can pay forty people to become doctors in africa you're gonna see you're gonna save forty

forty times a number of lives this is like a strategy game well you don't understand sandback refreed unless you understand that he turns everything into a game everything is game of five uh... he's describing a pyramid scheme of doctors yes yes and i have a lot of like yes i mean saying this on sixty minutes i like i cannot put wrap my pyramid scheme of doctors. Yes. And I rock.

I mean, saying this on 60 minutes, I cannot put, wrap my, okay, now I am like taking him being paid off, like, or paid on or off off the table because you're just like, this is ridiculous to like you're stupid. Yeah. Like to light the fact that people somehow collectively forgot that you wrote the blind side on fire

to say this shit on 60 minutes. It just like is, it's, what, he's describing a pyramid scheme. He sure is. He is describing a fucking pyramid scheme and also like, this whole, he turns everything into a gay, like, like, cause the,

the connection there is that like, he's off for good. He wants to follow the guy. Sure Sam could have been a gay, like, like, the through line of the connection there is that like, takes off for good. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while.

He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while.

He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was for a while. He was into a game. And man, that's, again, not unique to Sam, a significant percentage of the US economy

is based around taking the logic and addictive strategies game developers use and applying it to every imaginable industry, right? Like that's fucking everywhere. Like Sam is, again, not unique in this. And also the, it's just such a, the fact that Lewis seems to have bought into the basic logic of like, well, it's better to pay a bunch of doctors than becoming one is silly because like,

well, we have a shortage of doctors. We don't have a shortage of assholes who gamble with other people's money. There's not actually enough doctors for the people who need them. And also, I mean, to that point, it doesn't sound like, what I trust, knowing what I do, of Sam Bankman freed's ability to multitask, that would I trust him doing surgery? I don't think I would. I would trust him doing either of those things. Yeah. Yeah. No, he would never have, right? But yeah, anyway. But it sounds like he, I mean, maybe I'm like, you know, giving him too much credit and he's playing a game of 40 chess, but it doesn't seem that way.

And I like, he sounds ridiculous. I kind of outside of he's just completely diluted. His two options are he's just so out of touch with the youth that he thought Sam was unique in this. Or he, he, he decided from the moment he met him, this is the framing device I want to use for Sam's genius in my book, because I think they could film it easily, right? Because I'm sure he thinks that way about the books

he's written, he said so many of them adapted. And like, yeah, if I, you know, there's a lot of fun ways you could film this super genius solving his math problems through like imagining games out in the real world, right? Mm hmm. Yeah, so I my my guess is that he just couldn't get himself off of this idea he had for like the inevitable Sam Bankman freed movie, you know, crafted for the big bang theory audience. That's the idea.

Yeah, like he's already he's like, oh yeah, who's hot right now? Paul Mascale. Yeah. We'll we'll die his hair. It's gonna be fucking great No, I think they should have had Timothy Shalamey. I think they should have had Timothy Shalamey do like a you know What's his name the Batman guy where he would like wildly change his appearance and ways that are bad for his health every six months No, no, don't talk about rubber patterns in that way. I Know you know, I'm a Christian bail Christian bail'm probably going to say Timothy Schalmey. The Schalmey bailed out way.

Do a Christian bail to look like Sam Bankman freed. That sounds fun. I just worry about Timothy Schalmey. It looks like if you touch him, he may shatter. I just worry about him. He looks so frail. Yeah, that's the right thing. He looks like he's got consumption. Yeah, like that they would say that about him

in the distant consumption. Yeah. Like, they would say that about him in the in the in the distant past. Yeah. And it's like if Sam Bankman Fried is looking harder than you are, like, you're in trouble my man. Uh huh. Yeah. Well, I wouldn't say that about Sam, but so there's an amusing coda to Lewis is loving descriptions of Sam as a compulsive gamer.

This paragraph occurs right after the FTX customers pull a run on the bank and Iulating its cash reserves and starting its collapse as like the employees are all huddled inside their $30 million Bahamas sweets to try to figure out how to fix things. Nishad was agitated with Sam in a way that Rom Nick had never seen. At one point, turning on him and screaming, will you please fucking stop playing story book brawl? And I like that anecdote, but it gets to another frustrating issue with going infinite, which is that Michael Lewis has all the ingredients for a great modern Icarus story of hubris and the fall, but making it work tonally would require him to see these things that are obvious warning signs as warning signs and structure his book that way, right?

And then you get some catharsis in the payoffs. But these warning signs are just sort of scattered around. They're not given the significance. He would give them if he saw them as warning signs because he's clearly taken with all of this stuff. Another example of a valid through line, Lewis seems to have missed, is Bankman Fried's complete disregard, even distaste for the competence of the women around him. Lewis spends a fair amount of time on Sam's relationship with Carolyn, and he reprints these letters between them that certainly don't make Sam look great. It began with a seriously compelling list titled, Arguments Against, This is Arguments Against

Her Dating Him. In a lot of ways, I don't really have a soul. This is a lot more obvious in some contexts than others, but in the end, there's a pretty decent argument that my empathy is fake. My feelings are fake. My facial reactions are fake. I don't feel happiness. What's the point in dating someone you physically can't make happy?

I have a long history of getting bored and claustrophobic. This has the makings of a time when I'm less worried about it than normal, but the baseline prior might be high enough that nothing else matters. I feel conflicted about what I want. Sometimes I really want to be with you. Sometimes I want to stay at work for 60 hours straight and not think about anything else. And...

So, I want to say that I have this amount of self-love to not fall for this, but I can't even say that 100%. I just really feel for Carolyn at a lot of points in this story because it's, oh my god. I feel like there's a version of someone who would be like, oh, I can fix him, where you're like, oh no, this is like, it's like between fiction. There's only one thing.

And she loves trying to never leave me. I know, I know, she's a disadvantage. And it's difficult because like, Lewis discusses kind of Sam's inability to be functional with the people in his life. And he clearly has a thing, he funds another exchange by another woman in crypto

who he tries to date. Women in crypto. He's got this kind of thing going on. But Louis kind of always writes off his behavior as like, well, you know, he just, he was too depressed, he was too, he can't feel, he's too brilliant to like be an entrepreneur. It's a torture genius playbook of just like, oh, and he's horrible to women, but only because he's mind is, but, but, but, like, there's, I mean, they did this and this happens every 10 years like that happened with Zuckerberg they're like no he said like he's a rampant misogynist because like his

business started off of misogyny because he just had so many good ideas that it was like pressing on the woman respect like yeah it's ridiculous Kind of meanwhile, when Lewis is describing like, why Carolyn did what she did, he includes the line where she's like, he's like, he quotes someone to saying she would throw away all of her principles to be loved. Like, she's the only one of the effective altruist kids

who doesn't really believe in it. She's just so desperate for affection that she would like do anything for it, which like, I don't know, like I don't know the person, but it's weird that Lewis is so cynical about her and so full of excuses for Sam. I would have, I would have a fair amount of guesses as to why that may be. And the way that it seems like in many ways that, you know, Lewis has seen himself in Sam. And especially if you're used to writing profiles

of very successful, eccentric people, which he is, if this is the precedent you've set for the kind of behavior that you would excuse, such as clear racism or sexism, why would this be any different? Like it's, it's's it's it's fucking time. And then also on the other end of Carolyn being characterized as this like desperate for affection person. I tried to like tap into that of like God

if any of my personal correspondence came out, I'd be fucking cooked. Oh, it would be devastating. So many people and it's like, she's being be fucking cooked. Like, this is like so many people. And it's like, she's being singled out. That's the thing. Yeah, of course. Yeah, everyone's desperate for affection. So, you know, anytime you see Louis writing about Sam, he writes in kind of the terms,

Sam as one of the people in this weird effect of altruism cult, he uses terms like, he talks about his priors, which is like, it's a way of like bringing busy and mathematics into personal decisions. And all you're saying when you're saying like, well, these are my priors, is like, well, this is the shit I believe without any kind of evidence, right?

That's largely what that means. These are like my pre-existing biases, but saying pre-existing biases like, doesn't sound as smart as my priors. And likewise, Sam would always talk about like, well, every decision I make is like a doesn't sound as smart as my priors. And likewise, Sam would always talk about, like, well, every decision I make is like a mathematical decision. And I calculate, what's the expected value

of this outcome versus this outcome? And then I do the thing with the highest expected value, right? Which is another way of saying, I do whatever will make me feel good. Which is, you know, a lot of us are like that, a lot of the time, that's the human nature. We are creatures of comfort in a lot of ways, but Sam is just dressing up selfishness.

In lines like this, Sam wanted to do whatever at any given moment offer the highest expected value and his estimate of her carolins expected value seemed to peak right before they had sex and plummet immediately after. And like, that's no different than a lot of guys in their 20s. That's not special.

It just sounds like a fucking guy. Oh, so you're saying he got horny and then he didn't care about our afterwards. Well, that's not special. Like, I can't relate. Wow. Yeah, that's not just millions of men. That's millions of people. Like, it's so, I mean, even just outside of his relationships with women and his relationship

with Carolyn, I don't know, it gives me sort of like, men's a PTSD where there is this like, two-hander, where it's either, you can't understand what I'm doing because I am a super genius and you are not operating on my level, you could never understand why I am fucking up at this tremendous rate. And then if they're challenged enough, it's like, well, actually, I'm, you know, it, I don't know the correct way to like characterize this, but it almost becomes like internet speak,

where it's like, no, I'm actually just like, I don't give a shit. It's actually, I'm using QuickBooks because I don't give a fuck. It's like either I am a genius or I don't give a shit. I'm using QuickBooks because I don't give a fuck. It's either I am a genius or I don't care. And there's nothing in between. And it's like what is in between is just the fact that they're full of shit.

Yeah. Yeah, and you know who else is full of shit? Nope. I think time to to head dads. On March 16, 2000, two sheriff's deputies were shot in Atlanta. Jamil Alameen, 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 are you talking about? But I had no idea. Who you had become? That's how he approached you.

You know, he meant what he said that. Yeah, I'm thinking murder, 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.

I'm Mary K. McBrayer, host of the podcast, the greatest true crime stories ever told. I write about true crime, which means I live inside the research wormhole, but I'm not necessarily interested in the headline grabbing elements, the blood, and the gore, all of that. I'm more interested in the people behind these stories, and what we can learn by looking at their experiences. You can meet me every week on the greatest true crime stories ever told, where I dig into crimes where a woman is not just a victim. She might be the detective, the lawyer, the witness, the coroner, the criminal, or some combination of these roles.

I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Listen to the greatest true-crime stories ever told on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. After Christmas, don't miss this special event starting Monday December 18th at 7 p.m. Eastern at State Farm Park in I Heartland in Fortnight Available for a limited time afterwards stick around and check out all the exciting things State Farmhouse offer Stay high to Jake from State Farm on the big screen and try to beat Jake score at the park or minigame visit iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland to start playing today

Ah boy, I sure do love ads. Those were some good ones. So yeah, so we're back. We're talking about Sam Makeman-Freeze issues with women as chronicle by Michael Lewis, who does do his credit. Make a point of noting that all of the companies moves a CEO from the US to Hong Kong

and then from Hong Kong to the Bahamas. We're prompted by like, he and Ellison would have some big relationship conversation and she wouldn't say, like, I wanna have a closer relationship and then he would move the entire company without telling anybody, which again, like the instant you hear that anecdote, you're like, oh, well, this guy,

this guy is not a super genius, like this guy is just a guy. A guy. Kind of can't like deal with confrontation. Like yeah, that's not special. Again, millions of us out there. Every, every conflict avoidant person has their approach. It knows no gender, but excuse towards one.

Yeah. My last boyfriend bought an upright base. That was how it was. Bless his heart. I don't think. They rot. Yeah. The real shame here is that I don't think Lewis draws any sort of connection between how Sam treats the women at his company and how like Sam treats adults with the specialized financial knowledge that might have saved his company. Because there is a relate like I'm not trying to saved his company. Because there is a relate,

I'm not trying to discount his massage knee, which is certainly a thing, but I think the bigger through line with Sam that is present outside of just his dealing with the women that he was in relationships with and work with is that Sam doesn't think anyone besides him has worthwhile thoughts or ideas. And that anything he doesn't understand

is not worth paying attention to, which is a big thing in tech guys, right? This attitude that like, you're seeing now with these AI freaks where they don't think that there's any value in the human creation of art because they don't understand it. Like, they're willing to like have an AI just like come up with some crap that's vaguely patterned off of a historic. See, isn't this picture of like, you know, isolation, anonomi, and modern society better now that we've turned it into a bunch of friends

having brunch outside of a cafe. Look, it's much brighter now and prettier. It's like, no, that's not the point of the art. You don't understand, but like, they don't, yeah. It's this thing. Do you think that a computer could come up with the image of Hall Walker and Brian the dog in a convertible.

No, that's a uniquely human artistic instinct. Only we would understand. The only humans would get it. This idea that like I am smart and therefore if I don't understand something, it's not important, right? It's something for like people who are less than me to deal with.

This is why the company fell apart. It's interesting to me that like Lewis, he clearly does see aspects of how Sam treats women unfairly, but he doesn't make any sort of leaps between the way Sam treats like everybody who's not him. And I find that interesting. I do too. Yeah, good stuff.

So perhaps the biggest major through line in going infinite is Michael Lewis not getting the joke. That section where he quotes SPF explaining why CFOs are dumb is a perfect example. On a casual reading, you might even assume that we were supposed to find the line, what do you think I do? What the fuck do you think I do all day? Do you think I don't know how much money we have? Funny because Sam did not know how much money they had? Of course I'm ex of the book after FTX is crumbled Lewis goes into detail to discuss all the money that was recovered by John Ray Quote at the end of June 20th. Yeah, the third at the end of June 2023 John Ray filed a report on his various collections to date The debtors have recovered approximately seven billion in liquid assets, he wrote,

and they anticipate additional recoveries, 7.3 billion to be exact. Ray was inching towards an answer to the question I'd been asking from the day of the collapse. Where did all that money go? The answer was nowhere, it was still there. And that's not true. The reason he's writing this is that earlier in Sam's career,

a bunch of people leave Alameda because he loses $4 million and they think that he's lost $4 million in investor money and he's a dick about it and later they find it. Like he had just misplaced it basically. And so Lewis is being like, that's just what happened. They were never really in bankruptcy. See, it was a good business. Like they just didn't have any record keeping,

so they lost the money. And this meany, John Ray thinks it's bad to lose several billion dollars. But Louis is saying is not true. He is kind of lying here. Maybe he just, maybe it's an honest mistake. I don't know, but it's not accurate. Because for one thing,

seven-ish, 7.3 billion has been found. Almost nine billion is missing. So that's one and a half billion dollars unaccounted for still. That's still one of the largest financial frauds in history. That's significant. That's what I mean. Maybe as much as two billion, yeah.

Does even if you're trying to get through to someone who knows nothing about finance, the second number, the missing number is bigger than the first. But the one number they've got. He tries to cut close that whole by being like, and a lot of that money is in these, you know, money they paid to these companies that they'll probably get back. And it's like, why would you think that? A lot of that money went to other shady crypto people who don't bank in the US. Why do you think the money is going

to come back? Well, see, this is interesting because now, I feel, I feel bad because I know Michael Lewis is not the bastard at the episode, however. He's kind of playing Sam, if we're playing Sam Bankman-Freeds theory that you do not do any valuable work after 45, that may in fact apply to Michael Lewis.

Yeah. Sounds like maybe he's lost the thread because it's the way that he's talking about money and I mean, and I have not read this book. I have no worry. But you're just, that's why they pay you the big poth. But like, to hear how he talks about money in this book and to know that his most famous works have to do with fine ads with the exception of the of the blindside, which everyone forgets that he wrote,

like it calls his entire body of work into question. Yeah, yeah, and it's like, yeah, just the the ridiculousness of being like, well, look guys, seven, you know, they've recovered seven billion out of 9.3 billion. So things are basically good. Like that's insane. But also, as we'll get to later, he is, that even that doesn't tell the whole truth. Like this idea that everyone's going to get their money back is not true. But Lewis, in order to continue believing that Sam was a super genius, he has to have this kind of tragic story where like he didn't really lose the money.

It was a misunderstanding. It's all unfair. And because he needs to believe this, I think for the sake of his own ego, bringing up the fact that there's a lot of money missing is a really easy way to piss him off. And I'm going to play you this clip. It's the most revealing clip that I've found. And this is from an interview he did with a, on a YouTube channel called Intelligent Squared after the FTX collapse. After his book came out, so while Sam is on trial, basically. Okay. Seven point three billion.

So there's one point three billion that's missing. Plus, and there's still more in the fan. It's huge, not the only thing. And it's more than that. It's more than that. This is where today, today, the prosecution, the prosecution sent a motion to the court saying, can we please not talk about the possibility that customers are all going to get their money back? And in particular, can you get me finished?

I am. You can't. I need to let them in. Oh my God. I think what I care about is the fact that at the very least, it's important. But now you don't think it's important. I don't think it's important. I that at the very least, he's in control. I don't think it's important. I think at the very least, he's irresponsible. Of course.

I'm not saying he's not irresponsible. I'm saying it's just different than you think. Okay. Okay. If you observe, first of all, to pay, second of all, uprooted for it. Second. That is a two-way, right? His hair does not look real.

Colors, it's not giving matching color. Second observation, upload date four weeks ago, normally. Right. Third observation, obviously, he cuts off women aggressively to be wrong. And then finally, it's just the, because the listeners cannot see the size of that venue, it gave me a brief, like, I felt it in my stomach to be like, wow, that many people would gather

to see Michael Lewis just spew bullshit. And yet 15 people show up to watch me but chug a quart of milk. It's ridiculous. Yeah. Jamie, though, here's the thing. This is the difference between, you know, the same, the cultural contribution between what I call vulgar art, which is the stuff that will be forgotten,

you know, within a generation, and immortal art, right? Like the Parthenon, you know, you butt chugging the contents of infinite jest was a Parthenon level work of art. It will be with us. It missed in thousands years. It missed in thousands years. Just like the parthenon. He's in like a fucking cathedral, though.

It does look like he's in a green venue. Can you bring up a freeze frame of his face at like 1257 in that because he is doing and I think you should leave face. Like he is, he is almost a perfect character for one of those fucking sketches. Tim Robinson could do this. Oh Tim Robinson could do an amazing job of this. There's that sketch from the recent season where he's being like an on air pundit who like gets on his phone and gets real quiet, whatever he loses in argument.

Yeah. Lewis is definitely doing that kind of face in this. God. That right there, where he's like, he's gotta see. Yeah. That's what he's doing at Tim Robbins. He's doing a Tim Robbins. He's really, oh boy.

And I'm doubling down on my to on the to pay theory. Yeah. No, that here does not. I can't see a T fall enough to see if we've got the if we've got the veneers to match, but he's too rich to not have veneers. I I aspire to veneers. That's I just want to have exactly that much money. I wanted to pay how angry he gets there because we're going to address the actual facts of his claim now. Even if you take Lewis at his word, which is that it's basically fine because they recovered $7.3 out of like $9.3 billion. He's obviu skating the truth. It is accurate that Ray has announced FTX customers will see 90% of every dollar of recovered assets returned, which I would still call

that problematic because if somebody stole 10% of your bank account, you'd be kind of m assets returned. Which I would still call that problematic, because if somebody stole 10% of your bank account, you'd be kind of miffed. But that is even not what it seems like. And I'm putting from Investopedia here. To be clear, the 90% number refers to the fund's FTX is able to gain access to, rather than total customer deposits at the time of the exchange's collapse.

That doesn't necessarily mean customers will gain access to 90% of their assets that were left on the exchange. Rather, customers will gain access to 90% of the funds FTX is able to distribute to their creditors. FTX and FTX US had an estimated $8.7 billion combined shortfall by the time the crypto firm filed for bankruptcy. Roughly $6.9 billion of that shortfall, including a Bahamas

real estate portfolio, has been recovered. Let's consider Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market calculation as a capitalization, as a proxy for the broader cryptocurrency markets. On November 11th of last year, the petition date, Bitcoin was trading at around $17,000. On Friday, it crossed $30,000. So simply put, if the current plan goes through, you'd likely get 85% of the dollar value of your cryptocurrency had a hell of an FDX as a flash in November, even if the same points have almost doubled in value today. So one of those, like, both he's kind of overestimating the amount that they're going to get back. And also, because they lost, like, they still lost access to that money for it will probably

turn out to be two or three years. Like people have had to sell their homes and shit because like they had all of their money. Like that, there's harm here, right? That's what the courts are saying. Not only is there still money missing and not an insignificant amount, but like people suffered in the interim

where they didn't have access to their money. And yeah, they're crypto gamblers. I'm not, this isn't the most sympathetic population, but that is not relevant to determining whether or not Sam has legal. He's stealing 15 or 20% of a bunch of people's savings accounts is a substantial crime. The legal question is, is it a scam?

Which, like, yes. You know, and I'm sure that like everyone who, and understandably, because I walk amongst them, like everyone who was seeing this happen a couple years ago up to very recently We're like yeah, you're what are you talking about this happening is like a very you know, it's like easy to cheer it on But it's also like yeah, no Sam Bankham tree was taking advantage of every possible Mark he could yeah, and yeah, and people are still suffering ongoing harmors' result of it.

He's acting, like Lewis is acting as if there wasn't really anyone hurt, and it's like, well, no. Like, even if all of them, which will not happen, at least about 20% of that money, of deposit or money is just gone, probably more. But even if he hadn't done that, if you're still locked out of your money for two years,

because a guy illegally gambled with it, are you going to be fine that it came back eventually? No, you still didn't have that money for years, and that's a problem for you. That's a crime. I mean, and I would be more amenable to that perspective, if it was coming from someone who wasn't as like historically fabulously rich as Michael Lewis' because like a rich gaming, the rich story can be really satisfying. But this is not the guy to be making it and he's falling on the wrong side anyways.

And it's like gaming, the rich gaming, the rich because like, you did, they didn't hire Larry David to do a commercial so they could scam billionaires, right? They hired Larry David to do a commercial so they could scam billionaires, right? They hired Larry David to do a commercial so they could scam your mom, you know, because your mom likes Larry David. I'm not saying the rest of the show. I mean, most moms do, right?

He's pretty popular amongst the moms. Sound off in the comments. I don't know if my mom knows who, I mean, all the women in my family were big, sign fell fans. Does your mom watch curb message? No, no, no, but sign felled. Oh, my mom, yeah, my mom's sign fell. Okay, I'm back.

Yeah. So anyway, Michael Lewis, yeah, it's interesting to me, like the fact that the fact that Sam Bankman freed stole money from depositors, because that's what it is when you take money out of one company illegally and use it to gamble in depositors because that's what it is when you take money out of one company illegally and use it to gamble in another company. That's stealing.

Michael Lewis never uses the term stolen to describe what Sam did. And he basically goes to great lengths to claim that Sam misplaced all this money. This is again wildly inaccurate. And a good example of that is Alameda's hashtag Fiat account, which is like, that was one of the names for like the account where they were putting all of the actual US dollars that customers put in the exchange.

So customers would put US dollars into FTX and then use it to like buy cryptocurrency, right? But those US dollars needed to stay in the exchange so that people could cash out their positions, right? Otherwise, you're not doing legitimately what you're supposed to do as a business. FDX was not a bank. A bank is allowed only has to keep a certain amount in reserve, right? That's what a reserve currency is. This is an exchange. They were supposed to keep enough reserve in there to cover the value of their deposits. Sam instead took all that money and put it into Alameda.

And there's evidence that it like, it went directly into Alameda. The money people thought they were depositing into FTX, went into another company entirely. I would call that, and in fact, Sam was convicted because this is an example of fraud. Lewis depicts it as an honest mistake. And here's the New Yorker, quote,

Lewis finds that not only wholly implausible that this was, in fact, a gigantic accounting error explained by FTX's difficulty securing bank accounts. As Lewis concludes, history implausible as it sounded remained irritatingly difficult to disprove. And Lewis very gently insinuates that Ellison, in over her head, might have made some very bad decisions. very gently insinuates that Ellison, in over her head, might have made some very bad decisions. And in court, which again is a couple of weeks after his book comes out, it is proven with data from the company that Sam not only knew what he was doing, but he ordered other people to obscure this fact from customers, right? He ordered his employees to hide from customers that their money was going straight into another

company. This was proven when they actually during the court case, they had the people who programmed the exchange on Sam's behalf, like post code. And I found an analysis of FTX's code by Molly White, who does a newsletter called Citation Needed, which is quite good. Molly knows code and stuff. So here's her analyzing that. Prosecutors questioned Wang, who was the guy

who was coding the exchange, about the FTX insurance fund, which was ostensibly supposed to protect both FTX and its customers from trades that went badly, even more quickly than the exchange's risk engine could account for. FTX published the fund's supposed balance on their website and bragged widely about its existence, including a testimony to US Congress. However, according to Wang, the number balance on their website and bragged widely about its existence, including a testimony to U.S. Congress.

However, according to Wang, the numbers showed on the website was falsified. And the question is like, is this a real number Wang? No. So it's a fake number? Yes. Was the real number higher or lower than the fake number? Lower. And yeah, the way that they would do this, so like they're supposed to have this insurance

fund, which is part of what makes FTX safer than the other exchanges, is that you can't do a run on the bank because all of our deposits are backed up by cash, so we can't collapse the way that other exchanges do. To make people feel comfortable, they would show them, they had like, you could see like what the insurance fund was at, they were regularly brag, we have this much money in our insurance fund. It was a number accurate. No, all they were doing, so... What do I even ask?

The code snippets show that like they had Sam ordered Nashad Singh to write some code that would update the insurance fund amount randomly by adding it to the daily trading volume, like the amount of, basically, they would, it would calculate how much has been traded today and that would multiply that by a random number somewhere around 7500 and then divide it by a billion. So it would, that way that, it was just like how you do business. They're like, oh, so. There was never an insurance, a real insurance fund of any, like, meaningful amount of money.

They just pretended it was there by having a computer do a random equation. So it seemed like it was fluctuating over time. Yeah, that's, eh, that's not legal to do. No, no, that's fraud. Can I do that? There, and I feel like this, like, this level No, no, that's fraud. I feel like this, like this level of like splitting hairs in the New Yorker wouldn't happen unless the two main players Michael Lewis and Sam Make

Meadfried weren't tremendously privileged. Like for any other people, you would be like, yeah, so this was a lie. And then this happened. Like you wouldn't be splitting hairs like this. To be fair, the actual thrust of that New York article is like Michael Lewis is what the fuck is happening with this guy because he's clearly falling for something. Like the New York article is very critical of him. It's bringing up that he is not calling Sam Bankman free to fucking con man when he clearly is, right? So they're like headline, Michael Lewis low key fell off.

Yeah, low key. He fell off. Yeah, low key fell off. That's right. Molly Also brings up something else that was left out of court, but the prosecution published evidence of it, and I found this really telling. Elsewhere in the code, it's possible to observe that the amount of FTT, which is the token created that represented basically voting shares, it was like,

sit, it was FTX's funny money, was actually represented by a hard-coded value in the user interface and was not pulling from an external data source to get a real number. So again, they're lying about how much money is in this fund and part of how you can tell is when you would ask to see the insurance fund, it wouldn't consult back to the servers. It was just, it was doing the calculation on your own machine, right? Which is evidence that like there was never any attempt to give people accurate information. Wow. It's fun stuff. There's other fun reveals during the court case, for example,

during FTX's days as a functioning business. A lot of crypto people noticed there was a potential conflict of interest between FTX and Alameda They were like hey, it seems like you run both these companies and like traders on Alameda are use it are trading on FTX Is it possible that they're getting preferential treatment on the exchange that you also owned? There's a really telling Twitter conversation on Molly's blog where someone asked this and SBF says Alameda is the liquidity provider, but their account is just like everyone else's. And the respondent rightfully says,

I guess we're just supposed to trust you. And it turned out they were right to be worried. One of the chief selling points about FTX is that it's crash proof, right? Crypto exchanges have this weird habit, like 20 years old now, of getting really big and then collapsing, taking everyone's money with them.

Sometimes this is due to hacks, but also there's a lot of, because there's no regulation, a lot of times major traders will go bust, and that causes losses for the whole exchange, which gets socialized, right? Everybody loses money because one bad gambler gambled too much. One of FTX's selling points was that it was different. They had an algorithm to automatically freeze trades on an account once that account had suffered losses equal to the amount of money they'd put in the exchange. So you can't lose more money than you put in.

Is the basic idea? So that's how it was supposed to work and that's how it worked initially. But the limit that Alameda had for its gambling to make sure that it couldn't get an over its skis was removed later on Sam Bankman Fried's orders. And in court, Gary Wang, Sam's business partner, explained how Sam directed them to do this. Wang explained that Alameda had not started out with such a high credit limit,

but that periodically the trading firm had run into issues placing trades because they didn't have enough collateral. Sam Bankman Fried kept asking him to increase their credit limit to prevent it from happening. According to Wang, the limit was originally set to a few million dollars, but then it was increased to a billion. After they ran up against that limit too, Bankman freed asked him to set it to a number so large they wouldn't likely hit the limit. At that point, Wang set it to around 65 billion. And when I read that, what I see is this is a gambler in Vegas

who's like taking out loans to keep gambling because he's run out of money. Like he's like, you just imagine like someone just like on their knees in like shitty pins, right? Yeah. He's like, come on man. Yeah, give me, just give me some credit man.

I'm good for it. But he got up to 65 billion in credit. Yeah, yeah, which is insane. Now, when you pair all this with the stories that SPF tells, that Lewis tells of SPF's gaming addiction, you might conclude, was this kid just a fucking gambling addict, which is my, by the way, that's my interpretation. Well, there, I mean, there, to be, it sounds like this shit is neopoints to him. Like, it really is like, if there's anything that got the millennial

Generation hooked on capitalism and random gambling. It was neo pets and If anyone has proof that Sam Mangman freed was a neo pets user He just sounds like the worst version of a neo pets user to me the worst end game for a neo pets user is What you've been describing to me for several hours. And I think you and I were not invested in sandbagman freed ever being particularly smart. So we can see this. Lewis. He's a Neopets user. And I bet I was better at it than him. Well, that's the other thing. He was never very good at games. Like people found his like League of Legends account and were like,

Hey, he was mid. Like, I'm sure he wasn't good at storybook, brawl, right? Like he's just, he was never good at this. But it was the first time that Michael Lewis had heard of storybook. Yeah. So he's yeah, France that he was the best at it. Well, I'm not believe him. Yeah. And that just the idea, like again, Lewis can't be like, yeah, this kid had a gambling problem.

And he also owned a bank. so it became everyone's issue. But like, you're not... It's the bank man. It's hard to portray someone as smart if they're just addicted to gambling, right? Because that's not a smart person thing. It actually, a lot of smart people are horrible at X and a variety of ways, but like...

But it's like, it's a serious problem. In a Hollywood way, make it look like somebody's a genius if they just can't control themselves, right? Yeah, it's a serious problem. In a Hollywood way, make it look like somebody's a genius. If they just can't control themselves, right? Yeah, it's a serious, serious problem. Yeah, and again, no shame on people who have that problem, but like that does not work with how Lewis wants to portray him, right? And yeah, speaking of things that don't work. Shit. Everything you're about to advertise.

We won't have to work if you purchase these products. Okay, good self-correction. Yeah, I say. Actually, we'll continue to work. We're looking more accurate. Yeah, both true. 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? I had no idea who he had 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.

I'm Mary K. McBrayer, host of the podcast, the greatest true crime stories ever told. I write about true crime, which means I live inside the research wormhole, but I'm not necessarily interested in the headline grabbing elements, the blood, and the gore, all of that. I'm more interested in the people behind these stories and what we can learn by looking at their experiences. You can meet me every week on the greatest true crime stories ever told, where I dig

into crimes where a woman is not just a victim. She might be the detective, the lawyer, the witness, the coroner, the criminal, or some combination of these roles. I delve into the good, the bad, the difficult, and all the nuance I can find. Because these are the stories we need to know to understand the intersection of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche.

Listen to the greatest true crime stories ever told on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the Elvis Taran in the morning show for a special gathering in I Heartland in State Farm Park. It's a holiday celebration with fun talks, plus a very special Elvis Taran in the morning show poem

twist the night after Christmas. Don't miss this special event starting Monday, December 18th, at 7 p.m. Eastern at State Farm Park in I Heartland in Fortnite, available for a limited time. Afterwards, stick around and check out all the exciting things State Farm has to offer. Stay high to Jake from State Farm on the big screen and try to beat Jake Skour at the parkour mini-game. Visit iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland to start playing today. We're back! So, you know, I think it's clear from the stuff that came out in the court case that I just read some of, there's no way Alameda and FTX would have done the things

that I just described if they hadn't meant to disguise the reality of their business from the world, which is fraud, right? The reality is that Sam Bankman Friede used to posit her money to gamble. And he was gambling in part on his own chances. He wasn't just gambling. This is the thing that is important to understand.

Past a certain point, most of his gambling was not him betting on cryptocurrencies, right? The big shit he did that made the news, the billion dollars that he pumped into, renaming that stadium in Florida, to bringing in all these celebrities to these high-dollar, super ballads, that was a gamble. He was pulling a slot machine on his own chances of ascending to the halls of power, right? Sounds like him, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

One of my favorite aside bits from the court cases that on the stand when she was being questioned, Carolyn Ellison told everybody that Sam invited in her, he thought he'd had a 5% chance of becoming president of the United States. Which, well, I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but also like, look, some of the dumb asses we've got. He's probably not wrong, but you, I mean, he at least could have been like, who is that

fucking loser from Starbucks? He could have at least been there. Yeah, he could have, I think he could have had a failed presidential, but no, like, yeah. Oh, yeah, no, he did. Like, they're all dumb, like Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both done very stupid things, different kinds of very stupid things. But they both have charisma, right? That's true.

That's true. Like, again, say what you will about Joe Biden, you wouldn't have been in politics this long if he couldn't make enough people like him. And obviously, Donald Trump is very charismatic. Sandbank been free just isn't. Like, you don't become the president if you are a void of charisma.

No, and we've learned that time and time again. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like he was always all of his, his, his sudden rise to public prominence was not based on him actually being interesting. It was based on him spending tens of millions of dollars to get like Bill Clinton to pretend to be his buddy. Like that was all there ever was to it, you know? In my general research on the crypto industry, and if you're looking for actual good reading, don't buy going infinite, you won't get anything valuable

at it. If you do want to get something valuable and a deeper understanding about like how grifty this whole industry was, and also how grifty Sam was, there's a book called Number Go Up by Zeeke Faux, Zeeke F.A.U.X. Really good book, Number Go Up, which I do recommend to people curious for the dark side of crypto. Zeeke also spent time with Sam in the Bahamas, and I found this passage from his book

relevant to what I just mentioned. A few hours into our conversation, Bankman Fried told me he had to make a call. I had asked him if there was anyone who'd support his version of events, and he said I could talk with one of his few remaining supporters while I waited. In walked a hotty man with a long, scraggly beard, a pot belly and mismatched socks, one of them with a Pac-Man design, who was an employee of FTX who'd stuck around to help Bankman Fried try to find an investor to rescue the exchange. I threw it an easy question, why are you still here? I asked. He started off by saying he wanted to help FTX's customers. Then unprompted, he told me he thought there wasn't much of

a risk that Bankman Fried would ever get in trouble. I firmly believe once somebody becomes a certain level of rich, they're never a poor again, he said. They don't get a jail. Nothing bad happens to them. Wait, he has his own Zuckerberg quad. He has his own, you can be unethical and still be leaving with us the way I live my life. Ha ha, wait, read it again for me so I can really take it in. Yeah, this is Sam's friend who stuck by him after his business collapsed.

It works. I firmly believe once somebody becomes a certain level of rich, they're never poor again. They don't go to jail. Nothing bad happens to them. Poetry. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing to think in that moment too,

where all of the smarter people have just fled the island. And in that moment, he was infinite. That was, wow, wow. Yeah. I'm speechless. It's so funny too, because like, I don't know, man, just historically, you remember like, Marie Antoinette was pretty rich, and like that didn't end well, you know?

Like there's a lot of... Well, a lot of Pearson does play a lot of money. But his daughter had a lot of money. It did go well for him. You know, bad things happen to rich people too. Wow. And that's your main political stance as I recall. Yeah.

Yeah, I will hang out with anybody rich because nothing bad can happen to them. Obviously untrue. I kind of suspect that that sort of, I don't know, the fact that so much of what was said, like Zeke Foe is clearly someone who's smart enough to like understand when he's being lied to by these people and to understand their fundamental absurdity and that comes across in his book. I don't think Lewis got that, right? He believed fundamentally in the fundamental honesty at the center of Sampecman Fried and I kind of suspect that's why he covered

his face with his hands that day in court. He's not a dumb man and he must have realized by that point, the evidence that came out in the trial was undeniable that he got Kant too. One of the most remarkable things about going infinite is how much to tale Lewis provides about FTX's collapse without ever calling Sam a liar. The Guardians Review noted this too. He thought Bankman Fried hadn't lied to him at all, or at least that he'd only lied by a mission, not by commission. Late in the book, Lewis asks Bankman Fried, what would you have done if I'd asked you

specifically about FTX customer funds being used by Alameda? Bankman Fried admits that he would have changed the subject or rustled up a word, salad. And whatever the facades are wrecked by other effective altruists, Lewis considers Bankman Fried to be enigmatic but essentially genuine, and certainly not out to enrich himself, because he has no desire for the things that money can buy. Lewis is refusal to believe that Sam Beckman freed his allire in the most venal, base sense of the word, is based, I think, on a sense of professional pride. That explains why he's so adamant about pushing the line that there was no money missing,

and it's why he continued to defend Sam's dissembling as a fun quirky character trait while the trial was going on. See, as part of the cash in ongoing infinite, Michael Lewis launched a podcast, judging Sam, the trial of Sam Bankman-free. Oh, it was a, oh, is he. And who? Who, but everyone on this call knows that the first sign that your life is about

to be fucking torched is starting a podcast. That's right. That's right. It's the last refuge of fools and scoundrels. Yeah. Please pay for the cool stuff, free subscription at what do we call it, Sophie? So the trial judging Sam is part of Lewis's against the rules podcast on pushkin. And I can't speak for the regular episodes of that podcast.

I have not listened to any of the other ones, but I can say his Sam Bankman-free trial podcast is an uneven effort at best. Most of the work is done by Lydia Jean. She's a journalist. She's okay. I don't have any huge issues with her. I think we get a little too much like, here's what the court kitchen is like. Here's anecdotes from the fun lives of the journalist covering it. But also, yeah, then it's like,

my least favorite part of every public radio and I love public radio, but the broadcast where it like begins with six minutes of a guy stepping on leaves and you're like, oh my god, I get it, you're in fucking New Hampshire and on top of our. It's permanently fall where you in PR people leave. We understand. Yes. But every podcast on this trial does something like that. I think it's just because they were doing like basically daily episodes and needed to fill runtime.

And like, look, is that lazy? Yes, have we all been there? Yes. So I simply can't throw stones at this glass house. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? You're kidding me! As someone who's never had a daily podcast, I condemn this behavior because I've never had to do it.

So, Louus, Louie, it takes most of the, I have the lifting on this show because Louus was on tour for his book, right? And so, he couldn't be there for most of it. He was barely at the trial. Yeah, he was screaming at women and cathedrals. He was busy. Yeah. But he does occasionally come on. And one of the episodes that does shit like he shows up to court on the day that Sam takes the trial and or takes the stand in his own defense. And you know, during this portion where he's like Sam's being cross-examined, he says, I don't recall more than a hundred times.

Here's how a write-up from the verge summarizes his time on the stand. Bankman Fried's demeanor suggested a spoiled child complaining he didn't get the biggest scoop of ice cream at his birthday party. He didn't want to answer the prosecutor's questions or his lawyer's questions. He wanted to answer his own questions, which he liked better. He often replied to yes and no questions with nonsense. We were getting introduced to a document where Bankman freed listed his priorities, including getting accounting right on FTX. Cohen and Bankman freed Cohen's lawyer, and Bankman freed used this to show how devoted Bankman freed was to getting to the bottom of

the general fiasco with Alameda's money. The idea was to display in real time FTX's revenue in expenses where its bank accounts were, how much investor money it had, and so on. This did reveal Bankman Fried's priorities, getting accounting right was ranked 9th. So for the stories Bankman Fried wanted to tell, we had to rely on Bankman Fried. We moved on to Bankman Fried's argument about hedging, which I still do not understand, except as a way for him to say he's a smarter trader than his ex-girlfriend, the former Alameda Research CEO, Carolyn Ellis. God, this is more stand-up behavior.

The actual evidence suggests that Ellis and his both a better trader and much savour than Bankman Freed. She modeled at a risk scenario that matched almost exactly what happened at FTX, for instance, to try to keep him from sinking $2 billion into venture investing. And like, what happens is he's putting, you know, all this money and dad advertising into like playing celebrities, he's putting like $2 billion into these random series of investments and she's like, hey, we've taken deposit or money to gamble with. We have to keep more cash on hand.

Otherwise, the whole exchange could collapse. Sam ignores her, the exchange collapses, and then he blames her for not hedging, right? And a hedge is, when you take like a bet that one thing will happen, you take the opposite bet at a smaller amount of money so that if, no matter what happens, you can't lose too much money, right?

Right. But there's no hedging, the kind of risks that FDX was taking. Because the fundamental risk was, we don't have enough money if there's a run on the bank, you know? Well, there, there risk goes, we're never going to die. Like there, you can't, you can't hedge that. Yeah. What is wild to me is like, everything you're describing is ridiculous. And it makes total sense that it fucking impl uploaded in the catastrophic way that it did. But then you also, I mean, so much of it sounds like the kind of stuff that, for example,

Michael Lewis might report on is a tremendous scam that worked out great for everybody. Yeah. And it's, so, you know, again, that quote from the verge is pretty similar to how most reporters who were there at the trial described it, it is wildly different from how Michael Lewis describes how Sam reacts on the stage, right? Oh, okay. Yeah, and it's interesting because like obviously

most people were able to say, oh yeah, Sam is just lying on the stand. He's obviously skating, he's refusing to answer the question. But Michael Lewis, not only does Michael Lewis like being lied to by Sam Bakeman-Fried, he thinks Sam's defensive cloud of bullshit, right? This like word salad is better than the truth. And he says this in his fucking podcast, Jamie.

You're gonna love this clip. Today he didn't get as much trouble as he got yesterday though.. Not as much, but still a little bit more than other witnesses. That's true. The bigger point is the judge is sitting there listening to see if Sam is actually answering the question. Because he now knows he doesn't do that, yeah. Or generating a word salad for us all to consume. And I was thinking about this again today.

Why Sam's word salads are so fun. Like why he gets away. Like most people when they don't answer a question, your alarm bells go off pretty quickly. Like that, you just redirect it in some way. He's really, really good at starting the answer in a place where you think, oh, that's where the beginning of the answer belongs. And then making a little jump into, things are actually interesting to know about. So you're not bored. You're actually interested in what he said.

You're saying like there's substance to it. He's not just saying nothing. He's saying something that's substantive and makes you think it's just not what you asked, but then you're thinking and you forget what you asked. That's exactly what happens. Yeah, so that's like, he's just saying that like, yeah, Sam's lies, he's really good at lying.

Like, and it's fun to listen to him lie, as if that's a defense, right, where they're saying like, well, they really painted a different picture of Sam because they, you know, he got to get up on the stage and bullshit. That's good. That's a very interesting exchange to listen to as well, because it's like, you know, because got to get up on the stage and bullshit. That's good. It does a very interesting exchange to listen to as well. Yeah.

Because it's very clear that Michael Lewis has very little to do with this podcast. I don't know. I can think of a number of examples of a big name podcaster coming on their show to be combative with the people who are actually making the show for them. And that exchange too is like, no, like I know what you're saying. But yeah, and even in much she's describing like the court approaches, either he's a genius or he's like an incompetent sweetie pie, but you're just like, or he's a malevolent dumbass.

Or he's the kid. A con man. But like, yeah, I love this idea that like, yeah, we're getting to see the real Sam who is a guy who never answers your actual question. But like, I want to continue the clip because Lewis has something very, very ridiculous right after this. Okay. He's really, really good at starting the answer in a place where you think, oh, that's

where the beginning of the answer in a place where you think, oh, that's where the beginning of the answer belongs. And then making a little jump into, things are actually interesting to know about. So you're not bored. You're actually interested in what he said. You're saying like there's substance to it. He's not just saying nothing. He's saying something that's substantive

and makes you think it's just not what you asked, but then you're thinking and you forget what you asked. That's exactly what happens. It's engaging. It's like, maybe it's even better than the answer to the question. Like it's not. Right, maybe it's what you should have asked. That's exactly right.

Yeah, the question Sam answers that aren't what he's being asked or what you should have asked, right? Like he's smarter than you, the interviewer, and he knows what you actually should have asked, which I just thought was a wild thing for a journalist to say. This is, you know, we're getting to the end here, but the last thing I wanted to bring up was maybe the most interesting case of Michael Lewis following Sam's crap, which is him believing that Sam's outfit, his hairstyle, his poor hygiene are all evidence of his brilliance, right?

Sam just didn't have time to like take care of his appearance in any way. He was too smart to waste any of like his his brain power on that. And that article in Jacobin gives a really good summary of how the actual testimony of Sam's former friends and court blew this idea out of the water. The prosecutor followed with questions about Sam's approach to public relations. Ellison explained he was trying to cultivate an image of himself as a sort of very smart competence, somewhat a centric founder.

I was sitting in an overflow room on that day. So when the prosecutor asked how would you describe the defendant's personal appearance through 2022, the room was allowed to erupt into laughter. Ellison replied, he looked like he didn't put a lot of effort into his personal appearance. He dressed sort of sloppy and didn't cut his hair off. And he said he thought his hair had been very valuable. He said ever since Jane Street, he thought he had gotten higher bonuses because of his hair. And it was an important part of FDX's narrative and image.

God. Yeah. First and embarrassing, but also I think, you know think clearly predicated on the dipshit billionaire's that came before him. There is a clear aesthetic and a clear, like, you know, slavvnly genius thing that he's like a strategic. And that's interesting, right? The fact that Sam is standing on the shoulders of giants of Steve Jobs unw unwashed shoulders. Like, Mark Zuckerberg's hoodie and whatever we eat for us is like this. Genocide hoodie that he wears.

Yeah, yeah. And it's like, yeah, Lewis describes it as like everything in Sam's appearance felt less like a decision than a decision not to make a decision. And no, what everyone says at FTX is like, he was obsessed with like his hair. When they were spending, trying to build their $200 million

or whatever new headquarters, his only design note was that it should be shaped so it looked from the side like his hairs do. Because he thought that, he thought it was iconic, right? Like, which is also based on what we were just listening to, what the logo to that podcast is,

is the shape of his hair, everyone's playing into it. Yeah. It's fucking wild. Anyway, Jamie, that's my episode. Do you think we should fire Michael Lewis into the sun? Well, I was thinking earlier, I am very curious because I think it's like a waste of time to ask, will Michael Lewis have another opportunity

to course-crackage career? Of course he will. Of course he will. Yes. He's going to write 70 more books. Well, what I'm curious about is like where he goes from here. I feel like it's pretty telling if you've been content, this fucking degree, because no one clocked him in the blind side, but now he's been pretty severely clocked as like giving in to his worst biases and reporting it as facts. And I do wonder like, if that's the position you're in and you will absolutely write another book because you're unkillable financially. Like I wonder which direction he's going to go in.

Is he going to be hyper cautious? Is he going to play it safe? Is he going to be self-reflective at all or is he going to double down on the falling for it kind of stuff? I genuinely don't know because I just like, it's very hard to discern what kind of person, like it seems like he's certainly, you know, like high on his own supply and it's like,

well, you know, of course anyone could have fallen for it, but he is sort of conceding to the fact that he fell for it. I just am curious what happens to someone from there. My suspicion, and maybe I'll be wrong about this. I think we'll know pretty soon. I think he's gonna do another Sam. I specifically think he's going to... A second Sam.

Yeah, a second Sam is hit the Michael Lewis bibliography. And it's going to be Sam Altman. Like he's gonna do a Sam Altman. Like he's going to do a Sam Altman, the open AI guy who just got fired from his job. He's going to do a book on Sam Altman. I suspect. I'm not gonna stop it. You're probably right. You're probably, because then he'll be like, and I would know I can see through Sam's now having been conned by one. I certainly won't be conned by two.ian, Sam on you. Sam me twice won't get Sam'd again, you know? Just like George Bush said.

I am father of Sam's. Son of Sam me shit. Wow, yeah, no, that, um. That's my guess as to where this goes is Sam on. What a, why is Michael Lewis being presented with a second Sam? Doesn't seem fair. My second Sam is it that,

well, I've already done that joke once. And it worked. And it always works, Jay. It always works. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, I don't feel a gr- Well, I'd say that this is like in the top 20% dial of Baster's

episodes, I've come out feeling like, you know, I don't feel that bad. I usually feel like really dire. I feel pretty good. Yeah. He's in forever jail. Mm-hmm. He's in forever jail, right? Yeah.

Speaking of forever jail, Jamie, talent is like a jail that locks you into, for example, making a weekly podcast. And I am happy that you and I are about to be cellmates. We are, I'm so excited. It's different. We get to do the fun thing, we're like, we can't talk much about it yet, but there's a weekly podcast.

Yeah, can't talk much about it, but Jamie Loftus weekly is coming to the CoolZone Network. You were going to be the cool hand Luke of our podcast. You're welcome. God, I would love to be the cool hand Luke with the podcast. Yeah. I got to get some new outfits. You got to get some new outfits. No, that's not the one. Is that the one where he throws a baseball at the wall or is that the great escape? I feel like that was cool hand Luke.

I haven't seen him in a long time. Neither of I. Not since I was like seven. So I don't know. Why are you so cool hand look when you were seven? Yeah, my mom loved that movie. Nice. My mom had very strict rules on what I could watch on as movies as a kid, unless it was a movie she liked,

which is why I was in first grade when we watched Alien. Oh, it's so. Ooh, that explains so much about you too. Like you saw, you saw it. She was so much about you to me too. Like, you saw, you saw it. She was so excited that all the men die and the woman didn't, like, yeah, she wanted me to see that movie at a very young age. What a legacy.

Truly, what a legacy. The sentence because Minner's stupid was uttered two or three times during that movie. Which does unpack a lot of the plot in tender or not. Yeah. My mom would let me watch soap operas very young and would I would be like, what do they mean when they say making love? And she would say, what do you think? I don't know.

I'm seven. Yeah. Yeah. You haven't you have not equipped me to answer that question, mother. Oh. Well, yes, weekly podcast coming soon early next year. not equipped me to answer that question, mother. Well, yes, weekly podcast coming soon early next year. What's it about? You guess, but don't contact me about it because you're wrong. Yeah. Yeah. A second Jamie has hit the cool zone. I mean, you've done more than two podcasts. This joke never worked. But

whatever. A first Jamie has is the cool zone weekly. That's right. Jamie, what podcast is this about ours? Oh God, how many, how many, this will be what? Oh my God. Oh, the possible to say, it's impossible to say. When I think it's like six. Yeah.

I think it's like six. We've entered the half dozen range. It's getting dangerous. That's so cool for us. I know we're forever wives Yeah, it's a big man freed forever Jill forever Jill us forever wives So Jamie anything else you wanted to plug before we ride on out of here like my Yeah, it's the holidays. Are you looking for something to get for your loved or hated one? I won't know. Buy a copy of raw dog. It's my book about hot dogs. And if you don't like hot dogs, the title's funny. And I think that's, you know, about 60% of the purchases I've gotten have been

off that alone. So you should buy raw dog. And yeah. Buy raw dog. And now I'm not going to make a raw dog joke, that's just going to get me in trouble. Anyway, by a cooler zone media subscription and you won't have to hear ads or don't by a cooler zone media subscription and continue to listen to ads. It's, I don't care, live your life. I'm not your fucking dad. If you really want to hear the advertising that Robert's disparaging, I personally think it's more fun to imagine it. So you should get a color zone media

subscription. Yeah. Yeah. Once everyone's on cooler zone media, then we can finally get that sweet Lockheed Martin subscription that I or whatever ad deal that I've been wanting to have. And then Robert can finally live inside a grenade. Like it's always been his dream. That's been my dream. That's been my dream, Jamie. Yeah. All right, we're done.

Bye. We did it. Behind the bastards is a production of Coolzone Media. For more from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart 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 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. I'm Mary K. McBrayer, host of the podcast, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told, where I dig into crimes where a woman is not just a victim. She might be the detective, the lawyer, the witness, the coroner, the criminal, or some combination of those roles. These are the stories we need to know to understand the intersection

of society, justice, and the fascinating workings of the human psyche. Listen to the greatest true-crime stories ever told on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Plus a very special Elvis Durant in the Morning Show poem twist the night after Christmas. Don't miss this special event starting Monday, December 18th at 7 p.m. Eastern at State Farm Park in I Heartland in Fortnite, available for a limited time. Afterwards, stick around and check out all the exciting things

State Farm has to offer. Stay high to Jake from State Farm on the big screen and try to beat Jake Skour at the parkour minigame. Visit iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland to start playing today. Visit iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland to start playing today.