in gottlieb's opinion gunther was "probably the best reporter america ever had. we wanted to find out more about his publishing success stories so we called canadian freelance writer can cuss percent to talk to him about his 1992 book named inside. some problematic things are the ways he feels about women, he also credits his mom was saying she was the first to teach him this

kind of >> good evening everyone welcome to pngnd live im the co-owner of politics and prose we have a great event for you this evening with michael lewis talking about his new book the premonition and we like to think our friends at books and books in miami and harvard bookstore in cambridge massachusetts partnering with us to make this event happen. a couple of brief housekeeping notes first to post a question at any point during the talk, flip on the q&a icon at the bottom of the screen. the chat function will not be available this evening but you can find a link for purchasing additional copies of the premonition. in the introduction of his new book defines his job as finding the story in the material and he has done that consistently with extraordinary success through

16 books over more than 30 years. he found the story where the subject is wall street, baseball and moneyball football and the home game. 2008 subprime mortgage collapse. behavioral science and economics or the hollowing out of the q government under trump just to name a few. in the premonition he addresses the pandemic and has done so through intriguing characters a loosely connected group of doctors and scientists in public health experts who attempt to get the us government to take the pandemic threat seriously but going up against dysfunction and indifference to understand america's expense bungling of the crisis, you need to look

beyond donald trump's own mismanagement to the nations fragmented underfunded public health system and particularly the failings of the cdc. it's a compelling argument and in the compulsive narrative and reads like a thriller. michael will be in conversation this evening with a cognitive scientist google director of behavioral economics and previously served as an advisor in the obama white house and at the un. she is about to start a podcast called slight change of plans. the screen is yours. >> hi michael. it's great to see we have talked several times this week than a with a bigger crowd. this is my favorite bug you have written. so one thing i have appreciated very early on you gavely a glimpse into your philosophy as a writer you think it was to find the story

and then let us make up our own mind but that doesn't mean that you don't form an opinion about us. so what is your take? >> it really is true. people don't believe me but i do think that my job is to find the right characters and to find the people through whose eyes you want to see the world and if i bungle that the book is not any good and then to draw attention to them make the stripper in front of the cathedral but not just for any church i'm trying to say these people are important and you need to listen to them. so those who are being heard

so it doesn't matter all that much what i think about it. it really doesn't. do i feel i have done justice to these characters in the situation? are having said that the story is about what they did and who they are. they are obviously curated and i think of it i have said all along a portrait of a broken dysfunctional system not just public health it's like a portrait of society. the way theynd bounce around tells you what is wrong with it. they are drawing w a picture. and yes it is ordinarily about the public health system but that was my target to write a

book this is what i thought. this thing is the world historic event like the 1918 pandemic like one of those things 100 years from now what was it really like? and i thought if i do my job really well with a little message in at bottle to describe american society now. that was the hope and that was the ambition. and the other guiding principle is not what it is about. he's been my editor my entire career. don't bore yourself. keep yourself is interested in the material thatt you can and the reader will stay interested. i'm glad you think it's my desperate. i think it may be.

it's an absolute thrill to write. exhilarating. in the way that it is exhilarating to play tennis against somebody who is better than you. the material is always on the other side of the net. there's only so much i can do. i will not play my best tennis but that is like roger federal then all of a sudden i look so much better than i otherwise did. i thought i had roger fedor on the other side of the net. >> the book feels fresh because the stall the one —- the stories are unfolding in real time. we don't know how the coronavirus will evolve. so your characters work on infectious disease took on new significance of that backdrop they are actively reinterpreting their own path

in real time so like the economy for example we have had decades for more stable understanding of what they had done so maybe i need to rewrite my own understanding. >> that's true. it is not unprecedented. and like moneyball from first meeting thehe characters and delivery of books in both cases over a year and did not feel like i needed another. i think that's right. they were all a little surprised i showed up on their doorstep. i cannot tell you how many times they say why are you talking to me?

i'm a public health officer. >> you don't understand. you are really important. just like don't talk to me and i went to remain in the basement until i retire. that it is true that i think they think of themselves differently than they did in the beginning. it's also true, of who they were and what they were in relation to this event was the track. it is an ongoing event. that was never the problem. because they defined themselves in relation they were basically out by june it's too late it's over. we lost. they knew how it ended in june but it was never an issue with that the issue was to fully process.

>> yes. did you ever feel that you are taking on a b therapist role as part of your childhood and your past. all the books are that way if i don't get to that place where they talk to me like they don't talk to anybody else that i have not done my job. charities said they knowt me better than me to ex-husbands. that wasn't saying that much at the time that i got way past that. she thinks i know her better than anybody. . . . .

earing a reality in any way in

their favor. they trust me to understand what the world looks like through their eyes. once that trust is established, like magical things happen. magical things happen. you get to a sort of see the patterns in their lives that they don't see for themselves. fully formed people. you are delivering in understanding. there are moments like this. this was, this book moment, i met charity dean in early may of last year. after pestering the california government. they told me she did not want to. they lied.

i found her through back channels. i went and visitor in sacramento. we had to relay long days together. she was really she went all right. >> you say it nonchalantly, is not normal behavior so could you take credit for? is this extremely charming, disarming character whose convincing her or is this our usual character, something to hide? >> we know each other, we've gotten to know each other by said want you walk around your house, what would you said? >> probably not. [laughter] i am one of those people one of hethese characters so maybe thas why.

i don't have that type of personality. [laughter] >> i think you would say yes, that's just me. and i'll explain why. in her case, she wanted, there was all these things on the wall to remind herself of who she was. that sounds strange and a lot of things were like post-it notes on the wall and i wanted to inspect all of us. i'm walking around the house and in her bedroom, her grandmother's portrait, the photograph is hanging by her t bed. i take it off the wall and there are her most intimate personal resolutions from the last 15 years written on the back and it's all stuff more or less that conventional census of what i'm going to put on this year, i'm going to go to west africa and treat malaria or when to learn french or whatever.

so i get to look at this and december 20, 2019, the first line on her list is something very personal and the second one is a prediction process it has started, like a tingle went down my spine and i called her back up and i said what is this? she said i have a feeling this thing i've been waiting forak my entire career was about to be upon us and i just put it down and i didn't h have any evidenc, no reason. she's a doctor and of disease hunter tried to hump her instincts because there's a such a thing as a sixth sense and all of us. that moment, i didn't know what i was going to do with that but i thought this is when i am at my best, when i get into their lives so that i see this.

she was never going to mention it. she was never going to mention that she had permission in decembere of 2019 we were about to be overrun by this so for me to feel like i'm doing what i am doing properly, need to get them to a place where i can get to that bedroom and alter grandmother's portrait off the wall and see what's on d the ba. >> i love that. in part this is my favorite book because these characters are larger-than-life. i called you after i first learned about this, two minutes learning about it i picked up the phone and i was like michael, i cannot believe this force of nature. and i want to ask a few more questions about her. source her? did you know from the beginning

to have everything it takes be based character or did you take that moment when you saw that note to take place? >> she was inevitable because i met all of my other characters first and all other characters pointed to her. they all said before i got to her, five people said to me you've got to meet charity dean because she's the only one in california government who knows what we should do, she is a bad -- and they just said if i was wonder understand what was going on, i needed to spend time with her because they don't like the feeling that she had in mind these are not dumb people. these were important men who

might not typically find themselves in mind by a younger female doctor. it was clear she was special before i even met her. i when i met her i wasn't thinking i wasn't looking for a main character of the book, i was thinking i'm looking how to write about this but i thought one of the problems the country has is a status problem and if the wrong people have the status that you got these bozos who are kind of a rotating cast of characters on cableoi news who e supposedly experts who learned about infectious disease three months ago but they make themselveses public as experts.

they are usually not the experts and the people who are really experts in disease control are the people controlling disease and those are all public cap aquifers were nobody paid like crab, they get all kinds of grief but they are soldiers on the battlefield. a battlefield without -- the generals are the people who often themselves have never fought in the war so it was clear i wanted to do the structure of the story with society should do in real life and that is invert the structure, kick the person whose lowest person on the totem pole, the most important this fight and make them the most important. once i realized that i thought yeah, she is what i want to lean on the most but then there was another thing. reality configured itself in a way that the other characters

were all connected through her and that's how i found her in the first place so she was an actual connective tissue in the story. she let the reader to the characters so that was the other reason she ended up where she was. >> i felt like i watched an episode where all the characters somehow are in each other's world and you didn't even have to listen for. onetu thing that was fascinating to me about charity dean is being an infectious disease doctor and public health official, it i feels like she is in every nook and cranny of what she's capable of doing under this t jurisdiction and chases after several i need to extract lung tissue with garden cheers,

and all of the other hazmat suits, i could go up and tell him he's out of business, he can't practice anymore, sure, i'll do that, to. there's very fewew limits to ths present ability and her willingness to contribute and i'm struck by, i interacted easily with the government employee who very much is not charity dean throws walking to work and i got bit by a straight dark. so i'm scared, i'm in the doctors office and about to get a tetanus shot and i like good, now you have an animal control center. some on theen phone and i'm flustered and i'm like i was bit by a dark, animal rescue and he does everything in his power to avoid having to ask. he's like no problem, just give me the box social security number, or evidence of the dog,

the dog's birthday's, i'm like sure, i will make sure to take down the rabbit dog next time and ask him all these questions and take a picture loan audit. then i see that same straight dark two weeks later so exactly to what you are saying i'm thinking how do we help solve this problem where we recruit people like charity dean into the system? one way is you just find more charity beans, people possessed by the job and have these predictions. that's hard to do. the other alternative is to increase with which we view these positions. it's like we had this mission, teachers need to be paid more. they are the backbone of our society.em central workers were lifted up and all thehe sudden hair-like mailman is this very important person, or the male woman for

the amazon delivery guy were all these folks we are elevating it was wonderful if we elevate and i say that when i was working in the obama white house, i did see the hierarchy where i am a political appointee type and there are civil servants who worked in the government 50 years, these are the true experts yet at the table the shiny new object is the medical appointee and that's for all of it. i feel even that power system within the government. >> i think that's right. that's what i'm trying to do in the book, invert it. i'm trying to think this is the person should have status, everybody should know who they are and who should have resources to do their job m and should be in a position where they don't have to be that brave to take a risk. nobody should be as brave as charity dean is doing that job and if you have to, you should

beia paid $10 million a year. it's not a public servant way. that's what struck me instantly as being screwed up. it wasn't the justice, she was under resourced and underpaid and overworked. it was that she was expected to take all of this risk, all of the respondents way to her. the cdc wasn't willing to cover for her, the state of california for cover for her, t she was on her own. was nobody istras coming to save me. she said she had to learn that and when she took the job she said i did not expect to have to be as brave as i had to be. what made her such a good character she is full of fear, she is notav a fearless person. this person has lots of anxieties and fears deeply rooted in a problematic

childhood and has dealt with alcoholism among other things and she willed herself to be brave in order to do her job. all those things i was looking at around her house, courage is a muscle memory. it was signs like that telling herself, reminding herself to be brave and help screwed up the world that we have created that pressure on that role without reward? i agree, the thing in this case, there is right help because an interesting job, it's a mystery to me that there has not been a television drama built around local public health official. the stories are cinematic and riveting. natural material so what they do

is so interesting, i would not be surprised if one of the effects of the book lots of people think maybe i want to do that. what an interesting job. i want to know who my local health officials is and then thy pass a profile they didn't have before but that's what needs to happen. i was working on the fifth, it was mystifying to me the status of the political appointee compared to the status of the career civil service. it made no sense to me and still makes no sense. >> i don't have a blue badge so i literally heard people say that the work of the office management like 35 years, they could recite things like hundreds of pages that they definitely felt that dynamic it was painful to witness because i felt deeply elective in my own

expertise that they were here and here i was. >> and it not that they are not compelling people. usually they are people have tunnel vision and obsessed with their subject's and that is another aspect of the main character, obsession is like that's when you know have something and the combination of session with a failure to realize your character is called. when someone m knows they are le a character they lose altitude on stage and it becomes self-conscious. it's these people who are generally obsessed and don't think anything specular about themselves. she didn't find anything particular about herself and she's a person who was with a kid in red books about the bubonic plague and hung models of viruses from her ceiling and

willing to be excommunicated from her church and leave her first marriage to pursue a medical degree and found nothing unusual about it. >> people like carter, this was so fascinating to me. he is struggling to pay attention to anything and then he says when it comes to critical medicine, it's as if they are given ritalin. i see that p is so powerful. and richard has a near fatal accident as a child and you're here for a reason carrying this burden on his shoulders. what is my reason and assign me to something and he's like i guess this is it, this is my life's work. >> talk about a moment, i had joseph talking about this. richard was the jungle cry for the book.er

richard is prominent but not as prominent as a partner in the book. richard was the one who held my hand through the whole book and as a literary figure. his first ambition in life was to be a poet and writing was too hard so he became a doctor he was and an apologist in the way he gets into public service in itself is an interesting story but he's not self traumatized. we were talking on zoom one night and we are talking about a particular moment trying to figure out how to model, how to build models or find models that would enable them to go through, they invented it. and reinvented it. he said he was sitting there one night in the white house and

hauntingly starts to tell me this story because he's embarrassed by because it sounds like a little kid, my parents doted on me and i did the story that's been in my head my whole life, i rolled down an 80-foot cliff, hit my head i was unconscious in the water industry and my father by accident had a course in pediatric medicine or critical-care or something like the week before, he necessitates me and ever since then there was this mythology in the family, this alabama family that richard was there for a reason. he's maybe upper-middle-class alabama so they don't routinely tell these kinds of stories so the tory lingers in his mind and when he's in the white house facing the possibility that they won't have a solution to a

pandemic and by solution army they asked what you do before you get a vaccine? is going to be a. where disease is going to sweep through the land, how do you minimize disease in the land? they had this feeling that this is why i am here. this is what my mother was talking about and he's embarrassed to say. it is incredible and it's where he lived. >> think another theme emerging from the book, richard and the other characters, he quickly realized someone got it. the people who need to get this done have product. one anecdote where charity has this exchange with the cdc and she's potentially getting a

meningitis outbreak in chicago cdc and it falls on deaf ears. like we don't have your facts, think you're wrong but go for it local health official. have at it. i still remember the day that i realized the government bodies i had revered much of my life were just made of people. it was astonishing discovery to have. >> hard to remember. >> it's like you people are prone to the same one abilities and behavior biases like fear, ego, motivated by incentive structures and etc. my first teacher in the supermarket for the first time like wait, what? buys food in the same place as us mere commoners? thought it felt like that to have this person pulled in like the cdc, like now.

just my colleague. [laughter] >> as charity put it, she said she was so disappointed, i was so disappointed to find that the man behind the curtain was such a pansy. [laughter] >> i love that remark she thinks they are thehe cause, right? all of a sudden she finds herself actually finding fighting disease on the streets of santa barbara behind oprah's house. multidrug-resistant tuberculosis or meningococcal on the campus. it's terrifying continued helping all kinds of ways. she needs material and moral support that's all covered. they don't materialize and when they materialized, they basically tell her you could take that risk but if you do and you are wrong, you're going to lose your job so we're not going to support that. and after she suppresses this

outbreak for health authorities, eternally grateful and take she did all on her own without the cdc instructing her. later when there's another outbreak on a college campus i think in oregon, they asked the people to call charity dean how.se she knows it is mind-boggling that she gets to a place in her head a couple of years into her job of actually fighting disease where she bars cdc investigators from her investigationin because they just interfere. they don't bring anything to. it's crazy. what is interesting is the local health officials, depending on how they do their job they have

different relations with the cdc but the culture is very much supposed to be following cdc orders. the cdc has no official power and they have budgets, money to get them, are not supposed to anger the cdc but the good ones were crossed with the cdc for this reason the ones she thought were brave and great, not always but almost always women as opposed to rich and retired doctor looking for this and doesn't want any trouble. the brave ones found themselves realizing no one is coming to save you, the cdc is going to get in the way and the brave ones are the ones who got their heads chopped off in the last year. all of the people charity admired, there are some exceptions, santa clara?

>> yes. >> should get a medal because she thought she needed to construct on the county without backup from gavin newsom or donald trump she shut down the county, possibly savior consumingsh knives interrupting early disease transmission and what does she get? every wednesday at the house, a mob gathers today, to this day chance obscenities at her family. i called her about a monthse ago and she was in the shelter, she had armed guards and she was in the shelter with her teenage daughter because her team needed to study forel the test the next day and she couldn't do it because the mob was making too much noise outside the house so that's what they get so there is selective pressure placed on the health system by the pandemic to drive the very best of them out

and let the ones who said i'm not going to interfere too much, let them stay and that's what we need to correct for. >> to think back to my time in government, there is almost an allergy toward innovation and risk-taking. people are petrified of taking risk. arming the magnitude of what we saw, but i mean basic things like running an experiment to see what program works well or not.e remember the department of veterans affairs it took eight months to run a simple experiment and the reason is that the upside so well. if they continue with the status quo and don't cause any problems, there is no risk incurred so that is the easy way forward. likely alarming that it requires people willingness to lose everything in order to have a voice.

you have any ideas coming out of the stories about how we can have these systems so we are reading that kind of problem solving brother within where publications andnd everything ws all about profit or medicine and etc. >> was not a question? i didn't hear the question. >> the tone of the voice through me off, i thought it was a statement. >> i was just wondering if you have any ideas of how we can refigure the sin structures within these different sectors so that the end goal makes an impact. >> we need to create a recognition culture and accelerating government achievement and risk takers. our work shows the whole country is watching. the authors for public services a good idea and there is such a

thing called the sammy awards. it should be broadcast like the oscars, the stories are fantastic. first creating a recognition culture and the second is its leadership thing. the leaders of each organization need to create this quarter, it's not like the society. if you become the secretary of commerce, you need them to celebrate the people taking the risk even if it goes wrong. silicon valley, if you are not springme up sometimes, you're nt taking enough risk and you need to tilt the other direction so what kind of leaders will do that? i think there is a structural case, i wonder what you think of this and it would be we have 4000 something political appointeeshi coming to the

administration. they are typically with a couple interesting exceptions, the tenure of whoever is in the white house at best. they may take forever to get confirmed but the average tenure is 18 months to two years. ... >> who have the homeowner in

the home renters attitude see get rid of the presidential appointees instead of 4400 and then you institutionalize the leadership in the operation they are encouraged when you make the change to look to the best practices in the private sector what do we do to make our employees as excited about their jobs as the people at microsoft or google or whatever it is? i don't think it's that hard. i don't think it is that crazy especially when we have now seen what happens in t the institution like the cdc especially when you frame it

as a little more efficient or a little less efficient but the existence of the society's you can do similar things but that is one fix. >> i think it's a good idea to drop off some fractions because it is a matter of the degree because allowing people to bring freshvi ideas into government so we do see the academic's. >> it's a matter of balance if

i see you are the new head of the cdc you will last until the end off images on —- administration if maybe two good years are the head of the cdc you will probably have it for 15 years. it's much more likely it will bring their 15 years. you are much more likely to look for innovation if you live with what you have got eight years from now. so i don't think these are mutually exclusive. >> that's fair. the only other point i would make is there is a sense of urgency to get stuff done because the clock is ticking. i wrote once of 2014 and he reassuredet me that they would

try to make sure to implement my change in 2017. >> that think about why that person is that way because they are led by somebody they know will be gone and you will be gone. that person is led by someone who will be around to do what they are supposed to do and that person is that slow they will be fired. that is the consequences of good leadership we will get rid of people in the whole business because you know the boss will notir be around in 18 months that will go away. institutions need to refresh. >> that there is attention there. >> i agree if you tell too far

in the other direction i agree. so after all the president is held accountable and if he doesn't have any ability and that get silly. that yes i agree. >> we need time for q&a. i just want to and with one fun question i remember you told us when you are writing a book you have a playlist but you play this over and over again but i am wondering if you could share a few songs from that playlist. >> while you are looking at questions i will tell you what they are. my writing playlist is not

curated for musical excellence so i don't pretend to have some picking abilities i am not a dj it is like a musically idiotic instructor so there are things i like to write to but if romeo and juliet and emmylou harris. suspicious minds right you'll come. we io have this dance. kelly clarkson. i asked your dd and her favorite song and she sent it to me and i thought that is so curious i am putting it on the playlist. kermit the frog rainbow connection.an [laughter] >> some of it is cool and son

is distinctly not. a getsno me going and if i'm in a grocery store then i look for the pc to start writing words. >> had you know what to write about? >> this is the truth. it sounds not true but after every book, i do ask myself should i still be doing this? i try to give myself the space where i can actually insert no. i usually go do something else like write a script or a podcast or whatever. i don't say have to write another book.

i start with the position nobody will ever need to be written by me again. that way i am called to the blog rather than force myself on the book. i have to feel i am called to the story like it needs me to the point i feel a sense of obligation to talent. in this case it was cheap and dirty. but then the trump administration will mismanage it when something bad happens. so i thought i had a duty to poke around. it yielded suchh gold right away in the form of these characters i was off and running. my just answer a question. wire thede oakland a's winning on —- making money? i have the same conversation with my editors 16 times.

i say start. i'm really interested in this but i'm not sure. we spent threere months pondering my uncertainty. and atsa some point i say i have learned so much about this and i care so much about this and nobody else will do it. i've got to do it. it is slightly revealing maybe while i was working on this i had a secret group of doctors influencing policy all over the united states. no one in the world knew who they were. the near time discovers carter's e-mail front page of "the new yorky times" have a tiny sliver of the story and i

said now i don't think i'll write the book i don't need to because now it's in "the new york times". and i waited foror it to emerge what i knew and it didn't so i came back to it i said it's in the newspaper so if i don't do it won't get done and it should be done that's the important feeling. how this stuff is found really is accident. >> like your characters. >> that is true. >> maybe you have that same obsession. so which of your own books is your favorite? >> that's like asking which kid is my favorite. if youwh have more than one child. >> it's just you and me. [laughter] i know who it is. [laughter]

>> it doesn't completely compute but i will make critical judgments ofou them. but the way i judge them is the way olympic gods judge not just the quality that the difficulty it was an incredibly difficult i've been but thent made stashes on —- splashes it could be an incredible dive with no splash at all. moneyball simple dive no splash. this one was a pretty complicated dive i don't think there was a lot of splash. if i had to rate them not like my favorite. you said you have to put mine in a writing competition ten years from now against other writers i wouldhe but this one up.

>> what was the most surprising discovery you made? >> material or my writing process? that is easy. in santa barbara where i was for two weeks retracing steps, following the boulder path of the montecito bedside where she was rescuing people and living her drama. i felt like i walked into a netflix showing how come i did not know about this person but this role. it blew my socks off. right behind it are the other two characters.

it's like solvingo pandemics with pythons. >> it is the most bad ass virus. and then to completely rethink what happened in 1918 to create a national pandemic strategy. that blew my doors off. in the process one thing excited me that was new. in a very self-conscious way for the first time in the book i will go where the characters go. this is about these characters and i don't know what the story is yet. but this turned out to be a good way to write the book. >> a friend of mine when i was getting married do you have any advice?

it's already you 40 did that part marry the right person. >> you are building your house on the best foundation. some are not up to code you are still okay. >> what is the biggest mistake made from the cdc in response to covid-19? we only have two hours but only choose one. >> the testing failure is the biggest. you cannot control anything if you can't see it. they not only failed to provide us with flashlights but they shut down people from providing their own self-made flashlights together with the fda and simply blinded us when they were to minus so that was

shocking and catastrophic in cost i don't know how many lives. but the other thing i would say it's different it's not one thing that adrift in the institution to the point where it was unable to stand up to donald trump. it became a mouthpiece. the process by which at lost its ability is the other side of this. >> in these problems didn't start with trumpet is an effortless narrative. it is deeply entrenched and long before. so if you could we do an interview in your career what would it be? >> if i could redo some part

of my career? >> no interview. >> if i could redo an interview? i don't have those kind of regrets. i don't have them. nothing comes to mind with an interview. because no one interview is that important. it is a relationship. i have to spend not days but months with someone. so there is no great risk from anyone interview. >> . host: may be for a moment that if they say i shared to make sure that moment? >> i have never lost a fish. every fish i have hooked i have landed.

i never have a problem with someone to say you scared me off the story i don't want to be with you are writing about me anymore. with one exception but it was not an interview it was with george soros 20 years ago but not an interview. i feel all over eastern europe with him. there was a masterpiece and him. a masterpiece. it would have cut across the financial markets and government. i made the mistake of writing a cover piece for the new republic that offended him he previously agreed to let me be his writer and then said no. he didn't trust me anymore. i think he made a mistake. but that was a mistake on my part to write that thing. i just should have shut up. host: can we go over a little

bit? what do you listen to or read for fun? >> i read all kinds of stuff. now i'm reading clara and the sun. how can you win the nobel prize and still write so well? it's not fair. it is so good. the nonfiction i tend to read is usually work related and what i need to know about. sometimes i read biographies but i tend to read more fiction and nonfiction for pleasure. there is a tendency there. >> your favorite podcast? >> there is a new one called slight change of plans. i don't know what to do about

it. i don't want to write anymore. i just want to listen. i listen to all of now, gladwell. he led me into the business. i'm not a big consumer of culture. that they consumer of fiction. i am a sort of consumer of some kinds of nonfiction. i do get hooked on tv shows now i'm watching mayor of eastownn. it is a soap opera.

so i get hooked on things i'm not a systematic consumer of culture. this appears before me and ietf. that tending towards fiction tending towards television, good television drama. host: giving your last book and all that happened during the trump years you ever circle back to find out what happened to them? and what they think about what you wrote? >> almost always. a lot. yes.s. because a lot of them are totally oblivious to what will happen when they are written about in the book. what is funny is arthur a allen who ended up to be the afterword to the paperback who

basically created the field and was the world's expert and how different objects drift at sea to enable him in the coast guard to rescue all kinds of people that were lost at sea because they didn't know how to overturn an 18-foot sailboat they can predict where it had gone. so this is a story of me and my subjects but it catches the spirit of it. i called arthur a allen to write about him i picked him off and alphabetized list who have been furloughed. [laughter] i thought what he did that is so easy one —- not essential only 70000 people and they said i am michael lewis i have

this book i want to write and afterword he said come i fly out to connecticut and he spent three full days with me. his wife and his children we went to i the old office we went where he floated all the objects to figure out how they drift he cried remembering a woman he had not saved. it was very emotional. and then i get a call from arthur a allen when i'm at the airport and he says you are a writer. you are an author. i said yes. i told you that when i called you. he said i didn't hear that. i said what did you think i was doing to spend three days with you? he said i thought you were interested in how objects drift. [laughter] i said i but not that

interested. [laughter] so i got an e-mail from him today because he just read the premonition now he knows i'm an author and we are friends so i don't just stay in touch because to get their feedback i stay in touch because we have become friends so first to hear about the feedback that then it becomes water under the bridge we move on to having a relationship. >> what about anthony found she? >> i like him. if you wanted to use it as a weapon and to do damage i would not approve of you if

you wanted to use my book as a weapon you would say if you're so smart how come you didn't know as much as carter did january 20? he was saying everything wasga not that big of a deal. when carter was saying why you should not say it's okay he needs to say copacetic so he's playing the political game i admire it and i would hate it if somebody used it against him. >> this is the final one. after everything is back to normal what about the possibility of people have not any interest of watching or listening that is pandemic

related? >> if people have that prejudice i might i'm not worried about that prejudice because we don't get to the pandemic until page 180 in my book and i told my editor the joke of the book is i'm skipping the pandemic because the only interest to my character is that you don't go to this dreary event but all the things around the pandemic that led i to the pandemic so in some ways it's not even a book about the pandemic. i wasn't thatbo worried people won't read the pandemic that because there isn't there is and there isn't. >> think if you were covid or

pandemic or infectious disease but the same stories were told. this has been super fun. we are done. >> you did a great job. >> thank you. you did to. >> great moderating and michael i don't know why maia will notot let you roam around her place you can come over to mine. m[laughter] >> this was damning for the friendship. [laughter] to everyone watching thank you very much for tuning in this is his best book yet be sure to read and in the chat, you can purchase additional copies of the premonition from all of us here politics and prose as well as harvard bookstore and books and books stay well and well read.

>> a one-liner about boomers is that they are the generation that sold out but

would never admit they sold out it's a combination on the one hand a great deal of idealism and a sense of themselves that is morally noble liberating humanity but on the other hand a great deal of selfishness and narcissism and a blindness to the ways their liberation and agenda knocks down functioning institutions that left a lot of people worse off