problematic things are the ways he feels about women, he also >> that we have a great event for h you talking about the book 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 happened.

so click on the q&a icon at the bottom of your screen the chat function won't be available for audience comments but in that column me find a link for purchasing additional copies of the premonition. in the introduction defines a job and has done that consistently with extraordinary success over 30 years whether the subject is wall street fatherhood in-home game the 2008 subprime mortgage collapse and thes big short. behavioral science and economicss are the hollowing out of the government under trump and the fifth risk just to name a few in the premonition michael addresses the pandemic and is in so many

previous works he does through intriguing characters and in this case a loosely connected group of public health experts who attempt to get the us government to take the pandemic threat seriously but run up against dysfunction and indifference. the premises to understand america's extensive bungling of the crisis you need to look beyond donald trump's own mismanagement to the nations fragmented underfunded public health system in particular the failings of the cdc. a compelling argument as michael does in a narrative that reads like a thriller. in conversation with my a google director of behavioral economics who previously served as an advisor in the obama white house and at the un. and she's about to start a podcast called a slight change of plans the screen is yours.

>> i michael it's great to see you we have talked several times this week but this is my favorite book you have written. and i think one thing i appreciate is very early on and you give us a glimpse as a philosophy if you think your job is to find a story to let readers make upiv their own minds but it doesn't mean that you don't form an opinion. so what is your take on what the book is about? >> it really is true that i do think my job is to find the right characters. and find the people through whose eyes you want to see the world.

if i bungle that the book will not be any good. so i am like a stripper in front of the cathedral but to say these people are important and youou need to listen to this. i get excited when there is a situation people who are not heard. and are important but doesn't matter all that much what i think about it. so the story is about what they did and who they are and i think of it as all along as a portrait of a broken and

dysfunctional system. is like a portion of society and the way they bounce around tells you a lot about what's wrong with it. the pitcher by the things that happened and yes it is more narrowly about the public health system but that's my target to write a book this was the grandiose ambition it's like the 1990 pandemic so what was it really like? and i thought if i do my job really well, it's a message in a bottle to describe american society now. but that was the hope and the ambition but it does a lot of other things and the other

guiding principle is then my editor my entire career but the mantra is done for yourself keep yourself as interested in the material as you can and the reader will stay interested i just found this. but in the way it is exempt meeting to play tennis again someone that isha better than you it's always on the other side of the net if the materials sucks there's onlyy so much i can do. i will not play my best tennis but if it's like roger federal or no i look so much better than i did.

>> and the way this feels fresh is that it is unfolding in real time we don't know how the coronavirus will evolve but your characters work on infectious disease take on new significance of the black one —- the backdrop of the global significance so we interpret their own path and we are on this journey with them. we have had decades were more stable understanding to say maybe i need to rewrite my own understanding. >> and it poured out of me. just first meeting that characters to the t delivery of

a book in both cases was a year and i don't feel like i needed another day. i think that's right that they were all a little surprised that i showed up on their doorstep i cannot tell you how me times they said why are you talking to me? you don't understand yourec really important. don't talk to me. i have been invisible my entire career i will remain in the basement of the veterans administration until they retire. >> and it is true that they think of themselves a little differently than they did. it'ser also true for what they were in relation to this event was the track.

if people asked me it is an ongoing event you do that now how it would turn out, that was never a problem because they do find themselves in relation to the event. it's too late. it's over. we lost. but there was never an issue. to fully process them. host: did it ever feel that after interviewing the subject that you are forcing them to engage with. >> always. not just this book if i don't get to that place where they talk to me like they don't talk to anybody else than i have not done my job. at one point they said to me

you now know me better than my two ex-husband's. that didn't say j much at the time but i got way past that. may be nobody better than her sister and i know things about her sister doesn't know and the funny thing i think the basis att the bottom of all my books is the trust that is a clear reality that they trust me to understand what the world looks like a magical things happen so you can see the patterns inob their lives they don't see from themselves

and then to treat them in as characters in a work of fiction that you are delivering an understanding there are moments like this but i met charity dean after pestering the california government to let me talk to her when they said she didn't want to they lied they didn't want me to and i found her through back channels and a visited her in sacramento with two really long't days together and she was really interested in what i was doing. she had a view how the system was screwed up i decided i will trust you and help you

she told me among the more personal thing she did was to write down her birthday resolution and december 20th of every year and put these on the back of her grandmother's photograph she has a grandmother who was like a north star for her. so when she says she will trust me i said can i just walk around your house? can i just look at anything you want to look at? i will just wander around. she said okay. so i wander around the house. host: i need to pause there. this is not normal behavior so who takes credit for this interaction?

are you ask dreamily charming and disarming character to convince her or is she just like i have nothing to hide. >> you know me if i spent two full days at the i need to get to know you need to walk around your house. host: probably not. [laughter] that's why i am or the people who sit on the cutting room floor. maybe that's why. >> and in her case and then to remind yourself of who she was. walking around her house and then to grandmother's

photograph is hanging by her bed i take it off the ball and there are all of her most intimate personal resolutions from the past 15hi years written on the back. it's all stuff of what i will do this year. i will go to west africa and treat malaria. i will learn french. whatever it is. that's why was saying where the trust takes you in december 20th the first line on her list is something very personal s the second is a prediction. it has started. a tingle went down my spine. i called her back up from the pool what is this? >> she said this thing had

been waiting for my entire career was about to be upon us. i put it down. i had no evidence. no reason. she's the doctor. >> but the doctor in a disease hunter who also try to hone her instincts because she knows there is a six cents. and at that moment i didn't know what i i would do with that but i thought this is when i met my best to even see this in the first place she would never mention that she had premonitions in december 2019 we were going to be overrun by a pathogen. so for me to feel that i'm doing what i'm doing properly andin need to need to get into the bedroom and pulled the grandmothers portrait off the wall and look at the back. host: i love that.

>> so these characters are larger than life. and i said michael this is a force of i nature and that i want to ask if you were questions and did you know from the beginning this is a done deal? or didth it require that moment for that to crystallize? >> she was inevitable because i met all of my other characters first and they all pointed to her. they all said before i got to

her, five people said to me you have got to meet charity because she's the only one in the state of california government to knows what we should do. she is a bad ass. she is a force. they had a sense if i would understand what is going on i needed to spend time with her. they all had a feeling she had enlightenment. these are not dumb people these are important men who might not find themselves in my end by a younger female doctor. it is clear she was special before i even met her. when i met her i didn't think of aou character in the book but im for how to write about this but so one of the problems is

a status problem so you have those bozos who have a rotating cast of characters who are supposed said experts and learned about infectious disease three months ago but those that make themselves public as experts are usually not the experts. and that people who are experts of disease control are the people who are controlling disease. those are local public health officers who get all kinds of greece but they are the soldiers on the battlefield

with our society should do in real life and the lowest person on the totem pole the most important in this fight and make and the most important in the story thinking she's i want to lean on the most so the other characters were all connected through her she was a natural connective tissue so that was the other reason she ended up where she was. >> so then all the characters somehow so well done there.

so being an infectious disease doctor in public health official looking at every note and cranny what people are doing so i need to extract lung tissue so i am scared i'm

in the doctors office and they say oh good we have an animal control center. i will be sure to chase down this rabid dog next time and asked the questions and then i see this stray dog two weeks later. so exactly to your point so how do we help solve this problem?

and then to be possessed by their job. but then the pasture essential workers were lifted up. and then the amazon delivery guy they were elevated. and then to see the hierarchy form and then a career civil service. with a shiny new object.

that could be inverted but this is a person who should have status son of a chef to be as brave as jerry dean. and then you should be paid $10 million per year. is not a public service way. not to be under resourced underpaid and the cdc didn't cover for it in one of the

mantras was nobody is coming to save you. and to take the job to say i did not expect to have to be that way. and to be such a good characterbr and that she is not a fearless a person. and then to be deeply rooted in a problematic childhood. and willed herself to be brave to do her job. and all those things it was muscle memory. telling herself and reminding herself to be brave that we created that kind of pressure on that role. i agree.

so the thing in this case because it is an interesting job it is a mystery to me there hasn't been a television drama built around the local public health official. and the stakes are high. because that we ever do is so interesting. i want to know who my local politician is that that's what needs to happen. and it was mystifying to me

the status of the political appointee compared to the career civil servant it made no sense. still makes no sense to me. >> and for 35 years and then to feel that dynamic. >> and it's not that they are not compelling people and then that is another aspect of session is when you know you have something and that combination with a failure to realize you are a character is

gold. and then they lose altitude but she was a person as entertainment read books about the bubonic plague and hung bottles of viruses from her ceiling and to be excommunicated from her church and leave the first marriage to pursue a medical degree. >> and this is so fascinating to me he has add person says when it comes to critical care medicine it's like with ritalin. i found it so powerful and

then richard has is fatalism as a child were here for a reason and then think what is my reason and then it is that pandemic playbook and this is my life work. >> i had chills talking about this and richard was the jungle guy for the book he is prominent but not as prominent as carter. but richard was the one who held my hand and is a literary figure. his first ambition in life was to be a poet. and then became a doctor. but he's not self traumatizing.

then had a particular moment with a very social intervention and he thought that was not to work and then was embarrassed to i buy it. that has been in my head my whole life rolling down an 80-foot class hit my head and unconscious in the water. and a course in pediatric medicine enough critical care like the week before.

and then the mythology in the family that richard would save for a reason. and with the upper-middle-class. so the they don't routinely tell the stories so it faces the possibility that they won't have a solution to a pandemic and by a solution a try to answer the question what do you do about being vaccinated? so it was sweet through the land how do you minimize? they have a feeling this is why im here. and is embarrassed to tell me about it. is just incredible and that's where he lives.

host: another seen emerging from this book and quickly realized that someone has got it. it someone's job who it is to get this done so then charity has this exchange with the cdc and then with the meningitis outbreak and then it falls on deaf ears. we think you're wrong so have added. >> and then i remember the day that i have revered for so much of my life. and then an astonishing discovery to have. >> it's hard to remember present in the same

vulnerability so here it goes self protection and then to be my first teacher in the supermarket for the first time. what? she buys food in the same place as us? at that she lived in the school. that's what it felt like. so the cdc. host. >> so to say that she was so disappointed to find the man behind the curtain was such a pansy. [laughter] and she gets into it and things they are the gods. and alld of a sudden find themselves on the streets of santa barbara behind oprah's

house and with tuberculosis. and moral support many can take that risk and that we wouldn't support that. and after that manager cockrell outbreak on campus that theth health authorities are eternally grateful that she did that all on her own. and then to ask the oregon people and from the

investigation to just interfere. and that those and then depending on how they do their job to have different relations with the cdc but they are supposed to be following those cdc orders. even though it has no official power you are not supposed to anger the cdc. but those for just this reason and the one that she thought was brave was usually women but not always as opposed to

the rich and retire doctors who doesn't want any trouble. that the cdc would get in the way. nobody will save you and those who got their heads chopped off in the last year. all those except a couple of exceptions are you in santa clara? >>he yes. sarah should get a presidential medal. she saw she needed to shut down the county without backup from governor newsom or donald trump and probably saved a gazillion lives with that early disease transmission and what does she get as thanks? every wednesday at heron house a mob gathers still to this day and chance insults and

absurdities at her and her family. i called her a month ago and she was in a shelter with around-the-clock armed guards and was with her. teenage daughter because she needed to study for a test the next day and couldn't do it because the mob was making so much noise outside the house. and let them stay. that's we need to correct. >> . >> and with my time in government people are petrified. but basic things to see if the

program works well or not. editor took eight months and then to continue with the status quo there is no risk incurred so that is the easy way forward and it is slightly alarming for people's willingness to lose everything in order to have a voice but then how we can have the system that leads to the problem-solving and provocations are everything and it's allin about profits for medicine, et cetera et cetera. >> is that a question? >> your tone threw me off i thought that was a statement. >> do you have any ideas for

those incentive structures? we have to have a recognition in culture to celebrate the risktakers so there is the cme awards. so it should be broadcast like the oscars and second for the leadership the leaders of each organization and then to become the secretary of commerce and it's silicon

valley thing. and then to tell the other direction. and went is a structural change. and those that come in with the administration. typically with a couple of interesting exceptions at best they mayyp take priority but the average tenure is 18 months through two years. you will not create anything in the culture in 18 months or two years. the head of the gao they

appoint a person and then to be surveyed at the top of the federal government and i am satisfied or my work is meaningful. and the homeowner versus the home renter. and so you get rid of the presidential appointees. and then you institutionalize the leadership in the operations. and then you look to the practices of theu private sector and then to be as

excited about their jobs as the people at microsoft or google or wherever. is not radical and crazy. >> especially when you frame it to be a little less efficient. and the existence of the society. at the federal level but that is one fix. >> i do think it's good to log off because as a political

appointee is to allow people who are afforded short stints as ideas into government cdc these academics when they come into revamp. >> i agree but if i say maia you are the new head of the cdc but you only last until the and then on —- the end of my administration maybe youam will have two good years versus maia you are the new head of the cdc and you will have it for 15 years you are much more likely to bring in those if you're be there for 15 your much more likely for innovation if you have to live with what you've got eight

years from now so i don't think these are mutually exclusive. >> . >> and with that sense of urgency. and those were positive psychological effects. and then to reassure me in 2017 try to implement change. >> that think about why that person is that way because by someone in a will be gone. and of that person is led to do what they are supposed to do so one of the consequences of good leadership the

organizationser will get rid of those who don't function because then you know the boss will not be around. that has to go away. those institutions need a refresh. >> and the political appointee lobbyist administration. >> and you can kill too far in the other direction. i agree. and after all the president is held accountable and if he doesn't have any ability. but yes. i agree. host: we need to do q&a. >> we are supposed to have people ask questions. host: i have another question

you told us when you are writing a book you have a playlist and play it over and over. so can you share a few songs from the playlist? >> let me see. i have it here while you're looking at questions i will tell you what they are. my writing playlist is an curated for musicalng excellenc. i don't pretend to have song picking ability. i'm not a dj it is a musically idiotic structure but there are things i like to write to romeo and juliet.

suspicious minds, and white you come. kelly clarkson, dwight yocum i ask you reading her favorite song and she sent it to me and i said that is so curious i will put it on the playlist it was kermit the frog and rainbow connection. [laughter] some of that is cool and hip and some of that is not. he gets me going. if i am in the grocery store and i hear that song i look for a pc to start writing words. >> . host: how do you decide what to write about?

and he loves your book. >> this is the truth and it sounds not true. afterr every book, i do ask myself should i still be doing this? i try to give myself a space where i can actually answer know so i go do a podcast or write a script and i don't say i have to write another book and start the position so that way i'm called to the book so i have to feel that i'm called toto the story to the point where i feel a sense of obligation. and how i get there with any particular subject is on the subject and to say something bad will happen in the trump administration will mismanage it and then something bad

happens so i have a duty to poke around and it yielded such a goal right away that i was off and running. sometimes i'm not writing a book i just answer a question. but the answer is so breathtakingly interesting but i have the same conversation with my editor that i had 16 times. i say star. i'm interested in this but i'm not sure. so we spent three months pondering my uncertainty and at i some point i know so much about this and nobody else will do what i have to do it. it is a slightly revealing maybe. i had a secret group of

doctors influencing policy all over the united states and a privileged view. no one in the world knew who they were and i was all in. "the new york times" discovered one of the females and a front-page to "the new york times" they got a tiny sliver in the story. and then i waited for all of that to emerge and it didn't so i came back to it. i couldn't do any more for the newspaper so if i don't do it won't get done and it should be done. but is just accident. it really is accident. >> if i don't do it nobody else will. >> that's true.

host: maybe you have the same of session. >> so which of your own books is your favorite? >> that's like asking me which of my kids is my favorite. host: which of your kids is your favorite? right here. it's just you and me. i know who it is. [laughter] >> and doesn't completely compute the question but i will make critical judgments of them. but the way i judge them is the way over and take judges look at the dive. it could be in credibly difficult with a splash and needed work another one could be as simple dive with no splash at all.

moneyball simple dive not much splash.y this one was a pretty complicated dive and not a lot of splash. if i had to rate them. it's not like it's my favorite but if you said you have to put your book in a writing competition ten years from now i would put this one up. host:: what was the most surprising discovery you made interviewing and researching and your writing process. >> in the material? what did i discover that off my doors? that's easy. meeting with charity dean and santa barbara retracing her steps following her path of

the montecito mudslide were she was rescuing people. living her drama i fell i walked into a netflix show how did i not know about this person? it blew my sockse off. righte behind it are the other two characters just like solving a pandemic and the pipe time it's a most bad ass and then completely to rethink to create a national pandemic dstrategy so those are the three things so in the process that excited me that was new and a very self-conscious way, for the first time i just

say i go with the characters go i don't know what the story is. and that proved in this case to be a fertile way to write the book. >> that's like asking a friend of mine do you have any advice for me? you already did that part you marry the right person. so —- just like if you find the right characters and the story will unfold. >> yes. you build your house on the best foundation some of those materials are not up to code you are still okay. host: what do you view is the biggest mistake made of the cdc in response to covid-19? >> the testing failure is the

biggest. that is the simplest and the biggest. you cannot control anything if you don't seeee it. they not only failed to provide us with flashlights, theyth shut down people providing their own self-made flashlights. together with the fda and simply blinded them when they were to enlighten them. that was shocking and catastrophic and costly. >> that the other thing i would say is it's not a one thing but to the point where it was unable to stand up to donald trump. so became a mouthpiece the

process by which it lost its ability is the other side of this. >> and it will start with trump that's an effortless narrative. and those were long before. but if you could we do an interview in your career what would it be. >> so if i can we do an interview? i don't have those kinds of regrets. i don't have them. nothing comes to mind with an interview because no one interview is everr that important. it is ad relationship. i have to spend not days that months with someone.

there is no great risk from anyone interview. host: so maybe for a moment you make then seal i shared too much. >> i never lost a fish. every fish i hooked i have landed so i never had a problem to say you scared me out the story i don't want to be with you. with one exception but it wasn't an interview it was with george soros 20 years ago i was going to write a book about him i feel all over eastern europe with him there was a masterpiece in him. a masterpiece. across the financial markets in government. and i made the mistake of writing a cover piece for the

new republic that offended him previously he agreed to let me be his writer and then he said no. he didn't trust me anymore. i thank you made a mistake. bute that was a mistake on my part to write it i should have just shut up. host: interesting. can you go over a few minutes? this is a great question. what do you read or listen to for fun? >> i read all kinds of stuff i think how do win the nobel prize and still write so well? it is so good. nonfiction i tend to read it is work related it's normally stuff i need to know about i seldom, sometimes they

read biographies but i tend to read more fiction than nonfictionut for pleasure. there is a u tendency there. what do i listen to? there is a new podcast called slight change of plans. i don't know what to do. i don't want to write anymore. [laughter] the host is so charming. i listened to all of malcolm gladwell and his podcast. this is damning am not a big consumer of culture if am a big consumer of fiction i'm a sort of consumer of some kinds of

nonfiction i do get hooked on tv shows i am now watching the mayor of eastown detective story it is a soap opera but it is just so good so i get hooked on things but this stuff just appears before me and i eat it. but tending towards fiction or television or good television drama. >> giving your last book on federal bureaucrats do ever circle back to the folks to find out what happened to them and what they thought?

always. almost always. a lot. yes. because a lot of them are totally oblivious whatlw will happen but i will tell you what is funny arthur a allen who ended up being the afterward to the paperback and 8000 words who basically created the field and was the world's expert and how different objects would enable him and the coast guard to rescue people that were lost at sea because they didn't know how to overturn 18-foot sailboats theyy cannot predict. he developed a prediction machine for all these different objects so this is a story it's funny but it

captures the spirit. i called arthur a allen to write about him because i picked him offal the alphabetized list of government workers who had been furloughed as inessential. might that what he does that is so inessential? he only saved 8000 lives but never mind. i saided i want to come. i am michael lewis i have this book i want to write the afterward i to he didn't listen that closely he says come once a wi-fi out to connecticut from california and spent three full days with me. full days interview his wife andd children we go to his old office. we go out to long island sound he floats these objects he cried before meis remembering a woman he could not save. very emotional. on my way later

back to he says you are a writer i get a call you are an author. i said yes. i told you that when i called you he said i didn't hear that i thought i said what did you think i was doing to fly to connecticut to use do these interviews? he said i thought you are interested in howi objects drift. [laughter] he didn't know. i'm interested but not that interested. [laughter] so i got an e-mail from arthur a allen today because he just read the premonition. he now knows i'm an author and now a friend. so i don't just stay in touch because to get their feedback about the book that's because we become friends so the first thing i happened is the feedback but that is water on

under theap bridge and then we have a relationship. >> . >> i really like anthony fauci. if you wanted to use my book as a weapon to do damage to anthony faucher would not approve of it but if you wanted to use my book as a weapon you could say if you're so smart how to mediate now is much as carter did on january 2? he wasst saying everything wasn't that big of a deal and carter was explaining why you should not say it's okay the doctor fauci was operating with constraints and he needed to stay copacetic with trump

so he's playing the political game in the same time he's doing his best to save lives i admire him i would hate it if somebody took this to use that against him. >> he was the man last year. the final one. after everything is back to normal what you think about the possibility of people not having any interest in reading or watching or consuming anything pandemic related as we now have been living this 24/7? >> i might have that prejudice i'm not worried because we don't get to the pandemic until page 180 i told my editor the joke of the book is i'm skipping the pandemic because the only interest of

my characters is the very beginning you have to go through the event that's not what the story is about it's about all the things around the pandemic that led to what happened. so in some ways is not even a book about the pandemic. i was not that worried people won't read a pandemic book. it is and it isn't. >> yes that you would have controlled for covid or pandemic disease that this is like the main characters. >> this is super fun. we are done. >> you did a great job. host: you did two. >> i don't know why my a would not let you roam around your place. you can come to mine anytime.

[laughter] >> this is damning for our friendship.. [laughter] to everyone watching things very much for tuning in this is his best book yet so be sure to read it in the chat column you can find bookstore links to find links from the premonition from all of our friends from books and books in miami and the harvard bookstore stay well and stay well read. here's carol on the u.s. secret

service. ... ... >> i am the vice chair of the lbj foundation it is my pleasure to welcome you here tonight for an evening with tonight we're really lucky to have with us was just written a book about the secret service and our friend out of the texas tribune will interview her tonight about this. what we know having the highest possible steam for the secret