well, look who it is. what a surprise! as if! i can't believe i found you here! it's been so long. can ijust say i'm standing here feeling kind ofjealous? why? well, look. and we didn't even put it there. it wasn't even staged. no? no. well, i mean, it's selling very well, so why not? and the cover looks good. i think the cover kind of pops. i'm wondering if you get a bit... you know, i've had it one or two times, books in windows, but you must get it all the time. so, the thing that makes my socks go up and down is not seeing the book in the book store window, but it's walking down the aisle of an aeroplane and seeing people read the book. when you see people reading it... i've sat next to somebody once who was reading my book and i didn't say anything. so, i had exactly that experience. after liar�*s poker came out, i was... it was a version of this — i sat down to reread my book because i was coming back for the paperback book tour

from england and the guy next to me goes... he looks at the book and he says, "i read that book." and i said, "oh." and before i could stop him, he says, "cynical— both laugh we spent... it was a seven—hour flight. seven hours, and he's playing 20 questions, trying to figure out who i was, and he was getting closer and closer and closer. and it was just horrendous! did you manage... by the time you landed, he didn't figure it out? no, he hadn't figured it out. shall we go on in? i mean, i used to live in washington, so... i know. it's lovely. this is my favourite book shop in dc. well, i can see why. so, this is interesting because your books were all over the store. you got to just make sure people don't miss that one. it is the author's instinct, isn't it? it is. actually, it's. .. but it's put in the right position. put it over someone else's. yes.

katty laughs i shouldn't do that. here. no, i think it shows up enough. you write about such an eclectic group of subjects, but you write about them in a similar way. is that fair? if your point of entry is character, and it doesn't matter where the character is, you can go anywhere. if you think about, like, my first book here, this one. all right, that taught me a lesson, and the lesson was... liar�*s poker? liar�*s poker taught me a lesson. and the lesson was, if you can attach the reader to a person, they'll follow that person anywhere. and i knew i needed to explain, like, the mortgage bond market. who wanted to read about the mortgage bond market? but once you were attached to me, they would follow me into the mortgage bond market. and so all these books are just using the same device. so, when you say i write about it in the same way, i think that's true. it sort of tends to be characterfirst, and the character leads you through material, teaches you, gives you insights, all the rest. but a lot of authors write about character, but you also, on top of that, i'd say the kind of thing

you're known for is choosing these subjects that are quite dense, quite nerdy, don't sound on paper. if i was giving, getting the elevator pitch... right. ..i wouldn't think, "oh, yeah, that's a blockbuster subject "that everybody�*s going to want to read about." then you turn them into movies that brad pitt wants to be in. so, it's funny you say that, because i have found... it's almost a reliable indicator that i've found my next subject. if i'm at a dinner party and someone says, "what are you working on?" and i say it, and the eyes glaze over and there's no follow—up question and it's like... you can see them thinking, "god, ifeel so sorry for this bleep. "he's got to write this book about that." and what has happened is i've gotten particularly interested in something, and seen something that's interesting about it, that isn't obvious to the world in some way. and so, it actually is... that ends up being a good thing in the end. it's sort of like... it's a little bump. do you really want to read about high—frequency trading or do you really want to read about the united states government? right. right? and the first initial bump—up when someone says, "actually, you do because..."

people light up. it's like, now i have a reason to go learn something new. so, what comes first? isit...? er... ..the tradings of wall street and people don't know what they're doing? the big short... is it the subject, the inner workings of the american government, the pandemic planning, the back office of a baseball team and the number crunchers? or is it the characters that you're looking for? i can't do it without a character, so that's a necessary ingredient. sometimes the idea has preceded the character, like the big short. what i knew, i knew the wall street firms had made these catastrophic bets on subprime mortgages, right? i knew that they were the stupid money at the table, and that was a new thing, and that there was smart money at the table. the question was who. so, in that case, it was... well, it turned out there were 15 money managers who'd kind of gone all in on this bet. and i did a casting search. i went looking for characters to tell the story about what had happened. i didn't need the character

until after i had the notion. moneyball was sort of like all at once, that i was asking... i was just curious. how is this baseball team winning games who doesn't have any money? and when i met billy beane and he started to explain it to me, it was both him and the idea happening at once. sometimes it's like, going for a new one, itjust starts with like... the character. ..the character and a situation. like, totally socially maladjusted human being, who, in most of human history, the world would've found no particular use for, goes from being worth nothing to being worth $22.5 billion in 18 months and then starts to change the world in all kinds of weird ways. michael, let's talk about your book, the new one, the one you were just saying to me has caused all of this noise. so, you spent a lot of time with sam bankman—fried before you started even writing the book.

mm—hm. and i was wondering whether the... you write about this guy who's brilliant, creates this crypto exchange. it's quite a dense subject. he is very nerdy, and you spend a lot of time interviewing him, and then it all sort of spectacularly gets derailed. and i was wondering, did your narrative process, to the extent that while you were interviewing him, you had a plan for what you were going to write, did that get derailed, too, by what happened to sam? we got railed more than derailed. really, because i had... iwent in... i go, usually, into these things kind of groping. i found some character who i find interesting and he's in some weird situation. and so you had this person who... child of academics, clearly kind of socially troubled — like, he has trouble with other people... ..has become one of these instant billionaires, and notjust a billionaire, like, forbes had him at $22.5 billion and it took him 18 months to get it. then he was going to give it all away to save humanity. so, there's this odd backdrop.

that led me in, and it wasjust like, what is the story here? and i spent... well, i met him in the fall, october—ish of 2021, and i started to really immerse myself in the bahamas at ftx injanuary, february of the next year. so, all the way through november, when it collapses, i hadn't written a word. i'd played with ideas about how the book might go. when we got to november and it collapsed, until it collapsed, i didn't know how the book ended, i didn't know where it was going. and i had agonising conversations with friends and with myself about whether i would even do it, cos ijust didn't know it was going to work as a book. and my view of him, i'd always... one of the things that interested me was the way his mind worked. he thrived, he thought, and maybe it's true, in these semi—chaotic environments, and so he created them over and over.

and you could see that this business, before it all fell apart, was like, this isn't normal. there's no organisation chart, there's no list of employees. nobody has a title that bears any relationship to what they actually do. people don't know who they report to or who reports to them. it's just like total chaos, that it isn't that surprising that something went wrong, but i would never have guessed what. .. that's the calibre. what happened surprised me cos it's so stupid. it made... it didn't... if you understand the businesses, it doesn't make a great deal of sense what he did. he torpedoed a company that was worth $40 billion, that he had owned more than half of, for the benefit of this hedge fund that was maybe worth nothing or not worth much, and that he should've just gotten rid of long ago. that was the oddness of it that i had to sort of adapt to. there's a great scene at the end of the book. let's fast forward and talk a little bit about your relationship with sam because, as you say, there's been quite a lot of noise about it.

but there's a scene... we didn't sleep together. i know you didn't sleep together. michael laughs and that is not what the noise has been about, just to be clear, 0k? 0h, 0k. this is a family—friendly programme. there's this... but it is interesting. i find this sometimes as a journalist, you know, how close do you get to somebody? how much does natural human empathy kick in against my reporter's instincts? i'm sure you have that. you must�*ve had that... so, i've had that problem with other subjects because i know how sensitive and easily wounded they might be. he was unbelievably easy in this regard because he himself, by his own admission, lacks a lot of human feeling. i knew he didn't feel anything about me. he didn't care about me. he never asked me a single question about myself. he never asked me what i was doing. he didn't ask me, like, what was it like to write moneyball? nothing. no question like that. no interest whatsoever in me, and i sensed it. so, it was pretty easy for me not to have that much interest in his feelings. that's interesting.

do you ever have that with your characters? do you feel they've got close to you or into your heart or into your brain, and therefore it's hard to be objective about them ? the answer to that is yes, that it's almost always you develop a lot of feeling, because there is feeling in the air after a while. for the most part, those feelings don't, i think, affect how i write. but there are times when i know i have those feelings and i have to just make sure that they won't bother me when i write, but this wasn't one of them. do you have, like... tricks sounds glib, but do you have strategies that you fall back on to get people to open up? yeah. you do things with them. you don'tjust talk to them. you don'tjust have an interview. you play padel tennis or you go on a trip or you accompany them to their meetings. so i'm approaching this all wrong. well, we walked down the street and went to the book store together, and we've spent

time together before, so we're past that point. but the breaking the ice thing? the single bestjob interview i ever got, i ever had, was for leading a very fancy tour group that sent rich american kids on fancy trips through europe, and they hired recent college graduates to lead them. i went to new york city. so, i use this in my writing life. get an interview with the head of the tour company. his name is robbie brown. and i get there and he goes, "oh, my god, iforgot you were coming for an interview. "i'm so sorry. we're moving the furniture "from this office down to this office. "i'll talk to you another time. "could you just help me move the furniture?" so we move desks, we move cabinets, all the rest. and then he says, "i'll call you in for the interview "when i need to." instead, he called and said, "you got thejob." flash forward three months, i'm in a bed in, like,

belgium, with my fellow leader in this fancy tour operation. and i said, "you know, itjust occurred to me, i never "really had a job interview. "i just moved this guy's furniture from one side of the "office to the other." my fellow leader said, "i did that too. "i went in and he said, �*sorry, iforgot we...”' and what he was doing, it's so smart... yeah. ..you learn so much about people when you cooperate with them. are they a team player? having any thoughts about doing things? will they voice those thoughts? how do they interact with... are they generous? all that. a million things that you learn playing, doing things with them, playing games with them. so i do do that. that's one trick. another trick is force myself to look... ..look at the places where the character is least self—conscious, like. . .your toenails. you know, it's not yourface. it's like you look at your face and you want your face to... you're thinking that's what people are looking at, right? and so that's going to be very self—conscious. it's where you are, you think nobody is looking where it gets really interesting. and so i try to look where nobody is looking, i try to be where nobody is.

before you became a writer, you studied art history. mm. and then you worked as a cabinet—makerfor a bit. i worked at wildenstein, the art dealership first, six months, the famous... moving paintings around. i was a stock boy for wildenstein but, i mean, the minute i got there, it was a fabulous job. i get to hold all the art, know all what they owned. they owned billions and billions of dollars of art. and i got to have that interaction with the stuff. then i worked as a... three months, apprenticed as a woodworker in newjersey with a master cabinet—maker. then i went and led teenage girls through europe on these fancy trips, and then i ended up at the london school of economics. i did a master's in economics for two years. but from art history to cabinet—making to london school of economics to do a master's in economics, it's not an obvious... there's no, no... ..path. i was growing. you were looking. i knew when i graduated that i... at every stop, i was writing. i knew i wanted to write, but i didn't know how

it was going to happen. you had a plan to go to wall street and make a ton of money and then become a writer, very sensibly, by the way. everyone should make money before they start to write books. that's right. yeah. and then you sort of ditched the plan. i ditched the plan. two things happened. one was the attention my writing was getting was going through the roof. i was writing under my... i had to write under my mother's maiden name, mainly because i was getting in trouble with the wall street firm, cos i was writing about wall street kind of stuff. but i could see, oh, my goodness, like, people will read, people want what i'm writing. that helped. but the big thing that happened was... what was i? 26? been there two years. i looked up ahead of me in the firm and these ancient 35—year—olds. i thought, would that person ever leave now to be, to do anything? and by the time you were 35, you were so yoked to the place and the money, you had a whole life built around being in this place. i knew that if i hung around

that long, i'd just never leave and so it scared me. so ijust went, i pushed away. ijust said, "i've got to just take that risk." and you called your dad up and he said... he thought i was insane. yeah. no, no, theyjust handed me... i mean, he was a very prominent lawyer, ran a law firm in new orleans, and theyjust paid me as much as he got paid. and he was like, "what on earth? "i know you don't know anything. "i know you don't know anything about money. "you just got paid $250,000." and i said, "this isjust the ante. "they say next year is twice as much." and he goes, "you cannot leave. "you cannot leave." and... he laughs my dad gives great advice. | he was... i usually... i wasn't like most children. i usually listen to my dad. twice in my life i didn't. and that was the second time. and...he was wrong. it was... i mean, it could have gone a whole different direction, but the book that came out of that, liar�*s poker, just set me up, right? i mean, i didn't have

to worry about money. i didn't have to worry about what i was going to do with my life and it's been like... i hope he said, "i was wrong." i hope he one day said... no, i think he actually refuses to acknowledge now that... oh, yeah, no, he's forgotten his investment advice, that happens all the time. i never would have said that. are there ever bits of a story that you find hard to write about? you don't write about romance very much. you don't write about... well... i mean, you don't... there is... you mean sex? relationships generally. yeah. intimate relationships. i think the relationship between michael oher and the tuohys in the blind side — very interesting, intimate relationship, and continues to be. so i've written about... and i've written about being a father. i've written a book about fatherhood. i've written a book about... when it's my relationship, i've done a lot of that, right? i've done... i did a little book about a relationship i had with a high school coach, that... so i don't, i don't have any trouble... and i'm not put off by it.

do i want to write a... i don't know. do i want to write a conventional love story? i'm not disinterested in relationships, but maybe you're on to something, i don't know. i don't know about this one. i don't know about that theory. next one. you mentioned fatherhood. mm. i want to ask you about dixie. all right. may i? yep. and you've said that you want to honour her legacy. mm—hm. how do you do that? i have a peculiar way of dealing with the death of my child. and it's grown out of... it's grown out of a feeling that is, right from the beginning, that there was a pretty serious gap between what people expected me to feel and how i felt and... i mean, the most obvious example was i had lots of letters from people who had lost children, who proceeded to tell me that i would be living with these feelings of guilt. and i thought, "that's

strange, cos "i just don't even feel that. "i feel incredible sadness. "i feel loss." and the loss i'm feeling, i'm realising, is a loss of love, but i don't feel guilt. like, i was a great dad. she had a great life. we loved each other. there was, you know, to use the sports metaphor, which she would love to use, we left it all on the field, right? so it wasn't like, ok, we lost, but it's not that we didn't try. so i didn't feel the things that were coming at me and in the books that were written about it, i'd look at it and i'd say, "that's not my experience." and i finally concluded that i'm going, i think i have to approach this in a funny way, the way i approach literary subjects. it's sort of like it's my vision i'm trying to purify. it's my particular... everybody has an unusual circumstance, a unique circumstance that, that how you feel and how you're going to go through this is how, it's partly how you're wired, it's partly what your relationship

was with the person you lost, it's probably how they died. it is dependent on a lot of different things. so this is going to be an individual sport, me figuring out how to live with the grief. you've spoke about gratitude, which, you know, it sounds like such a hard place to get to when you've lost a child. how do you get to gratitude? the intensity of the pain i felt, and still feel, is in direct proportion to the power of the love i felt. and i didn'tjust love my child, all three of my children i feel the same way. i liked my child. i just... it was a friendship and a parenting relationship at the same time. and... ..i'm incredibly grateful that i felt that way. like, the grief is so pure. like, the sadness... none of these toxic emotions. there's not anger, there's not

guilt, there's not whatever it is, the regret, those kind of things that kind of eat at you. sadness doesn't eat at you. sadness, you know, tears and laughter go together. you're in a different emotional space when you're in tears and laughter than you are with anger and resentment and guilt. and then i'm grateful that the relationship was such that she's left me with tears and laughter. so i don't have that much trouble getting to that spot. there's a meta thing going on too, though, and it's... i really do think. so you talk about how you get to know people and you look at their toenails as opposed to how they do their make—up. listen very carefully to the way people tell their stories, and you will learn a lot about them. you'll notice patterns. there's always someone who's getting shafted, or there's always someone who something lucky happened to them, or there's always someone who's being offended by people, or that...

the patterns are the way people... people think that their story is just an objective story, but in fact, what they're doing is imposing their kind of, their make—up, their psychology on the world and generating the same story over and over. my children all say, they all say i'm the luckiest person they've ever known. and one of the things they say is that, like, "whenever we go to a restaurant, "there's always a parking spot for you "right outside the restaurant." and i say, "you know why that is?" and they go, "why?" i says, "because i look for the parking spot. "i assume it's going to be there." most people think the spot right outside the restaurant's going to be taken, but i think it's going to be there and it isn't always there, but they think it's there an unusual amount of time for me. it's just that i'm always looking for it cos i think i'm going to get it. and i think that if you... that narrative is important and i've kind of insisted on forcing the narrative with dixie's death and dixie. it's another way of honouring her. she doesn't need me to curl up in a little ball and never

do anything again. she needs me to be big and brave and honour her. here's to dixie. aw. thank you. yeah. hello. we've had some fairly chilly weather over the past few days, but things are about to get colder, as we're going to see a blast of arctic air moving in for the next couple of days. so a drop in temperature and some snow showers which will cause a bit of disruption, particularly in the north. so we've got a couple of weather fronts shifting their way south, opening the doors to these cold northerly winds, bringing us that arctic air. through the next few hours,

already some snow showers working in across parts of shetland, mainland north of scotland. also seeing a little bit of snowfall, a few light rain showers, further south. but actually most of us are dry and as the sun rises, i think, first thing, temperatures are going to be just about either side of freezing. so through the day on sunday then we've got the snow showers packing in across the north of scotland. it's also going to be really windy, particularly up towards the northern isles, where gusts could reach 70 miles an hour, so blizzard conditions there. further south, few spots of light rain, perhaps northern ireland, wales, into central southern england. but most places are going to be avoiding these showers and we'll see temperatures between about 3 to 6 degrees, but it'll feel cooler with the wind, especially in the north. now, heading on into monday, snow showers continue to pack in on that northerly breeze. they'll become more frequent across the northern half of scotland, but also for northern ireland, some snow possible here on monday and through some of these irish sea coasts, perhaps. pembrokeshire, one or two snow showers also possible for the likes of the north york moors towards norfolk as well. most of us, though, looking dry with some wintry sunshine. but look at those temperatures, just1 to 5 on the thermometer. but when you add on those

brisk northerly winds, it's really going to feel bitterly cold. feeling around about —5, —6 around some of those east coasts, for instance. moving through into tuesday, and nowjust have a look at these showers just moving in for northern ireland, perhaps southern scotland, perhaps one or two into parts of northwest england and wales as well. there is the potential for a little bit more disruptive snow on tuesday, especially moving in towards the central belt, i think, later on in the day. so we're keeping an eye on the snow showers in the north, but further south and east, i think, you're going to be staying dry if cold again. so there's that area of low pressure bringing a bit of snow i think for some of us on tuesday. that clears away. this area of low pressure towards the south is most likely to be staying out across france, but if it does push further north into that colder air. across southern england, it could bring a bit of snow. either way, i think next week we're looking at a colder week, a fair amount of dry weather in the south, some snow showers mainly in the north and sharp overnight frosts. bye— bye.

live from washington, this is bbc news. taiwan's president—elect, william lai, vows to stand up to chinese intimidation in his first speech after his election victory. president biden says he's sent a private message to iran about the houthis in yemen following us and uk airstrikes targeting the group. and as the pivotal iowa caucuses approach, a severe winter storm is putting a damper on republican campaigning.

iam i am helena iam helena humphrey i am helena humphrey and iam helena humphrey and it i am helena humphrey and it is good to have you with us. taiwan has asked china to respect the results of its presidential election after voters elected a candidate who vowed to maintain taiwan's independence. china had warned voters not to vote for the doctor—turned—politician william lai, who represents the democratic progressive party. now, he won 40% of the vote, beating the other two opponents by a wide margin. mr lai's victory could increase tensions with china, which has called mr lai a troublemaker and separatist. china considers taiwan a part of its territory. it has been calling for a — quote — "peaceful reunification" but has not ruled out the use of force. in recent months, the country has ramped up its military presence on the island, heightening fears of a possible conflict. i spoke to the bbc�*s steve lai about the significance of this election. steve, what does this election

result mean for taiwan and the region?