he was found not guilty on all counts in november 2016. can we please give a big hand took clarence moses. >> welcome. >> you can watch this other programs online booktv.org. >> the tvs monthly in depth program with michael lewis. the soloists have written many books most recently the undoing project, friendship that changed our minds. >> you are the author of more than a dozen best-selling books. what makes a good story in your mind? >> guest: no formula. the question you asked me, i've never really asked myself

exactly what leads me to want to write a book because their pain in the to do. it's finding if i look back on it is finding an interesting person in a situation that will allow me to explore interesting ideas. what almost always happens is i have lots of little projects stumbling along, magazine pieces of things i'm investigating. become so interesting that i think wow, such a good story, have an obligation to tell it. that's when it becomes a book. in terms of if you asked me to go to a class of students and give them a formula to how to write a good story, i went on how to begin. >> host: when did you decide you wanted to make be an arthur.

>> my career path is something on the bottom of the tv screen that says to not try this at home. is an art history major what i first wanted to do was be an art historian. i stumbled out of college and linda by accident on wall street. i got that job very accidentally without a great deal of intention. while i was working on my princeton thesis. it was effectively a book, i became engrossed with the writing of it. i've never written for newspapers. i was a reader, because i like to read. they didn't have anybody say you

are a born writer. when i finish my thesis they came back it was a great and i got very zane about how it was written. he never said it was nicely written so i said what did you think of the writing and he said it this way, never try to make a living at it. but i tried, that i really want to write. so i started willy-nilly and submitted things to magazines. it was haphazard things started to get published. the advice i would give someone, the practical things that happened to me that was useful was doing something other than right. it is usually useful.

it gave me material that you wouldn't get in a normal journalistic life. that attached engines to my ambitions. to have that is experience. >> host: what are you currently working on? >> guest: at any given time you could see a row on a bench of folders of, i might want to do this. there are dozens of things there in various states of neglect. the thing that's got me just right now, it will sound boring, then writing the federal government when trump was elected i watch the transition. there bits and pieces in the newspaper about how deal obama administration are prepared to

trancprepare for the transition. but the political level of 4000 her role in not knowing much and have to quickly cram the figure was going to and sometimes the people who roll and know a lot about it sometimes they know nothing. the point of view of the outgoing administration is to educate the people who come about how this works. the obama administration because they're so grateful to the bush administration for how they had prepared during a time of crisis, obama directed his government to pay attention in a big way. they did the best course of ever created from agency to agency.

in the trump administration did show up for. some departments really didn't show up for it than i thought that's a missed opportunity. crazy. even if they didn't like anything obama stood for you could still learn a lot about how work. and the amount of overlap was much greater then what people would have you believe. so i wanted the briefings. i started calling up career civil servants and say can you give me the talk with the briefing book that you're going to give whoever was supposed to show so i can figure out how it works, and what they might not know that might kill us. and i started with the energy department. that's scary to me. and it turned out a lot of the

department are missing. it's more like the department of nuclear weapons. that was frightening. the second one i picked i said to myself nuclear weapons is alarming. in a new administration would come in and be so haphazard about the nuclear stockpile. so i pick the department of agriculture. and i spent several months getting those briefings. it was riveting, the people who were there and what they had to say. the range of activities they did. i'm in a keep doing it. exactly where it leads, i don't know. i kind of feel and excitement about the material.

>> if you take your book, money balls it became an interesting story about people and personalities in america's pastime. how do you weave that together? >> it doesn't start big. it starts like what i'm doing now. very small with an observation. i was sitting here watching my local baseball team went agent salaries were going through the roof i looked and i thought, that's odd. used to be these people were paid the same but there were close to each other. now leftfielder be granted and someone getting millions of dollars. so watching the money on the field for a while and realized

the story is not that, not only that, is how much money the team has. my team is of 14 yet it's winning as many games as another one. so starts with a question, go see the management task about it, their answer is riveting, takes about a month to figure out this is an magazine piece or article it's a book. into this is tossed the interesting character billeting play by brad pitt in the movie i realize to be the engine to the narrative.

and then how do you put it together so the reader will keep turning pages. at the bottom, that's the easy part. it's figuring out what the stories about. and in that case what i thought the story was about was not baseball. underneath it, the fact that a market of any people at any level market could be so inefficient i thought that was incredible. forget the baseball players. corporate employees are doing what they do on the job with millions of people watching their statistics attached to a lot of what they did on the field. of those people can be miss valued that you can build the

baseball team out of that, who can't. so those at the bottom of it. that was an important story and transcends the media subject matter. >> host: is an aha moment? >> i can't always answer that question, but in the case of this is funny, i grope, i try to figure out how the operation ran. i started with the front office and they explain strategies and players are miss valued because people use their intuition instead of statistical analysis. and i said what players think of that, it's kind of on your team,

they don't look like most teams. first baseman who never played first base. he said we don't tell the players anything. because it confuses them. i thought this was the start of a conversation there kind of lab rats. so thinking i had a long magazine piece. so went to go systematically to get to know the players. and i move down the clubhouse. first time is in there after game is a night game and i was waiting for the player to come back and greet me and all the players are coming back there all they could. it was the first is seen oakland a's make it and it was

unpleasant. a lot of body fat where shanda ben, michigan parts and i thought if you find those up against the wall and asked them what they did for live and nobody would guess their professional athlete. book tv interviewers may be, but not professional athletes. when i realized they didn't look right i mentioned at the next day and he said that's a funny thing. we talk about that. when a player looks wrong it's one of the reasons the market miss values them. they look like someone has played before or the idea of a athlete the market will get it. but if he short, fat, or have to click feet they say something is

off of the markets put off, he said we are in the business of finding people who have defects. the more obvious and glaring, the better it is because the defect will distract the baseball expert from seeing the real value of what they're doing. and that's my thought, how they look in baseball is have an effect on how their value? then i thought this is a story about markets and how screwed up they are. women in the workplace, it applies to a lot of things. it's about the way we stereotype away the cap people and how it affects the value of the people.

so then i thought how to move it out. at that point i had a book. and bodine would say i tricked him. and his right. were six weeks into a relationship and think it may be a piece for a magazine. when i rolled in i said this might be a book. you can see the expression change. he did not want to book written. it was too late. he thought i can't quite get out of this now. >> you can call in. this is from 2011, let's watch.

>> the journey started when i stop playing me through pamphlet every. i read that and that was my moment. and then i went back and found all the bill james stuff i could read. and once i had access to the enforcing that there is no turning back. as far as last ten years we're just trying to survive as a business and find a way to compete in a challenging situation. i don't think we ever envision the organization itself would be put out front it's a bit surreal.

>> guest: it gets even funnier because he got tricked into the book been written about him. even when the book was done, i can understand what they were doing was different. i had to go see other baseball organizations and see what they were doing. i had a point of comparison. even though that material would spend time on the cutting room floor. so i went out to the texas rangers and the mariners and seahawks, so billy d saw me doing this i said it's not just about us, is writing about baseball. i don't want my subjects to become too self-conscious. he gets the book and reads it and he calls me and he is

horribly upset. and i said, i was thinking if i felt sneaky about it it's not totally in his interest for me to write this book. they're doing things that other people are doing. i thought that's what he was upset about. so i said what are you upset about and he said you have me saying -- and many crispy overtime. he said you do curse all the time. you don't understand, my mother will be upset. and i said your mother? i said i thought if that's all you're worried about i thought

you were worried about i was exposing your secrets and there's a long pause and then he said you don't think anybody baseballs can read your book. nobodies can reach your book. and so people do read the book. nothing goes crazy. and to his credit, he could so easily have said michael lewis doesn't know what is talking about. i gave a few interviews but he got it wrong. he could've thrown me under the bus. but he didn't. he fought back on my behalf. flashforward a few months in a movie studio wants to turn it into a movie. this is 2003 or four. i had movie studios by and that

they've never been made into a movie. they say they'll make up at the wall. so billy calls me and says you not gonna believe it a movie studio wants to buy my life rights. he's laughing like it's preposterous. and i said no i don't want to book, that one movie. and i said you're thinking about it the wrong way. they just give you money. they never make anything. and you can take the money and it will never make it. i listed all of the things that they had bought is listening said wow. that's a good deal. if i just signed it though give me money so he signs it. every 18 months for six years he get another check. call me and say this is

fantastic. then one day calls me and says you best her. brad pitt just called, is on the way to my house. my wife is putting on makeup of the babysitters wearing the dress. i was in shock. who would make a movie of baseball statistics. in the relationships i have with my subjects, i really a the chicken at a ham and egg breakfast. i'm interested, they're committed. and i can move on with my life, but a book and a movie exploding in a person's life, it's amazing the grace he's handled it. even if it is pleasant, it's often distorted.

>> another book, blind side. is a true your wife said you'd be an idiot if you write the book. >> guest: yes. you may have already gathered in order to write it after tell myself why am writing this story. i'm the only one who can tell the story because i have some privileged position. on the blindside, it helps if you connect up to things before. for at least rhymes or something you can say i can see why could read a book like that. so if it's about baseball or how markets work .-ellipsis thematic connection. but the blindside, the accident

involved there -- you shut me up if i go on too long. i wonder if database listening to me. >> host: we have two hours and 35 minutes. >> guest: i have decided i want to write a piece that was an exercise about the teacher who most influenced me in my life, happen to be my high school baseball coach. i wanted to persuade the new york times magazine to put billy on the cover and just get it how someone gets into the head of the kids so powerfully it was such permanence. the things he said to me then,

here now. especially when i'm in trouble. >> size thinking about that in the story i thought she didn't just go with my experience. i need to see if other people as adults feel about them. i was in memphis and i thought sean -- leaves here. they been in the same class from kindergarten through 12th grade. i got out he said the only academic awards weekend with once they gave you for being there for 13 years. so i call him and he picks me up at the airport. first thing said was, who writes your book?

and i said i read my books. he said, you don't write books, who actually write some i said, i sit down to write my books. then he goes your word dumbass like me in the back of english class you don't write books. >> it took me a while to convince him. he takes me to his house and he was a poor boy growing up in his been a huge success. he's got a huge mansion. introduces me to family. in his living room is a person i said who is the kid and he said he came to our school, leanne saw him in shorts and a t-shirt

going home at the bus stop in the snow. pulled over, and she realized she was homeless, not functioning in school. she took him in. and we get back in touch and i hear the story of what's going on. is clearly -- with my fair lady accepted with a modern twist. they are rich, white, evangelical christian report again. other trying to turn michael lawrence 12. i was some success all of a sudden he becomes of her regime, he starts to succeed in school, he comes out of his shell a bit. sean had been a gifted athlete.

he was drafted by the mets at the time. maybe by the red stew. he was that good. sean is a fixer. he knows how to fix things. he looked at michael and said i can train him up. is not a basketball player shape he said i can train them up so it junior college coach will want him. because of moneyball sports franchise start to get in touch with me and want talk about analytics and how you intellectualize their sports. i became friends with the guy in the front office of the san francisco 49ers. we start talking about the

interesting questions about money and support. reset it's not how much money you have, it's more how the money is distributed across the city of data on what's happened to that since reagents happen? but then a market emerged much of the market say. he said the quarterback is the highest paid on the field but it used to be like a running back. a more high-profile player there's a guy called the left tackle who guards the blindside became the second highest paid player in the nfl. there are basically elephants who are ballerinas. they were huge and had big hands

their agile and quick so then sean calls me up and says you won't believe what happened. he said and then was an acquaintance and had come to the school and see michael or on a basketball court and said to shawn, that's a future nfl left tackle. that time he had been in uniform they had them on a bench because they thought he was a defensive player and he didn't want to hit anybody at this point i turned to my wife and said she had heard some of the stories and some of its quite moving.

he stares at a benefit as i've never had a bed in my life. this is a new thing for me. >> and that's in the movie. >> these things are happening. i thought that's not my story. it feels like it's cheating to make them the main character of the book. . . fun, and they're playing the golden state warriors. he was staying with the spirit we went to dinner. he started telling tabitha the stories turkey was in tears. and i said, there is a a book u but it's in my book. it's about some of the kind of person would write. we got in the car and she said you're an idiot if you don't make this the next book, the inherent drama in the story will carry it. and i realized at some point that there was a way of i'd realize i can harmonize with

my own writing if you ask the question how does he go from being an illiterate foraging likely to be dead or jail when he's 15 isn't pretty. how does he go from the least visible people in his age to one ofis the most. all in two years. how does that happen. the force that led these things

to become very valuable and another of the things is the mother so i'm going to writeoi a story k about these forces. when we think of poor america we think the athletes get out. their talents are so conspicuous they get spotted and the truth is even something as conspicuous as the tackle would have been mixed but for the action of the family and some other people but nevertheless it took some accidents. if that kid can be mixed, what talents are in their.

it's such a waste, so that is what motivated. it's whether i can explain who wrote this and if i feel strong enough about it i think i do now but back then i was anxious about whether i could do this. >> and our audience may know who this is, i'm sure they do. most people know she is more quickly than they know who i am. now an art photographer you can go to the website and i watched

a second act which was hard to do. i don't know if you've heard this way but she didn't have the ambition to be on tv. she started her life behind the camera and they said you go get on camera and the person didn't show up so that is how she ended up on tv. i was covering for a very peculiar way the presidential campaign. it i was basically the main candidates were not saying anything interesting but i noticed that there was an interesting story on the side of the campaign.

many people think they are runningy for president but the minor candidates, pat buchanan is p well known who had a passionate following than the major candidates. so on the road constantly and there was a little bit of an information looking for materi material. there was something the choose or lose bus registering people around the country so the

publicist unbeknownst to me is where the bus is going, from portlande to seattle. michael lewis called and demands an interview. would you like to i interview tabatha? we met and she was just when they showed up for the intervi interview. he's not allowed to tag along at 's thes event.

i will have dinner with them, so she flew in and we had dinner. that was 1996 we were married in the fall of 97 and had three kidse. >> with our guest on book tv in depth let's get to your phone calls. >> caller: you write about richard. how did you guess [inaudible]

>> guest: it is my most recent book published. >> host: by the title the undoing project? >> guest: it is about the collaboration. the workth they did was so effective that they couldn't ignore him. it is susceptible to making the cognitive area to making certain kinds of mistakes and they were

meaningful and what leads to things like medical diagnosis in the market and bad decisions about which baseball player. the phrase itself came off the university in 1996. this is poignant because they have the collaboration more than just an intellectual collaboration. they called the project they werect working on and they bustd up because he thought he was not interested in the idea and they

were trying to untangle the rules of the imagination. he thought he wasn't interested in this idea about it was scribbling away in the folder and there was a miscommunication between the two. they see the psychological insight people have had about how the mind works and he won the nobel prize.

it wasn't that hard when i wrote the line in the book. he was one of them and the thing that was so interesting about him personally, he wasn't good at school. you think of professional economists he came to this profession in an awed way and there was a point that he was willing tor give up. he thought he didn't belong in the profession in part because he thought it was absurd. he was predisposed to exploiting these psychological insights.

>> guest: one of the insights that drops out is we are pattern seeking creatures we will see patterns even when there is no pattern. people go after an event leave a narrative that makes it seem like the inevitable. the story i story spoke come ald show why that was boundnd to happen. what they are going after the fact is imposing sense of

certainty on how the world mov moves. it is almost woven into the professional historian and that in fact the truth of life is the reality. life is not determined as all of that. they were aware.

they were imposing a full sends of cleaning up the path as we all do when we move through life. >> if someone were to write a book about michael lewis, which offer what you want to write the story? >> guest: is that a living author? >> guest: it is about writers live sand there is probably a relationship between how interesting it is so when they start to have an interesting life the work is probably not going to be that good. there is not much material.

it's someone who approaches the act of writing as entertainment and the aspect to what he's doing. it certainly would be a big mistake that would be some high-level competent journalist but this isn't going to happen, i promise you. >> i am a huge fan and i just want to know if you ever consider writing about public education or if you spend a year

in the innerer city. thanks. i'm thinking about writing the department of education, so the short answer is no. for health care and public education it is more accidental if i read something curious that is happening that might lead me to a book but that hasn't happened in. when i am home, this fall i was meant to be a volunteer at the school and it's m the most entertaining high stress job ino

the world. i'd been asked for a thousand questions and i don't knowes the answer to any of them when people come in because it is a chaotic place. the material in that world is such aat vital place, but i haven't stumbled upon the way in. >> caller: it was an awesome book and changed not only am i thinking of baseball but journalism as well. here is my question. i am not an in-depth huge baseball fan but i understand that houston astro's management has taken an approach described

as taking the team in order to improve its prospects for a futurere run at the championshi. for me that sounds a little log and not right. and i would like to get michael lewis comments on that. >> guest: the management couldn't stomach what they were doing inch the first place to accumulate not intentionally losing the worse you do, the high europe and you have access to elite talent year after year and you can build. i think they are showing it.

you can take your way to a really good team. i saw a headline about this the other day and i was aware when they were using those games year after year in the good management that they were probably thinking it was several years running and would make a big difference. i'm sure that strategically it is harder with baseball because it's hard to identify the best talent. the best talent in basketball just because you get the first pick in the draft doesn't mean that you are going to draft the right person. there's many examples of the first pick in the draft either because they've gotten hurt or

they were not as good as everybody thought they were. it was a combination of stuff that they did and sophisticated intellectual obligation. that happened in this public appears to go wit as though wite commentary than i thought. they had come from the cardina cardinals. the fbi got involved and i thought isn't it an amazing thing that we actually have management information, intellectualll property if you o back 20 years there is nothing you could have hacked.

it's a little distasteful and doesn't bother me a that much i quell the fan base put it for long enough to build the team and if it isy the main strategic option will it take for three years and a chairmanship but if

we don't do that i hope they would have the guts not to fire. >> host: i think inn the book you talk about your dad buying stock so you know the story who was making money selling the stock to you and your family. >> there is a funny moment my father still bringsen up from te to time he was trying to teach me about the stock market. i was 12 or 13-years-old with a little book where you listed your investment and kept track of them and explained he had bought 20 shares in the company and i think that he picked it because it was good company but also beyond some restaurants in

new orleans and in the literature it says like $10 a share and desist down below to pay $230. it's the 230, the other 30 is the commission to the broker and i said whose the broker and he said he is the one you call when you want to buy th buy he placee ordethe places theorder and i se all he does is take your phone call and then calls somebody answers to buy that and for that he's charging that and my father said yes. i said where does he live, i want to go into his house. i was so outraged. [laughter] my first brush with wall street i had the some of the same instincts today which is charging too much for the service. >> you say in page 287 as my new year's resolution i stopped

selling people things i didn't think they should buy. i've given up my new year's resolution. >> guest: you are taking me back to my youth. the us one of the threads that runs through the financial book it's how screwed up the incentives are so a stockbroker back in the day as the incentive to have you trade and you're much better off not trading that much so an incentive to give bad advice. if doctors have the incentive to prescribe medication you t shouldn't take or give you an operation you don't need. if they don't have a code of ethics they tryem to stop themselves from that and even doctors are susceptible when there is a financial incentive to do things they probably shouldn't do and when you are dealing with someone else's

heart it's even easier to give t into the bad incentives. i felt themly immediately when y job was a bond salesman or to sell whatever they had, to sell the stuff we made the most money on an phone calls from the guys at the top of the firm with promises and bonuses if you sold stuff no one else could so. the more money the firm made off with you sold probably the worse it was for the person you're selling it to say you do all kinds of deals with yourself,, you fool yourself that it's not that bad. we will make it work and people will see the value in it. but the first six months into the job i remember the pit in my stomach, 24-years-old staring at

the ceiling at night living in london not being able to fall asleep just bothered by the situation i was in. i got over it. i was talking to my cousin who was professor of money manager running billions of dollars and should have known better than to listen to me. i wasn't telling them to do things that would actually lose them money but it was aware of this. >> host: were you making money personally? >> guest: : yeah, it's pennies compared to what they make now but to me it was a fortune. the first year when i was 24 i think it was about $90,000. the second year was 250 or so into their work apps on what they would pay. they had a device to make sure we didn't get too uppity and ask

for too much. i was tol told if i state it wod be double the next year and double the next. $250,000 at 25 or 26 was a fortune so yes i was making money. but the firm however this is what gets screwed up when you are in that world. i knew how much money the stuff i was doing roughly was making for the firm and it was tens of millions of dollars, so i remember feeling kind of cheated when they were paying me what they were paying and that's when i had to get out. because what they were paying me was trivial but in many ways it was about more fun m to be.

the fact i could be i there on e floor in the center of the financial universe my job was at the center, to be writing magazine articles while i am there that are about what i'm seeing, albeit under a pseudonym is known too my peers that were highly cynical. the name is diana bleeker my mother's maiden name. one or two appeared in the new republic and they were all over the salomon brothers trading for. most people didn't know it was me but the management you and they kind of just let it happen. when i left i realized i could make a writing as a -- a living as a writer. i left the 250,000 i left the

contract and it felt like the best deal i ever made about when i explained to my bosses that i was fond of either i but i was o quit to be a writer and write a book about wall street you would think that their response would be red alert, sign a nondisclosure agreement can't don't write a book about us, instead don't do this, you're going to get rich here, don't ruin your future. if they were genuinely concerned about my mental health, not about a book and there was charming that. if you try to do that now, at goldman sachs right now if you rolled out the door after two and a half years and i'm going to go write a book, you wouldn't gett home. >> host: what did i did john thk of the? >> guest: he didn't like it.

>> guest: he was a friend that ran salomon brothers while i was there and he's no he is not alie anymore, he died recently. the book had an odd reaction in the firm come it was banned from the trading floor but everybody brought it i in anyway and was s reading it under the desk. i had so many friends there. the upper managementas was irritated with me. i caused them trouble and the rank-and-file mostly thought it was funny and it didn't bother them at all because most of the people at that point had become so cynical about the management that they didn't feel any particular corporate loyalty. it was not regarded as an act of betrayal as othe it otherwise me them. they lost the corporate identity

or attachments to the greater good. there was less of that than you might expect. he would call into leaders later years. at the end he said he found it amusing and he bought boxes of books and find a copy and told me at one point i was the biggest -- he was my biggest customer. i grew very fond of him but he doesn't likdidn't like the book. >> host: the title might be obvious but how did you come up with liars poker?

it just gave that feel. i have a folder and whatever title i'm working on it pops in my head and i have to live with it for a bit so there will be dozens of titles and i will go look at that and i can remember what i did is talk like six of titles, send them to my editor. >> host: >> caller: you are my favorite

author. i lived across the way from you and it shows the power of c-span letting me get in touch with you. i've been watching about all the climate change disasters from the southeast of houston and the devastating fires we have had in the area and brought back to me a very vivid story about the insurance industry and how they don't pay claims even though you have a solid contractm, with th. it brought back memories of a big story that i knew about between the insurance industry

aninto the government and so forth. i wonder how does a person get a story to you. how does a person get a chance to at least tell you the idea of a story or something that happened over at period of 20 years and get you to think about it or suggest someone that might be able to bring those issues out into the open for the public. >> host: thanks for the call. >> guest: you know, it's funny lots of people know what my next book is. it might be the common things people do. the problem is what they should

be doing they feel very strongly about this but i don't have any particular feeling about itt at all. why don't you write a book about it since you care so much about it. once in my career i had someone told me you should write a story and it ended up being true. we can come back to that. for whatever reason i need to discover my own stories and i don't have a website, i stay on social media entirely. i tried to hide my phone number, but i do read the letters people write.

but the likelihood. you need to do a story told. i understand that feeling. where do you go? i'm sitting in the middle of the media a journalistic enterprise might be a good place to go. every now and then they will say you need to write a story about x.. i know a writer that will be good for this but i don't know if that has ever lived anywhere good so this is a long way of saying i am a frustrated person

and what you hope to get out of me as a subject you didn't want me to write about. it's the most genuine attempt in my lifetime to reform from within. they saw how distorted the stock market had become into the stock markets had abdicated their responsibilities to provide a fair place to come together to trade and set of creating an upn exchange to prevent high-frequency traders from taking advantage of everyone else. it was danny moses from the big

short but said to me from the royal bank of kansas we have been havingh problems with our stock market orders and he explained what was going on. theyth were engaged in this obligation of how the stock market worked. they said this is your story and i said let's get back to the big short. i wrote the big short and read a newspaper article he had been arrested walking out the door fromty stealing the stock market

trading code. the fbi was on it right away. i thought isn't itt interesting. they would get arrested and then there was a bit into news accountsts that said high a frequency trading code the reason he had to be arrested and held without bail is because it fell into the wrong hands and there was a hyperbolic language used but in the wrong hands they could disrupt the financial markets and i thought it was the right hand. are you presuming it's been in the right-hand.

i called up and said who is this guy, which i i should have donen the first plac place and sat and listened totr the lecture and my job was on the floor. why didn't i listen in the first place? so i cannot think of another book that does. >> host: jim in west palm beach florida, you are next go-ahead. >> caller: sold the movie the blindside. here is my question. i wonder if you can give your comment on the current state of markets in the federal reserve, the new york fed, the world's central a banks where some of tm are now buying stock and they also have low historic interest

rate which is a sort of enabler of theab government running huge deficits now and have a low love interest rates are hurting. they alsost come lastly now we have a record amount of debt and put our stock market into record territory by a n lot of differet metrics. but it seems like no one cares. anyway, i just appreciate your thoughts on this. >> i suspect my thoughts on this are not as interesting as your thoughts. i think you are probably paying closer attention to this than i am. i would say broadly you look at the markets now and you're still living in the world of the financial crisis. the federal banks are still trying to back their way out of what they thought they had to go to in response to the financial crisisis which was huge amountsf

liquidity into the markets. things like hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities. once you lower interest rates to zero, coming back the other way is hard. why the stock market does with the stock market does is a mystery to me and was a conventional wisdom donald trump wass elected president. for about a moment then acted os done what it's done. the caller is right that one of the unfortunate side effects of

the monetary policy that was required to numb the pain of the financial crisis is that the same reserve and probably one of the unfortunate side effects is if there is not a normal return people go looking for the risk may be they should not take. >> host: wealthy have you respond to this last year on the cnbc. >> you said in the book you have things you are trying to parse your words now. >> let's walk through do you believe it ore not? is a yes or no question do you believe it or not? [inaudible] i think you are a part of it if you want to do this let's do this. it should be eliminated from the vocabulary.

computerized trading -- >> computerized trading in scalping. people can trade with computers until the end of time. people use computers to scalp. you cannot scalp trade. you cannot scalp orders. >> host: august of last year, cnbc. >> guest: it was well before last year. the book came out in 2014. this is right when the book came out. thatat was a great moment. that is the main character of the flashpoint. he's reluctant to go after the guy who runs the exchange created for the benefit of better alternative trading systems. it's a g great acronym set up on the other side of the lincoln

tunnel and stock market orders from manhattan go through the optical fiber in the lincoln tunnel and they get their first. when he starts to discover that there is something wrong in the market and finding out how this is happening, they are putting small orders on the exchange and are able a to detect the orders that are coming through that market and race to the other exchanges in the new jersey like the stock exchanges that are further away. >> host: what type of timey frame? >> guest: microseconds. it's very hard to conceive of the units of time that are meaningful in the stock market. we are talking about the speed of light from the other side of the lincoln tunnel to new jersey. it's pretty fast.

i don't know if people are still doing this, the exchanges were still selling so it's next to the server which was actually the stock market and they ar are indians buildings, people were fighting to get a faster view of the market than everybody else so everybody is not seeing the market at the same time. they were able to cobble together a faster picture of the market. anyway, that exchange was on cnbc and there were several different things about it. he lost his job soon there after it was reported because of the lies he told on-air.

he said you can't misrepresent your business. the exchange i was in a remote location and i was supposed to be participating in the conversation but it ended up being a fight between the two of them. he was informed that this was going to happen in advance. we didn't know he was going to be there until he showed up for what they thought was going to happen is that he would be humiliated but instead he humiliated the guy. the great moment i remember from this is that night i went to dinner with two guys that ran at the time goldman sachs equity department and they had seen how

rotten the market had gotten and made a decision that they were going to support the building of the new exchange because they didn't want to be associated with what was going to happen if anybodyt found out. they joined the forces of good. they said when the show aired, which the cnbc producer told me it was the most-watched episode on cnbc. she said congratulations but nevertheless, they said the trading floor stopped. now they still own a stake in the exchange.

so, while this is going on, he's standing there watching and turns to the head of the stock market department and says, that angry guy come it's like $15 million stake in the company. he says the little guy, he doesn't own any of that market? wech are screwed. everybody watching it for that was the worst moment. i thought that is one day when the story h is told from 50 yeas now people will say that was a big moment in the historynk of wall street. i think that even though right now, the political campaign was organized against the buck and

against him. regulators are being bought and sold every day by the financial industry and extracted by high-frequency traders. i think they are going to win and we are going to say that was an important moment because the regulatory apparatus has proven itself unable. you can't control wall street because at some level the regulator is being paid one 50th of what the person they are regulating is being paid. the incentives are all screwed up they want to work for the person they are regulating but it can happen with entrepreneurshipep people can sy you don't want to be ripped off it doesn't have to be this way with organized, come to us.

and i think if it shows that it is possible when it wil then itt happen in the other markets. >> i think these are probably two of your shortest books in the game of life and accidental road to." fatherhood. >> guest: the home game is a journal i kept after each of my children were born and i had an irresponsibility to an appropriate response to the question. i didn't know why i didn't

attach, why i didn't feel that a new father was supposed to be a and i've talked to my wife about this and she would say go to therapy and write it down kind of thing. so i confessed the kind of things i was thinking and feeling. when people come up to me and have the warmest conversations about stuff i've written those are the books they want to talk about.

they would say thank god. i thought my husband was the biggest jerk. >> host: did you feel differently after? >> guest: all of that seems like a distant memory. i would say it was great from the beginning but it wasn't. itri was horrible. so, i'm really glad i preserved. the first six or eight months it was hellish every time but it was the positive things i was not experiencing as also the

things i was. i think my wife thought this. at least theyit are a literary material. what happens, where life comes from you are not exactly wired i forr it in the same way that my wifeas was at taking care of something creates the feeling of

love different place. i didn't at first. probably the answer to that is yes but specifically kept me in to check in the very beginning and now we are both very involved parents. next from overland park kansas, go ahead.

>> caller: i am very impressed with your body of work. i have a series of questions. one of the things you brought up is the marketplace value i think that it' is really interesting. but thinking back on the trading issue on the attacks, that is an interesting concept in terms of what that would be able to do to put a check and balance on that commodity for the stock transactions at the speed of light.

>> guest: as much pleasure as it would give me because they've irritated me to no end i think the public presentation is fal false. the unintended consequences of the tax there are better ways to attack the problem. and it's at the level of incentives. do not allow exchanges to pay brokers to send orders in a certain f form. do not allow exchanges to sell privileged access to informati information. they can say everybody can buy it but not everyone can spend a million dollars a year on technology for a faster picture of the stock market.

if you just stop those things, what you could get is the benefits of high-frequency trading and there are some without so much of the cost and pollution. it's not that we want to go back to the time where it was much slower and run b by humans. that's not the point. the point is there have beens great games to the stock market investors like everybody else iy technology and wall street has managed to claw back anyway they shouldn't have. >> host: rancho cucamonga. >> caller: i want to ask a question on the writing but then he answered the question as a great storyteller. what i wantebut i wanted to finu

said some said he wouldn't be a great writer and that is a fantastic story. what motivated you to be such a great storyteller? >> guest: this is an interesting question why people write. some people write for money and some have a political position they want to get across. some people write because they like attention and i think they all play a part in my life. i can't deny that it would be hard to do it if nobody paid any attention to it or it would be harder if in some cases i didn't have an overt political interest in the story i was telling.

but actually, underneath all that, i the fact that this gives me pleasure. the doing of this gives me pleasure. when i'm sitting there i'm told, i write with headphones on listening to a track that drowns out everything. it's silly but that's how i write. people tell me when they are in the room with me and i'm doing that laughing all the time at my own jokes which is sad but true so that's how i got him i in ine first place when i was working on myn senior thesis on articles no one was ever going to read i just really like doing it, >> host: do you have an office or place you write? >> guest: i live in berkeley california, and i have a little redwood cabin 50 yards from the house. i walked down to the cabin and they work there. it's confusing because i'm more

disorganized. i have little kids still so usually i drive my 10-year-old son to school and then i go ba back. novelists often have a story they have to write 500 words a day or a rule they make themselves write a certain amount a day. i did i write only one out of three days on average. a lot ofut my time is figuring t what i want to write about and learn about. i am a nonfiction writer and even novelists have to do research but i have to do an awful lot of work to figure out. >> host: >> guest: to find the part of life i want to carve into a story and figure out how to carve it. >> host: new york with michael lewis. >> caller: i've always found you to be the most sensible and i want to ask your advice and

tell my son enjoys his job in a big investment bank on the prospect of the h bonus numbers and a couple of weeks time. it's spoiling everything that he feels about the job. >> guest: is he afraid it isn't going to be as high as he once? >> guest: yes that is part of the system. >> guest: if he likes the job apart from the bonus and he's making himself miserable. there is a whole class of people who do it mostly for the money and that is a shame as he is already ahead of the game because he likes his job. if he wantsis to put it in perspective you can send him a list of the average pay for coal miners or give a list of other jobs that are unpleasant you get

paid a lot less than he would be paid. if i had a child in a wall street firm and they said it sucks i'm only going to get 250,000 the 4 million. you are doing so much better than everybody if you let this make you miserable you want anything make you miserable. i would tell him it is notab acceptable to let a wall street firm have that kind of power over his happiness. >> host: one more call from missouri, go ahead.

>> caller: i was wondering in regard to the film adaptation if you felt the portrayal about how it was accurate and has nothing to do with philip seymour. i thought he was fine. and also when you were researching at the university of mississippi, did you come in contact with patrick willis who of courseon as you know later wt on to the san francisco 49ers and will probably be in the profitable hall of fame but patrick willis had a toughgh upbringing to have a good day. >> guest: there was one significant difference between the character played by philip seymour hoffman. that was the resentment about the general manager taking over

able toa lot of what a manager o do and treating the manager as a middle manager who spoke executes the strategy dictated by the front office. that simmered and was handled in a passive aggressive way in real life. in the movie they dramatized it by having hibyhaving him get inf billy and fight with him so that didn't happen. so that kind of willingness to actually fight with his bosses, that didn't happen in the flesh. >> host: patrick willis was a really interesting character. when michael got to the university of mississippi, he was maybe a year or two behind patrick and i can remember i met patrick willis and i actually had lunch with him. there was an instant connection because patrick had adopted by a

white family at a pretty young age and i think the family saw in him someone that might connect with michael and help smooth this transition. about whabut what i really remet patrick willis is that he had been on the bench i think his freshman year and he was an unbelievably gifted linebacker. i was up in the press box at the hemingway stadium, whatever it's called in oxford mississippi sitting with scouts. i was sitting there and it's like they were just there to watch the play a little bit and i was there because i was working on the book and they wanted to know what i thought. does that look like an nfl left tackle to them and an lsu running back comes through the

ole ms. 3-yard line it looks like he's going to score then out of nowhere appeal appears pk willis, lifts him on the shoulder, throws him into the ground, 240 pounds and what was that of such violence, i turned and i said do you know who that guy is and he said he is obviously covering a lot of ground on the field but no one knows where heem is yet. i remember the moment he has been discovered because you think all pro-life but in fact the year before he comes off and wreaks havoc on the w football field. so i remember him as a very sweet guy who you wouldn't believe have the capacity that he displayed on the footballie field. >> host: your dad was a lawyer, your mom a community

organizer. >> guest: that makes my mom sound dull. i would say activists. my dad and to call him a lawyer he was at i thought of it as a gifted administrator who didn't particularly like being a voyeur bulawyerbut like running a law . he did a lot of other things, people who attend them i think they ran every civic organization at one point or another and another is still active on the board. she helped create a couple of charter schools after katrina and she's out the door every morning and busy all over the city. my father is mostly retired. the short story is my ancestor

was named joshua lewis, my great-grandfather was sent by thomas jefferson to new orleans in 18032 received the purchase from the french, we need the first chief justice of the supreme court and they wrote the first legal opinion. it's been woven into the fabric

of the city in lots of different ways. >> michael lewis on in depth at booktv we will take a short break to show some of the books becoming best selling movies and we will be back with your phone calls. >> most kids would come within 200 miles. >> i expect you all to be welcomed. ♪ do you have any place topl stay tonight? don't lie to me. was this a bad idea? it's time to figure out another

bedroom for you. >> him into youis continuous wi? >> a bad. >> don't be surprised if one day you wake up and then he's gone. >> you threate within my son, yu threaten me. ♪ you can go out for spring football in march. >> he is your family and when you think of him, you think of me., i think what you are doing is so great.

♪ it's one we could afford. we are going to shake things up. >> we will put a team together. >> he's come in and try to reinvent the system and now it

isn't working out. they call it money well. i think we got a ticket to the titanic. >> argued about to lose your job? i go on the internet sometimes. >> watch tv, talk to people. do you believe in this thing or not? >> listen up, you may not look like a winning team, but you are one, so play like one tonight. something unexpected into the whole city is here with us. ♪ [inaudible] 25% interest rates on credit cards, student loans we can never get out from under. >> when they created the

greatest fraud in history, no one is paying attention. more outsiders risked it all to takeow them down. >> he can profit off of their stupidity. [inaudible] we have to act now. >> [inaudible] no, no. i will talk to you later. if we are lied, people will lose homes.

>> we can do it all and it will stilll go through. >> the agencies, the banks, the government they are all asleep at the wheel. it is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. [inaudible] the big short. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ the continue on in depth with michael lewis are " we setting a record. >> we've passed it by an hour and aa half already. let's talk about two of the older books. the new thing that came out in 1999 and next in 2001.

so, this is again related to my wife after i met her since we are on this biographical journey is. she got it before we were married in the marriott during fellowship. i follow her out and don't have a reason for being in palo alto california and the internet bubblead is happening story aftr story so i start to kind of poke around. it was one of these events but i happened to be sitting in the middle of. and that th if the person it way named jim clark and he made one

small fortune that was behind the creation of netscape and when i met him, and this is funny because it occurred to me i was writing about. internetet phenomenon at the center of it all was an unnatural willingness that it was a machine for replacing it with the new and companies do not normally do that. you have to create an expectation that's going to happen for them. even though he was in his 50s, he was legendary and always

moving forward. i can read them that there was a coffee shop across the street and i remember sitting there thinking i want to see if i can locate this unsettled feeling that you feel out here. i didn't have a cell phone, i was late to get one but never the less there was a pay phone and also a phonebook and i found clark in the phonebook, i called jim clark and got a housekeeper. this is ath billionaire. i called, he picks up the phone

i said i am michael lewis. at that time is office is a depressing room on top of a jenny craig weight loss center. i tried to write the program to a sailboat across the desk that he c could control it remotely. i started talking and wanted to spend more time with this guy than the new thing led to the article that got glued together and next there are books and

book objects like a magazine piece between covers. >> host: and what was netscape? >> guest: the first internet browser. thinking back to that time that is what people thought would be valuable. jim clark regarded by everybody at the time was the visionary who always seems to have his finger on what is about to happenub it's gotten so crazy to

think it ise money out and now they say you can own a big piece of this company called google but you have to pay $25 million for it he says that it's ridiculousus. that would be worth tens of billions. he thought that it was preposterous. >> host: >> guest: i got interested when the bubble burst into things that were worth hundreds of millions i always thought

they were trivial compared to the social consequences and the malaise in 2001 is that it was all a fraud, there was a lot of that and i don't know we want to trace the social consequences. it may be true that it's not an engine for the corporate process but it is for social change and so i wrote these long reported pieces about things that have happened that gave a glimpse into an all-out future. one of them for example was a kid in new jersey who at age 13 orfa 14 he had a modest family middle class whose grandmother had given him a hundred bucks

for 500 bucks at some point and he opened up a brokerage account to seem like a grown-up and on the internet no one knows you're a kid so he turned this money into 700 or $800,000 of trading profits and was doing things likeld going to the local merces dealer even though he couldn't drive, handing over $50,000 in cash saying hold this for me until i get my license. the fcc followed his activity because what he was doing is finding tiny stock companies, buying the stock and promoting them like fighting an advertisement for them becauseha he saw that's what you do in the stock market. he thought that's how it worked at s the fcc came down on the

stock market manipulations of its other phenomena might enable. >> host: how much did he end up keeping? >> guest: almost allf of it. if he paid a fine of this trivial so he kept almost all of it.ay i haven't't heard from him in tears whicyears which is on. most of my subjects i am in pretty close touch with i will hear from them once a month or couple times. last i heard from him he had a house on miami beach and it was glamorous. he decided in his head i got into his life a and try to coax him into going to college but he thought college is a waste of

time. he was going to make money without going to college and i assume that is what he's been doing but i don't know. >> host: we will go to ron joining us from new hampshire. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i wanted to get your comment on thedm uniting amendment. it's the crowd sourced constitutional amendment the last few years people have been doing on a website to write a new constitutional amendment including like term limits for congress, getting rid of discrimination on sexual orientation and all this stuff congress will not do but do

people actually want. one of the things i wanted to ask about was the tax system. it creates a tax systems with no deductions. the total transactions in the united states tota totaled over $1,200,000,000,000,000 per year and when you tax that less than a person with half a%, it comes out to over $6 trillion. >> guest: what's that addams family movie maybe billy madison where he's in a debate in school and gets up and says what he has to say and the principal says very much we are all a little stupider for having heard that.

i don't know what he's talking about, so that it sounds like an interesting constitutional amendment. >> host: with the tie it into what you wrote in some off your books. the role of social media and internet in politics is a direct connection with donald trump and twitter. >> guest: my heart sinks when you ask questions like that. there are essays to be written about the subject but i really am a storyteller. in 2001 you wrote people did mention of the internet might change democracy assume it will take power away from politicians and give it to the people. >> guest: i don't really read any of my books ever.

most of what i write i haven't been able to remember what i wrote so that is the conventional wisdom at the time. didhe i challenge it and have te decency to say maybe it was not true? it has had obviously perverse effects. it's opened up the political marketplace.

department of energy whoa what do the recollection of is news for node about nuclear energy? >> guest: that funny. i went into the department of agriculture. these enterprises are so vast to get them across in 100,000 or 15,000 words is a huge challenge, so i went in with a particular angle and the angle was, what is the risk? what is the risk of a white house that is disengaged from actual managing the government day-to-day and didn't bother to get the memo and understand what the department does that hasn't staffed up the government. what could go wrong? so in the department of energy, on that -- i met -- the story starts with a several named john mcwilliams, the first ever chief risk officer inside the

department, and he comes from a very successful investment career. made his fortune in private equity in visiting in things like nuclear power, and he was brought in in the first place to help the department assess the risks it was running in the investment portfolio. they do make their loans and sub diedded loans and grands to technology that may pave off hundred years from now. they do long-term kind of scientific research and long-term investing in technologies. but he morphed into this other thing, this other job of just looking at the whole department of . what is the risk here? and nuclear -- nuclear energy was not on the risk. the future of nuclear energy was a footnote in what concerned him, and so what concerned me in the piece. he was much more concerned that, say, the iran deal, the iran nuclear deal, would fall apart

because the white house wouldn't understand that it had been negotiated by people who actually know how you make nuclear bomb and so actually made sure the iranian government won't be able to do it because of this agreement, and that they won't actually get to that because they never got briefed on that. so, in any event there's a story to tell about nuclear energy that i don't know much but but it's an interesting story. when i was a kid, that was supposed to be the energy of the future. what happened to that? i think what happened was we overreacted to the mile island or -- three mile island and public policy took odd wrong turns. it would have been a smart way to go to invest in nuclear power, and we didn't go there for complicated political reasons that would require a long piece to explain and a piece i haven't written. >> host: you brought up the president a couple of timed finish the sentence the state of

american politics today is what from your standpoint. >> guest: if it's a word? and disturbing. would be another word that would come to mind. the notion that there's no such thing as the truth or no such thing as facts that, that you can assemble your own version of reality with your own pundits and ignore evidence to the contrary, and you can have an electorate that is so poorly polarized it sees the world and can't imagine how the other side sees the world the way it does except to ridicule the other side. makes you fear for democracy. the absence 0 a walter cronkite

like source of news where everybody agrees, that's more or less right, we more or less trust that, where we're all participating in the same reality. seems to be like a necessary ingredient to democracy. so, i think trump is an existential threat, i do, and i don't know hough it's going to play out. i predict my last book, the "the undoing project" one of the big takeaways is people are predicting things, turn and run as fast as possible the other direction because most of the things they say are predictable, are not. predicting weather will happen is the political life of america. don't bother. all kinds of -- we don't know the things that are going to happen, going to drive the future. but it does seem like a very volatile, uncertain time. what drew me in first place to

writing this series in vanity fair that may become a book, want just how alarmed i was that the new administration had just ignored this wonderful course in federal government that was there for the taking, but that the whole approach to governing seemed to be increasing, ever so slightly, in some cases, not ever so sightly in other cases, catastrophic risk. the risk of various catastrophes happening. and that is what -- what is on me mind now is how we get through this alive. that's what is on my mind now. i live on he west coast. we're bear-baiting the north korean government, like who knows if we need to get -- decide it's fun to shoot a missile at us or put one on a boat and float into it los angeles harbor. i think all kinds of very, very

serious risk. john mcwilliams in the department of energy, his first concern, back in february, before north korea was on anybody's radar, really, was north korea and he said the reason the department of energy is up -- worried about north korea and you wouldn't think why would the department of energy be involved in north korea at install the run the national lab, the national science lab, that evaluates what the north koreans are doing when anyway fire these missiles seemingly willy-nilly interest the ocean and they are radically improving missile technology. making jump nod one expected hem to make. i think they imagined to get in ukrainian scientists in to help them build missiles and acquired intel electric fuel property and made them much more lethal. we're sitting in a world where

nuclear war went from something that i didn't think very much about, a couple years ago, and i'm aware there's a risk, to being a real risk. and less dramatic, difference function, like to steady corrosion of the federal work force because people dump on it all the time and don't appreciate what it does and think that it's all waste and inefficiency and corruption. the corrosion to this society that emerges from that approach to managing it, may not see it as dramatically as you see a nuclear explosion, but you will see it -- it will have devastating effects. so, i'm trying to be hopeful. i'm naturally an optimist. amos, a character in the "the undoing" has a great line.

eeyore is wandering learn look what are cat is going to go rein. amos says pessimism is stupid. you lift the bad thing twice issue first you imagine the bad thing happening and then when it happened. wander around the a cloud of despair because nuclear bomb is going off in san francisco. what good does that do? and i don't. almost cons shoesly adopt a strategy of optimism. but the strategy is challenged daily right now. it is. >> host: we're talking with michael lewis, 14 books? >> guest: the counter is in the literary world i don't get. don't know how much book is have written and i think of hem not at exactly books. i think i edit an anthology of poo people's writing for charity. i don't even know the title of

it. didn't write anything. the actual books were conceived as books, and from the beginning to end, and handed in as books, are liar's parker, the new thing, money ball, the blindside, the big short, the undoing project and flash boys. >> host: with that we go to sandra from santa rosa, california. >> hi, michael. what an interesting to listen to what you have just been talking about. my gosh. just decided that you should be -- have a weekly hour program on television. >> guest: ha-ha. you're hiring me. >> caller: yes. yes. if i could do that i would. >> guest: you'd be so sick of me, trust me. >> no, no, no because everything else is sound bites and nobody

knows anything. we don't get in depth information that we need from you. i read the department of energy article, and it was so revealing, and i felt like i was on the inside, but we don't know anything. i knew it was bad, but i didn't know how bad it was until i read that article. and one of your other -- well, your book i like the -- got the most out of was "boomerang." the way you express yourself is a way we need to hear and most of us don't -- too busy watching -- not me but stupid programs on television instead of becoming educated about what is going on in the world and what you just said for the last, what, your last five minutes about the state of the world. it's pretty horrifying, and just want to commend you for doing

something to help to us be more informed. >> host: you brought up the book "boomerang." >> guest: you are going to keep her on. don't cut her off. she's in santa rosa? >> host: sandra, stay on the line. >> caller: okay. >> guest: so, "boomerang" is a book. between covers and it's -- but it was written in the first place as a series of magazine pieces and the idea was -- the thing that interested me was on the back end of the financial crisis, i had written the american story, written the story of what happened in the big short, to us here, but this is a global crisis and it was experienced by different societies in different ways. it was the same root cause, which was indiscriminate lending. it was profligate lending, people handing out now people to

do what they warranted with it without thinking too mach what that was. the the leonards ceased to be the brake on the process in the football game inch iceland, for example, this population the size of peoria, built three of the world residents biggest banks in a matter of a decade, and developed a whole rationalization about why iceland for years had been -- its whole history had been preventing from achieving the capital of global finance and ice landic president was giving speech speeching says the viking mentality is one needed in finance and now the world can see we're narl gifted finance years so they had that dilution until i it came crashing down. the greeks want today bloat their already bloated public

sector with the money. what miami did with the money, i thought of it this i would. it's like entire societies were left alone in a dark room, with a human sack of money and allowed to do whatever they wanted with and it you could see the perversions in the society buy what they did with the money. in this increasingly one world, culture, where you can buy the same stuff in new york as you income london and tokyo, not many opportunities for distinctive travel and get at aspects of the society that are peculiar about the society through some lens. and this was getting what is macular about iceland and greece and ireland and germany, through the lens of money. so story offered countries' experiences in financial crisis and the material was unbelievable. iceland. i hate to go on too much because

she is going to ask a question. the population, 150,000, 300,000 people, generally the men were the bread winner, all related. and the men -- the chief source of wealth was fishing. that's what they did. this fished. also had cheap energy but the energy was -- it was thermal energy. geothermal energy. so for complicated reasons they smelted aluminum in iceland, but the fishing was the big thing. the men were fishermen, and this story happened over and over. fishermen goes to with wife and says, bjorn says i can change foreign exchange at the new bank instead of fish and you make twice as much money and dent get wet, it's not cold and miserable and we're actually naturally

good at trading foreign currency. this wife says, are you sure about that? why would you know anything about trading foreign counselor currency. he said everything is getting rich. dock the boat. we're going to whip them and drive them on the training desk. interviewed that person. this isn't an exaggeration. then it turns out that what they're creating afinancial calamity of global epic proportions. the banks are catastrophic. comes tumbling down. i go in after it collapses, the only financial vie able investment advisory business in the country when i arrive is a woman who is set up -- come to me and i will help you figure out how to invest you money. business the premise is promise no man will ever be allowed to advise you or get his hand on your money. the mistrust of men -- all male

overconfidence. the husband said i know where i'm going and the wife -- all of sudden there their three straitsway from where they're supposed to be and me move says, look at map. the country elect the first female prime minister and the first lesbian prime minister. didn't even want the head of state sleeping with a man. the hostility towards the male financial overconfident impulse was at its global peak, and so it gave -- that's what was write about. different things in different plays. so we probably just cost you 10 decide in -- so 10s do in a phone billy san da, please continue. >> caller: well, at one time you said that you were going to write about california, and i think the pension issue that has become such a huge problem. we don't have money to spend on

important things because of the amount of money being spent on penguins, like 100 million in sonoma county alone. that's not a year, is it? it's horrific, anyway. so that was what i was wondering about. >> guest: well, so, i did write about it and at the end of "boomer rang" one chapter about colorado. not a particularlied identifying chapter but it did get at -- attempt -- took brave poll thank you -- chuck reed was the mayor of san jose who was in a ward with the police and fire department because he was trying to cut their pensions. it's a huge issue. an issue i might find a way to write about because the finances are out of control. what we pay -- what -- how california is pendses its

money -- a lot of the -- if the tax revenues are strong, so on, but the combination of really bad deals, the state cut with public employees, and the legal obligation they therefore have, to pay for these pensions, with low investment return, because interest rates have been low for so long. this is a slow-moving iceberg of a problem, but a slow moving catastrophe in the making. it's not just in california. all these pensions calculations are based on returns of 8% or some assumed investment return that the pensions themselves are not earning. so eventually you'll have shortfalls and we'll have some messy political reckoning. >> host: among your favorite books "confederacy of dunces"

explain that. >> guest: a novel written by a man john kennedy tooles who killed himself before the novel was published. he had gotten as far as the publisher being interested in and it going back and forth with letters and then -- i don't know what happened but he killed himself. and it's the funniest -- it's one over the two or throw funniest books i've ever read. the book -- anybody asks me, can you give me the book that describes new orleans, it's the book i give them. it's a book i give them because ignatius riley, the character at the center of it, thinks don keough tate -- the best exacter since don quixote, and a wholly original character and there are tears streaming down my face

when i read it. haven't read it in a decade or so but one of the few books i i've read more than once. >> host: how it published after he killed himself. >> guest: he inbedded in the novel -- imbedded in novel a very funny portion of his own mother who is a lunatic. a charging new orleans lunatic, and very expressive out the woman. and after he died, she was convinced already son had written a work of genius, and she ran around bothering people to read the book, and she cornered the novelist, walker percy, a famous novelist who lived across the lake from new orleans, after one of his classes. he was teaching at loyola university, and hands him this dirty manuscript in a brown paper bag and said my dead son wrote this, please read and it

get published. he said in hiss introduction the book, this is just what you want, the mother of a dead child who has written a work of genius and now it's in my hands. and he said he started reading this thing, thinking he was going to read -- gave it two of three page and then could say i'm sorry, it's no good or couldn't be published help said he turned the pages with growing wonderment. constant believe how good it was. so he got it to a publisher. i can't remember who. anyway, he get is publish and it wins -- either the pull lit irore the national book award, the same year walker percy's book it is up. but in this culture, unlike in english culture, it is really hard to pull off a come nick

novel that will -- comic novel that will be rick niced in literature, the same way a comedy is made a movie and taken seriously as something that makes you cry. and so the oscar always goes to the drama. it's one of the funniest things i've ever read. so, takes me -- there's a catharsis in having something explained to you that you didn't quite realize and needed explaining, and one of the things i needed explained to me as a result of my upbringing in new orleans, what's so secular about this place? so -- peculiar about this place? i can't put words to it and, he not only puts words to it, he creates characters that embody it and you just go, oh, this is

home. >> host: next is rage in north carolina. you're on the air with michael lewis. >> hi, michael. watched you on c-span at the national book city of, and i tivod and it played that interview over and over when i get so damned depresses. second, believe you gave an interview and i don't know where -- on "undoing project" that said if you make decisions using your gut, you're going to get nothing or worse. since we have a president that does that, are we screwed? >> guest: the short answer is, yes. so, the point -- this the source thief money ball story -- that the point in "the undoing project" one insight is that you

can show how people were just going by their gut, will get to wrong -- systematically wrong answers. not that the gut is always wrong. but if you have a chinese between gut, based decisions and data-driven decisions where the database really good in capturing what you need to make the decision go with the data because the gut will mislead you because your mind mislead outside in various ways. your opinioner is very well-taken, that we went from a president, in obama, who was extremely aware of the limitations of his own mind. even though he was a very smart person. he was very aware that the job of president is a decisionmaking job, and we can construct our environment so that we are less likely to make mistakes but

we'll still make mistakes, but nevertheless we can try to guard against them a bit by encouraging input from people who might not otherwise feel comfortable speaking up. and acknowledge that whatever my first impulse might by foolish. there was whole literature on decisionmaking; obama read that it has been demonstrated the mere act of making decisions erode your able to make decisions, like going into sam's club and all these decisions, after an hour you are exhausted. give people a lot of choices and their able to make choices i corroded. so obama got erode of hislights but blue and gray suits so he depend have to decide what he would wear and tried to clean the environment to make it as likely as possible he would make good decisions. go from that to someone who just

thinks he knows everything, and who is flying by the seat of his pants all the time, and who plays on our -- who he does it consciously or not but as day and amos, we will long for certainty in our leaders we punish intelligent uncertainty if we don't want our president to get up and say there's only a 98% chance we'll get nuked or only a 75% chance the economy is going to get better. we don't want probable. we should want probablistic think erring expressing themselves clearly. but we want people to stand and say this is what wore going to do and this will happen and i know. and every comment who ever walked the earth knows this, that seeming certain -- anyone

ever sold stocks on watt street knows what you do is seen was totally certain about the thing you're proposing, that will -- that will sway your audience. so, we have a president who is very happy -- seems very certain about things that are inharenly uncertain. that worries me. i'm not supposed to be partisan but i think we're in a very disturbing moment. >> host: we'll go to berkeley, california -- >> guest: there we go, my home. >> host: curly, you're next. >> caller: hey. how are you guys doing? steve, big, big fan of c-span. mr. lewis, big fan of your becomes and so forth. you guys have covered a lot of ground. it's been very interesting. could go a lot of different places but i need to start in defense of the gut for just a second if could i. >> guest: sure. >> okay. first of all, simplest one is didn't billy bean use his gut to

decide that give from cleveland, who is using the numbers that everybody told him one ever going to work -- didn't billy bean use his gut to make that things we'll leave that for another time. i wanted to ask you about -- look, what you were saying, the cogent analysis you made about why data is better than just thinking something without challenging it, that is pretty obvious and you did a very good job of explaining that, and people -- i mean there's always those behavioral economics issues where you go into a class where people will end up doing a auction for a $20 bill, saw this on frontline and the guy ended up paying $22 for a $20 bill or something. the excitement of the moment is the essence of a auction situation and of making markets for that matter. i did just also want to bring up just for a second black shoals,

and those guys used numbers analysis of the best kind for a long time to thus come up to a situation that led to where it was. ... go with your gut in a better way. i would say in the case of higher rain a person who could

do statistics, will apply statistical analysis to baseball players, it's exactly that decision. we knew what kind of person he needed and there were a lot of people likely available, someone who's framing statistics and also in the role of baseball. he argued new when he was looking for a buyer. if you are going to go after me, billy dean himself, the high priest of using analytics to evaluate baseball players and strategies just said screw it, i think this. he did this with the player because he thought the play was either doing drugs, he was detecting and attacked the player was going to have. really in theory would say it doesn't matter, but in fact he

had a sense they did matter. been in a leadership position of an organization, i don't think you can lay just by numbers if for no other reason they don't listen the numbers. people made the story. it is more complicated. we leave everything to an algorithm. absolutely true i agree with that. how about we just leave it at that. >> host: the books by michael lewis, beginning with "liar's poker" right into the wreckage on wall street 1989, the money culture 1991, pacific raised, the fault on between the u.s. and japan. losers, the road to everyplace but the white house in 1997. the new new thing in silicon valley in 1999. mats come in the future just happened in 2001. trade ties the art of winning an unfair game followed by coach, lessons on an unfair life and

blindside which came out in 2006. your ninth book, home game, the big short inside the doomsday machine from 2010. boomerang, travels in a new third world from 2011. flash boys, wall street and your recent book, the undoing project, friendship that changed our minds. what was the easiest, what was the most difficult book of all of these? >> liars book was the easiest because i didn't know how hard it was supposed to be. all of these books come in the character on the page and now when the character i was my material for large parts of that book. and i was unjustifiably abused by myself -- amused by myself. >> host: are you laughing? >> guest: i was laughing with tears coming down my face.

.what is the easiest. it came out at a very fast. when i think about judging my books, judge olympic dodge, and it's not just the quality of the execution, and the difficulty. trade for having is the degree of difficulty. it wasn't hard to write. the material was in my lap. i lived it. the hardest to write, after that it gets tricky, but probably "the big short." basically because you have to explain if you're on the same avenue at the financial crisis, you do have to explain the collateralized obligations and no one can explain the collateralized debt obligations. all you can do this give the

reader a faster reason they understand. so the complexity of what happened, it was really difficult to read that in and not lose the reader. you had to rewrite one of them and take it at all in again. which was the most difficult to deal? probably "the big short." >> host: suzanne from williamsburg, virginia. >> caller: thank you. a great three hours almost. >> host: you haven't been watching for three hours. >> caller: it's pretty hard to believe. i started my michael lewis journey with "liar's poker." i had to watch the whole thing. anyway, the reason i'm calling as i have a little story i thought you might enjoy. i was living in manhattan in the early 80s and my roommate at the time with long-term capital

management. well management. well before it was long-term capital management, well before the infamous that you wrote about. while my roommate was cooking dinner, john and i used to sit in the living room and plate numbers games. wii is to try to figure out the least amount of gases we could figure out the number that was the nature each other's heads. in hindsight -- i also wonder whether that was the very beginning of john's rise and downfall is that simple game in the living room. it truly was a betting culture. i would love to hear more about that. do you think people are born that way or is it just something they acquired my they acquired by acquaintance or whatever?

lewis thank you. that's funny. john mayweather was my boss. i worked for the failed line of his desk and his desk was of historic interest because what they did. they were the trading arm and if you've gone back a decade earlier, another partnerships that had this kind of operation in moscow. they were making these enormous debts but the firm money. it is so great they 1989-1990, more than 100% of the firm's profits were coming from seven or eight people overseen a john meriwether. in 8000 person firm. they are making it at. so the whole enterprise ended up organizing itself around john meriwether's status and made that it was making. these were huge gambles.

it was true that he was gambling in the beginning in the marketplace. the marketplace in the 80s got much more complicated. options and futures are traded everywhere. there were lots of actual mispricing the securities and people who are smart but the numbers and in response to your question about a city gambling culture, it was very much a gambling culture and it felt like when you walk towards the trading floor that you were in the place a bit like people who are predisposed to alcoholism in a bar. people who are predisposed to gambling addiction are actually attract you to that place and it was just kind of encouraged. in defense of the place, pretty shrewd about establishing the smart gamblers from the gamblers

and giving the money to the smart gamblers to play with. but you didn't do what john meriwether did for a living unless you really like to gamble. most people couldn't deal with the debts they made. in the end, he was so successful that he becomes almost too big for his own firm and they go and create long-term capital management in a make debts that almost bring down the global financial system. but you only get to that place if you're unbelievably successful for a long time. >> host: [inaudible] blindside >> guest: sandra bullock captures so well that one man's has been saw the movie for the first time he went gasp, that's exactly what he said, my god, i could just handle one. there were two of them.

it was shocking to me. it was like seeing one of my characters end up on the screen. i was even more impressed than i maybe should have even been. i saw that brad pitt captures billy beane and all kinds of interesting ways. christian bale captures michael berry in all kinds of interesting ways. steve correll captures steve eiseman in all kinds and the imitation, the impressions they do back up and say the movie business seems like kind of a nonsense business, hollywood, celebrity, but in los angeles, there is a trade and a craftsman with unbelievable skill and talent in these actors and directors and writers are so talented that you can't quite believe it when you see it.

i love sandra bullock. she is just the best i think and she did an unbelievable job, but the actor who scared me the most with his power was christian bale. he scared me because michael berry who he has asked for her syndrome. he has no connection and socially to the outside world. he is the first to really see what is going on in the subprime mortgage network and the only one who has an argument about when the market is going to turn in why. it is based on having studied the loans that were made that shouldn't have been made. anyway comment in person he's a little quirky. not wildly quirky, but quirky. i've heard that christian bale had gone inside one day that was it. he called very politely, can i come spend a day and just be with you. watched him, talk to him, very

natural conversation. he said it was hard for me because he didn't get to go to the bathroom. he sat in my office for 12 years. i was exhausted at the end of it. he was on the screen and became michael berry. he is wearing the clothes that michael was very -- michael barrett swearing when i met him. and i cornered christian bale to say you spend one day with him. i spent a year studying this person and i could not have done an impression. you are doing all kinds of things. i don't know what it is, to get him across. how did you do that? he didn't want to talk about it. actors like magicians don't want to tell their magic. it bothered him so much. he said okay, here's the thing. it was obvious right away.

he breathes funny. i said what? when he talks, he takes a breath in odd places in a sentence. and from that, all these mannerisms emerge. and i saw that right away and it was obvious that i said to the director, and get my breathing right and if i get the breathing right everything else will follow. post 12012, ucla commencement address. >> .in 2006 when a bunch of us portugal, italy, greece and spain, we called them the pigs for a reason. i can explain it in one sentence when the entire u.s. themselves, the party accelerate, the brutal hangover is inevitable. after the act in such a manner i found myself right in the middle of the financial meltdown prophet named for a minute because i had predict today. i had been a chicken little or a

cassandra to some, especially in government one lucky sop. in truth, and i was just trying to figure it all out. >> another funny thing about michael brady coming back to me now watching him is he trained to be a doctor. that is what he was going to be, but he was more interested in the stock market. he comes out to me and i said why the talking in the stock market. i asked myself, do i care about people? not really. it was a really honest kind of self assessment. like i shouldn't be a doctor if i don't care that much about people. i find him unbelievably lovable. i really love the guy. a very good person, very interesting person, has his own peculiar take on the world that happens to fit with that moment in history.

but the trail of him doesn't completely capture him. but sitting on his desk, it was incredible what this guy did with it. anyway, i don't know, this starts a sandra bullock. >> this is from 2010. we will watch and get your reaction. >> actually one sunday after church we write north oxford baptist, true story and we played the day before and he runs the foot while bright and then left i'm thinking what's wrong with him. the short school bus picked them out. he needs to be running lap. we come out of church and here comes houston on the parking lot. sean is like eavesdropping me. and i said. i stepped in front of the cardinal the windows down. he got are you doing today? not really but actually coach. what the problem? i'm trying to figure out, i said, my son was a preseason

all-american left tackle really talented, and really decent at football. i said you ran the ball right 50 times and left 10 times. i'm not understanding this. he does well, and we can go back and watch the film because he did. i said when the ball left. [laughter] that's her. she's the best. very funny. so the scene in the movie where she's going and telling him what to do, she's talking about in that clip the ole miss football coach. they are close friends now. the funny thing, she has steve at the basketball game on the

court premises and take it and she has seats right next to the opposing team's bench. from here to there to the opposing teams player and she spends the whole game teaching them how to behave. don't use language like that. they are all yes, just listening to her. now, interesting thing about movies, people realize people. when i met leanne -- when i regained with sean and i started to think about writing this story, she was very weary for a bunch of reasons. she didn't think anything good would come out of it.

but she didn't like the idea of being on stage. she was -- she wasn't shy. in her own world she was a force, but she didn't have herself as a character. she's acquired a sense of herself as a character in part of the recent sandra bullock shared what character she was by doing it on screen. so, i am glad no one has tried to make a movie about me because i think it would bear very hard, especially if it was done well, to go through your life is such a vivid impression of yourself having been seen by millions and not have it affect you in some way. >> host: we go to catherine in california. go ahead, please. what part of the state are you from? >> guest: centro, margarita. >> host: welcome to the conversation. >> caller: thank you very much in thank you for c-span.

we've been watching never weakened for many years. we've been with michael lewis for three hours. >> caller: i want to agree with sandra from santa rosa tiered first off two questions. one in which i was listening to your conversation i was struck by what you said about being a thinker and i think you are a thinker and i don't want to disturb. i'm wondering if you think of yourself as the conscience of the culture, but more broadly the culture itself. i do. again, i don't want to disturb your image, which is so creative, but obviously that is what you are and i really appreciate it. ignore it if you think it might bother you.

this might be a silly postscript to the whole thing because it's a wonderful conversation. again, i appreciate it, but in your list of authors, there are no women. i am just wondering if you're inspired by women and if you read them and if you do, why are they not on your list of inspiration or maybe it's just a short list. that is my question. i'll go with an answer offline. >> host: thanks for watching the tv. >> guest: kind of an unrepresentative example in some ways. yes, i do read books by women. when i go back to like the beginning, i don't read anybody now. this is going to sound horrible, but nobody inspires me anymore as a writer. what happened does he do this, if you do this for a long time, i think it's because you spend so much time, you read so

critically and i read so much more critically. much more than when i was 20 years old. writers can't get inside me the same way they could. the thing i like least about what i do having turned it into a career as slightly damp might interest -- changes my interest in reading in a way that is not all good. that list you have for me, i'm pretty sure are all books that got inside me when i was 20 years old. becker west got inside me when i was 20 years old. at clambering file can. i discovered this seemingly plain style british writer. she was one just by the sheer

clarity generated this power and made me think that's the way to go, as clear as possible. don't use fancy words when a little word will do. don't use complex sentences when a simple sentence will do. don't disguise the fact you have nothing to say by saying it in a fancy way. have something to say. back in those days when i was capable of being inspired, she is on the list. not many other people are. though she was on the list. anyway. >> host: if there is one writer in all of time that you would want to meet, who would it be? >> do i get to spend some days with him? are we going to have a dinner? >> host: you get to spend dinner with him. >> guest: i don't want to have dinner at george orwell, they may want to spend a couple weeks

with him. i think it would take a while to get through to him in any meaningful way. maybe dickens, mark twain for dinner. mark twain i feel i've read so much about 10. he has been so combed over that i feel i might get a lot more out of dickens because it would be fresher. >> host: we will go to stephen's indicator, it illinois. >> caller: i have a short attention span because i'm listening to you because i can see in your eyes you're telling the truth. i heard you earlier why you write. i think you write because the truth is like gold. it doesn't run in a straight

line. it weaves and wanes. so when you find it, you have to let people know that you are a writer. i am not a writer. you discover the truth and you know the difference between truth constructed for your assumptions than the actual truth. i see it in your eyes you have the truth seeker. it is true, what you say that when you find the truth, it seems like an interesting truth. it is really energizing as a writer. however, enough by nature, maybe i'm proving the thinnest three hour marathon that preaching is not my style. to get back to the previous scholars point, i can hardly function as my own.

and i think oddly, you're dancing with the reader, having a relationship with the reader. if the reader controls, if it's going to be any good the reader has to have some control over it. you can't get them around your truth because they'll feel it. they are being told what to think about the story they are reading. all those stories have the reader walks into an exercise is discretion over. and so, the byproduct of this is the frustration if you are hoping your book to deliver a truth for a reader is often a come away with a completely different truth. they are reading it completely the way you have no idea. i see coming back to why i write and this is the pleasure i get

out of doing it but i hope the reader is getting the pleasure to think the same caliber pleasure reading it as i got created. i think of myself as creating some pleasure and interest in people's lives. i don't have that much control over what's going to happen. >> host: this is from elizabeth in new jersey. she wants to know how much time is spent researching, writing and how much time does michael lewis stange is thinking. >> guest: authority established that i don't think. the typical book you said, what is the pattern? they're not exactly the same, but roughly what happened the book will take me two years in 18 months will be gathering material in six months we will be writing. and when i'm writing always six, seven, eight hours a day. 18 months i will be writing

character sketches, notes, ideas, organizing the structure of the thing, but not really writing. so, my writing is sporadic. when i write, i write a lot and i write very fast and i revise, revise, revise. >> host: how much time you spend just thinking in the process of writing in general. >> guest: so, in my bringing, my father used to say when i was a kid that the lewis family had a motto. he said the lewis family coat of arms in latin i just believe it. it was not true. he had me believing it until i was 22 years old. he said the lewis family motto

is do as little as possible and not unwillingly for it is better to receive a slight reprimand and to perform an arduous task. i mentioned this because the idea that what i'm not doing or what i'm doing when i'm not writing is something difficult while thinking is a false idea. i spend a lot of my life kind of just carting around, kind of enjoying my life. and i can't say -- i read someplace that bill gates has two weeks where he just goes away to think when he is on microsoft. i just thought how would you do that?

. my name is nathan but 3 and i will be your host for an hour here. i want to welcome everybody who is watching on booktv to the southern festival of books sponsored by humanities tennessee. i want to say thank you to all those who donate, your individual donations make this event possible. thank you very much. if you would like to make